Page 142 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
He looks at Asher next. “Keep the code clean. We’re paying for stability, not experimentation.”
Then, his gaze turns to me. His eyes narrow slightly, scanning me from my untucked shirt all the way down to the scuff on my boot.
“And you… try not to end up on Page Six with a starlet or a senator’s daughter. We’re selling family values now, Owen. Not frat boy fantasies.”
I feel the muscle in my jaw jump, but I force it down. I flash him my best, brightest, most vapid smile—the exact one that’s gotten me out of speeding tickets, into VIP sections, and out of trouble for a decade.
“I’m a changed man, Robert,” I lie, putting a hand over my heart. “I’ve taken up knitting. I spend my weekends volunteering at a library for quiet introverts.”
Sterling snorts with a dismissive, wet sound. He doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t care. He has his signature. He has his Morality Clause. He effectively owns us.
“See that you do,” he says.
He turns toward the door where Tessa stands, holding it open. She’s been invisible for the last hour, standing like a statue in the corner while clutching her tablet like a shield.
“Miss Hartley,” Sterling nods to her on his way out. “A pleasure. Your presentation on community engagement was… adequate.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sterling,” Tessa replies. Her voice is incredibly steady, but I can see the tendons straining in her hand as she grips the heavy door handle.
“Keep them in line,” Sterling advises her. “They need a firm hand.”
“I will do my best, sir.”
He walks out. The heavy glass door swings shut behind him, but the vibration seems to ripple through the room long after he’s gone.
The silence is heavy, saturated with the musky scent of his cologne.
Ethan exhales sharply, a harsh sound that cuts through the quiet room. He walks to the head of the table, rips his tie off in one violent motion, and throws it onto the mahogany surface.
“It’s done,” he says.
“We’re rich,” Asher notes. He’s still sitting, staring blankly at the closed laptop in front of him. “Based on the valuation, our net worth just increased by four hundred percent on paper in the last ten minutes.”
“And we’re contractually obligated to be celibate monks,” I add, leaning back in my chair and kicking my feet up on the table right next to the signed contract. “Clause four, section B. No participation in deviant lifestyles or communal arrangements. He practically wrote ‘No orgies’ in legal font. I give it three hours.”
Ethan turns, completely ignoring Asher and me. The professional mask he’s been wearing for two hours entirely dissolves, revealing the tired, wired, and desperate man underneath.
He walks straight over to Tessa and crowds her space, completely ignoring the glass walls and open blinds that leave us exposed to the entire office floor.
“You okay?” he asks, his voice low.
“I’m fine,” she says. She forces a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Just… happy it’s over. The smell of his cologne was giving me a headache. It was like breathing in an antique shop.”
“It smelled like old money and harsh judgment,” I agree, swinging my legs off the table and walking over to join them. “I hated it.”
I lean against the wall, arms crossed as I watch them. Ethan is looking at her with that terrifying, unnerving intensity he usually saves for hostile boardrooms, but Tessa just leans into it. She puts a hand on his chest, letting her thumb brush softly over the lapel of his jacket.
“So,” she says softly. “Fifty million dollars. What are we going to do with it?”
“Server expansion,” Asher says instantly from the table. “We need to migrate the database to a decentralized cloud structure before the user loads triples.”
“Marketing blitz,” Tessa counters. “We need to control the narrative before Sterling does.”
“I was thinking,” I say, catching Tessa’s eye.
She looks at me. Her eyes are heavily rimmed with exhaustion, but there’s still a bright spark there.
“I was thinking,” I continue, “we could use a tiny, microscopic fraction of it to order the most expensive takeout in Austin, lock the door to the apartment, and break every single rule in that contract.”
