Chapter 16 Ares
Ares
We moved into the conference room to discuss the Kurt Wilder development. Inside, with the door locked, Orion pulled out the complaint Wilder had handed us, and a flash drive clattered on the table.
“What’s that?” Tashi said.
She perched on the edge of her seat at the conference table, her face drawn into a worried expression. This time, instead of confident and self-assured, she wore a terrified expression, as if life as she knew it had ended.
I didn’t blame her.
Orion studied the paperwork. “Wilder’s evidence,” he said.
I scooped up the flash drive, plugged it into my computer, and channeled it through the Wi-Fi connection to the room’s big-screen television. The drive showed Tashi getting uncomfortably close to a man in the elevator, with him trying to pull away.
“That’s Marcus Talbor,” I said.
“That’s not what happened!” said Tashi. “He propositioned me!”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” I said.
“What’s wrong with you? I did try to tell you, Ares,” Tashi snapped. “Instead of focusing on that, you got all upset about me and your brothers, and then, well, you know. You all ended up in my bed.”
“After the elevator,” Leo said thoughtfully.
“You were aware of this incident but didn’t investigate it?” Orion shot me a glance that communicated he couldn’t believe I had failed at my job.
I couldn’t believe it either.
I couldn’t answer him. I had put us all at risk by focusing on the wrong thing.
“Look,” Leo said. “There’s plenty of blame to go around. All of us failed to keep our promise and lost focus on the business. Except for you, Tashi. You got caught in the middle of this, because whatever is going on, it’s not about the new employee.”
A sharp knock echoed through the conference room.
Closest to the door, I unlocked it, and Henri Saltz stormed in.
The first thing I noticed was his suit: a navy pinstripe, pressed within an inch of its life, paired with a burgundy tie that screamed “serious business.” Wrong.
Henri wore golf clothes on Fridays and had done so for as long as we’d known him, without fail.
He should be on the back nine by now, not dressed as if he were meeting with the board.
His face was flushed, not the healthy pink of someone who’d been in the sun, but the mottled red of barely controlled fury. Veins stood out on his temples. His jaw worked like he was chewing words he didn’t want to spit out yet.
“What have I heard about a sexual harassment suit against the hotel?” His voice came out higher than usual, strained. “When were you going to tell me?”
I tracked everything. I noticed the way his hands flexed at his sides. The slight tremor in his left shoulder—stress or rage, difficult to tell. Something was off about Henri. Way off.
“Henri, we just found out ourselves,” Orion said, his voice tight.
“Kurt Wilder dropped it on us this morning,” Leo added. “In the lobby.”
Henri’s eyes swept the room like a spotlight, pausing on each of us before landing on the frozen image on the screen—Tashi and Marcus in the elevator. His pupils dilated. Why?
“And who’s the employee involved in these allegations?”
“The allegation is against Tashi,” I said, watching his reaction carefully. “We don’t believe it for a second.”
“Someone deep-faked this footage but used the time stamps from the elevator,” Leo said. “We believe Tashi, so that’s the only conclusion we can come to.”
Henri’s expression hardened, but there was something underneath the anger. His breathing quickened. His hands formed fists. “This is a disaster. Ms. George must be terminated immediately.”
Tashi flinched like she’d been slapped. Her knuckles went white where they gripped the table edge.
“Absolutely not,” Orion said, steel entering his voice as he rose to face Henri.
“She’s our best marketing asset,” Leo added, moving slightly to position himself between Henri and Tashi. “Revenue’s up thirty-one percent since she started.”
“I don’t care if she’s tripled our revenue.
” Henri’s voice cracked on the last word.
He stepped forward, and I noticed his gait was off—too rigid, like every muscle was locked.
“A Gaming Commission investigation could cost us our license. We can’t afford to be associated with sexual misconduct allegations. She has to go.”
“What she’s done for this hotel is nothing short of amazing,” Orion said, standing to full height. “We’re not throwing her under the bus to appease Wilder.”
Tashi’s breathing had gone shallow. Her face was pale, her eyes darting between Henri and us. Flight instinct kicking in.
“Why is your judgment clouded?” Henri’s voice dropped to something cold and calculated. “All three of you.”
The room went silent.
I studied him—the too-perfect suit, the wrong cologne, and the tremor in his hands that hadn’t stopped since he walked in. His eyes kept flicking to Tashi, as if he knew her well. No. Couldn’t be. They’d never met before she began working here.
But they way he stared at her made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“Either you let her go, or I won’t help you pull out of this mess,” he said with a snarl.
Orion drew himself to his full height and, as usual, commanded the room. “I’m wondering whose judgment is compromised? We don’t have all the facts of the case, and we aren’t punishing Ms. George over an unsubstantiated allegation.”
“You three have always been stubborn, but this? Defending someone you barely know?” Henri’s voice rose, cracking on the last word. “This isn’t like you. We’ve had too many problems, and if you don’t do damage control fast, we’ve lost this hotel.”
He turned on his heel, movements sharp and jerky, and strode toward the door. The sharp tang of his cologne lingered in his wake—something chemical and wrong that made my nose itch.
“Henri—” Orion started.
But Henri was already gone, the door slamming hard enough to rattle the framed photos on the wall. The sound echoed through the conference room like a gunshot.
Silence pressed in, thick and suffocating.
I could hear Tashi’s breathing—quick, shallow gasps that told me she was on the edge of panic. Leo had gone perfectly still, which meant his mind was racing. Orion stood at the head of the table, jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping.
“Well,” Leo said finally, his voice carefully light. “That went well.”
Nobody laughed.
Tashi pushed back from the table, the chair legs scraping against the floor with a sound that set my teeth on edge. “He’s right. I should go. Before I cost you everything.”
“Sit down,” I said, more sharply than I intended.
She flinched, and guilt twisted in my gut. But she sat.
“Henri doesn’t make those calls,” Orion said, his voice returning to that controlled CEO tone. “We do. And we’re not making decisions about your future based on fabricated evidence and Wilder’s vendetta.”
“But he said—”
“He said a lot of things,” I interrupted, my mind still cataloging Henri’s behavior. “None of which made sense. Did you see how he looked at you?”
“Like I was destroying his life’s work?” Tashi’s voice cracked. “Yeah, I noticed.”
“No.” I pulled up the security footage of Henri entering the building, rewinding to watch his face. “Like he knew you. Personally. Not as an employee, but as someone…familiar.”
Leo moved to stand behind me, watching the screen. “Ares is right. That wasn’t just anger about the hotel. That was personal.”
“I’d never met him before I started working here,” Tashi said.
“Are you sure?” I asked, freezing the frame on Henri’s face as he’d first looked at her. The recognition in his eyes was unmistakable now that I was looking for it. “Because he definitely knows you.”
Tashi wrapped her arms around herself, a defensive posture that made me want to pull her close and promise her safety I wasn’t sure I could deliver. “I don’t know him. I’d remember.”
“Maybe not you,” Orion said slowly. “But what about your family? Your mother? Could she have known him?”
Tashi went still, then shook her head. “No. That’s impossible. She mentioned no one named Henri. And besides, she died when I was sixteen. If she knew him, it was a lifetime ago.”
But her voice wavered on the last words, uncertainty bleeding through.
I saved the footage of Henri’s reaction and filed it separately from the main security feeds. Something to analyze later when we weren’t in crisis mode.
“We have bigger problems right now,” Leo said, gesturing at the frozen elevator image still on the screen. “Someone deep-faked this footage well enough to fool a Gaming Commission investigation. That’s not amateur work. That’s professional-grade manipulation with serious resources behind it.”
“And they timed it perfectly,” Orion added. “Right when Tashi’s most visible, right when we’re most vulnerable, right when a single scandal could trigger a cascade of investor panic.”
“This is coordinated,” I said, the pattern becoming clearer. “Marcus’s complaint. The fabricated evidence. Wilder showing up immediately with a hearing scheduled. Henri pushing for immediate termination. It’s too synchronized to be coincidence.”
“So, what are you saying?” Tashi asked. “That Henri’s part of it?”
“I’m saying someone with inside knowledge orchestrated this attack,” I said. “Someone who knew exactly when and how to strike for maximum damage.”
The room fell silent again as the implications rolled over us.
“We need to find out who’s behind this,” Orion said. “And we need to do it before the hearing next week.”
“I’ll dig into the metadata on that flash drive,” I said. “See if I can trace where the deepfake was created. Neville can help.”
“I’ll reach out to our remaining investors,” Orion added. “Make sure they don’t panic before we have a chance to explain.”
“And I’ll handle the PR,” Leo said. “Get ahead of whatever story’s about to break.”
They all looked at me, then at Tashi, who sat hunched in her chair like she was trying to disappear.
“What about me?” she asked quietly. “What do I do?”