The General's residence was not a mansion. It was a walled compound tucked away on a quiet, tree-lined street in the old French Concession. The walls were high, topped with broken glass and surveillance cameras. A young soldier in crisp greens opened the heavy wooden gate, his eyes scanning Rajendra with blank professionalism before nodding him inside.
The house itself was spartan. Polished concrete floors, dark wood furniture, the smell of lemon polish and old books. There were no family photos, only a large scroll painting of mountains hanging in the main hall. It felt less like a home and more like a forward operating base that had been decorated by a particularly severe librarian.
The dinner table was set for four. General Guo Feng sat at the head, immutable as a cliff face. Guo Huilan sat to his right, looking like a cadet at inspection. An empty chair was to his left, and a silent aide in civilian clothes sat at the foot, not eating, just observing.
Rajendra took the left-hand seat. The food was simple, excellent, and served in small, precise portions. The conversation, what little there was, was conducted in Mandarin between the General and his daughter. Rajendra ate, listened to the cadence of their voices, and waited.
After the soup was cleared, the General turned his granite gaze on Rajendra. Through Huilan, he asked: "You have a business. You now have a wife. What is your plan for providing for a household?"
It was a practical, patriarchal question. Rajendra had prepared for this.
"I am building a foundation," he said, choosing his words with care. "The joint venture is the first pillar. Stability comes from a strong enterprise, not just a full cupboard."
The General listened to the translation, his expression unchanging. "And children? A household needs continuity."
Rajendra felt the script tighten around him. "Children are a great responsibility. They require a stable world. First, we build that world. And my wife has her own path, her duty to the people. That must also be respected." He was walking the line—showing traditional concern while acknowledging Huilan's modernity.
The General's eyes narrowed slightly. He seemed dissatisfied with the diplomatic answer but let it pass with a grunt. "A man must know which family he belongs to," he said, the words heavy. "His father's, or his wife's."
Before Rajendra could formulate a response, a phone rang in another room. The aide excused himself and returned a moment later, whispering urgently to the General. The old soldier's face hardened. He listened, then dismissed the aide with a chop of his hand.
He looked at Rajendra, his eyes like chips of flint. "There was an incident at the border. In the mountains. Indian and Chinese patrols. A misunderstanding. No shots were fired, but the air is now poison." He leaned forward slightly. "What would your government do now?"
The room went still. This was no longer about family. This was a loyalty test, bare and brutal. Huilan's translation was toneless, but Rajendra saw the warning in her eyes.
He put down his chopsticks. He thought not as an Indian, not as a son-in-law, but as a merchant who had seen how border tensions strangled trade routes and bled economies.
"Governments will talk," he said, his voice measured. "Soldiers will stand down. And business will stop. Ports will close, orders will freeze, money will turn to dust. When elephants argue, the grass is trampled. The smartest thing is for the elephants to step back, so the grass can grow. Everyone profits from peace. Everyone loses from pride."
He spoke of elephants and grass, not nations and armies. He spoke the language of loss and gain, the only universal language he truly trusted.
The General stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then he gave a single, slow nod. It wasn't approval. It was acknowledgment—of the answer, and of the man who gave it. The test was over. The message was received: You are between two giants. Do not pick a side; explain the cost of the fight.
The rest of the meal passed in a stiff, silent truce.
Afterward, Huilan walked him to the gate. The night air was cold.
"You handled that well," she said quietly. "He respects pragmatism. He dislikes sentiment, but he understands profit and loss."
Rajendra wasn't in the mood for debriefing. "Your father just drew a map and put me on the border line. And my actual business partner from India is in Shanghai because she thinks I'm gambling with our company on these political games."
Huilan stopped. "The woman at the trade council."
"Yes. She's not just a partner. She's the foundation of the legitimate half of my life. The part that isn't hidden in vaults or written in secret marriage books. And I'm lying to her."
For the first time, he saw a flicker of something other than calculation in Huilan's eyes. Something like uncertainty. "This complication was not anticipated."
"No," Rajendra said, his voice flat. "It wasn't. I need to fix it."
He left her at the gate and went to find Shanti.
He waited in the lobby of her functional, mid-range hotel. When she stepped out of the elevator, she saw him and froze for a second. She was dressed for business in trousers and a blouse, her hair pulled back. She looked tired.
"No more meetings?" she asked, her voice carefully neutral.
"I'm done with meetings for tonight. Can we walk? Can we actually talk?"
She studied him, then nodded. They left the hotel and walked toward the Bund. The famous waterfront was quieter at this hour, just a few couples and fishermen along the railings. The lights of Pudong were faint smudges in the haze across the Huangpu River.
He didn't tell her everything. He couldn't. But for the first time since landing in China, he told someone a version of the truth that wasn't a complete lie.
"The deal here… it's tied to a specific political faction. A powerful one. Getting it meant getting personally entangled with them. There's a… personal dimension to the alliance. It's temporary. It's tactical. But it's sensitive, and I can't discuss the details."
He spoke looking out at the dark water, not at her. "I walked into a tiger's cage to get the key to the city, Shanti. And now I'm inside, and the door is locked from the outside. Everything I'm doing—the factory, the joint venture—it's real. It's for MANO. For us. You have to believe that."
He heard her take a slow breath beside him. She didn't speak for a long time. When she did, her voice was low, stripped of its earlier coldness, just weary. "I believe you're trying to build something. I believe you're in over your head. What I don't believe is that you can manage this tiger and our company from thousands of miles away, with Ganesh playing messenger and me reading between the lines of your telegrams."
She turned to face him. "So here's the new deal. I'm not going back to Mumbai. I'm staying. I'll handle the legitimate side of the joint venture—the factory specifications, the quality control protocols, the export paperwork. You handle the… political lubrication. The dinners. The handshakes. The sensitive parts."
She was reclaiming her stake, not by pulling out, but by diving in. She was protecting her investment by inserting herself between him and the business, making sure the company's interests were guarded by someone whose only loyalty was to the balance sheet.
Rajendra felt a surge of conflicting emotions—relief that she wasn't walking away, fear of having her in the line of fire, and a profound respect for her sheer nerve. "Shanti, the politics here, they're not like Bombay. They're—"
"I'm not here for the politics," she cut him off. "I'm here for the pressure cooker specs and the shipping manifests. You keep the tigers away from the factory door. I'll make sure the factory runs. That's the deal."
He saw the resolve in her eyes. Arguing would be useless, and dishonest. She was right. This was the only way to rebuild trust. "Alright," he said finally. "But you follow my lead on anything outside the factory walls. No independent diplomacy. No heroics."
A faint, humorless smile touched her lips. "I'm not here for heroics, Rajendra. I'm here for the profit margin."
The next morning, he informed Guo Huilan. They met in a park, a neutral ground.
"My business partner, Shanti Sharma. She is a co-owner of MANO. She will be staying in Shanghai to oversee the joint venture setup. The operational side."
Huilan understood immediately. The faint tension around her eyes tightened. "This adds volatility. An unknown variable."
"It adds stability," Rajendra countered. "She keeps the commercial side clean, transparent, and profitable. That keeps the venture successful. A successful venture makes your father happy. And it means I don't have to lie to the person who holds the keys to the empire I'm actually trying to build."
He held her gaze. This was not a request for permission. It was a notification.
After a long pause, Huilan gave a slight, stiff nod. The triangle was now formalized. The merchant, the bureaucrat, and the partner. A precarious, silent understanding settled between them.
That night, exhausted, Rajendra lay on his narrow bed. A soft chime in his mind announced a System alert. It was from Vex.
Vex: The psychic dampening around your previous asset's location has fully dissipated. No further traces detected. However, our long-range passive scans indicate increased low-level dimensional traffic near your planetary sector. It is likely routine cosmological drift. But vigilance is recommended. The void has ears, and sometimes, they listen.
Even the cosmos was sending memos. The stakes were fractal, extending from this Shanghai backstreet all the way to the silent places between stars. He could not afford a single misstep.
He got up and looked out his small window. Somewhere in this vast, sleeping city, Shanti was in a hotel room, probably reviewing documents. Guo Huilan was in her government quarters, calculating her next move. The General was in his spartan house, a sleeping dragon.
And he, Rajendra Shakuniya, was the pin holding them all in a trembling, temporary balance. He was no longer a man walking a tightrope between two worlds. He was the shaky axis around which three worlds now slowly turned: the cosmic, the political, and the personal. The only thing preventing them from spinning apart was his own two hands, and the fragile, fraying threads of deals, debts, and half-truths he had woven between them.