Chapter 17 Tashi
Tashi
My phone buzzed with a text from Marta: Girl, you’ve been radio silent for three days. I’m getting on a plane to Vegas.
I stared at the message, trying to figure out how to respond. What could I possibly say that would make sense?
Sorry, I’ve been busy falling in love with three men simultaneously while being accused of sexual harassment and watching my career implode on social media.
Yeah, that would go over well.
I was curled up on the sofa in my suite, surrounded by the wreckage of the past seventy-two hours. Empty coffee cups. My laptop, displaying news articles I couldn’t stop reading. My phone, showing missed calls from numbers I didn’t recognize—probably reporters looking for a statement.
I was in limbo, suspended between the life I’d built and the one that was crashing down around me.
Daniel used to live in that limbo with me—postponing, half-choosing, keeping me on standby.
I wasn’t his fiancée anymore. And I wasn’t waiting for him to decide that.
I’m fine, I texted back to Marta. Dealing with work stuff. Don’t fly out.
Her response came immediately: Work stuff doesn’t make you go dark for three days. What happened?
I didn’t know where to start. The Marcus allegations? The media circus? The fact that I was in a relationship with three brothers, and everyone somehow knew about it?
It’s complicated, I typed. I’ll call you soon. Promise.
Marta: You better. Love you.
Me: Love you too.
I set the phone down and pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. The suite felt too big, too empty, too quiet. The brothers had been giving me space—checking in via text, making sure I was eating, but not visiting. Probably dealing with their own crisis management.
Three days ago, we’d made a decision. Together. To try something unprecedented. To build a relationship that defied convention and logic and every piece of professional advice anyone had ever given.
And within hours, it had all exploded.
My laptop pinged with another news alert. I shouldn’t look. I knew I shouldn’t look. But my hand moved anyway, clicking the notification.
Olympus Royale CFO Resigns Amid Workplace Misconduct Scandal
I read the article, my stomach sinking with each paragraph.
Henri had resigned. Effective immediately.
And his statement made it sound like he was the hero—the conscientious executive who couldn’t tolerate the Kolykos brothers’ “pattern of inappropriate workplace relationships and ethical violations.”
He was positioning himself as the whistleblower. The good guy trying to save the company from corrupt leadership.
And people were believing him.
The comments section was predictably awful:
Finally, someone with integrity standing up to those billionaire playboys.
The woman was obviously using sex to climb the corporate ladder.
Three brothers and one employee? That’s not a relationship, that’s a hostile work environment.
I closed the laptop before I could read more.
My phone rang. Unknown number. I let it go to voicemail.
It rang again. Different number. Voicemail.
A third time. I turned it off entirely.
The silence pressed in, suffocating and absolute. This was what isolation felt like. Being cut off from work, from purpose, from the men I’d somehow fallen for in record time. Waiting for someone else to decide my fate.
A knock at the door made me jump.
“Tashi?” Orion’s voice came through. “It’s us. Can we come in?”
I hesitated, suddenly aware of how I must look—unwashed hair, three-day-old pajamas, surrounded by the detritus of a minor breakdown.
“Just a second,” I called, scrambling to make myself presentable. I grabbed a hoodie, ran my fingers through my hair, and tried to look like someone who had her life together.
It didn’t work.
When I opened the door, all three of them stood there looking concerned. Not the polished executives I’d grown used to, but tired men who’d clearly been fighting their own battles.
“Hey,” Leo said gently. “We brought food.”
“And coffee,” Ares added, holding up a carrier with multiple cups.
“And updates,” Orion finished. “Can we come in?”
I stepped aside, suddenly grateful I wasn’t alone anymore.
They settled into my suite like they belonged there—Leo unpacking takeout containers, Ares setting up coffee, and Orion closing the curtains to block out the Vegas sun that felt too bright for the mood.
“You’ve been watching the news,” Orion said. Not a question.
“Hard not to.” I wrapped my hands around the coffee cup Ares handed me. “Henri resigned.”
Ares nodded. “The evidence we took to the board backed up everything we suspected—but it also confirmed this is bigger than Henri.”
“We know.” Leo’s voice was tight. “And he’s positioning himself as the ethical one while painting us as corrupt management.”
“Is it working?”
“With some people, yes.” Orion sat across from me, his expression unreadable. “Mitchell pulled his investment. Two other investors are ‘reassessing their positions.’ The Gaming Commission is expanding their investigation.”
My chest tightened. “Because of me.”
“Because of whoever’s orchestrating this,” Ares corrected. “Marcus was a pawn. Henri’s involved but probably not the mastermind. Someone’s funding this operation, coordinating the attacks, and timing everything for maximum damage.”
“Who?”
“Neville pulled usable data from the flash drive,” Ares said. “Enough to confirm this is coordinated—but not enough yet to name the person pulling the strings.”
Leo handed me a container of pad thai—my favorite, somehow he’d remembered. “But in the meantime, we need to talk. About us. About what happens next.”
I picked at the noodles, not really hungry. “What is there to talk about? I’m radioactive. Being associated with me is destroying your business. The smart move is for me to resign, disappear, let you salvage what’s left.”
“No,” all three of them said simultaneously.
“Tashi.” Orion leaned forward. “We made a decision three days ago. All of us. To try something that society says is impossible. And yes, it’s messy. Yes, there are consequences. But we don’t abandon people we love just because things get hard.”
They’d barely let me out of their sight since the fire. Every meal appeared without me asking. Every door opened before I reached it. Every night, one of them checked that I was breathing before I slept.
Three days wasn’t long—but it was long enough to feel what it meant to be chosen.
“Love.” The word caught in my throat. “You barely know me.”
“We know enough,” Ares said. “We know you’re brilliant at your job.
We know you fight for what you believe in.
We know you tried to tell each of us the truth about the others and kept getting interrupted.
We know you’re not a predator or a gold digger or any of the other things people are calling you. ”
“We also know,” Leo added, “that you’re sitting here alone, reading terrible things about yourself, trying to figure out how to sacrifice yourself to save us. Which means you care about us too.”
Did I? Was that what this hollowness meant—that I cared about people who were being hurt because of their association with me?
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted. “Any of this. The relationship part. The public scandal part. The being investigated by the Gaming Commission part. I’m out of my depth.”
“So are we,” Orion said. “None of us have been in a polyamorous relationship before. None of us have dealt with this level of coordinated attack. We’re all figuring it out as we go.”
“But we’re figuring it out together,” Leo emphasized. “From now on. Not separately. Not with you isolated in this suite while we handle everything. Together.”
I wanted to believe them. Wanted to believe that love—if that was what this was—could survive public scrutiny and professional consequences and the weight of everyone’s judgment.
But I’d watched relationships crumble under much less pressure.
“Henri knows everything,” I said quietly. “If he’s been monitoring surveillance for months, he has footage of…us. All of us. In compromising situations.”
“Probably,” Ares admitted. “But that footage was obtained illegally through unauthorized surveillance. It’s not admissible in court or regulatory proceedings.”
“It doesn’t need to be admissible to destroy you,” I said. “It just needs to exist. One leak to the media, one anonymous upload, and your reputations are done.”
The silence that followed confirmed they’d already thought of this.
“So, what do we do?” I asked. “Wait for Henri to detonate whatever bomb he’s built? Hope that people believe us over salacious evidence? Pray that the Gaming Commission finds in our favor despite everything?”
“We go on offense,” Orion said. “We stop reacting to attacks and start controlling the narrative. We find out who’s funding this operation and why.
We expose Henri’s embezzlement and money laundering.
We prove Marcus’s allegations are false.
And we—” He met my eyes. “We tell our story. On our terms. Before someone else tells it for us.”
“Our story,” I repeated. “You mean admitting publicly that I’m involved with all three of you?”
“If it comes to that, yes.” Leo’s voice was steady. “We’re not ashamed of what we have. We’re not going to hide it or pretend it’s something dirty. If people can’t handle the truth, that’s their problem.”
“That’s easy to say when you’re billionaires with resources and lawyers,” I said. “I’m just a marketing director who’s about to be unemployable.”
“You’re not just anything,” Ares said firmly. “You’re the woman who saved this hotel’s reputation with a single marketing campaign. You’re the person who saw potential where everyone else saw liability. You’re someone we—” He stopped, recalibrating. “Someone we want in our lives, scandal or not.”
I looked at each of them—these complicated, brilliant, infuriating men who’d somehow become essential in less than two weeks.