Chapter 1
Tashi
Why doI have a talent for setting my life on fire?
Not that I hadn’t tried to snuff out the dumpster conflagration of my personal life. After Daniel postponed our wedding yet again, and I ran out of excuses for all the services I’d hired and paid for, I said we needed time to think things over. We hadn’t called it off, but I knew I wasn’t his fiancée anymore — not really. Then, after a phone interview, I hopped impulsively on a plane to take a job across the country in Las Vegas, only to find out that I’d jumped into a new blaze.
I wasn’t some junior hire tagging along for fun. I’d been brought in as a senior project consultant to oversee a major systems overhaul across the Olympus Royale properties, which meant shadowing leadership from the top down.
And unfortunately for my sanity, the top down happened to be them.
My new bosses were smoking hot forty-something triplets.
Talk about tripling your pleasure.
Which was highly unprofessional, and I was sure I would burn in whatever retribution the Universe had for me.
I just hadn’t expected it to be tonight.
I collapsed onto my hotel bed at 10:32 p.m. after twelve hours of touring the Olympus Royale Hotel and Casino facilities, exhausted from mentally undressing my new bosses every five minutes. I mean, how much torture can a gal take?
The Kolykos brothers.
Orion, the CEO, whose dreamy expression was set to swoon-worthy.
Ares—Hotel Operations and Security, whose ultra-straight spine, along with the curses that fell from his mouth every two minutes, spoke of a military background.
And Leo—marketing, branding, and public image—whose mischievous glint masked a razor-sharp mind, the casual toss of the craps dice telegraphing exactly what he wanted to do with his hands.
These guys were seriously panty-melting—each one buff, impeccably dressed in Italian suits, with salt-and-pepper hair groomed like they were movie stars. And if my body wasn’t aching, my feet screaming in protest against the spiked heels I’d worn to look professional, and my brain churning as if it were running through a blender set to “overwhelm,” I’d take out my frustrations in the shower with the help of my hand.
But no. Other tortures awaited.
Daniel wouldn’t stop texting. My phone had been buzzing all day with his particular brand of emotional manipulation.
12:15 a.m. Daniel:You can’t just run away from our problems.
3:33 p.m. Daniel:This is childish, Tashi.
8:45 p.m. Daniel:Fine. Ignore me. But you’re making a huge mistake.
I had paid no attention to Daniel’s texts while Ares explained security protocols, Orion walked me through their revenue projections, and Leo made me laugh over lunch while he ate and I drank wine because the food in the restaurant would sendme into anaphylactic shock. The brothers had been professional, attentive, and so devastatingly attractive that I’d nearly walked into a slot machine while stealing glances at the way Ares’s suit jacket stretched across his shoulders.
But now as I sat alone in my room with a microwaved allergy-safe meal heating up, and nothing to distract me from the wreckage of my life, Daniel’s persistent behavior felt like deliberate psychological torture. And he always twisted the story so he came out looking like the hero. Of course he couldn’t leave me alone. What would his rich mother say?
I knew Daniel’s secret, what his mother had let drop when I told her the news. I’d been on the fence about taking the Las Vegas job and looking for some glimmer of hope from Daniel’s mother, Velma, that my marriage wasn’t doomed.
“Well,” she had sighed. “He knows what happens if he doesn’t marry by thirty-five.”
“What?” I asked.
She wouldn’t answer.
So, I called their family lawyer to say I agreed to the prenup and weaseled out the 411. Daniel would lose his trust fund if he didn’t marry by the magic age.
That was when I had texted Daniel that we needed space, and hopped on the first plane to Las Vegas.
I pulled out my phone. Twenty-three unread messages—all from him.
