The black car deposited Harsh back at the mouth of his alley. The transition was jarring—from the silent, sea-view opulence of Malabar Hill to the familiar, cacophonous grime of Bhuleshwar. He stood there for a long moment, the address for Sigma Electro-components burning a hole in his pocket, Venkat Swami's calm, ancient eyes seared into his memory.
He had expected a bullet, a beating, a disappearance. He had received a job offer.
It was the most terrifying outcome possible.
He walked back to the alcove in a daze. Deepak and Sanjay rushed to him, their faces etched with fear.
"Harsh Bhai! What happened? Who were they?" Sanjay asked, his words tumbling out.
"They didn't hurt you?" Deepak added, his eyes searching Harsh for injuries.
"No," Harsh said, his voice distant. "They didn't hurt me." He looked around the cramped, familiar space, the soldering irons, the piles of components. It all seemed suddenly small. Pathetic. A child's game. "We need to talk."
He told them everything. The car, the bungalow, the meeting with Venkat Swami himself. He told them about the termination of their oil operation, the warning about Vijay Malhotra. And finally, he told them about Sigma Electro-components.
Their reactions were a study in contrast. Sanjay's face fell, the ambitious fire in his eyes guttering out at the death of their lucrative, secret venture. Deepak, ever practical, simply looked relieved that they were still alive.
"But... he wants us to run a factory?" Sanjay asked, bewildered. "Why?"
"Because he doesn't just break things, he builds them," Harsh repeated Swami's words, the meaning becoming clearer as he said them. "And he wants to build us. Or rather, a version of us that is useful to him. Legitimate. Controllable."
The next day, Harsh took a bus to Andheri, to the industrial estate. Sigma Electro-components was housed in a low, weathered building that smelled of solder flux and desperation. The founder, Mr. Iyer, was a thin, nervous man with glasses perched on the end of his nose and a permanent sheen of sweat on his brow. He looked like a professor who had accidentally wandered into a knife fight.
He greeted Harsh with a mixture of hope and deep suspicion. "Mr. Patel? The... investor?"
"That's right," Harsh said, shaking his hand. He didn't feel like an investor. He felt like a delivery boy for a message from a god.
Iyer gave him a tour. The place was a mess. The production line was inefficient, with workers backtracking and tripping over each other. The inventory system was non-existent—components were piled haphazardly in corners. The soldering work was shoddy; Harsh could see cold joints and bridged connections from across the room. It was a picture of honest incompetence.
"This order," Iyer said, pointing to a massive pile of circuit boards, "is for a German company. It is already two weeks late. Every day, I get a telex. If I fail, I will lose my house. Everything."
Harsh understood now. This wasn't an investment. It was a test. Venkat Swami had given him a sinking ship and told him to bail it out with a teacup. Failure was not an option. The consequences would not be from the German company, but from the man in the white kurta.
For the next week, Harsh became a ghost at Sigma Electro-components. He didn't tell Iyer what to do; he just started doing it. He arrived at dawn and left last.
He reorganized the production floor, creating a logical, linear flow. He spent a chunk of his own hidden money—his war chest—on proper shelving and labeled bins for components, imposing a military precision on the chaos. He stood over the shoulder of the lead soldering technician, not criticizing, but demonstrating—showing him the precise amount of heat, the perfect amount of solder, the clean, quick motion that created a perfect joint.
He worked alongside them, his hands remembering the skills he'd started with. He wasn't Harsh Patel, investor; he was Harsh Patel, repairman. And it worked. The workers, initially suspicious, saw his skill and his willingness to get his hands dirty. They started to listen.
The change was rapid. The rate of defective boards plummeted. The production speed doubled, then tripled. The German order, once a monstrous weight, began to look manageable.
Mr. Iyer watched the transformation with something akin to awe. "I... I don't know how to thank you," he stammered one evening as the last of the workers left. "You have saved me."
Harsh just nodded, wiping his hands on a rag. He hadn't done it for Iyer. He had done it to pass the test.
The shipment for the German company was completed with a day to spare. Iyer was ecstatic. He offered Harsh a formal partnership, tears in his eyes.
Harsh refused. "Just keep the systems in place," he said. "Run the business. Make it profitable."
He left the factory that night exhausted, his clothes smelling of flux and sweat, but with a strange, unfamiliar feeling. It wasn't the illicit thrill of a diesel deal. It was a deep, solid satisfaction. He had built something. He had fixed something. And it was real.
As he walked toward the bus stop, a figure detached itself from the shadows.
It was the ghost.
Harsh's heart stuttered, the satisfaction evaporating.
The ghost didn't speak. He simply handed Harsh a thick, sealed envelope. Then he turned and walked away.
Harsh stood under a flickering streetlight and tore it open.
Inside was not a threat. It was a detailed financial statement for Sigma Electro-components, showing a dramatic spike in profitability and efficiency since his involvement. And paper-clipped to it was a banker's draft.
It was a share of the profits. A generous one.
It was payment.
The message was clear. Venkat Swami was not just his master. He was now his client. His patron.
Harsh looked from the clean, legitimate cheque in his hand back toward the grimy factory. He had wanted to be a businessman. Now he was one. He had a successful electronics repair operation and a stake in a growing manufacturing unit.
He had everything he thought he wanted.
But as he pocketed the cheque, the weight of it felt exactly the same as the weight of the ghost's envelope of extortion money. The cage had simply gotten larger, more comfortable, and infinitely more inescapable.
The legitimate front was the most sophisticated prison he had ever been in.
(Chapter End)