Sexting the Silverfoxes

Chapter 1

Tashi

Why do I have a talent for setting my life on fire?

Not that I hadn’t tried to snuff out the dumpster conflagration of my personal life.

After Daniel postponed our wedding yet again, and I ran out of excuses for all the services I’d hired and paid for, I said we needed time to think things over.

We hadn’t called it off, but I knew I wasn’t his fiancée anymore — not really.

Then, after a phone interview, I hopped impulsively on a plane to take a job across the country in Las Vegas, only to find out that I’d jumped into a new blaze.

I wasn’t some junior hire tagging along for fun. I’d been brought in as a senior project consultant to oversee a major systems overhaul across the Olympus Royale properties, which meant shadowing leadership from the top down.

And unfortunately for my sanity, the top down happened to be them.

My new bosses were smoking hot forty-something triplets.

Talk about tripling your pleasure.

Which was highly unprofessional, and I was sure I would burn in whatever retribution the Universe had for me.

I just hadn’t expected it to be tonight.

I collapsed onto my hotel bed at 10:32 p.m. after twelve hours of touring the Olympus Royale Hotel and Casino facilities, exhausted from mentally undressing my new bosses every five minutes. I mean, how much torture can a gal take?

The Kolykos brothers.

Orion, the CEO, whose dreamy expression was set to swoon-worthy.

Ares—Hotel Operations and Security, whose ultra-straight spine, along with the curses that fell from his mouth every two minutes, spoke of a military background.

And Leo—marketing, branding, and public image—whose mischievous glint masked a razor-sharp mind, the casual toss of the craps dice telegraphing exactly what he wanted to do with his hands.

These guys were seriously panty-melting—each one buff, impeccably dressed in Italian suits, with salt-and-pepper hair groomed like they were movie stars.

And if my body wasn’t aching, my feet screaming in protest against the spiked heels I’d worn to look professional, and my brain churning as if it were running through a blender set to “overwhelm,” I’d take out my frustrations in the shower with the help of my hand.

But no. Other tortures awaited.

Daniel wouldn’t stop texting. My phone had been buzzing all day with his particular brand of emotional manipulation.

12:15 a.m. Daniel: You can’t just run away from our problems.

3:33 p.m. Daniel: This is childish, Tashi.

8:45 p.m. Daniel: Fine. Ignore me. But you’re making a huge mistake.

I had paid no attention to Daniel’s texts while Ares explained security protocols, Orion walked me through their revenue projections, and Leo made me laugh over lunch while he ate and I drank wine because the food in the restaurant would send me into anaphylactic shock.

The brothers had been professional, attentive, and so devastatingly attractive that I’d nearly walked into a slot machine while stealing glances at the way Ares’s suit jacket stretched across his shoulders.

But now as I sat alone in my room with a microwaved allergy-safe meal heating up, and nothing to distract me from the wreckage of my life, Daniel’s persistent behavior felt like deliberate psychological torture.

And he always twisted the story so he came out looking like the hero.

Of course he couldn’t leave me alone. What would his rich mother say?

I knew Daniel’s secret, what his mother had let drop when I told her the news. I’d been on the fence about taking the Las Vegas job and looking for some glimmer of hope from Daniel’s mother, Velma, that my marriage wasn’t doomed.

“Well,” she had sighed. “He knows what happens if he doesn’t marry by thirty-five.”

“What?” I asked.

She wouldn’t answer.

So, I called their family lawyer to say I agreed to the prenup and weaseled out the 411. Daniel would lose his trust fund if he didn’t marry by the magic age.

That was when I had texted Daniel that we needed space, and hopped on the first plane to Las Vegas.

I pulled out my phone. Twenty-three unread messages—all from him.

My thumb hovered over the delete button. Just erase him. Block him. Move on.

Then a new message appeared.

10:47 p.m. Daniel: See what you’re missing?

The attached photo loaded slowly, pixel by agonizing pixel.

Daniel’s red hair caught the light, his face hidden between another woman’s thighs. The woman was blonde. Skinny. Tan. Everything fashion magazines told me I should be, and genetics had decided I wouldn’t.

My phone screen cracked under my grip.

The world narrowed to that single image—betrayal made flesh. Explicit. A weapon designed to hurt me in the most intimate way possible.

I’d spent twenty months planning a wedding—deposits on venues, tastings with caterers who couldn’t accommodate my allergies, arguments with his mother about flower arrangements. Twenty months of playing bride-in-waiting while he apparently auditioned replacements.

And he’d sent me photographic evidence like a taunt. Proof I’d been right to doubt him every time he came home late, every time his phone buzzed and he angled it away from me, and every time he looked at me like I was a burden he couldn’t figure out how to shed.

My hands shook. Not with grief. That would come later, in the quiet hours when I had to face what this moment meant about my judgment, my choices, and my worth.

Right now? Pure, undiluted rage.

He’d wasted years of my life. He’d made me doubt myself. And he thought sending me this photo would—what? Make me jealous? Make me beg him to come back?

My fingers moved before my brain caught up, typing words I knew I’d regret but couldn’t stop: No wonder, because you can’t handle curves like mine.

Not enough. The fury demanded blood. Demanded proof that he’d lost something valuable, that I wasn’t the one crawling back.

I yanked down the neckline of my tank top.

Angled my phone. Captured what Daniel had clearly taken for granted—full breasts that didn’t need a push-up bra, curves that filled out clothes in ways that made men’s eyes follow me across rooms, the body he’d started making subtle remarks about six months ago when a wedding dress fitting revealed exactly how different I looked from his blonde, skinny ideal.

My thumb hovered over the send button for half a second.

Would he even care? I cropped the photo perfectly, making sure the nipple stayed in the shot. That should get his attention.

Fuck him. Fuck his judgment. Fuck every man who made me feel like I needed to apologize for taking up space.

I hit send.

Immediate sweet, intoxicating vindication flooded through me. He would see what he’d thrown away, that I wasn’t broken by his betrayal. He’d see—

Ice-cold horror crashed through the vindication like a bucket of water to the face.

The message hadn’t gone to Daniel.

It had gone to the group chat labeled “Olympus Management”—Ares, Orion, and Leo Kolykos. My three billionaire bosses. The men who’d spent today watching me with an intensity that made my skin burn. The identical triplets who now had a photo of my breasts on their phones.

“No, no, no, no—”

I lurched backward off the bed, my hip slamming into the kitchenette counter. The microwave I’d started before Daniel’s photo arrived sparked once. Twice.

Then burst into flames.

The smoke alarm shrieked to life, its piercing wail drilling into my skull as flames spread across the kitchenette counter. My prepackaged allergy-safe dinner caught fire. Orange flames licked up the cabinet doors. Black smoke billowed toward the ceiling.

And I’d just sent a nude photo to my bosses.

My brain short-circuited between priorities: Put out the fire. Delete the message. Jump out the window. Die of mortification before the flames got me.

I grabbed a dish towel and swatted uselessly at the flames, succeeding only in fanning them higher. Smoke filled my lungs, and I doubled over coughing, eyes streaming as the kitchenette transformed into an inferno.

The fire extinguisher. Where was the goddamn fire extinguisher?

I spun toward the hallway, but smoke had turned the room into a gray wall of nothing. My lungs burned. My eyes couldn’t focus. The smoke alarm’s scream became distant, muffled, like I was underwater.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

Three separate text notifications lit up the screen through the smoke.

Ares: On our way.

Orion: Get out of there. We’re coming.

Leo: Holy shit, you’re on fire. Literally.

They’d seen the photo. They knew about the fire. They were coming to rescue me from a disaster I’d created through sheer, stupid rage.

My knees hit the floor. The room spun. Through the gray haze, I could see flames spreading to the curtains, hungry and relentless, like my career prospects burning in real time.

Distantly, I heard shouting. Pounding. The door exploded inward. Then strong arms lifted me from the floor, and I registered three things simultaneously.

One: I wasn’t wearing a bra under my tank top.

Two: The man carrying me smelled like expensive cologne and controlled fury.

Three: Orion Kolykos was staring down at me with an expression that promised this conversation was far from over.

“Breathe,” he commanded, his voice cutting through my smoke-addled panic. “Just breathe, Tashi.”

Behind him, I glimpsed Ares wielding a fire extinguisher with military precision while Leo herded panicked hotel guests away from my doorway.

I’d managed to make an unforgettable impression on my first day.

Just not the kind that came with a promotion.

“Get the others out!” Orion’s voice cut through the chaos as he carried me toward the door, my face pressed against his chest. The expensive fabric of his suit jacket smelled like smoke now, ruined because of my catastrophic life choices.

“Already handled,” Ares barked from somewhere behind us. “Fire department’s three minutes out. Corridor’s clear.”

Orion carried me into the stairwell as if I weighed nothing and started downward. “Hold on tight,” he said.