Leo was staring at me. “What the hell was that?”
“Someone’s planning to sell the hotel,” I said, my mind racing. “They’re telling investors it’s already done. That we’re out and the property’s available.”
“But we’re not out. We still own—” Leo stopped. “The shares. If they force a sale through the board?—”
“They can’t. Not without shareholder approval. Unless—” The pieces clicked together with sickening clarity. “Unless they’ve already lined up enough shareholders to force it. Henricontrols the board now. If he’s got proxy votes from enough minority shareholders?—”
“He could force a sale over our objections,” Leo finished. “Even though we own the majority stake.”
“Not if we can prove the board is acting illegally.” I stood up, pacing. “But that takes time. And if Gerald’s already assembling an investor group, that means they’re moving fast. They want this done before the Gaming Commission hearing. Before Marcus’s conspiracy comes to light. Before everything unravels.”
“What do we do?”
I looked at my brother. “We move faster. Neville—get him up here now. I want every communication Henri’s had in the last month. Every email, every phone call, every meeting. If he’s planning to sell this hotel, there’s a paper trail. We find it, we stop him.”
“And the gala tonight?”
“Goes ahead as planned.” I grabbed my phone, already dialing our attorney. “We make our announcement. We show the world we’re united and unbreakable. And then we nail Henri and Wilder and everyone who thought they could steal what’s ours.”
Leo stood up. “I’ll get Neville. But Orion—” He hesitated. “The jealousy thing. We need to figure this out.”
I nodded, but my mind was already three steps ahead, calculating moves and countermoves.
Someone was trying to steal our hotel.
Neville arrived within minutes, tablet in hand, and took a seat at the far end of the table. “Status update,” he said without preamble. “Overnight sweeps—ballroom, Selene Room, all mechanical shafts, loading bays, rooftop units, and structural beams. Nothing. If the bombs are here, they’re hidden in a way we haven’t seen before.”
“We’re looking at military-grade concealment,” Ares muttered.
“Or someone who knows this building better than we do,” Neville said. “Every anomaly we’ve tracked—key card spoofs, duplicate camera feeds—suggests insider-level knowledge. I’m running another pass through the maintenance logs now.”
As Neville spoke, Ares’s attention drifted. Slowly, quietly, he pulled up a schematic of the Olympus Royale on his e-pad—one of the old internal architectural overlays we’d digitized years ago. A full wireframe of the hotel glowed across the screen.
I watched him zoom into the ballroom’s sublevel support structures. His eyes narrowed. He scrolled. Zoomed again. His jaw tightened.
“Kandahar,” he muttered.
“Ares?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Brother?” Leo prodded.
Ares stood abruptly, still staring at the schematic. “I need to check something. Neville, walk with me.”
Leo and I exchanged looks. That tone—low, focused, threaded with danger—meant one thing: Ares had a theory he would rather not name until he confirmed it.
“I’ll go with you,” Leo said, rising smoothly.
I knew exactly what he was doing. Giving us space. Fixing, in his Leo way, what had cracked.
“Right,” I said quietly.
The door closed behind them, leaving me alone with Tashi.
I turned to her. “Tashi…I’m sorry.”
She looked up, surprise and lingering sadness in her eyes.
