Chapter 17 #2
“It’s messy, Owen! It’s complicated! Who gets her? Do we draw straws? Do we fight for her? Do we make her choose and then resent the brother she picks for the rest of our lives?”
“We don’t make her choose,” I say.
The realization hits me like a physical blow, sharper than the rejection in the elevator.
“That’s why we lost her,” I say, my voice rough. “We made her choose. I tried to charm her in the elevator just now. I tried to be the ‘nice one.’ She shut me down because she said I chose you over her.”
Ethan goes still. “You chased her?”
“Yes. And I failed. Just like you failed to buy her with a counter-offer.”
I look at Asher.
“And you failed to solve her with logic.”
I look back at Ethan.
“We pulled her in three different directions until she snapped. As long as we make her choose, she loses. And we lose.”
“We don’t make her choose,” I repeat, the idea taking root, wild and desperate. It’s crazy. It’s forbidden. It’s something we haven’t done since we were in the sandbox. We were fueled by adrenaline and the desperate need to feel alive.
But looking at my brothers, looking at the shared hunger in their eyes, I realize it’s the only way.
“We share everything,” I say slowly. “We share the company. We share the risks. We share the rewards.”
“This isn’t a company,” Ethan snaps. “This is a woman. A woman we all… care about.”
“Exactly. We all care about her. We all want her. And maybe… maybe she wants us too.”
Ethan laughs bitterly. “She doesn’t want us, Owen. She’s a nice girl from Ohio. She wants a boyfriend. A husband. Not a circus.”
“Does she?” I challenge. “She sent that text to all three of us. She flirted with all three of us.”
“She’s confused.”
“She’s not confused,” Asher interrupts. “She is multi-faceted. She responds to different stimuli. She laughs with Owen. She debates with Ethan. She exists in silence with me.”
“See?” I gesture to Asher. “She needs all of it. Maybe one of us isn’t enough. Maybe she needs the whole Unit.”
Ethan stops pacing. He looks at me, and for the first time, I see genuine disgust warring with desperation.
“Share her?” he spits the words out. “Do you hear yourself? She isn’t an equity split, Owen. She isn’t a timeshare.”
He walks to the window, gripping the sill tight enough to crack the marble.
“I want her to be mine,” Ethan says, his voice low and raw. “Just mine. I want to wake up next to her every day. I want to be the only man who knows what she sounds like when she comes. I can’t… I can’t watch you with her.”
“You’d have to,” I say softly.
“If we can’t share her, and we can’t fight for her without destroying the Unit… then we let her go. It’s the only logical outcome,” Ethan says, turning back to us.
“Logic,” Asher cuts in, his voice sharp. “That is the problem. You are applying binary logic to a quantum problem.”
“We have to try,” I insist. “Because the alternative is losing her to Markus Vance. The alternative is her walking out that door and never coming back.”
“We need data,” Asher says.
“We don’t need data, Ash, we need a miracle.”
“We need data,” Asher repeats. “We need to acknowledge the reality of the situation out loud.”
He looks at me. Then at Ethan.
“We have all slept with her,” Asher states flatly.
“We know, Asher,” Ethan snaps, staring out the window. “You made that perfectly clear in the group chat last night.”
“I am merely establishing the timeline of failure,” Asher says calmly. “Owen breached protocol at his loft at the end of her second week. You crossed the line on your desk after the beta launch. I crossed it last night. The ‘strictly professional’ mandate is dead, Ethan. We killed it.”
“I tried to stop,” Ethan says, his voice rough, refusing to turn around. “I tried to send her away.”
“But you didn’t,” Asher says. “You engaged. You marked her. I saw the bruise on her hip.”
“And I heard you two through the door,” I add, stepping into the fray. “Don’t act like you’re the only one tortured by this, Ethan. You looked at her all week like you owned her. It drove me crazy. It drove all of us crazy.”
The three of us stand there in a triangle of silence.
The truth is finally out in the open air, stripped of all the corporate bullshit and unspoken tension. We’re exposed.
“We’re hypocrites,” I say, breaking the tension with a harsh laugh. “All of us. We made a pact to protect the company from exactly this kind of mess, and instead, we all slept with her.”
“The Trifecta,” Asher murmurs.
“She completed the set,” I add.
“She didn’t play us,” Ethan says, rubbing a hand over his face. The anger drains out of him, replaced by a heavy, crushing exhaustion. “We played ourselves. We pushed her into a corner.”
“So what now?” I ask. “She resigned. She’s running. She’s going to Nebula.”
“I will bury Vance in litigation before I let him have her,” Ethan says instantly, his voice vibrating with violence.
“A lawsuit won’t keep her in your bed,” Asher points out. “It will only ensure she hates you. And we can’t keep her under the current parameters. Operating as separate entities competing for the same resource is causing system failure.”
“It’s causing me to want to punch you,” Ethan corrects him. He turns away from the window to glare at Asher. “Knowing she was in your bed last night… it takes everything I have not to put my fist through your jaw right now.”
“I felt the same way when you had her on your desk,” I admit quietly. “We’re tearing each other apart.”
“We can’t share her,” Ethan says, shaking his head. “It’s not… we don’t do that. Not with someone like her. Not with family.”
“Why not?” I ask.
I look at my brothers. We’ve shared everything else. Trauma. Poverty. Success. We survived the desert together. We survived the startup trenches together.
“She needs all of us,” I say, the idea taking root, wild and desperate. “She needs your stability,” I point to Ethan. “She needs Asher’s focus. And she needs my…”
“Chaos,” Asher supplies.
“Charm,” I correct. “She didn’t choose one of us, Ethan. She said yes to all of us.”
“Because she was confused!” Ethan roars.
He swipes a stack of files off his desk. They scatter across the floor in a chaotic wave. It’s the first time I’ve seen him lose control in years.
“She was confused, and we took advantage of her,” Ethan breathes heavily, leaning his hands on the desk. “If we try to do this… if we try to ‘share’ her… we are just confusing her more. It’s selfish, Owen.”
“Is it?” I ask quietly. “Or is it selfish to let her walk away because you’re too proud to share?”
Ethan flinches. “I’m not proud,” he whispers. “I’m terrified. I’m terrified that if I see her with you, I’ll hate you. And I can’t lose my brothers. I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t lose us,” Asher says. He steps forward, entering Ethan’s personal space for the first time. “But if she leaves? If she goes to Nebula? You will lose yourself. I have run the simulation, Ethan. You will not survive her absence.”
“The probability she accepts Vance’s offer is high,” Asher says. “She has already engaged with all three vectors. She craves the connection.”
“And the alternative?” Ethan asks, his voice tight.
“She goes to Nebula,” Asher states flatly. “She signs the contract. And eventually, she enters a standard monogamous courtship with someone else. Perhaps Vance himself. He has a history of mixing business with pleasure.”
Ethan flinches. The vein in his temple throbs violently. “Vance,” he spits the name like a curse. “He doesn’t know her. He sees a strategist. He doesn’t see her.”
“Exactly,” I cut in. “He’ll own her work, Ethan. And eventually, he’ll own her nights. Do you want to watch that? Do you want to see her on the arm of a man who doesn’t know she takes her coffee with oat milk?”
Ethan looks at his desk. He looks at the files scattered on the floor. I see the struggle in his eyes—the rigid moral code warring with the primal, possessive need that has been driving him crazy for weeks.
Finally, the jealousy wins. It burns through the hesitation like a fever.
“No,” he growls. “No one else touches her.”
“Then choose,” I press him, knowing this is the only way. “Let her go to Vance, or let us in. Those are the options.”
Ethan looks at me, then at Asher. The vein in his temple throbs so hard I worry it might burst.
“You’re asking me to tear myself open,” he says, his voice shaking with a rage that feels dangerously close to grief. “To watch you touch her? To know she’s with you? It’s torture, Owen.”
“I know,” I say softly. “But the alternative…”
Ethan turns to look at the empty doorway. At the ghost of her presence.
“The alternative is zero,” Asher supplies. “Total system loss.”
Ethan closes his eyes. He stands there for a long moment, the silence stretching thin, vibrating with the force of his internal war. He looks like a man standing on a ledge, deciding whether to jump or burn.
“I tried,” he whispers, his voice cracking. “I tried to let her go. I sat in this office for three days and tried to convince myself she was just an employee.”
He opens his eyes. They are wet. “But she isn’t. She’s… she’s the air.”
He looks at me, then at Asher. He looks defeated, stripped of his armor.
“I can’t survive without the air,” he admits. “And neither can you.”
“No,” I say hoarsely. “I can’t.”
“Then we have no choice,” Ethan says. “We share her.”
He says the words like they taste like broken glass.
“Not because it’s efficient,” he adds, his voice rough. “But because I can’t breathe without her. And I won’t let you breathe without her either.”
The silence stretches, heavy and absolute. The decision has been made, but the reality of it hangs over us like a storm cloud.
“We have to tell her,” I say, the urgency hitting me like a caffeine spike. “Right now. Before she officially signs that PDF and sends it to Vance.”
“She already signed it,” Asher announces.
We both turn to look at him. Asher is staring at his phone, his face bathed in the blue light of the screen.
“What?” Ethan asks, the color draining from his face.
“I am monitoring the corporate accounts,” Asher says, looking up. “A wire transfer of fifty thousand dollars just cleared into the holding account. The sender is listed as Nebula Corporation.”
“Fuck,” I breathe out.
“Where is she?” Ethan demands, his voice cracking like a whip. “Did she leave the building?”
“Her terminal is logged off,” Asher says, tapping the screen. “GPS triangulation puts her phone at her apartment. Her heart rate monitor indicates extreme physical exertion and elevated stress levels. She is likely packing.”
I start moving toward the door. “I’m going.”
“Owen,” Ethan warns, his voice sharp. “Wait.”
“I’m not waiting for a board meeting!” I snap, grabbing my jacket from the rack. “She paid you off, Ethan! She’s packing to leave Austin! Are you coming, or are you going to sit here and let Vance win?”
Ethan stands there, his hands clenched at his sides. He looks paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the line we are about to cross.
“We have to go together,” Asher says, stepping up beside me. He looks at Ethan, his usual calm cracking just enough to show the urgency underneath. “It’s the only way the numbers work, Ethan. A unified front will triple our odds. I’m ready.”
Ethan looks at the two of us. His brothers. His partners. And now… his co-conspirators.
He lets out a breath—a sharp, frustrated sound. He walks to the coat rack. He grabs his jacket, but he doesn’t put it on immediately. He grips it like a weapon.
“Fine,” Ethan growls.
He looks at me. The conflict is still there, burning in his gray eyes, but the resolve is stronger.
“We go,” Ethan says. “But we do this carefully. We don’t corner her. We don’t scare her.”
“We’re going to ask her to sleep with all three of us, Ethan,” I say softly, opening the door. “I think we’re past ‘careful.’”
Ethan clenches his jaw. He puts on his jacket, the movement sharp and angry.
“Just drive,” he orders.