A month had passed since Isha Singh first stepped wide-eyed into Vora Heights.
She now moved through Surat's factories and markets like a quiet breeze—watching, asking, learning—while Jai's empire hummed louder than ever.
Then the whispers began.
Land deeds in the eastern quarter of Surat, prime riverfront plots, entire lanes of warehouses, were changing hands overnight. Prices tripled in weeks. Local owners who refused offers woke to find their storehouses mysteriously "damaged" by fire or flood. The buyer's seal on every contract was the same: a stylised lotus above the name Alok Chaudhary of Indrapuri.
Jai first heard the name over breakfast. Sarita slid a thick folder across the teak table.
"Alok Chaudhary. Thirty-one. Base in Indrapuri—four hundred and fifty kilometres inland, an Malwa heartland. Controls the opium and cotton routes through Mandu. Net worth rivals the Subahdar of Gujarat. And in the last six weeks he has quietly purchased nearly nine percent of Surat's commercial land."
Jai's spoon paused halfway to his mouth. "Nine percent in six weeks? That's not investment. That's invasion."
Sarita nodded. "He pays in silver—new silver. Jai set the spoon down. His voice was calm, but the room felt colder.
"Call Maya."
That same evening, in the war-room beneath the penthouse, Maya and her three lieutenants—Arjun, Rahil, Sanjay—melted out of the shadows like smoke given form.
"Find out everything," Jai said simply. "Who he eats with. Who he pays. Who he truly serves."
Maya bowed, emerald eyes gleaming. "We leave at moonrise."
They were gone for thirty-three days.
On the thirty-fourth night, Maya returned alone. She knelt before Jai in the private study, voice low and precise.
"Alok Chaudhary is the East India Company's cat's-paw.
The British have accepted what we already knew: Surat cannot be taken by force while Jai Vora breathes. So they changed strategy. They found a local lion with ambition bigger than his honour. They are funnelling silver—thausands of rupees—through Goa and disguised Portuguese ships. In return, Chaudhary is to choke our supply lines, buy up every dock and warehouse we need, raise prices on raw spices we don't control, and starve our factories of space and material.
His orders are simple: break the Vora Trading Company from within, using Indian hands so the Emperor cannot call it foreign aggression.
He meets their factors in a riverside haveli three miles east of the city—every new moon. Next meeting: twelve days from tonight."
Maya placed a rolled parchment on the table—sealed with the EIC crest and Alok Chaudhary's lotus.
Silence stretched, thick as monsoon air.
Jai stared at the seal, fingers drumming once on the teak.
For eight years he had played the game clean—better goods, faster roads, loyal people.
He had avoided blood, avoided open war.
Now the British had chosen a different battlefield, and they had chosen an Indian to wield the knife.
Jai's voice, when it came, was soft as falling ash.
"Then the gloves come off."
He looked up. Maya's eyes burned with the same cold fire.
"Prepare the squad," he said. "This time, we don't watch.
We strike." its time Jai Vora decided to get his hands dirty….