“Damn straight it does,” Ares said. “It means you were convenient.”
“Fuck you.”
“Enough!” I slammed my hand on the desk hard enough to rattle the pens. “We’re not doing this. We’re not tearing each other apart over a woman.”
“She’s not just a woman,” Leo said quietly. “That’s the problem.”
He was right.
We’d sworn years ago—after our parents died, after we’d built this empire from nothing—that business came first. Family came first. Women were never worth risking what we’d built together.
But Tashi wasn’t a one-night stand. And the thought of losing her—to my brothers or anyone else—made my chest ache in ways I didn’t know how to process.
“We’ve never crossed the streams before,” Leo said. “But it was bound to happen sometime.”
“You can’t have her,” I said, the words coming out more possessive than I intended.
“Neither can you,” Ares shot back.
“Then what?” Leo spread his hands. “We all just what? Walk away?”
The thought of walking away from Tashi felt impossible, like asking me to stop breathing.
“We could ask her to choose,” Ares said slowly.
“And if she chooses one of you?” I countered. “What then? Do I just accept it? Watch her with one of my brothers every day?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
I didn’t. That was the most frustrating part.
“We can argue all night,” Leo said. “But there’s only one person who can answer this question. Only one person whose choice actually matters.”
He was right. Again.
“Let’s go find her,” Ares said.
I looked at my brothers—the men I’d fought beside, built beside, and survived beside for seventeen years. These were the men with whom I had never competed over anything that truly mattered.
Until now.
“Together?” I asked.
“Together,” Ares confirmed. “We present a united front. Let her know what we each want. And then…”
“Then we let her decide,” Leo finished.
It was the only fair option that would prevent us from destroying each other.
But fair didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt like hell.
“Agreed,” I said.
We entered the elevator, and I pressed the button for the executive housing floor. The doors started to close?—
And Tashi stepped in, stopping them with her hand.
She held a piece of paper, her eyes red-rimmed like she’d been crying. When she saw all three of us, she froze. “Oh,” she said. “I was on my way to talk to you.”
