Chapter 29 Tashi #2
“Marcus.” Ares shifted, putting himself between Marcus and me. “You don’t want to do this.”
“Don’t I?” Marcus kept the gun trained on Ares while his eyes swept the room, cataloging positions.
Professional. Calculating. This was the real Marcus—not the crude hotel employee, but the trained operative.
“You cost me a fortune. Henri’s going to prison.
Wilder’s finished. The investors pulled out.
Two years of work, all gone because you couldn’t keep your hands off the help. ”
“This isn’t about us,” Orion said, his voice calm despite the gun pointed at his brother. “This is about you getting paid.”
“Smart and beautiful,” Marcus said, shifting his aim to Orion.
“I wonder how much you would be worth if you were dead. There will be an estate sale and an emergency liquidation, and desperate investors will swoop in to buy at a discount. My employers will still get what they want. Just messier than planned.”
“You’ll never get away with this,” Leo said. “Too many people know about you now. About the conspiracy. Killing us just makes it obvious.”
“Obvious to whom?” Marcus smiled. “Tragic electrical fire. The fire was caused by faulty wiring in a renovated building. Five people overcome by smoke before they could escape the penthouse suite. Security system malfunctioned—so unfortunate. By the time anyone realizes it wasn’t an accident, I’ll be in a country with no extradition treaty and a very comfortable bank account. ”
“The stairwell—” Marta started.
“Locked,” Marcus interrupted. “I control the security system now. No one’s coming up. No one’s going down. You’re trapped, and in about five minutes, this floor is going to be an inferno.”
He pulled something from his jacket—a small device with a timer counting down. Four minutes, thirty seconds.
“Incendiary charges in the walls,” he explained pleasantly.
“Military-grade. Hot enough to compromise the sprinkler system before it can activate. By the time the fire department gets through my locked doors, you’ll all be dead from smoke inhalation.
Quick. Relatively painless. More than you deserve after costing me this job. ”
Ares tensed, calculating angles.
Marcus saw it and smiled. “Don’t,” he said. “I’m a professional. You’re a businessman who played soldier. I’ll put three rounds in you before you take two steps.”
“What’s your plan?” Orion asked, clearly trying to buy time. “Shoot us then set the fire?”
“Why waste bullets?” Marcus checked his watch. “Four minutes. I’ll be in the stairwell when the charges blow. You’ll be locked in here. The smoke will do the rest.”
He was already backing toward the door, gun still trained on Ares.
This was it. Our last chance. In four minutes, those charges would blow. The suite would burn. We’d die trapped up here while Marcus walked away free.
Unless.
My eyes found the heavy brocade curtains that framed the floor-to-ceiling windows. The same curtains Leo had joked were “criminally flammable” when I’d wanted to light candles at dinner. Vintage fabric. Expensive. Beautiful.
And absolutely perfect.
I looked at the decorative candelabra on the side table, complete with real candles lit for ambiance, then glanced at Ares, who was watching Marcus with predatory focus. I glanced at the curtains, which would ignite easily like kindling.
Marcus had his back to the window. Gun trained on Ares while Leo and Orion tried to talk him down.
Nobody was watching me.
I grabbed the candelabra.
“You know what the funny thing is?” I said, my voice louder than necessary. “You tried to kill me with fire once before. That microwave in my room? That was you, wasn’t it?”
Marcus glanced at me, distracted. “Pressure tactic. Make you want to leave. You didn’t take the hint.”
“No,” I agreed. “I didn’t.”
I hurled the candelabra at the curtains.
“TASHI, NO—” Ares shouted.
The flames caught instantly. The old fabric went up exactly as Leo had predicted, fire racing up the heavy drapes toward the ceiling. Smoke bloomed thick and black. The fire alarm shrieked, that piercing wail that meant automatic dispatch, automatic response, witnesses and help, and evidence.
Marcus spun toward me, and in that split second of distraction, Ares moved.
He tackled Marcus low and hard, both of them crashing into the bar cart. The gun went flying. Leo dove for it while Orion grabbed me, pulling me away from the spreading fire.
“Are you insane?” he shouted over the alarm. “You could have killed us all!”
“He was going to kill us anyway!” I shouted back. “But fire alarms can’t be disabled! Security’s coming!”
The sprinklers finally kicked in—apparently, Marcus hadn’t managed to disable them completely—water cascading down in sheets. The curtains hissed and smoked, yet they continued to burn, the fire too strong for water to quell.
Ares and Marcus fought on the floor, brutal and efficient. Marcus had training, but Ares had fury and motivation and twenty pounds of muscle. Blood mixed with water on the marble floor.
“The timer!” Marta screamed, pointing at the device Marcus had dropped. Three minutes, ten seconds.
Leo grabbed it, his fingers flying over the controls. “I can’t disarm it! It’s military-grade, encrypted—”
“Then get it out of here!” Orion ordered.
“The windows!” I ran to the glass, grabbed a chair, and smashed it through. The wind whipped in, feeding the fire but giving us an escape route for the device.
Leo didn’t hesitate. He ran to the window and hurled the timer out into the night.
We watched it arc down toward the empty construction lot beside the hotel, a small black shape disappearing into darkness. The explosion lit up the night three seconds later, a ball of flame that would have killed us all if Leo hadn’t—
“Move!” Ares roared.
The curtains had fully engulfed the wall. The sprinklers were useless. Smoke was everywhere, thick and choking. My eyes burned. My lungs burned.
Marcus was unconscious on the floor, blood streaming from his head. Ares had zip-tied his hands with something from his pocket—of course he carried zip ties—and was already dragging him toward the door.
“The stairwell is still locked,” Orion said, pulling me toward the exit. “Security can override from below, but—”
The door burst open.
Hotel security flooded in, led by Neville with a fire extinguisher and a look of absolute terror on his face. “The fire department is on the way!” he shouted. “I overrode the locks! We need to evacuate now!”
We ran. Through the smoke, down the emergency stairs, Ares dragged Marcus’s unconscious body while Neville and security cleared the path ahead. The building’s fire alarm was deafening now, with everyone evacuating and chaos in the stairwells.
We burst out of the parking lot into a scene of controlled chaos. Fire trucks. Ambulances. Police. Media was present, as expected—someone likely live-streamed the explosion from the construction lot.
Paramedics descended on us immediately. Oxygen masks. Blood pressure checks. Questions about smoke inhalation and injuries.
I watched them load Marcus—now conscious and snarling—into a police car. Watched the firefighters disappear into the building to fight the blaze I’d started. Watched my suite—our home—burning on the top floor, smoke pouring from the shattered window.
“You burned down our home,” Leo said beside me, and I couldn’t tell if he was horrified or impressed.
“Our home is wherever we are,” I said, my voice hoarse from smoke. “The suite is just a room.”
Orion appeared on my other side, his face streaked with soot, his eyes fierce. “You are a brilliant, reckless, terrifying woman. You weaponized fire safety.”
“You did say I was going to burn the place down.”
Ares dropped down beside us, accepting an oxygen mask from a paramedic. “You were right.”
“I’m always right,” I said, then started coughing. The paramedic pushed the oxygen mask over my face with a stern look.
“She deliberately set a fire,” the paramedic said to Orion. “In an enclosed space. With people in it. Who does that?”
“Someone who was about to die anyway,” I managed between breaths. “Better to burn and call for help than suffocate in silence.”
“Ms. George saved all our lives,” Orion told the paramedic. “That man”—he pointed at Marcus getting hauled into the police car—“planted explosives. She triggered the fire alarm to bring help.”
The paramedic looked at the burning penthouse, Marcus in handcuffs, and the four of us covered in soot, water, and blood. “You people are insane,” he said.
“Probably,” Leo agreed cheerfully. “But we’re alive.”
An hour later, after the fire was extinguished, Marta found us; the police had taken our statements, and the media had captured footage of us wrapped in blankets like disaster survivors.
“You’re on the news,” she reported. “All the networks. ‘Billionaires Survive Assassination Attempt.’ TMZ is calling it the ‘Casino Fire Conspiracy.’ Someone got footage of the explosion in the construction lot.”
“Of course they did,” I said. “This is Vegas.”
“The narrative’s already shifting,” Marta continued, pulling up her phone. “Social media’s going crazy. #TeamTashi is trending again, but now it’s #FirefighterTashi. Someone made fan art of you throwing the candelabra. You’re a meme.”
“I’m a what?”
She showed me her screen. Sure enough, there I was—an artistic interpretation of me—hurling the candelabra at the curtains, while Marcus cowered in the background. The caption read: When you’re done being the victim.
Despite everything—the smoke still in my lungs, the adrenaline still coursing through my veins, the sheer terror of the last hour—I started laughing.
“She’s in shock,” Ares told the paramedic.
“I’m not in shock,” I protested. “I’m just—we almost died. Again. And I’m a meme. Again. This is my life now.”
“Our life,” Orion corrected, pulling me close despite the paramedic’s protests. “We almost died together. We survived together. We’re going to rebuild together.”
“The suite—”
“Is insured,” Leo said. “And honestly? It needed remodeling anyway. I’m thinking fire-resistant curtains this time. Maybe we skip the vintage fabrics.”
“Maybe,” I agreed.
A police detective approached with her notebook. “Ms. George? We’ll need you to walk us through exactly what happened up there. Why did you set the fire?”
I told her. About Marcus’s confession. The timer. The incendiary charges. The fire alarm was the only system that he couldn’t completely disable. I would prefer to call for help and risk burning rather than suffocate in silence.
She wrote it all down, her expression carefully neutral.
“That was either the bravest or stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said finally.
“Why not both?” I offered.
She almost smiled. “Mr. Talbor—or whatever his real name is—is in custody. We found the explosive devices. His false identity. Evidence of the conspiracy. We have enough evidence, combined with today’s Gaming Commission hearing and the federal investigation into Henri Saltz, to put everyone involved away for a very long time. ”
“Good,” Ares said. “And Kurt Wilder?”
“The Gaming Commission has opened a formal investigation. FBI’s looking into corruption charges. Daniel Wilder is being questioned about his involvement.” She closed her notebook. “It’s over. You won.”
I looked at the executive floor, at the smoke still drifting from the shattered windows, and the brothers beside me, soot-stained and exhausted and absolutely beautiful. I looked at Marta, who had flown across the country twice to help us fight.
“We won,” I repeated.
And despite everything—the terror and the fire and the near-death experience—I meant it. We’d won.
We had won not only the hearing but also the conspiracy and the assassination attempt.
We’d won each other. We’d won the right to love who and how we wanted without shame or apology. We’d gained the freedom to build something unconventional, beautiful, and real.
“What now?” Leo asked.
I looked at each of them—Orion with his protective intensity, Leo with his creative brilliance, and Ares with his fierce devotion.
“Now?” I said. “Now we rebuild. The suite. The hotel. Our lives. Everything. Better than before.”
“Together,” Orion added.
“Together,” I agreed.
And as the media captured our moment—four people wrapped in emergency blankets, covered in soot, absolutely in love—I knew that whatever we rebuilt would be stronger than what had burned.
Because we’d been tested by fire, literally and figuratively.
And we’d survived.