“Thought I’d check up on my army of do-gooders,” Jiggy said. “How’s our homeless friend?” His beady gaze landed on Hari.

Hari withdrew into himself.

Naina stood and got between Hari and Jiggy. “Hey, Jiggy. Welcome back. How was New York?”

“Best city in the world,” Jiggy declared in his high-pitched voice. “Best city to have a wedding in.” He’d been in New York City for his niece’s wedding. A wedding he’d paid for, as anyone who read the news knew. “When you have an uncle with money, that is.” He laughed as though there was nothing more fun than broadcasting your generosity.

“Exciting. Let’s go to my office and you can tell us all about it.” Naina tried to get to the door but it was hard to do while still trying to shield Hari, who looked ready to crawl under the table. Hari was terrified of Mehta. Vansh had introduced them before Jiggy went off to New York, and Hari had told Naina that Jiggy reminded him of a shark and sharks were why Hari was terrified of oceans.

Vansh stood, helping Naina cut Hari off from Jiggy’s view.

But Jiggy walked around them into the conference room. “Let’s talk here. I like that everyone is here.” He dropped into a chair between Sadiya and Makayla. “So what are we working on?”

Sadiya told him about their breakthrough with Naman Thapa. Jiggy waved it away. “Nepal is eight thousand miles away. What’s happening with Yash’s—sorry, I mean Vansh’s . . . the brothers have such similar names!” He stopped to laugh. “We should just call it the Raje project to avoid confusion.”

Naina sat down next to Hari. The muscle in Vansh’s jaw clenched and released, but other than that he showed no sign of discomfort at the obviously deliberate slip.

“We’ve got twenty companies on board and we’ve gathered twenty-eight people who’re interested in being part of the pilot,” Vansh said, sitting down too.

“We’ve also been working with Siddhartha Dashwood to do photo biographies of some of the people in the pilot,” Naina said. It was still annoying to her that Sid had become so involved in the project so fast, but she couldn’t argue with how stunning his captures were, and how much mileage the app was going to get through them.

Jiggy looked from Vansh to Naina, a veritable calculator shining in his eyes. “I know, I know. I’ve heard all that. You made me drink all that Kool-Aid . . . if the homeless crisis is caused by the tech industry, then maybe the tech industry can do something to turn the crisis around.” He repeated the words they’d presented to him last week and waved them away. Then he turned to Vansh. “Have you talked to your brother about this project?”