The silence in the small Patel home was a physical weight, thick and suffocating. The proud roar of the scooter's engine had died, leaving behind only the frantic, silent scream of his parents' fear. Harsh stood frozen, the metal key biting into his palm, its earlier promise of freedom now feeling like a convict's brand.
His mother's hands trembled as they clutched the edge of her sari. Her eyes, wide with a terror far deeper than any he'd seen when facing Ganesh's thugs, were fixed on him. "Beta… answer your father," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Where did this come from? Tell us you haven't… that you're not…" She couldn't even say the words. In her world, a sudden windfall for a boy like him had only one source: crime.
His father, Ramnik Patel, took a step forward. The lines on his face seemed to have deepened in the last minute. He was a quiet man, worn down by a lifetime of calculating every paisa, of accepting his designated place in the world. His son's audacity was a earthquake shaking the foundations of everything he understood.
"A scooter," his father said, the words flat, disbelieving. "I have worked for twenty years. I take the bus. I walk. You are a boy. You buy a scooter with cash." He looked from Harsh to the machine and back again, as if trying to solve an impossible equation. "This money. Is it clean?"
The question hung in the air, stark and brutal. Clean. The opposite of everything Harsh dealt in: the smuggled goods, the bribes, the lies, the street fights disguised as business.
Harsh's mind, usually a lightning-fast calculator of risk and reward, scrambled. He could not tell the truth. The truth would break them. It would confirm their worst nightmares and shatter the fragile respect he'd just clawed back with the scooter. But a lie, to their faces, felt like a different kind of sin.
He saw his mother's face, the hope that he would say the right thing warring with her dread. He saw his father's rigid posture, the fear that his son had strayed onto a path that would end in ruin or prison.
The lie, when it came, was born from this desperation. It was a story crafted not for a corrupt policeman or a rival, but for the two people whose opinion, against all odds, still mattered more than any profit.
"It's from tuition, Papa," Harsh said, forcing his voice to be calm, reasonable. He met his father's gaze, pouring every ounce of earnestness he could fake into his own. "I've been tutoring students. Rich families in Malabar Hill. Their children are… not bright. The parents pay well for good marks. Very well. I've been saving it all. I didn't tell you because… I wanted it to be a surprise."
The story was almost believable. It played on their deepest desires: that their son was using his brains, that he was moving in respectable circles, that he was achieving success through the sanctioned channel of education.
His mother's tense shoulders loosened a fraction. A flicker of hope. "Tutoring? In Malabar Hill?" The name of the affluent neighborhood held magic. "But… how did you get such clients?"
"A teacher from my old college," Harsh continued, the web of lies spinning itself easier now. "He recommended me. He knows I need the money."
His father was harder to convince. His eyes narrowed, the calculator in his mind still running. "How much do they pay? For a scooter? How many hours of tutoring is that?"
"Fifty rupees an hour," Harsh said, naming a sum that was astronomical to a man who earned maybe a thousand a month. He saw his father flinch. "Two students. Three times a week. For months, Papa. I saved every rupee. I walked everywhere so I could save for this." He gestured to the scooter, the symbol of his sacrifice. "So I could help more. So I could travel to them faster, take on more students."
The logic was circular and perfect. The scooter was an investment to make more money… legitimately.
The fight went out of his father. The rigid anger was replaced by a bewildered exhaustion. The numbers were too big for him to process. The world of fifty-rupees-an-hour was as alien to him as the moon. He couldn't disprove it; he could only choose to believe in the son standing in front of him.
"You should have told us," his father muttered, the words lacking force. He turned away and walked back inside, the questions not answered, but shelved. The potential shame was too great to confront. It was easier to accept the lie.
His mother rushed forward, her fear now morphing into a nervous pride. She touched the scooter's handlebar as if it were made of glass. "Malabar Hill," she repeated, a wonder in her voice. "My son, tutoring in Malabar Hill." She looked at him, her eyes shining with tears of relief. "You must be so tired, beta. Working so hard. Come, I'll make you something special to eat."
She bustled inside, already rewriting the narrative in her head, a story she could tell the neighbors with pride, not fear.
Harsh was left alone with his new scooter and his old guilt.
The victory felt hollow. He had pacified them, but he had done it by building a beautiful, flimsy wall between himself and the only people who loved him unconditionally. Every rupee he made from now on would have to be filtered through this new, fake origin story. Every sign of success would be measured against the fiction of a tutoring gig.
He had gotten away with it. But as he followed his mother inside, the smell of his father's silent disappointment and his mother's fragrant, hopeful cooking mixing in the air, he knew the cost. He had secured his empire's growth, but he had mortgaged a piece of his soul to do it. The suspicion wasn't gone; it was just buried under a story too comforting to question. And he knew that lies, like foundations built on sand, have a way of shifting when you least expect it. The cliffhanger in the alley was resolved, but a new, more intimate one had begun within the walls of his own home.