Sorry about this.
This chapter is same as previous but it will be Re-written form previous.
(You can skip this chapter)
So please Read next chapter
Thank you.
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The days after the raid were a funeral procession without a body. The alcove was a corpse, picked clean by the Crime Branch vultures. Harsh, Deepak, and Sanjay moved through the wreckage like ghosts, their movements silent, their spirits crushed. The adrenaline of the narrow escape had faded, leaving a hollow, aching void. The weight of the lost money in the oil vat was a physical pressure on Harsh's chest.
His parents' silent treatment was a different kind of torture. Their fear and disappointment were a thick fog in the small apartment, more suffocating than the monsoon humidity. The lie about tutoring was a shattered vase, and they were all stepping carefully around the pieces.
The only thing that burned in the emptiness was a cold, hard coal of fury. It had a name: Kersi.
The raid hadn't been random. Sawant's words were etched into his mind: "We have information." Information from a rival. The whispers, the reputation attacks—they had all failed. So Kersi had used his veneer of respectability to call down the law. He hadn't just tried to break Harsh's business; he had tried to break Harsh himself.
This called for a different response. Not a hidden counter-attack, but a public execution.
He put his entire damaged network on a single, silent mission: find me a device, any device, recently sold by Kersi's Emporium that had failed. He wasn't looking for a simple repair job. He was hunting for a specific kind of corpse.
It was Mr. Agarwal, the shopkeeper whose loyalty Harsh had earned with quality, who brought him the murder weapon. He arrived at the ruins of the alcove looking ashamed, carrying a beautiful, wood-cased Grundig radio.
"I am a fool, Harsh Bhai," he muttered, unable to meet Harsh's eyes. "After the raid… I got scared. I thought maybe you were… finished. So I went to Kersi. Paid a fortune for this. 'German engineering,' he said. 'Top quality.' It worked for four days."
Harsh took the radio. It was heavy, impeccably crafted. A status symbol. He opened the back panel. Inside, it was a graveyard.
Nestled amongst the robust, vintage German tubes was a cheap, modern circuit board, brutally grafted into the system with globs of cold solder. Wires were spliced with tape, not even properly connected. It was a Frankenstein monster of greed and incompetence.
A slow, vicious smile spread across Harsh's face for the first time in days. He had him.
"Can you fix it?" Mr. Agarwal asked, hopeful.
"I'm not going to fix it," Harsh said, his voice quiet and deadly. "I'm going to use it."
He spent the next 48 hours in a state of cold, focused mania. While Deepak and Sanjay cleared debris, Harsh worked on the Grundig. He didn't just repair it; he performed a post-mortem and a resurrection. He sourced period-correct components, replaced the shoddy board with elegant, hand-wired points, and polished every connection until it gleamed. He made it not just functional, but a masterpiece.
He also had Deepak, whose soldering was art, create a display: the defective, sloppy board mounted next to a pristine, perfectly crafted one. A lesson in对比.
On the third day, at the peak of the Lamington Road rush, he made his move. He didn't go to his alley. He set up a small table directly in front of Kersi's Emporium.
He placed the gorgeous Grundig on the table. He set up the display of the two circuit boards. Mr. Agarwal stood beside him, a nervous but resolute witness.
A crowd gathered, curious about the spectacle.
Then, Harsh began to speak. His voice wasn't a shout; it was a clear, carrying instrument of truth.
"You value quality!" he called out. "You work hard for your money! But are you being cheated?"
He pointed to the Grundig. "This is a beautiful radio. Sold by a 'reputable' shop for a premium price." He let the words hang. Then, he opened the back panel, using a small mirror so the crowd could see inside.
A collective gasp rippled through the audience. The butchery inside was undeniable.
"This," Harsh announced, his voice dripping with contempt, "is what you are buying. Cheap junk. Shoddy work. Designed to fail. This is not quality. This is a scam."
He held up the display, the good board next to the bad. "This is quality. This is what your money should buy."
Then, he turned on the radio. The rich, warm sound of a violin concerto poured out, pure and powerful. It was audio proof of his skill and Kersi's fraud.
The crowd's murmur turned into an angry roar.
Kersi burst out of his shop, his face purple with rage and panic. "Lies! He is planting evidence! He is a criminal the police raided!"
"The police raided me on a tip!" Harsh shot back, his voice cutting through the bluster like a knife. He turned to the crowd, making the connection for everyone. "I wonder who gave them that tip? A man who was afraid of real competition? A man who knew his own business was a house of cards?"
It was the final, devastating blow.
The dam broke. Other customers who had bought from Kersi surged forward, waving their defective devices, their voices joining in an angry chorus of betrayal. The scene descended into chaos. Kersi was surrounded, jostled, his reputation evaporating in the heat of public outrage.
Harsh didn't say another word. He packed his things with slow, deliberate movements. He had not just defended himself; he had fed Kersi to the wolves of his own greed.
He caught Kersi's eye across the seething crowd. In Kersi's face, he saw the utter ruin of a lifetime's work. In Harsh's, Kersi saw only cold, final judgment.
The face-slapping was complete. It was public. It was humiliating. It was absolute.
As Harsh walked away, the sounds of Kersi's empire crumbling behind him, he felt no joy. Only a grim sense of justice. The rival was destroyed. The path ahead was drenched in rainwater and spilled oil, but it was open. He had survived the attempt to break him and had broken the breaker instead.
The empire was in ruins, but its king was still standing. And now, the entire market knew it.