The number on the slip of paper was a shackle. It sat in the ledger, a cold, hard fact that dwarfed all their previous calculations. The debt to Chiman was a wolf at the door; the new "donation" to Desai was a tax on the very air they breathed. The atmosphere in the alcove was funereal. They had won, but they were bankrupt. They had saved the king, but the kingdom was now owned by creditors.
For days, they worked in a grim, joyless silence. The thrill of the repair, the satisfaction of a clever fix—it was all gone. Every soldered joint was just a tiny, inadequate step toward an impossible financial summit. Harsh moved like an automaton, his mind a closed loop of interest rates and extortion payments. The gold, buried in its reeking hiding place, felt less like a treasure and more like a tombstone.
Sanjay, ever the optimist, tried to break the gloom. "Maybe the price will move soon, Harsh Bhai. Just a little. Enough to…" He trailed off, unable to articulate what "enough" would look like against the monstrous sums they owed.
Harsh didn't answer. The certainty that had once fueled him had been burned away in the crucible of the raid, replaced by a numb acceptance of his gilded cage.
It was Deepak who brought in the newspaper. It was a day old, bought from a vendor for wrapping components. He was about to tear a page to wrap a repaired walkman when a headline in the corner of the business section caught his eye.
He stopped. His brow furrowed. He held the page closer, his lips moving silently as he read. Then, his eyes widened.
"Harsh Bhai," he said, his voice strange, tight.
Harsh didn't look up. "What is it?"
"The… the price," Deepak stammered.
A cold fist clenched in Harsh's stomach. It's crashed, he thought. The bottom has fallen out. We're finished. He forced himself to look up, ready to face the final blow.
Deepak was holding out the paper, his finger tapping a small, unassuming table buried amongst foreign exchange rates and stock summaries. It was the daily bullion listing.
Harsh took the paper, his hands numb. His eyes scanned the tiny print.
24-Carat Gold (per 10 gm) Previous Close: ₹3,250 Today's Open: ₹3,450
Two hundred rupees. It had jumped two hundred rupees in a single day.
It wasn't a tidal wave. It was a tremor. The first, unmistakable shudder of the earthquake.
He read it again. And again. The numbers didn't change. ₹3,450.
The numbness that had encased him cracked. A single, sharp spark of feeling—pure, undiluted vindication—shot through his system. It was so intense it was almost painful.
He had been right.
The world was finally, irrevocably, catching up to the future he held in his head.
He didn't whoop. He didn't shout. He didn't even smile. The sheer weight of the relief, the validation after weeks of ridicule, pressure, and soul-crushing doubt, was too immense for a simple celebration.
He slowly lowered the newspaper. He looked at Deepak, whose face was a mixture of shock and dawning hope. He looked at Sanjay, who was watching them, confused.
"What? What is it?" Sanjay asked, his voice anxious.
Deepak found his voice, a whisper of awe. "It moved. The gold. It went up."
"How much?" Sanjay asked, scrambling over.
Harsh finally moved. He turned to the FUTURE ledger. His hand, which had been trembling with anxiety for days, was now perfectly steady. He opened it to the GOLD column. He found the last entry, the price he'd logged after his last call to the jeweller. ₹3,250.
He dipped his pen in the inkwell, the scratch of the nib loud in the silent alcove. In the next line, he wrote the new figure.
₹3,450.
The ink was dark and final. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He looked up at his partners, his two loyal soldiers who had followed him into the abyss on nothing but faith. The grim despair that had lined their faces was still there, but now it was edged with something else. Something fragile and fierce.
"It's starting," Harsh said, his voice low and quiet, but with a current of steel running beneath it.
The smile, when it finally came, was a small, private thing. It didn't touch his eyes, which remained hard and focused. It was not a smile of joy, but of confirmation. The smile of a general who sees the enemy's forces finally moving exactly as predicted.
It was a secret smile. A smile that said, I told you so, to a world that had laughed at him. A smile that acknowledged the long, dangerous road ahead, but now knew, with absolute certainty, that the road led to victory.
The first tremor had hit. The avalanche was next.
And for the first time since he'd buried his fortune under a pile of garbage, Harsh Patel felt the ground solid beneath his feet.
(Chapter End)