Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor

At the end of this novel, which swings from impoverished hovels to palatial estates, I felt like no one could be trusted and the pursuit of money and power, regardless of who you literally kill along the way, is the rule. This is the story of Ajay, and his rags to hired gun story working for the most powerful family in India. Nothing about Ajay’s past suggests he would end up working for one of India’s most feared families. As a poor 8-year-old boy in eastern Uttar Pradesh, he was destined to a miserable life of subsistence farming — or worse. To settle a debt after his father is beaten to death, Ajay’s mother sells the boy off. But somehow Ajay cheats death, eventually catching the eye of a spoiled young man named Sunny Wadia. So begins an extraordinary journey and a deeply unnerving relationship. Ajay discovers that he loves to serve, to please, a desire that Kapoor captures in sentences that spring with frantic enthusiasm. Ajay latches on to young Sunny with the desperation of a groupie and the discipline of an acolyte. As Sunny’s armed bodyguard, he’s trained to kill every threat. He is a pawn in this sprawling saga about how vast power corrupts.