Chapter Three

Vansh watched Naina bestow one of her hard-to-win smiles on Jignesh Mehta. Like so many men before him, getting a laugh out of the untouchable Naina Kohli seemed to make the tech billionaire feel like the king of the world. Which he kind of was. Vansh wondered what they were talking about.

Clearly, Naina had her game face on. The one no one could see through. She caught Vansh watching them and he winked at her, making her narrow her eyes. But the tight edges of her mouth loosened ever so slightly in the smallest of smiles. A real one, not a carefully manufactured one like she’d just given Mehta.

Vansh was about to start toward them, but she widened her eyes, a warning to stay exactly where he was. Which only made Vansh want to join them even more. But before he could decide if he wanted to needle Naina quite that much, Mehta caught sight of him and waved him over with the kind of excitement that didn’t match up with the fact that Vansh had never met the man.

Vansh made his way over, ignoring the visual darts Naina shot his way. Mehta was a guest in his home, so there was no question of not going over to greet him when he’d been summoned so enthusiastically. Their mother had not raised someone that ill-mannered.

“You must be the younger Raje brother?” Mehta said excitedly. His voice was a little higher than Vansh had expected, and his tone was not exactly what Vansh would call entrepreneurial. He smiled perpetually but there was a restlessness in his eyes. The word pugilist came to mind—short and stocky with a clean-shaven head and a perfectly trimmed goatee.

Naina stood a head taller than Mehta in her heels. Which had to be a good five inches high because she almost matched up to Vansh’s five feet ten in them. Which meant she could treat Vansh to her plentiful condescension eye to eye.

“This is Vansh Raje, Yash’s brother,” Naina said in her Dr. Kohli’s Polite Daughter voice. “Vansh, this is Jignesh Mehta, CEO of Omnivore Systems.”

“An honor,” Vansh said.

“Cool!” Mehta said. “Cool,” he repeated, just in case someone had missed it the first time. His tone reminded Vansh of high school boys from the nineties teen movies his mother loved. “And it’s Jiggy. My friends call me Jiggy.”

Naina quirked a brow. Do not laugh.

“I hear you’re back from Zimbabwe, where you’ve been digging wells,” Jiggy said. “Sounds like a blast.”

Vansh had heard the mission described several different ways, but “a blast” was a first.

“It was a very satisfying project.” Vansh refused to look at Naina, because not cracking a smile was now a matter of pride.

Jiggy turned to Naina. “All you rich kids running around the world trying to fix it.”

This time Naina’s brow rose less subtly. Vansh couldn’t tell if she was offended that Mehta had put Vansh’s work and hers in the same general category or if she was offended that he had dismissed them both as rich kids when he himself had a personal fortune of several billion dollars.

“Some rich kids run around the world doing the actual work, while some let others do the legwork and buy the credit with their riches,” Naina said, her tone so cold, Vansh didn’t know how Mehta didn’t freeze and crumble instantly.

Instead, getting a reaction out of Naina seemed to stoke Jiggy’s smugness.

Truth was, if he wanted to use his wealth to purchase credit for good work that could use his money, then who were they to argue?

“Your foundation has been doing some amazing work,” Vansh said. “And Naina’s work is certainly a great choice for a flagship project.”

“I know, right?” Mehta countered. “Glad you think so.” He had one of those thick Western Indian accents overlaid with rolled American Rs and lengthened As.

“I know so.” Vansh found himself getting into the nineties teen-movie banter.

“So, are you and Naina like close and all?”

That took Vansh by surprise. Naina too from the quick drawing together of her winged brows. Had the eyebrow game always been so strong with her?

“We’ve known each other our whole lives,” Vansh said. Tone placating, because Naina looked like she was about to tell the Jiggster here exactly how much she didn’t think any of this was his business.

“She was almost your sister-in-law,” the man said, gossipy excitement making his beady eyes beadier.

“That would be true if Yash and I had ever had any intention of marrying.” Naina grabbed a mimosa from a passing waiter and took a sip.

This fact-based rebuttal seemed to bore Mehta. He turned to Vansh. “You have a girlfriend, Vansh?”

Okay, so the man jumped topics like he was on a trampoline.

“Not currently.”

“So where to next?”

“Haven’t decided. I’m thinking about staying here for a while. Reconnecting with my roots and all that.”

Mehta brightened. “Family is important. Are you and your brother close?”

Okay.“As close as two brothers can be.”

This declaration seemed to make Jiggs happier than it should have made anyone who wasn’t Vansh’s brother. He bounced on his velvet Manolo Blahnik loafers.

“Will you be working with him?” So, they were in a full-fledged inquisition then.

“We’re always involved in each other’s work.”

Mehta’s face lit up like the gold embroidery on his thousand-dollar shoes. “Anything specific?”

“I’ve been traveling the globe looking to be useful,” Vansh said, “but our country has quite a few of its own problems, does it not?”

“This is what I told Naina when I convinced her to move back here. But she insists on putting her focus on foreigners.” This from a man who had famously scraped his way out of poverty on the streets of Mumbai before arriving in Silicon Valley with the proverbial six dollars in his pocket.

“Your money is very convincing, Jiggy,” Naina said indifferently. But her eyes were alert. Obviously, this wasn’t the gossip session Jiggy was selling it as.

“All I want is for it to be put to good use.”

“Oh, money can always be put to good use. That’s the general point of money,” Vansh said.

Jiggy’s bark of laughter was so loud that everyone within a ten-foot radius started. One of the aunties even pressed a hand to her chest.

Jignesh thumped Vansh’s shoulder, all delighted bonhomie. “If you have any ideas—pet causes, if you will”—he gave a knowing wink that made as much sense as his general behavior—“I’d love to hear them. Naina’s endowment is large enough that she could easily share it with another worthy cause.”

Naina, who had been making the effort to look bored, snapped to attention, her focus suddenly fully trained on the two of them. “I didn’t realize my endowment was available for the taking.”

“Well, it is my money, and young Mr. Raje seems like the kind of person who knows how to help people.” Something like anger flashed in Jiggy’s eyes, even as he went on smiling.

Before Naina could respond to that vote of confidence, the crowd started clinking their glasses and everyone’s focus shifted to Yash as he jogged up onto the stage that had been constructed on the back lawn.

Californicators, the college beatboxing band that had been performing as part of a long lineup of local bands, gave him an impressive vocal drumroll, and Yash shoulder-bumped each of the seven members and said something that made every one of them look like they had just kissed the Pope’s ring.

Love for his brother swelled inside Vansh.

Finally Yash took the mic and cleared his throat, and the sea of guests who had coalesced from around the estate grounds to circle the stage burst into cheers.

“What a perfect Northern California night,” Yash said, managing to sound victorious, earnest, and in awe of the very earth they lived on. “A night filled with hope.”

Vansh hooted gleefully and the crowd joined in.

“A night I’ve dreamed of from the day I first tied my own shoelaces in kindergarten and my mother said, ‘You did that like someone who will run a country someday.’” Deafening cheering. Yash’s eyes glistened with tears. “Thanks, Ma!”

“Your mother is never wrong,” their mother shouted from the front of the crowd, her voice strong and proud.

Yash gave her a smile that made every woman in the crowd melt into a puddle and press her hands into her womb.

“Yes, Ma, you are never wrong.” He touched a hand to his heart. “Another thing my mother taught me was that actions are more important than rhetoric, so I’ll keep this short. We just made something historic and important happen, and we did it without engaging in lies and slander. We did it by coming up with ideas. Ideas that will fix what we, not someone else, we, all of us together, have broken. Our state’s future is bright.”

More cheers.

“We do an amazing job generating wealth and keeping our job market buzzing enough to shore up our nation’s economy. But we cannot leave our citizens, too many of them, who are struggling, behind. We’re miles ahead of the rest of the country in protecting our natural resources, but we cannot let fires consume us and bring destruction closer and closer to our doorsteps. We need solutions. We are the land of innovation. I am counting on each and every one of you to put your heads together for solutions. My door is open, I’m still finalizing my team, and I will introduce them to you soon. But I assure you that every person who works for me will be hungry for your input and ideas. This is our shot, we’re going to make it good.”

After that he thanked their parents, their grandmother. Every one of the siblings and cousins. He waved up to the balcony, where their grandmother waved down to him. Their cousin Esha, who never left the suite on the top floor when strangers were present on the estate, might have been listening too, and he said a special thanks to her.

He thanked every person on his team by name, and finally he invited India onstage and kissed her. Which was so sweet that the hoots and cheers mixed with laughter and awws. By the time he and India left the stage hand in hand, gazes locked like they couldn’t believe the other existed, there wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd.

Well, maybe there was one. Naina was glowering at Jiggy as though she hadn’t heard a word of the speech. Bummer, because during his speech Yash had mentioned that he wouldn’t have won without Vansh’s help with the historic meeting.

Jiggy offered Vansh a handkerchief, which he politely declined given that the billionaire had sniffled into it wholeheartedly through the entire speech.

“You lost a good man,” Jiggy said to Naina. Either the man had no talent for reading his audience, or he didn’t care.

Naina smiled. A smile that said Screw you as clearly as those words could be said. “I did. And now you want to take away my funding too.” She was in no mood to pretend that she gave a shit about anything other than her funding. “Sharing the funding was not the deal, Jiggy.”

“It’s a huge endowment. And I want to know what Mr. Raje comes up with.”

Oh. So the man was serious about hearing Vansh’s ideas.

Obviously, Naina had grasped this before Vansh had. She opened her mouth to answer, but Mehta raised a hand to cut her off. “Let’s give him a project so we can keep him around. Don’t you want to keep him around, Naina?”

She kept her eyes on Jiggy. Vansh might as well have been invisible. “Not if it means sharing the money I need to do my work.”

Why, thanks a lot, Knightlina!

“You did the work just fine without my money, now you’ll figure out how to do it with a little less of it. Stop being such a grouch. Let’s go get some cake.” Grabbing Naina’s arm, he dragged her away.

The glare she threw at Vansh over her shoulder as she mouthed, Don’t even think about it, should have burned him to ash. It probably did, because suddenly Vansh couldn’t feel his limbs, unless that was the adrenaline that was suddenly pumping through him.

Why would he not think about it? He didn’t even have a project in mind yet and he already had someone interested in funding him. He did have a talent for this, no matter what Ms. Kohli thought.

“That was the best speech I’ve ever heard,” someone said behind Vansh, voice cracking with emotion. “I would follow Yash to the ends of the earth. Is there anyone who wouldn’t?”

Vansh turned and found that it was the data guy from Yash’s campaign team. Vansh looked around to see who he was talking to, but he was sitting by himself and evidently talking to himself.

“Hi, Hari,” Vansh said. Remembering names was one of his talents.

There were five empty flutes of mimosas at the table, and instead of answering Vansh’s greeting, Hari downed the sixth, half-empty glass and dug into a gigantic slice of cake.

“Congratulations,” Vansh said to him. Hari had worked hard on Yash’s campaign. He was a genius with numbers and data, and he’d taken the information on demographics and voting behaviors and figured out exactly where to put campaign dollars and time, right down to neighborhoods and streets.

He’d worked mostly alone in one corner of the office by himself, just the way he was sitting by himself right now at a table tucked away from the crowd.

“Do you know what you’re going to do now?” Vansh asked. He understood only too well the emptiness one felt after a successful project. He made it a point never to linger too long on any project. Satisfaction, but also loss. Because the postvictory flush didn’t take up quite as much time as one would think.

Since the election, Nisha had accepted the position of communications director. She had managed Yash’s political campaigns for the past decade. This was her chosen career, unlike with the rest of the Rajes, for whom Yash’s ambitions were more of a pet pastime.

Rico, Ashna’s boyfriend, who had handled the media for Yash’s campaign, was moving on to work on a state senator’s campaign. One of the incumbent California senators was done with his term limit and the primary for that seat was going to be a bloodbath in two years. Maybe Hari could work with him.

Everyone seemed to be moving along, doing things, changing the world. Vansh had never had any interest in the rat race. He’d shrugged off that life years ago. He’d chosen to join the Peace Corps instead of going to college. He’d decided to see the world, work on real problems instead of toeing the expected path like everyone around him.

He had a gift, a gift for making positive change, and he had always been true to that. The trick was keeping his heart open. Also his eyes and ears.

Hari threw a shifty look at his cake and poked it with a fork. He wasn’t exactly comfortable with eye contact.

Yash hadn’t yet announced jobs in the administration, but there wasn’t much for someone with Hari’s skill set to do on a governor’s staff, at least not until he was up for reelection. From what Vansh remembered from their interactions, Hari was painfully shy, to the point where it was usually impossible to get him to talk.

The guy probably just wanted Vansh to leave him alone.

“No plans,” Hari said, his voice loud in the way of people who weren’t used to talking to other people. Or people who’d had one too many mimosas.

Vansh looked at the six empty glasses.

“I like orange juice,” Hari said.

Ah.

Vansh sat down next to him. “Was this the first time you worked on a political campaign? Are you interested in working on another campaign? I can talk to Rico Silva.”

Hari’s hands started shaking and he put the fork down with a clang. His mouth was full of cake that he chewed and gulped furiously. “No, no. That’s all right!” He stood; the chair toppled over behind him. “I have to go.” He tried to back away but stumbled over the chair.

Jumping to the rescue, Vansh grabbed his arm and kept him from going down with the chair. Then, setting the chair straight, he pushed Hari back into it. The man was shaking.

“I was just making conversation,” Vansh said gently. “It’s just that you did such a great job on the campaign I thought it might be something you might like working on. We don’t have to talk about your plans.”

Hari hiccupped and picked up a red carnation from the red, white, and blue floral centerpiece and smelled it. Then went on smelling it with great focus.

Vansh raised his chin at the empty glasses. “All these, um, glasses of orange juice. Did you—”

Hari burst into tears.

Okay.Vansh patted his shoulder. “It’s fine, I wasn’t  . . .”

Hari buried his head into his elbow on the table and started sobbing so hard his shoulders bounced.

Vansh looked around. There was no one close enough to notice. For a few minutes, Hari just cried and Vansh just patted his arm and made reassuring sounds, trying to calm him down without embarrassing him.

Without warning, Hari sat up and threw an accusatory glare at the empty champagne flutes. “It’s really good juice. I’ve never had juice this good ever. I think all that sugar is making me sick.”

“Actually that’s not . . . never mind, I’m glad you liked it. Did you drive here?”

Another sob spurted out of Hari. “I don’t have a car.” More hiccupping sobs. “Do you think they’ll care if I get another glass?”

He tried to stand.

Vansh tugged him back as gently as he could. “That’s probably not a great idea. And it’s okay. I don’t have a car either.” Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Was that a terrible privileged-person thing to say, given that he had access to seven Teslas in his family alone? “I’m sorry,” he said.

Hari slipped him a quick sideways glance, then looked away again. “You’re so nice. You’re even nicer than your brother, and I don’t know anyone who’s nicer than Yash.”

“Same. I don’t know anyone nicer than Yash either. Listen. Do you have a friend who can drive you home? Or I can arrange for something. That orange juice, it was—”

Hari started weeping again. He pressed his face back into his elbow. “No one can drive me home. I don’t have a home.” As soon as the words left his mouth he sprang upright and pressed a hand to his mouth and jumped out of his chair again.

And teetered on his feet. Again.

“Here, let me help you.” Vansh grabbed his arm and walked him to the alcove behind the pool house, where he forced him to drink a bottle of water, which Hari promptly threw up into the bushes by the pool, hopefully also expelling some of the alcohol he had consumed.

“Am I sick?” the poor man asked miserably. “Am I going to die?”

“We’re all going to die someday,” Vansh mumbled, then said, “Actually, that orange juice . . . it wasn’t just orange juice.”

“But it tasted exactly like orange juice,” Hari said with equal parts confusion and conviction.

“That’s because there was orange juice in it. Along with champagne. Well, sparkling wine made in Sonoma.”

Hari looked horrified. “But I don’t drink.”

Not what the puke in my bushes says, buddy.

“If I drink. If I drink . . . I . . . I . . .” The sobs started again.

Okay, time to get him to a bed. Vansh pushed him into one of the patio chairs and brought him more water.

“You are so nice.” Hari sniffled as he drank.

Vansh patted his back. “You said you had no home. What did you mean by that?”

Hari did another jack-in-the-box jump and promptly face-dived toward the patio. Fortunately Vansh had the reflexes of someone who’d spent many an evening with drunken friends in various parts of the world. He caught the man before he hit the ground and put him back in the chair.

“Let’s sit for a few minutes without jumping out of the chair, please. And keep drinking.” He handed him the bottle of water. If he thought the mimosas were orange juice, that meant they had gone down fast.

He needed some food to soak up all that alcohol, but Vansh couldn’t leave him alone. So he took him back to the corner table where he’d found him. “Don’t move until I get back.”

Then he went to the food tent and grabbed a couple of samosas and brought them back. Wasn’t Hari the guy who’d always taken the leftover donuts and pizza home from Yash’s campaign office? A faint memory of the rest of the team teasing him about it nudged at Vansh.

Thankfully, Hari hadn’t moved. He sat there slouched and felled by mimosas. Well, time to fix mimosas with samosas. Vansh handed him the plate.

“I grew up in a big house,” Hari said as though it hurt him to make the declaration. “In Bhopal. Now I live in a tent.”

As the words left his mouth his eyes widened to saucers and he shoved the entire, rather large samosa into his mouth. And promptly started choking.

Vansh slammed his palm into Hari’s back, making him expel the clump of potatoes and pastry congealing his mouth shut and cutting off his oxygen supply. Vansh was all set to perform the Heimlich, but Hari sucked in a huge slurp of air and color rushed back into his face.

“You saved my life,” Hari said. Tears streamed from his eyes, this time probably because he’d just been choking.

Everyone knew how very much Vansh enjoyed saving lives, but this situation was a little too absurd even for him. He handed Hari another bottle of water and looked around to see if he could find reinforcements to help with the situation, but everyone seemed otherwise engaged.

Naina and Mehta were deeply engrossed in their conversation, and they were the only other guests still left in this part of the yard. Everyone else seemed to be packed around the stage, mobbing Yash and listening to the band, which was really getting into it.

“It was just a very large bite of samosa. I didn’t really do anything,” Vansh said, making Hari let out another grateful sound.

“You followed me when I tried to leave. You cared. No one cares to follow someone like me.” The tears were flowing in earnest now and Vansh wished he could do something to make the poor guy feel better.

“Of course I followed you. And what do you mean someone like you? You’re every bit as worthy of being taken care of as anyone else.”

“I didn’t mean to say that,” Hari said on another sob.

Vansh made a face that he hoped showed his confusion.

“The tent.” Hari said the words the way one confesses to a crime.

“I don’t mean to pry. But are you saying you live in a tent on a campsite? Or are you saying something else?” Was he saying he was homeless?

Hari nodded, which was somewhat confusing. Vansh had enough experience with the South Asian head nod, but those had accents too, and Hari’s wasn’t clear.

Two thoughts struck Vansh at once. One, that homelessness had been the first thing to occur to him, and that said horrifying things about the city Vansh loved. Two, that he didn’t know what he would do if he found out that someone who’d worked on Yash’s campaign had been—was?—homeless.

“If my family ever found out, the shame would kill them,” Hari added through his tears.

Find what out? Vansh leaned forward. “Is your family in India or here?”

“In India,” Hari said. “My father is an imminent doctor.”

Vansh assumed the man meant eminent, unless he meant that his father was still in medical school. “My parents’ friends and relatives have property all over Bhopal. If they found out that Dr. Samarth’s son lives on the streets like a beggar, my parents would have nowhere to hide their faces.”

Holy hell, he was right about Hari’s being homeless.

Vansh must have looked horrified, because Hari looked horrified in response. “I’m sorry, I should never have told you. But you saved my life and I got emotional. It’s an emotional day.” Hari grabbed Vansh’s hand. “You won’t tell Yash, will you? Yash would be so disappointed in me if he found out. He would never have hired me if he’d known.”

“That’s not true. You should know that Yash wouldn’t judge you based on where you live.”

Instead of placating him, this just made Hari look even more distraught. “You cannot tell him. Please. Please! I couldn’t bear it if he found out.”

“Hari, it’s okay. Calm down. I won’t tell anyone anything you don’t want them to know. But what are you saying exactly? Have you been living on the street the entire time you’ve worked on the campaign?” Now that Vansh thought about it, the salaries Yash had been able to pay his team were nowhere near enough to live in the city. Most of the team commuted.

How had Hari not told this to anyone? How had the media not picked up on it? “Didn’t you give up your partnership in your social media marketing firm to work on Yash’s campaign?”

Hari looked around to make sure no one could overhear. “That’s what I had planned to do. I heard Yash speaking last year and I knew I had to work for him. I had to do everything I could to make his plans for California a reality. You know, my grandfather was a freedom fighter in India and he used to tell me the stories of marching with Gandhiji and being hit on the head with batons by the British troops.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “I’m not sure if my grandfather told me that or if I watched that in that Gandhi movie with that British guy playing Gandhi,” Hari added. “I was really young when my grandfather used to tell me his stories. But I do remember how hearing him talk about freedom and justice and the rights of people made me feel. And Yash made me feel like that too.

“When I came to America to go to grad school, I thought it would be the land of freedom and equality. And in many ways it was. But in so many ways it was not. Everyone was just running after things and fighting each other over politics and religion, and no one cared about the fact that old people had to work in Walmart and that the Tenderloin was covered in homeless tents.”

Vansh opened a bottle of water and took a sip. Why was drunk rambling always so damned insightful and true? “You’re absolutely right,” he said.

“I should never drink,” Hari said suddenly. “I had promised my mother that I would never drink after I told my cousin that she looked like a cross between a horse and a rat at her wedding. Drinking makes me tell the truth. Someone handed me a glass and I thought it was orange juice. Who puts alcohol in orange juice? Why would anyone do something that devious?”

Vansh gave his shoulder another pat. “Never mind all that. Where are you living right now?”

Hari stood, a little more steady now. “I think the invitation said six to ten and it’s already past eleven, so I have to leave. The Samarths never outstay their welcome.”

“Sit down, Hari. You can’t go back to the tent.” Now that Vansh knew, he couldn’t not do something. How was he not going to tell Yash this?

“But that’s my home.”

“No, it’s the pavement. Can you not afford a hotel room with your paycheck?”

“I had to pay off my debts. I’m still paying off my debts. And I can’t let my spot go. If I remove my tent, someone else will take it.”

How had Vansh never wondered how homelessness actually worked? “Okay, well, I’m going to check you into a hotel tonight. We will figure this out in the morning.” Pulling out his phone, Vansh started looking for availability at hotels in the area.

Hari’s hands started shaking. “That’s very kind of you, but they won’t let me stay in a hotel.”

God, he was afraid to ask. “Why?”

“Because they need ID.”

“You don’t have a driver’s license?”

“My backpack was stolen. My passport, my wallet, everything was in there.”

Of course the man hadn’t reported it.

How had Vansh never wondered how crime worked for the homeless? Did the cops cover the people who lived on the streets? Who protected them?

Vansh had so much to learn, but first he needed to figure out how to help Hari. Then he’d think about what all of this would mean to Yash if a journalist got their hands on this information.

No matter what, he could not let this poor man—who had made it possible for his brother to win the election—go back to living on the street. It was time to clean up the mess that was Hari’s life. Good thing Vansh was good at cleaning up messes. Good thing he was ready for a new project.

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