Chapter 33
ETHAN
My world is loud.
Inside the penthouse, it’s a deafening cacophony of ringing phones, pinging notifications, and the low drone of the news playing on the television. Outside, twenty stories down, the faint wail of sirens and the hum of news vans gather on the street below.
The scandal is compounding.
TECH TRIO’S SECRET LIFE EXPOSED, the chyron on the TV reads. MOSAIC CEO AND brOTHERS IN POLYAMOROUS SCANDAL WITH EMPLOYEE.
Snatching the remote, I kill the feed. The room goes quiet, save for the rapid, mechanical tapping of Asher’s keyboard.
“Status,” I demand, staring at the black screen.
“Sterling is holding,” Owen says, pressing his phone to his chest to muffle the microphone. He looks drained, the usual spark in his eyes dimmed by exhaustion. “He says the Board is convening an emergency session in an hour. They’re talking about triggering the Morality Clause.”
“Let them convene,” I say calmly. “Tell Sterling if he wants to fire the founders after we just delivered the most successful quarter in company history, he can explain the tanking valuation to the board himself.”
Owen nods, putting the phone back to his ear. “You heard him, Sterling. Make the call.”
I turn my attention to the sofa.
Tessa’s sitting there, her knees pulled to her chest. She hasn’t moved in an hour. She’s scrolling through her phone, reading the comments. I cross the room, and the reflection of the hateful words glares back at me from the dark glass of her screen.
Slut. Gold digger. Whore.
I pluck the phone from her hand.
“Hey!” she protests, her head snapping up. Her eyes are rimmed with red.
“No more,” I say, tossing her phone onto the armchair out of reach. “We don’t read the comments. That is Rule Number One of being famous, which, apparently, we now are.”
“They hate me, Ethan,” she whispers. “They’re saying I seduced you. They’re saying I slept my way to the top. They’re saying the babies are mistakes.”
I kneel in front of her, forcing her to look at me. I place my hands on her knees.
“Look at me, Tessa.”
She blinks, tears spilling over.
“They don’t know you,” I say fiercely. “They don’t know you built the brand strategy that made this company worth millions. They don’t know you’re the smartest person in the room. And they certainly don’t know we chased you, not the other way around.”
“It doesn’t matter what the truth is,” she argues. “What matters is the narrative. Nebula won. Markus won. He destroyed our reputation.”
“He destroyed our privacy,” I correct her. “Not our reputation. Watch.”
I stand up and walk to Asher. “Post it.”
Asher nods. He hits enter.
“What did you do?” Tessa asks, sitting up.
“We released a statement,” I say. “On the official Mosaic blog. And on all our personal accounts.”
Tessa scrambles to grab Owen’s iPad from the table. She refreshes the page.
I recite the words I wrote ten minutes ago. The words that will either save us or sink us.
“To our users and investors: Mosaic was built on the foundation of truth. We believe secrets make us sick, and confessions set us free. Today, a private moment was stolen from us and used to shame us. We refuse to be shamed. We are a family. We are expecting twins. And we are more committed than ever to Mosaic, to each other, and to the values of transparency. If you believe in love in all its forms, we welcome you. If not, Mosaic isn’t for you.
Welcome to the new era. - The Founders.”
Tessa reads it silently. Her lips tremble.
“You told them to delete the app?” she whispers, looking at me with wide eyes. “Ethan, that’s suicide.”
“It’s a power move,” Owen says from the corner, finally hanging up on Sterling. “And guess what? User downloads have just spiked by 400 percent in the last five minutes. People love rebels.”
Tessa lets out a long, shaky breath. “You guys are crazy.”
“We’re protecting our own,” I say.
My phone rings again. A shrill, demanding tone cuts through the moment. I check the caller ID.
Mother.
My stomach tightens. I haven’t spoken to her since last Christmas, when she spent the entire dinner criticizing Owen’s career choices and asking why I hadn’t found a “nice girl” yet.
“Ethan?” Tessa asks, seeing my expression.
“It’s my mother,” I say grimly.
“You have to answer,” Owen says quietly. “She’s seeing the news.”
I swipe answer and put it on speaker. I want them to hear this. I want no more secrets.
“Ethan,” her voice comes through, sharp and icy. “Tell me the news is lying. Tell me this is some sort of PR stunt.”
“It’s not a stunt,” I say, my voice steady. “It’s the truth.”
A judgmental, heavy silence fills the line.
“You have embarrassed this family,” she says finally. “With your own brothers? You’re ruining your legacy. And for what? An employee who doesn’t know her place?”
Asher stops typing. Owen stands up straight. Tessa shrinks back into the sofa.
“Her name is Tessa,” I say, my voice completely devoid of warmth. “And she’s pregnant with twins.”
“You pay her off,” she snaps instantly. “You fix this scandal before you become the laughingstock of the country.”
“There’s nothing to fix,” I say.
“If you do this,” she warns, her tone dripping with venom, “you are no son of mine.”
“I haven’t been your son since I was twelve years old and had to protect my brothers myself,” I reply coldly. “Do not call this number again.”
I hang up.
The stillness in the penthouse is absolute.
“I’m sorry,” Tessa whispers. “I caused this. I separated you from your family.”
“You are my family,” I say, walking back to her. “They are just blood. You are the choice.”
I lean down and kiss her forehead, lingering there. “Don’t you ever think you ruined anything. You saved us from being them.”
The elevator dings.
We all turn. Building security should be stepping out, or maybe Sterling himself coming to demand my resignation.
But the doors slide open, and it is Harper.
She never left the building. Clearly, she’s been crying in the lobby for the last hour—makeup smeared, eyes puffy, gripping her phone like a weapon.
“Harper,” Owen says, stepping forward, his face softening. “Harp, come in.”
“Don’t,” she warns, holding up a hand. She storms into the room, heels clicking aggressively on the marble. Ignoring us, she stares straight at Tessa.
“I saw the statement,” Harper says, her voice shaking. “Beautifully written. Very touching. ‘Love in all its forms.’”
“Harper, please,” Tessa stands up, reaching out. “Let me explain.”
“You already explained,” Harper says, walking past her to grab the handle of the suitcase she left by the island. “You all did. For months, every time we FaceTimed, you looked me in the eye and lied to me. You protected the company. You protected your circle.”
She turns to look at us, the betrayal raw and exposed. “But you didn’t protect me. You just left me out of it.”
“We can fix it,” I say, taking a step toward her.
She steps back, shaking her head. “No. There’s no NDA to cover this up, Ethan. You broke the trust. We survived Richard. We survived poverty, because we didn’t lie to each other.”
She turns to Tessa.
“I can’t even look at you right now,” Harper whispers. “I feel like I don’t even know who you are.”
“Harper, don’t go,” Tessa begs, taking a step forward. “Please. Stay. Yell at us. Scream. Just don’t leave.”
“I have to go,” Harper says. “I’m staying at a hotel. Do not follow me. Do not track my phone, Asher. Leave me alone.”
She drags her luggage to the elevator and hits the call button. She stands with her back to us, her shoulders rigid.
We remain paralyzed. The elevator arrives. She steps inside. The doors close.
Gone.
The emptiness that follows is different from the severing of my mother. That was a dead limb falling away. This is an amputation of a healthy one.
Tessa collapses onto the sofa, burying her face in her hands. She shakes violently as she cries.
“I lost her,” she cries. “I lost her.”
Owen sits next to her, pulling her into his arms, but he looks devastated. Harper is his twin in spirit, if not biology. They are the closest.
“She’s just angry,” Owen says, but his voice lacks conviction. “She needs time.”
“She’s right,” Asher says quietly, staring at the closed elevator doors. “We excluded her from the data set. We treated her as an external variable. It was a tactical error.”
“It wasn’t tactical,” I say heavily, sitting on the coffee table in front of Tessa. “It was cowardly. We didn’t trust her because we were ashamed. And she knows it.”
I reach out and take Tessa’s hand. She grips it tightly, her palm clammy.
“We have to earn her back,” I say.
“How?” Tessa weeps. “She hates us.”
“She loves us,” I correct her. “That’s why she hates us right now. Indifference is the opposite of love, not hate. She is furious because she cares.”
I glance at my brothers. We survived the initial leak and the downloads are spiking, but Sterling is still convening the Board. The Morality Clause is still in play. The corporate war is far from over.
But staring at the empty elevator, the fifty million dollars in Series B funding is the last thing on my mind.
“We give her space,” I decide, though it goes against every instinct I have to fix things immediately. “We let her cool down. And then… we grovel. We show her that the circle isn’t broken. It just got bigger.”
Tessa nods, her hand clammy inside mine.
On the coffee table, my phone lights up again. Sterling. The emergency Board session is starting.
I ignore it, keeping my eyes locked on the closed metal doors of the elevator.