The lie that shielded his family became the catalyst for his next evolution. The "tutoring" cover story was a fragile shield; it wouldn't withstand real scrutiny. To truly protect his secret and fuel his growth, Harsh needed more than just Malvankar's brutal protection. He needed a system. A web of connections so intricate that it would make him invisible, his operations seamless and untouchable. He needed to stop being a lone operator and become a node in a vast, shadowy network.
This wasn't about making friends. It was about identifying mutual self-interest and exploiting it with cold precision. His classroom was the chaotic ecosystem of Mumbai's underbelly, and his curriculum was corruption.
His first target was the docks, the source of his most lucrative goods. Shetty was a valve, but Harsh needed to understand the plumbing. He began showing up at the dockyards not just for transactions, but to observe. He bought chai for the older, grizzled loaders who had seen everything. He didn't ask direct questions. He listened. He learned the rhythms, the shift changes, the specific berths where "special" cargo—goods that never made the official manifests—was offloaded.
Through this casual, paid-for intelligence, he identified a man named Boman. Boman wasn't a smuggler; he was a crane operator. A man who could "accidentally" swing a container a little too hard, splitting its seam just enough for a few choice boxes to "fall out" and be quickly whisked away before the customs inspectors arrived. Harsh approached him not with a bag of money, but with a proposition.
"Your daughter," Harsh said, having learned the man's one vulnerability. "She's top of her class, yes? Wants to go to medical college in Pune." Boman's eyes had narrowed with defensive suspicion. Harsh continued, calm. "I know a man. An educational consultant. He helps with admissions. For a fee. I will pay his fee. In return, you tell me which ships carry the electronics. The exact unloading time. A ten-minute heads-up is all I need."
It was an offer of a future, not a bribe. Boman, a man who lifted tons of steel for a pittance, saw a path for his daughter he could never provide. The deal was struck with a silent, grim nod. Harsh had his man on the inside.
Next was the customs office. Goods that slipped past Boman and Shetty still had to navigate the port's bureaucracy. Here, Harsh targeted a young, junior clerk named Anil. Anil was easy to spot—sharp-eyed, impeccably dressed, but with shoes that were too worn, a telltale sign of ambition stifled by a low government salary and Mumbai's impossible cost of living.
Harsh found him drinking alone at a cheap bar after his shift. He didn't sit down. He placed a brand-new, imported Parker pen on the counter next to Anil's elbow.
"A man who processes paperwork should have a good pen," Harsh said quietly.
Anil looked at the pen, then at Harsh, recognizing him from the docks. "I have a pen."
"Not like this one," Harsh replied. "This is a pen for a man who values efficiency. I value efficiency too. Sometimes, paperwork gets stuck. A signature is missed. A stamp is misplaced. It causes delays. Inefficiency." He let the words hang. "I am willing to pay a small fee for efficiency. A retainer. To ensure my import paperwork is always… prioritized."
He wasn't asking for forged documents. He was asking for speed. In the grinding, slow-motion chaos of Indian bureaucracy, speed was a superpower worth more than gold. Anil looked at the pen, a symbol of the status he craved, then pocketed it. He named his price. It was shockingly low. Harsh had his man in the bureaucracy.
Back in the markets, his network expanded organically. He became a prized customer for Prakash Rao, not just for his business, but for the information he provided. In return, Rao gave him first look at the best scrap lots, the ones with high-grade components before the vultures picked them over. He built a relationship with a printer in Kalbadevi who could produce fake invoices and packing lists for a pittance, creating a paper trail for his banked money.
He even turned a potential enemy into an asset. The owner of a small electronics parts shop on Lamington Road had initially been hostile, seeing Harsh as competition. Harsh didn't undercut him; he became his biggest wholesale buyer, purchasing resistors, capacitors, and soldering wire in bulk. He paid on time, in cash. The shop owner's hostility turned into a eager obsequiousness. He became a reliable source of clean, legitimate components, and more importantly, industry gossip.
Harsh's "mini network" was a living, breathing thing. It had no name, no headquarters. It existed in nods across crowded rooms, in pre-paid envelopes of cash left under a specific stone, in the timely ringing of a payphone. It was built on a currency of leverage, mutual benefit, and discreetly fulfilled desires.
He was no longer just Harsh Patel, the repair boy. To Boman, he was an educational benefactor. To Anil, he was a source of untaxed income. To Rao, he was a valuable informant. To the printer, he was a steady client. To the parts shop owner, he was a wholesale king.
He managed this web alone. Deepak and Sanjay knew only their parts of the operation. The left hand never knew what the right was doing. It was safer that way.
One evening, standing on the docks as the sun set over the Arabian Sea, Harsh watched a container ship being unloaded. He saw Boman in his crane cab, who gave a almost imperceptible signal—two quick flashes of the cabin light. The signal for consumer electronics. Harsh didn't move. He simply took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead—a pre-arranged signal for Shetty's watchers.
Nearby, he knew Anil was in his office, perhaps already stamping a bill of lading for a shipment that hadn't even been requested yet, ensuring its smooth passage.
In that moment, Harsh felt a power far greater than any he'd felt counting cash. The money was a result. This—this web of influence, this silent orchestration of events—was the cause. He had built a nervous system for his empire, and every pulse of information, every transaction, flowed through him.
He was connected. He was embedded. He was no longer just playing the game; he was beginning to design the board. The cliffhanger of exposure was still there, but now he had a dozen early warning systems and a hundred ways to vanish into the city's labyrinthine machinery. The boy from Bhuleshwar was disappearing, replaced by a ghost in the machine.