“Gentlemen, and Mina. I’m surprised you’ve all come on such little notice, but I guess that’s neither here nor there. We’ll have to use this time wisely.”

Uncle Frankie stood on his creaky old bones just as Ajay predicted he would. “I think we all know why we’re here, puttar—”

“Frankie, sit down.”

Frankie stuttered, his lips smacking with spittle. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. You may have rallied some of the members here before our year-end meeting—god knows how if all of your calendars look like mine—but as interim CEO I control the agenda. Just because my father is here today doesn’t change that. When I open the meeting up for the room, you may speak then.”

“Deepak!” Frankie shouted. “Do you see this? Do you see what he’s doing?”

Ajay’s father shrugged before leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. “Frankie, Ajay has a point. The CEO and chairman of the board leads the agenda. It’s in our bylaws. You really are out of line.”

“How dare you—?”

“Careful,” Ajay said with as much calmness as he could muster. “When you address my father, you speak to him with respect.”

Frankie scanned the room and when Ajay’s brothers gave him that same, even, measured look, he took a seat.

“Now, as I was saying.” Ajay faced his family first. Mina with her encouraging smile. Hem with his serious, concerned expression. His father, who looked at him with so much pride. “Singhs, it appears we’re missing a member of the family.”

“Your mother assigned me her proxy,” his father said. “She has business in the city she needs to attend to. The documentation is with Rafael.”

“Fine. Let’s start with the easiest and then go to the most difficult.” He looked down at his computer, at the notes he’d taken, and the carefully crafted persuasive arguments that he’d anticipated delivering to a room where everyone thought he was unable to do his job.

Well, almost everyone. Ajay smiled at his father, the reason he loved what he did in the first place, who sat patiently waiting for him to speak. The old man’s pride, he realized, was enough to help carry the weight of obligations that weighed on his shoulders.

“I know that you all want to discuss the acquisition and the potential nomination by my father to make me CEO of Bharat. I know that everyone is concerned about our stock prices, and whether or not I’m fit for the position.”

“I think that’s a good summary speech there,” one of the board members chimed in. “Are you going to do the right thing, then, and let us source a new CEO?”