Chapter 24
Ares
I was heading to the security command center when I nearly collided with Tashi in the hallway outside the ballroom.
She was moving fast, head down, hands clenched around a manila envelope. When she looked up and saw me, I caught the fury blazing in her eyes—and something else underneath. Fear.
“Tashi.” I caught her arm gently. “What happened?”
“Marcus.” She practically spat the name. “He served me with a sexual harassment lawsuit. He claims I propositioned him, created a hostile work environment, the whole thing.”
My blood went cold. “When?”
“Just now. I was checking the Selene Room setup, and he cornered me.” She held up the envelope like it was contaminated. “It’s perfectly timed. Hits right before the Gaming Commission hearing. More ammunition for Wilder.”
The protective rage that flooded through me was visceral and immediate. I wanted to find Marcus and break every bone in his body. Slowly.
“Where is he now?” My voice came out harder than I intended.
“Gone. He delivered his legal threat and left like the coward he is.” Tashi’s hands were shaking. “Ares, he said the most horrible things. Called me a whore. Said I was using my body to manipulate you three. Said my story is less believable than his accusations.”
“He’s wrong.”
“I know that. You know that. But will a jury know that? Will the Gaming Commission know that?” She pressed her free hand to her forehead.
“I have eighty-five minutes to finish Frank’s decisions.
Tomorrow night we’re throwing a gala that could make or break us.
And now I’m being sued for sexual harassment by the man who actually harassed me. ”
I pulled her into an empty conference room and closed the door. The space was quiet, private—somewhere she could breathe without performing strength.
“Look at me,” I said.
She did, those dark eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
“Marcus is trying to destroy you because you’re the strongest weapon we have.
Not because of your body or your relationship with us, but because of your mind.
Your marketing genius and your ability to turn disaster into triumph.
He knows that if you stand on that stage tomorrow night and tell our story, we win. So he’s trying to break you first.”
“It’s working.”
“No.” I took her shoulders. “You’re standing here. You’re still planning the gala. You’re still fighting. That’s not broken. That’s courage.”
“I don’t feel courageous. I feel—” Her voice cracked. “I feel like everything I touch turns to disaster. You three lost your company because of me. Now I’m being sued. Marcus is threatening everything we’ve built. And I can’t—I don’t know how to fix this.”
“You don’t have to fix it alone.” I pulled out my phone. “I’m calling our attorney right now. He’ll tear this lawsuit apart within hours. It’s retaliatory, baseless, and designed for maximum psychological damage. But legally? It’s garbage.”
“You don’t know that—”
“I do know that. Because I know you.” I texted our lawyer, Wilson Pryce.
Me: Marcus Talbor served Tashi with a sexual harassment lawsuit. Need immediate review and response. This case is priority one.
The response came within seconds.
Pryce: Send me the documents.
I turned back to Tashi. “Now. You’re going to give me that envelope. You’re going to finish your decisions for Frank. And you’re going to let me handle Marcus.”
“Handle him how?”
“However necessary.” I took the envelope from her hands. “You said he’s gone?”
“Left through the service entrance about ten minutes ago.”
“Then I’m going to find him. And I’m going to make sure he understands that threatening you was the biggest mistake of his life.”
“Ares—” She grabbed my arm. “Don’t do anything that gets you arrested. We need you at the gala. At the hearing.”
“I’m not going to kill him.” Though the temptation was strong. “But I am going to make sure he can’t hurt you again. Trust me?”
She searched my face for a long moment, then nodded. “I trust you.”
“Good.” I kissed her forehead. “Now go make your decisions. Show Frank that brilliant mind of yours. And stop worrying about Marcus. He’s my problem now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What I should have done days ago.” I headed for the door. “Find out exactly who Marcus Talbor really is.”
I wanted to kill him.
The impulse was visceral, immediate, and entirely inappropriate for a man who prided himself on control. But after leaving Tashi in that conference room—still shaking from Marcus’s threats—every protective instinct I’d spent forty-two years honing screamed for violence.
“Replay it,” I told Neville, who sat at his bank of monitors in the security command center.
“Ares, you’ve watched it four times—”
“Replay it.”
Neville sighed but complied. The footage started again: Tashi rounding the corner, Marcus stepping into her path, the conversation I couldn’t hear but could read in every line of her body—shock, then anger, then that steel-spined determination that made me love her even more.
“He’s threatening her,” I said.
“Obviously.” Neville paused the footage on Marcus’s face—that calculated smile that made me want to rearrange his features. “The question is what we do about it. Legal channels? Escort him off the property?” He glanced at me. “Do you want to handle this personally?”
“All of the above.” My phone rang and I saw it was from our attorney.
“Kolykos.”
“Ares, Wilson Pryce.”
“Yeah, Wil.”
“This lawsuit is retaliatory garbage designed to cause maximum PR damage before your hearing.”
“I’ll move to sever what’s left of his access.”
“You can’t—and you know it. That’s why you didn’t move when he first made his allegations. Ares, this suit is just a way to make his allegations more public.”
“How so?”
“Lawsuits are public information.”
“It’s more. This is psychological warfare.”
“Look. Let me talk to some people. I may be able to slow-track the suit in the system, so it doesn’t torpedo you at the Gaming Commission hearing.”
That doesn’t sound like much, and doesn’t seem capable of stopping the steamroller that Talbor set into motion.
“Thanks, Wil.”
I turned to Neville, who was on the phone. I had him checking everything on the asshole—employment records, background check, security footage, digital footprint.
He hung up the phone and blew out a breath. “Ares, the company Marcus claimed to work for? It exists. But they have no record of a Marcus Talbor ever being employed there.”
My blood went cold. “What?”
“The HR person I spoke to checked their system twice. There is no Marcus Talbor. No employee matched his description on those dates. Nothing.”
“Then who the hell did our HR talk to when they verified his references?”
“I’m guessing someone pretending to be from that company,” Neville said grimly. “Professional identity fabrication. The operation requires resources, planning, and technical skill.”
“Tradecraft.”
“Yeah.”
That had to be it. The way he assessed exits when he entered a room, the professional quality of his harassment.
“He’s not just some horny employee. He’s trained. But who? The world of mercenaries is filled with ex-operatives as guns-for-hire.” I leaned over Neville’s shoulder as files populated his screen. “His employment application. Who verified his references?”
I pulled up Marcus’s personnel file. Clean record before he reached us. Decent performance reviews. There was nothing on paper that suggested he was a saboteur.
But I’d learned long ago that paper lied.
“Show me his digital footprint. Social media, online presence, everything.”
More typing. Then Neville’s expression shifted from concerned to alarmed.
“His social media accounts—they’re all created within six months of his application here. He has no prior history. The photos are generic, locations are vague, and connections are minimal. This isn’t a real person’s online life. Marcus Talbor is a manufactured identity.”
“He’s an intelligence operative.” The pieces clicked together with sickening clarity. “Working for someone, but who’d go this far?”
Neville pulled up more files. “Look at this—I’ve been tracking the security breaches. The incidents include duplicated camera feeds, manipulated key card access, and a microwave fire in Tashi’s room. Every single incident traces back to someone with a spy’s level of access and technical knowledge.”
“He’s been sabotaging us from the inside.”
“Since the day he was hired.” Neville’s face paled. “Which means whoever hired him knew exactly what they were doing. Their choice wasn’t opportunistic. It was planned.”
I turned the conversation with Pryce over in my mind. “He’s not trying to win the lawsuit. He’s trying to destroy us before the hearing.”
“And if he can’t do it legally, what’s his backup plan?”
The question hung in the air like a threat.
“Where is he now?” I asked.
Neville checked the security feeds. “Left through the south service entrance ten minutes ago. Hasn’t come back.”
“Track him. I want to know where he goes, who he meets with, what he’s planning.”
“I can try, but if he’s as good as I think he is—”
“Do it anyway.” I headed toward the door. “And pull every piece of footage we have of him. I want behavioral analysis, movement patterns, anything that tells us who he really is.”
“Where are you going?”
“To have a conversation with someone who might know more than they’re saying.”
Ten minutes later, I was standing outside Henri Saltz’s temporary office—the one he’d commandeered after the board meeting.
I didn’t knock.
Henri looked up from his desk, his expression shifting from surprise to wariness. “Ares. I’m busy—”
“Marcus Talbor,” I said. “Tell me about him.”
“Who?”
“Don’t.” I closed the door behind me. “You’re many things, Henri, but you’re not stupid. Marcus Talbor. Front desk employee. Fake identity. Professional operative. This is the same man who has been sabotaging our hotel for months. Tell me what you know.”
Henri’s face went carefully blank. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”