Chapter 6 Ares
Ares
At six a.m., Leo stumbled into our executive boardroom looking like hell as I reviewed the previous night’s security feeds.
“Rough night?” I didn’t glance up from the tablet displaying camera feeds from the executive floor. I had rewound the timestamp to when Leo entered the executive elevator with Tashi, and the log indicated that they had gone to the roof.
“A great night interrupted with a customer complaint.”
“Oh?”
“The front desk guy, Marcus? Made a few off-color remarks to a guest who lost their room key and wanted another.”
I shook my head. “The guy mistakes remarks like that as charm.”
“Well, it’s not. And it took me an hour and a few hundred in chips to talk her down. I don’t know how we can repair our reputation with a guy like that greeting guests.”
“He’s Henri’s hire. We’d need to speak to him about letting him go.”
Leo blew out a breath. “Fantastic.”
“Of course,” I said. “Management should make sure their behavior is aboveboard if we want employees to follow our example.”
“What does that mean?” Leo said. He poured coffee with extra-careful precision, communicating that his hands weren’t steady.
“You and Tashi on the roof.”
“It was a marketing strategy session,” Leo said.
I glanced up. Leo’s hair looked like he’d run his hands through it fifty times. Same shirt from last night.
“That’s what you’re calling it? At midnight? On the rooftop?”
“Yeah.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes as he added cream and sugar. Leo always overdid the cream when he was rattled.
“Uh-huh,” I said as I snapped the laptop shut.
“What?” Leo feigned innocence.
The first spears of dawn cut through the windows, casting shards of light on the glass conference table and shadows on the floor.
“You know what,” I replied.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I shook my head. “If that’s how you want to play it. There is just one word I want to remind you of—liability.”
Leo huffed. “You’re too cautious.”
“And you’re not cautious enough.”
The door opened. Orion walked in, impeccably dressed in a charcoal suit with perfect hair and tie, dressed for war. Everything about him screamed control. For Orion, this meant he felt the opposite. The tension in his shoulders and the tightness around his mouth told me something was on his mind.
“We need to discuss the overnight social media activity,” Orion said in clipped tones as he headed for coffee.
Leo and I exchanged glances.
Here we go.
Orion pulled out his phone and connected it to our wall display.
Tashi’s posts filled the screen, photos of three brothers surrounding an employee they had pulled from a burning building.
Strategic hashtags. The engagement numbers made my security brain calculate threat assessment and exposure risk.
“She posted at two a.m.,” Orion said, voice carefully neutral. “The post was trending locally by three and nationally by four. By six, there were two hundred booking inquiries and seventeen interview requests.”
“That’s amazing,” Leo breathed.
“She turned a disaster into a phenomenon, but without consulting us, or obtaining approval or legal review.”
“She’s doing her job,” I said.
“But this? Making us a media circus?”
“Look at the numbers, Orion,” Leo said. “The positive comments. The shares. The narrative shift from ‘hotel with bad security’ to ‘heroic rescue’ and ‘management that cares.’”
“Still, she should have gotten permission.”
He wasn’t angry about the posts. He was angry about losing control.
I understood that. Control was how we’d survived our parents’ death. How we’d built this empire. Still. “And you would have said no,” I said, “quashing her creative impulses. That is not why we are paying her.”
Orion gave a dismissive wave of his hand.
“Look at the comments,” Leo said. “People are calling us heroes. She made us look like the good guys.”
“We are the good guys,” Orion said.
“Yeah, but now people believe it.” Leo scrolled. “There’s fan art. Of us. When’s the last time that happened to billionaires?”
Orion’s mouth twitched. “Never.”
“She’s done what we hired her for,” I said. “She’s bold. Takes risks we won’t.”
Orion stared at the screen. “Where is she?”
“Sleeping,” Leo said. “Up all night creating this.”
“You know this because?”
Leo shifted. Childhood tell. “I texted her after I saw the posts.”
“At two in the morning.”
“Yeah.”
Cornered, predictably, Orion shifted tack. “Safety meeting at seven. Henri insisted. He’s pissed about the fire.”
“Henri’s always pissed,” Leo muttered.
True. Our CFO had been with us for seventeen years—since we bought the property with his money after our parents died.
Henri Saltz had gambled at our tiny casino.
He was the finance guy who told us he made it big on Wall Street.
He invested in our small dream and made it huge.
But he had opinions about everything. Risk assessments for every decision.
Skepticism about every innovation. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw him smile.
And I didn’t trust him.
I didn’t trust him at a gut level, the way I would trust someone with whom I’d shared dangerous experiences. Henri made decisions from spreadsheets, not from standing in burning buildings deciding who to save first.
“He’ll hate the social campaign,” I said.
“He hates everything fun,” Leo agreed.
I went back to the footage. My eyes tracked movement patterns, time stamps, and access points. What I had discovered was chilling. Someone had deliberately created a fire hazard in her room and had accessed her suite with a key card or by bypassing the lock.
That took skill. Resources. Insider knowledge.
I’d pulled footage from the executive floor for forty-eight hours before the fire and found the damning evidence that proved the sabotage by inference. All the access logs had been wiped. We had a mole inside the Olympus Royale.
Someone wanted Tashi gone. Dead, ideally.
Why her?
Tashi had been in Las Vegas barely three days—long enough to sit through executive meetings and learn names, not nearly long enough to make friends or enemies. Unless it wasn’t about her. Unless it was about us. Sending a message to the Kolykos brothers through our most vulnerable target.
That made my jaw clench. Made my hands want to form fists.
At 6:58 a.m., Henri Saltz, already scowling, fifty-three years old with groomed silver hair and wearing a suit typical of East Coast wealth, swept in.
Henri fought us on every modernization—credit card payment at slots, digital marketing, and social media use. Always the same argument: “This is how we’ve always done it.”
Except our revenue had declined since the money-laundering scandal, and we needed a kick start to regain our customers. And Tashi had just shown that we needed her.
“Gentlemen,” he said, taking his seat opposite Orion. “Shall we discuss how your employee nearly burned down a floor her first week?”
“Morning, Henri,” Leo said.
Henri ignored him, pulling up his tablet. “I’ve reviewed the reports. Fire originated in Ms. George’s suite. The microwave was the source. Now, I understand you’ve hired this woman as some kind of consultant—”
“Marketing,” Orion said flatly.
“I thought Leo handled that,” Henri said with clipped efficiency.
Leo cleared his throat. “Obviously, what I’m doing isn’t working. I’m man enough to admit that. We need someone with fresh, contemporary ideas. Tashi’s that person.”
“Uh-huh,” said Henri, staring at his e-pad. “Not because she’s seventeen years younger than you with a body like a brick shithouse.”
“Hey!” Leo protested.
“—but perhaps we should consider whether someone who can’t operate a microwave should be in leadership.”
My teeth ground. “The fire wasn’t her doing.”
“How’s that?” said Henri dryly.
“The microwave was faulty.”
Henri’s eyes snapped to mine. “Faulty?”
“That’s the best I could determine.”
So, I lied. I’m not telling anyone anything until I get to the truth.
“You’ve also allowed this unvetted employee to create unauthorized viral content, exposing us to liability—”
“Have you seen it?” Leo interrupted, shoving his phone at Henri.
“I don’t need—”
“Look.”
Henri took the phone reluctantly. His face changed as he scrolled. Surprise. Then calculating. “Impressive,” he admitted. “For someone so young to generate this engagement.” He kept scrolling. “Where did you find her?”
“New York,” Orion said. “Highly recommended. Stellar portfolio.”
“New York.” Henri’s voice went flat. “Her background? Education? Previous employment?”
“In her personnel file,” I said. “Why?”
“Curious about why this miracle worker is worth nearly burning down our hotel.” He checked his watch. “Where is Ms. George? Shouldn’t she be here?”
“Sleeping,” Leo said. “Up all night creating the campaign you just called impressive.”
“How convenient. We’re paying her to sleep through safety meetings.”
“I’ll find her,” I said, standing. My chair scraped. Henri’s hostility made me want to hit something.
I headed for the elevator. Halfway there, I heard rhythmic pounding from the stairwell.
I changed direction and pulled open the door.
Tashi stood on the landing below, pounding the door. She was disheveled and flushed, wearing a tan dress that hugged her figure, with her hair in a messy bun that was coming loose. She appeared not to have slept the previous night, but she was beautiful.
“Leo?” Relief flooded her face. “Oh, thank God—”
“I’m Ares. Where’s your key card?”
She winced. “In my room. Running late, I left it behind.”
“Don’t do that again.” My voice came out hard. “I can’t be on every floor.”
“I know. I’m sorry. The meeting—”
“We’re in it. Henri’s asking for you. Not happy about the fire or your posts.”
“He’s seen them?”
“Leo showed him. He admitted they’re impressive, but he’s asking questions. Background, where you’re from, qualifications.”
“Is that weird?”
“For Henri? Yeah.” We reached the executive conference room, and I swiped us in. “He isn’t concerned about individual employees. Just numbers.”
“Because I nearly burned down his investment?”
“Maybe.” But my gut screamed otherwise.
I opened the door and let her enter first.
Henri went white. Then red. And then rage flashed across his face before he smoothed it out.
But I’d seen it.
He knew her.
“Ms. George,” Orion said smoothly. “Thank you for joining us. We’ve been reviewing your campaign.”
“I hope it meets with your approval,” Tashi said, sitting between Leo and me. Her hands shook as she opened her laptop.
“It’s brilliant,” Leo said. “Show him the metrics.”
She turned the laptop for us to view the screen. The numbers flashed bigger now. She had received hundreds of thousands of views, with shares multiplying and positive sentiment crushing past negative coverage.
“As you can see,” she said, gaining confidence, “we’ve reframed the incident. Instead of ‘safety issues,’ the story is ‘leadership saves an employee.’ You’re positioned as hands-on, caring leaders who—”
“Where are you from, Ms. George?” Henri cut her off.
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Your background. Hometown. I’m curious about the woman reshaping our image.” His smile was cold. “Reasonable question.”
“Connecticut originally,” she said carefully. “New York in the past few years.”
“Connecticut.” Henri’s jaw tightened. “Which part?”
“Does it matter?” I asked.
“Making conversation. Getting to know our new hire.” He gestured at her screen. “She mentions ‘a fresh start after personal challenges back East.’ I’m curious what brings someone from Connecticut to Vegas with such urgency.”
“A job offer,” Tashi said, voice cooling. “A fantastic one. Is there a problem, Mr. Saltz?”
“Not at all.” But his hands gripped the table, his knuckles turning white. Why were his shoulders tense? Why did it seem he was in fight-or-flight mode? “I simply like knowing who we’re trusting with our reputation.”
The room went tense. Leo shifted. Orion narrowed his eyes.
I reached across to point at something on Tashi’s screen and let my hand rest on her shoulder. Brief. Casual. She’s one of us. Back off.
Henri stood abruptly, chair scraping. “I apologize. I have another urgent meeting. Continue without me.”
He left without looking at her. Practically fled. Henri Saltz never fled from anything.
The door clicked shut.
“Well,” Tashi said. “Did I wake up ugly or does your CFO just hate everyone?”
“He’s been a bastard since birth,” Leo said quickly. “Don’t take it personally.”
But it was personal. I’d seen Henri’s face. That was recognition. A man seeing a ghost.
“Let’s continue,” Orion said. “Ares, investigation status?”
I ran through my report. Tampered microwave. Security gaps. Suspects identified. Other department heads added updates. Tashi took notes and asked intelligent questions about protocols and procedures.
But part of my brain stayed on Henri.
What the hell was that?
I needed to review Henri’s background. Check for Connecticut connections. Any link between him and Tashi. My instincts were screaming that Henri Saltz knew exactly who Tashi George was.
And he was terrified.
Why?