She made the effort to soften her tone but not her words. “That meeting happened because both parties trusted Yash.”

No one said she wasn’t entitled to her opinion. Vansh gave her his most charming smile, making sure his dimples dug into his cheeks in a way that usually made people melt. Not Naina, of course. Naina had been immune to his dimples since she’d caught him sneaking out his father’s car at fifteen when he’d backed it straight into hers. While mildly high.

Publicly she’d taken the blame, but privately she’d lectured him for days and then kept on him about safety for months. Her lectures always hit harder than he’d ever admit. He’d felt terrible. Two cars had been destroyed. The worst thing was that they’d ended up in landfills. As a punishment to himself, Vansh had never owned a car after that.

He’d been grateful that Naina had taken the blame and saved his ass. It hadn’t been the only time either. Ma and Dad never got upset with Naina about anything. Like Yash, she was beyond reproach with his family. Or she had been until the deception with Yash had come out. Now she seemed to be persona non grata, and the unfairness of that stuck in Vansh’s throat. But the patronizing look she was giving him helped him get over it.

“That meeting happened because I spent a year in Guatemala with the leader of the police union in the Peace Corps. I was the one he trusted.”

The smile she gave him was tolerant, but Vansh saw it for what it was: an eye roll disguised as a smile. In her eyes the credit Yash gave him was just another bone his family threw him.

She was not wrong about his family’s indulging him. Vansh enjoyed all the gifts of his older siblings without being encumbered by the weight of expectations they all dragged around.

Vansh had no interest in letting the weight of other people’s expectations and definitions of ambition hold him down. He traveled light, let the wind carry him where he was most needed.

“True success doesn’t need external validation,” he said as loud cheering rose from the jubilant crowd thronging the grounds of his childhood home.

Naina’s eyes narrowed, as though she saw something about him that he himself couldn’t see. The fact that she’d just dismissed his contribution to his brother’s victory meant she didn’t see him at all.

Naina’s approval, or anyone else’s for that matter, was immaterial. The only approval he needed was his own. And that he had in spades.