With such thoughts in mind, Basant pounded his steering wheel in frustration as he glided into the reserved parking slot in front of his parents’ house, where he and his family lived. It was a soiled three-story concrete structure that had been painted white at some indeterminate time in the past. The roof was flat and the window frames metal. On the first floor was a small office where his wife, Meeta, occasionally saw her few private patients. The rest of the first floor housed his aging parents. Basant and his family occupied the second floor, and his younger brother, Tapasbrati, and his family were on the third.

As Basant was critically eyeing his house, which was hardly the style that he expected to be living in at this stage of his life, he became aware of a car pulling up behind him, blocking him in. Gazing in the rearview mirror, he had to squint against the car’s headlights. All he could make out through the hazy glare was a Mercedes emblem.

“What the hell?” Basant spat. No one was supposed to park behind him.

He opened his door and climbed from the car with full intention of walking back and giving the Mercedes’s driver a piece of his mind. But he didn’t have to. The driver and his two passengers had already alighted and were approaching ominously.

“Basant Chandra?” the passenger in the lead questioned. He wasn’t a big man, but he conveyed an indisputable aura of malevolent authority with his dark complexion, spiked hair, a bad-boy black leather motorcycle jacket over a tight white T-shirt, exposing a powerful, athletic body. Almost as intimidating was the driver. He was huge.

Basant took a reflexive step back as alarm bells began to sound inside his head. This was no chance meeting. “This is private property,” Basant said, trying to sound confident, which he clearly wasn’t.

“That’s not the question,” the man in the motorcycle jacket said. “The question is: Are you the piece of donkey crap called Basant Chandra?”

Basant swallowed with some difficulty. His internal alarms were now clanging with the utmost urgency. Maybe he shouldn’t have hit the hooker quite so hard. He looked from the Sikh driver to the second passenger, who’d proceeded to pull a gun from his jacket pocket. “I’m Basant Chandra,” Basant managed. His voice squeaked, almost unrecognizable to himself. “What’s the problem?”

“You’re the problem,” the man in the motorcycle jacket said. He pointed over his shoulder. “Get in the car. We’ve been hired to talk some sense into you. We’re going for a little ride.”

“I . . . I . . . I can’t go anyplace. My family is waiting for me.”

“Oh, sure!” the apparent leader of the group said with a short, cynical laugh. “That’s exactly what we have to talk about. Get in the car before Subrata here loses control and shoots you, which I know he’d prefer to do.”

Basant was now visibly trembling. He desperately looked from one threatening face to the other, then down to the gun in Subrata’s hand.