Vansh introduced them, and as always everyone was instantly charmed. Naturally, they all knew who he was. He started with the statistics, figures of how many people lived on the streets in San Francisco. All his ease and charm were nothing compared to the passion and knowledge he projected. Every one of them sat up and hung on each word. No one would ever know that he had the entire thing memorized, that he wasn’t reading the words on the screen, that he couldn’t.

Watching how hard he worked around his dyslexia, how confidently he embraced the tools that helped him, how very much he gave to every single thing, the pride she felt in him came back in a rush, drowning out everything else.

He wasn’t wearing a suit, but he had started to wear button-downs to the office in place of his muscle shirts. Not that he didn’t make button-downs look like muscle shirts. Arm muscles pushed into his sleeves as he pointed at the screen.

“Why don’t you let your programmer explain the architecture and the database structure to us?” Jiggy said. He’d been watching silently, but finally his hunger for blood and drama won out. He was up to something.

The room’s collective attention turned to Hari, and he made a choking sound.

“Mr. Samarth isn’t feeling great today,” Naina said. “Maybe Mr. Raje and I can explain the technical details.”

“Unlike you and Mr. Raje, Hari can give us ground-level insight into the project. He’s actually been living on the street for some amount of time, has he not?” The bastard had the gall to smile.

Vansh started to respond but Hari jumped out of his seat, breath coming out of him in gasps. His hands were clasped around his stomach. His skin had gone an alarming shade of gray. Before Naina could do anything to help him, he made a horrid gurgling sound and projectile-vomited across the boardroom table.

Expletives and gasps filled the room with its perfect acoustics. Chairs scraped back. Everyone scrambled away from the hot-chocolate-colored wave.

Naina and Vansh both lunged toward Hari, trying to catch him, but his eyes rolled up in his head and he slid down to the floor struggling for breath as Jiggy screamed and screamed in the background.

Chapter Twenty-Six

A panic attack can feel an awful lot like a real heart attack,” Dr. Warsi, whom both Vansh and Naina had known their whole lives, said. “We’ve sedated Mr. Samarth. We’ll keep him here at least for a day or until we come up with a treatment plan.”

They thanked her and she told them that they could wait in her office if that was more comfortable than the waiting room, but that they didn’t have to. It was late enough that Hari would hopefully sleep through the night. They could come back tomorrow.