The front door opened and Ajay swiveled to look at his latest visitor. His baby brother, dressed in a flannel shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and sporting a man bun and a freshly trimmed beard, strolled in as if he owned the place.

“Hey.” He paused when he saw Ajay sitting shirtless at the counter. “Dude, why are you naked?”

“Seriously? I’m in my own house minding my own business. Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be on WesCo?”

“Touchy, touchy. I’m here for the Gupta wedding next weekend. The one we’re all required to go to.”

“Next weekend? Already?” Uncle Frankie was on the board at Bharat, and his granddaughter was getting married in the Indian wedding of the season. Festivities were supposed to start on Thursday and go through Sunday. “Is it Indian or American attire?”

“Both,” his brothers said in unison.

“Shit.” Ajay made a mental note to ask Rafael to secure the family gift for the bride and to also order clothes. He turned back to Zail. “Why are you here a week early, though?”

“I have a couple meetings to go over the budget for next year. I’m also spending some time with our new SVP of Legal. I texted you last night about it.” He kicked off his chappals next to Hem’s and straddled the vacant barstool. “Cha?”

“Yeah,” Hem replied. “Everything going okay?”

Zail rubbed his hands over his face. “You know that technology we’re working on? The one that WTA wants? Well, we filed a provisional patent application last November. It’s only good for a year. If we don’t finish the software in the next few months, we’re screwed.”

“Can’t we refile?” Hem asked.

“Yeah, but our competitors can put their own patent applications in then, which would effectively block us from having market control. That means millions of dollars down the drain, and the contracts we have in the pipeline all go away. We’ll be in the red.”

“The R & D team has been on this for a long time,” Ajay said. “What’s the problem?”

“We don’t have our best engineer anymore, that’s the problem.” Zail’s bitterness was clear in his voice. “Sahar was my right-hand woman and the best programmer in the Valley. We lost her, and we lost our edge.”

Sahar Ali Khan had been one of the most brilliant minds Ajay had ever met. He had always been fond of her, but he’d had no choice but to let her go. She’d lied to them and failed to disclose that she was related to an executive at WTA. Since Zail had gone to MIT with her and then worked with her on a daily basis, he hurt the most from her loss.

And now Bharat was suffering, too.