Chapter Four Ajay
Ajay rarely slept without his phone next to his pillow. That way, when his four a.m. alarm went off, he heard it. Except he’d been so distracted the night before that he’d forgotten to go to bed with his device, and when he finally woke up, the bedside clock face read 8:01 a.m.
There was no way it was eight. He hadn’t slept in that late since... god, when was the last time he slept in?
He sat up, and his laptop, which had been tucked next to his hip, almost crashed to the floor. His reflexes were the only thing that saved his precious machine.
“Fuck me,” he mumbled as he set it aside and rubbed his hands over his face to try to clear the rest of his sleep-fogged brain.
The room was awash with a soft morning glow. His automatic blinds hadn’t even alerted him to the time of day.
The Stuart Hughes suit that he’d shed when he walked in the door was strewn across the wide chaise angled in the corner. The air still smelled like sandalwood from the cleaning service.
Spending the night at his bungalow at Bharat Mahal had helped clear his thoughts.
It apparently helped with catching up on sleep, too.
Ajay pulled back the covers and stretched, easing his sleep-sore muscles. Hopefully no one was tending the gardens, otherwise they’d get a show. He walked naked downstairs wearing nothing but his silver kara, the bracelet that he never took off. After some searching, he located his phone under a stack of files on the kitchen island.
“This is what happens when you take a break,” he said as he watched the messages load on his screen. He had over a hundred emails, sixteen voice mails, and forty-seven texts. He checked his assistant’s texts first.
RAFAEL (6:45 AM):Sir, please call me as soon as you are able. You had a conference call at 6:30 you missed.
“Shit,” Ajay muttered. That call was supposed to be with the distribution center in India that they were hoping to purchase. He scrolled to the next message.
RAFAEL (6:57 AM):Sir, your brothers are looking for you. I told them you were staying at your bungalow on the Singh family compound.
RAFAEL (7:15 AM):Sir, Hem is on his way to the family compound and should be there at approximately 8 a.m. I’ve rescheduled your morning meetings and calls before 9 a.m. Your brother Zail landed this morning from California and is also on his way. Please contact me.
“That’ll show me the next time I want to sleep in,” Ajay said.
RAFAEL (7:34 AM):Ajay, do I need to call your mother to go out there and find you? Am I clearing your schedule for the entire day? Your cousin Bhram is trying to reach you and is unable to do so, as well. By the way, I keep getting lilies at the office. I’d appreciate it if, during your conversation with Bhram, you told him to stop.
Before Ajay could call Rafael to let him know he was awake, his doorbell went off in a series of rings.
His brother. Always punctual.
Punjabi swearing came through the thick wood door loud and clear. “Oye! Are you dead? Answer the door!” Hem shouted in Punjabi.
“Oye, chutiya, I’m naked!” he said, swearing in the same language. He tossed his phone on the counter and rushed back to his room where he found a pair of boxers and tugged them on. If he answered the door in his birthday suit, Hem would probably whip out his dick and a ruler just to be the smartass older brother.
Less than thirty seconds later, Hem was still pounding on the door when he answered. “What the hell, bhai?”
His older brother rolled his eyes. He’d shaved, his hair was neatly styled, and he was dressed as if he was headed to work. “I came to see if you were alive. I’d think you’d have finished most of your workday already.”
“I’m a bit behind today.” Ajay stepped back for Hem to enter. “Is everything okay?”
“I should be asking you that,” Hem said. “Cha?”
“Yeah, if you’re making it.”
Hem toed off his shoes and shrugged out of his suit jacket, draping it over the back of one of the barstools. “Are you feeling okay?” he asked as he rolled up the cuffs of his oxford shirt. His kara, identical to the one Ajay wore, glinted in the light.
“Bhai, I’m fine.”
“I’m only asking because you slept past four thirty, you’re naked, and you grew a beard. I don’t think you’ve shaved since before Dad had his second heart attack.”
Ajay sat on one of the barstools and ran his fingers through his facial hair. The memory came flooding back. His father wheezing. The car ride to the hospital following the screaming sirens of the ambulance. The hospital waiting room.
Hem had always been an astute bastard.
“Makes me look older. Besides, I’ve been busy.”
“Don’t I know it. You’re doing great, Ajay. But take care of yourself, too.” Hem started to pull the ingredients out of Ajay’s cabinet for the chai. Masala mix. Pot. Tea leaves. It was jarring at first to realize that Hem knew where everything was.
It made sense though. Hem rarely stayed at his place, but his bungalow was identical to his own. Zail’s was the same too, but he rarely used it since he was mostly on the West Coast overseeing Bharat’s operations. Ajay was the only regular visitor. To learn from his father, he had to be near him.
“Where is Mina?” he asked as he picked up his phone to scroll through some of his emails from the night before.
“At the office.” Hem poured loose-leaf tea into a pot of water. “I have to drag her away some nights. It’s as if she was starving for something new, something challenging. There is so much work to catch up on at my firm, she’s gorging herself on it all.”
“That’s good, right? You guys are working well together. Did you come out here to check on me or to talk about your new relationship?”
Hem hummed. “I’m here because I wanted to ask Mom for Nani’s ring.”
Ajay froze. “You’re going to marry her.”
Hem looked at Ajay over his shoulder. “Eventually. When she says she’s ready. I know I am, though, so I’m going to be prepared while I wait.”
“I’m happy for you,” Ajay said. He meant it, too. His brother looked relaxed. At ease. Almost two years ago he’d left the family compound, left the company, because he refused to fall in line with their father’s expectations. Now Hem was where he belonged.
The front door opened and Ajay swiveled to look at his latest visitor. His baby brother, dressed in a flannel shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and sporting a man bun and a freshly trimmed beard, strolled in as if he owned the place.
“Hey.” He paused when he saw Ajay sitting shirtless at the counter. “Dude, why are you naked?”
“Seriously? I’m in my own house minding my own business. Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be on WesCo?”
“Touchy, touchy. I’m here for the Gupta wedding next weekend. The one we’re all required to go to.”
“Next weekend? Already?” Uncle Frankie was on the board at Bharat, and his granddaughter was getting married in the Indian wedding of the season. Festivities were supposed to start on Thursday and go through Sunday. “Is it Indian or American attire?”
“Both,” his brothers said in unison.
“Shit.” Ajay made a mental note to ask Rafael to secure the family gift for the bride and to also order clothes. He turned back to Zail. “Why are you here a week early, though?”
“I have a couple meetings to go over the budget for next year. I’m also spending some time with our new SVP of Legal. I texted you last night about it.” He kicked off his chappals next to Hem’s and straddled the vacant barstool. “Cha?”
“Yeah,” Hem replied. “Everything going okay?”
Zail rubbed his hands over his face. “You know that technology we’re working on? The one that WTA wants? Well, we filed a provisional patent application last November. It’s only good for a year. If we don’t finish the software in the next few months, we’re screwed.”
“Can’t we refile?” Hem asked.
“Yeah, but our competitors can put their own patent applications in then, which would effectively block us from having market control. That means millions of dollars down the drain, and the contracts we have in the pipeline all go away. We’ll be in the red.”
“The R D team has been on this for a long time,” Ajay said. “What’s the problem?”
“We don’t have our best engineer anymore, that’s the problem.” Zail’s bitterness was clear in his voice. “Sahar was my right-hand woman and the best programmer in the Valley. We lost her, and we lost our edge.”
Sahar Ali Khan had been one of the most brilliant minds Ajay had ever met. He had always been fond of her, but he’d had no choice but to let her go. She’d lied to them and failed to disclose that she was related to an executive at WTA. Since Zail had gone to MIT with her and then worked with her on a daily basis, he hurt the most from her loss.
And now Bharat was suffering, too.
“There is buzz in Silicon Valley that WTA is waiting for us to fail so they can make their next move,” Zail added.
“Yeah, I kind of figured,” Ajay said. If he was in WTA’s shoes, he’d wait for Bharat to fail, too, before trying again to take over the company. “What do you need from us?”
“I need Sahar back, but since you won’t agree to that, I need time. I don’t know if I’ll get that, either. Essentially, we’re screwed without Sahar.”
As if he couldn’t stand the idea of failing, Zail paced the living room until he stood under the pull-up bar that was built into the hallway doorframe. He reached up to grab it and started smooth, easy reps. He had to be over two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle, yet he made those pull-ups look as easy as breathing.
“Your role at the company depends on that patent, too,” Hem said, pointing at Ajay. “If the company can’t deliver the software, you’re going to lose the support of the board and major shareholders when Dad announces his retirement and names you as his successor.”
Ajay looked back and forth between his brothers. “I’m going to need a backup plan, then. Something that gets buyers, investors, hell, shareholders out of their seats and cheering.”
Hem poured milk into the boiling tea water. The pot sizzled for a second before calming. “How are the rest of the businesses in HAZ Industries doing? The vineyard, the hotels, the clubs, the rental properties? Is there something there we’re doing differently?”
“Not a thing, Hem. Everything is status quo.” Which meant that it was time to shake things up, Ajay thought. He made a mental note to review their other businesses with the executive team.
Hem rounded the counter and shoved Zail so he let go of the pull-up bar. “Hut, yaar. Move. I’ll show you how it’s done.” He gripped the handles and started to do pull-ups twice as fast as Zail. As he lifted his knees to form a ninety-degree angle, he looked over at Ajay and spoke as if taking a stroll in the gardens instead of lifting his body weight.
“Maybe we can get Dad to take a vacation in California. He could help with the software.”
“I don’t think he’s ready to travel,” Zail said. “And his health is still too fragile for us to work on it here.”
The sound of sizzling erupted from the stove, and Ajay vaulted out of his chair. He pulled the chai pot off the burner just as it overflowed.
“Dammit, Hem! You’re not supposed to leave the pot once you put the milk in.”
“Oh, relax,” Hem said as he continued to do pull-ups. “It tastes better when tea’s boiled like that. No sugar for me.”
“Me, either,” Zail said.
Great. Not only had Ajay slept late, but his brothers were now busting his balls and making a mess in his kitchen. He loved his family, but this was why he sometimes spent nights at his penthouse.
Grumbling to himself, he strained the chai into three cups and dumped the pot and strainer into the sink. His phone rang just as he finished wiping down the counter and grabbed his cup for his first blissful sip. Expecting Rafael, he answered.
“Sorry, I slept in.”
“Tsk-tsk, Ajay Singh.”
The warm rasp of Rajneet Kaur Hothi’s voice filled his ear and went straight to his gut. It heated his blood in a way that he hadn’t experienced in... god, he didn’t even know how long it had been since a woman had him so twisted. He shut that reaction down as quickly as it started.
“What can I do for you, Ms. Hothi?”
“Other than give my employees back?”
He chuckled. “Not a chance in hell.” Ajay looked at his brothers, Zail standing with his arms crossed, a thunderous look on his face, while Hem stayed suspended midair in a pull-up.
“Are we even then?”
“Hardly,” Ajay said. “How did you get this number?”
Her laugh twisted around him like a vise. “I have my ways. I was trying to get hold of your father, actually. I prefer to speak with the person in charge, but you’ll have to do.”
He wondered if she’d said that on purpose to rile him. If so, it was working. He was already dealing with pressure to be as great as the men who’d come before him. He didn’t need this stranger wondering if he was less of a leader, less of a man.
“You’re doing a piss-poor job of negotiating for whatever it is you called me for,” he said calmly.
“I want a meeting.”
“A... meeting. About what?”
“An opportunity to secure your spot as CEO.”
He jerked up in his seat. The fact that his brothers and he had just been talking about the same subject felt eerily like fate. Not that he believed in fate.
Much.
“You have my attention.”
“Not over the phone, darling. This is better in person. I’ll have my assistant reach out to yours to discuss the details. Then we’ll talk about how Bharat needs to spend some money.”
“I’m wrapped up for the next few weeks.”
He heard her sigh. It sounded practiced, as if she was expecting his hesitation. “Your patent needs to be filed by November, right?”
“How did you—”
“I deal in information, Ajay. I told you that already. If you want to be CEO, you need either a huge win for Bharat by securing that patent before WTA comes in and blocks you... or you need a backup plan. Not to sound juvenile, but that’s Corporate Maneuvers 101. I’ll have my assistant contact you next week.”
She hung up the phone without another word.
Well, wasn’t that both irritating and intriguing, Ajay thought. He looked over at his brothers, and before he could tell them what the call was about, Zail burst out, enraged.
“Why didn’t you tell her off?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because she’s the reason why we lost Sahar!” He pounded a fist against his chest. “She came forward with this bullshit, faulty information, and we lost the best thing we had.”
Hem dropped from the pull-up bar. “Zail, she wasn’t the one who lied to us. Sahar did. Sahar knew what was going on and didn’t tell us she had a relative working at WTA.”
“Because it wasn’t true,” Zail snapped. “All we had was some vague evidence. Nothing concrete. I went to Sahar myself, confronted her, and she told me that it was a set up. I believe her. We should’ve all believed her. And now you’re getting in bed with the sapa, with the snake? No, I’m not going to stand here and let that happen. I won’t do it.”
Ajay knew that Zail had taken Sahar’s loss hard, but this was next level. He took a sip of his chai and sat on a counter stool.
“If I force my way into the CEO position without the support of our shareholders and board members, and we can’t deliver on the relocation software, then we’re going to lose money. Raj wants a meeting because she has a business proposition that could potentially mitigate our risk. I want to see what she has to say.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Hem said. “There is no harm in hearing her out. From what Mina says, she’s a smart businesswoman who created a successful enterprise out of nothing.”
“Fuck this. I’m not going to stand here and listen to you all talk about working with this woman.” Zail stormed out of the house without a backward look.
“He has feelings for Sahar,” Ajay said to Hem.
“Yeah, and he blames Raj for losing her,” Hem replied. “Do you think she’ll be at the Gupta wedding? We’ve never seen her at the desi society events before, but Uncle Frankie has invited every South Asian entrepreneur in the tristate area. She must be on the list.”
Ajay paused and thought about the way Raj had operated so far. “I think she’ll show depending on how our meeting goes. She wants something from us. She’ll make an appearance at the wedding just because she knows that we’ll be there.”
Hem grinned. “You’re going to play a game of cat and mouse, little brother.”
“Yup. I just don’t know who’s the cat and who’s the mouse. I don’t know if I care, either. Let’s get to the main house.”