5. Malcom

"The three of us?" I hissed and stared at the men who were like brothers to me like they were fucking insane. I wanted what they were suggesting, but I couldn't get myself to give in. All morning, I'd been chewing myself a new one for how I'd behaved with Rosa.

"Yes." Jett shrugged like they had suggested pizza for lunch instead of what they'd just proposed.

"Absolutely not," I clipped, running my hands over my close-shaven head. "No.

"Why?" Casey asked with concern in his eyes. "We've done this before."

"For a night or a weekend or fun at the club. You want to ask our housekeeper for that? You're asking for a fucking?—"

"Say something else than a sexual harassment suit, come on, I dare you," Jett muttered, rolling his eyes. I scowled at him.

"You want to play with the help." The word sounded dirty on my tongue.

"Don't call her that." Jett sat up defensively. "Call her that again, and I swear to fucking god?—"

"Breathe, both of you." Casey stepped in like the peacemaker he was.

I exhaled roughly.

Jett was right.

I had gone too far.

Rosa wasn't just another employee or just the help or just anything. Not to me, not to us. To us, she had become so much more. But how could we do what they were suggesting?

She was too good for our dark games.

"There is no way we could ask for one night," I muttered. I knew one night wouldn't be enough.

"No one said one night," Casey chimed in, and my eyes connected with his light blue ones.

"What?" I swallowed hard. More than a night?

"Obviously, you weren't listening and just jumped to your own conclusions," Jett chimed in, but I didn't look away from Casey.

"What do you mean, you don't want one night? What? A weekend? A month?" Fuck me, that wouldn't be enough. I knew in my balls it wouldn't be.

No. The idea, as tempting as it was, couldn't work.

It would mess everything up.

We would have the time of our lives, but she would end up leaving. It was better to keep her in our lives like we did now. At least that way, we would guarantee her being under our roof and within reach for a minimum of five days a week. Until she meets someone. Until she starts a family of her own and leaves us.

"We're suggesting a forever, Mal."

"Forever?" I scoffed, afraid of how much I liked that idea.

"Forever," he repeated. "We all have a certain thing in common."

"We're daddies," I cut him off and glared. "We're daddies. We like to be in charge and make sure a woman is satisfied. It's not as ominous as you make it sound."

"Fine," he sighed. "We're all daddies. But we all know that when it comes to Rosie, we want more than to make her see stars and have her toes curl." His arms crossed in front of him. Casey was losing his patience with me. "We want to take care of her. Protect her. Love her."

"Jesus." I wiped my face. Everything inside of me was yelling yes! Yes! That was exactly what we wanted when it came to my raven-haired flower. "Love her," I rasped. But no matter what my heart wanted, my brain, my stupid too rational brain, stayed in control. "Do you know what you're saying? Love!"

The idea felt too big.

Too risky.

"You're losing him," Jett observed, and I growled.

‘You two don't get it!" Didn't they know how much it would fucking hurt if this didn't work? If we put everything on the line, for her to tell us we weren't enough? Or what if we were too much? What if she only wanted one of us? Or two of us? My eyes moved from Casey to Jett.

She would pick them if that was the case.

I'd been terrible to Rosa. My mouth always got me in trouble around her. No matter how hard I tried, I always found my fucking foot shoved in my mouth with her big brown eyes looking at me like I was some kind of monster.

I'd lose not only the only woman I had ever wanted more from but my business partners. My best friends.

"I'd rather put our portfolios in jeopardy. We could make more money if we lost it. But our hearts?" I shook my head. "I don't know if we could recover from that."

"You want to see her with someone else?" Casey asked in a tone I didn't recognize. He was easy and fun loving. He was hardly ever serious.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. I love you, man, you know I do. We're all like brothers here?—"

"Case—"

"But would you be okay seeing her with someone else?" he asked again but didn't let me answer. "Because that's what's going to happen if we don't do this." I blinked, and then it hit me.

"Are you threatening me?" I asked sternly, trying to mask the fear that washed through me.

"We both are." Jett stood up and shrugged. "You're our brother, Mal. You know that. But this whole keeping her at arms length is bullshit, and you know that, too."

"You better be careful, Jett. You don't want to say something you will regret and?—"

"The only thing I could see myself regretting is sitting on my ass and watching her fall for some other asshole who would never feel like I do for her. Who will never love her like we would."

"Love? There's that word again. We're not those guys!"

"You're just scared," Jett clipped, and it felt like the wind was let out of me. "You're just scared," he repeated. I glanced at Casey, but he didn't say a word. He also didn't step in to defend me or calm down the situation.

He just stood there, looking at me like he agreed with Jett!

"I'm scared?" I laughed, but I knew how fake it sounded not only to me but the men in front of me.

"You're scared. But what you don't get, Mal, is that I think we all are. You're right. We do this, we are putting a fuck ton of things on the line, shit that actually matters. We might think she's interested in us, and it might turn out she's not. But we won't know unless we make a move."

"And you think, what? The three of us charging in like bulls in a china shop and claiming our girl, telling her, her daddies are home, is going to work?"

"Mal," Casey sighed. "Don't be a dick. You know what he's saying."

"I can't believe you agree with this!" I looked at Casey, and his blue gaze softened.

"You know we all love her. We've shared women in the past, but this is different. She matters to us. She brings shit out in us. We want more than a moment. We want a lifetime. And I agree with Jett." He almost looked defeated. "This would work better, would work perfectly, if it was with the three of us. That's why we wanted to talk to you. But?—"

"But?" I cut him off and sat straighter, bracing for him to drop a bomb on my lap.

"But if you can't see yourself taking a chance on her, on us, for our future… it's okay, man." I frowned. "We get it. But you can't ask us to give her up, too. Not when we know what we feel is more than lust. We don't wanna fuck her to get her out of our system any more than you want to."

"Casey." My voice cracked. My tongue felt too big for my mouth. He hadn't been down this road. Putting your heart on the line and having all your plans fade off to nothing. But I had. Shit with my college girlfriend hadn't been meant to be, and hindsight was a blessing and a bitch. We had been together for all the wrong reasons, and I was glad things never went further than they did before we graduated, but that still didn't take away from how much it'd hurt at the time. How much it had shaped me.

"I don't know…" I swallowed but didn't know how to say anything else. Light blue eyes softened with empathy.

"I know, Mal. We both do." He nodded and shot a look at Jett, who was standing up. "We talked to you about this. You can sit and think about it and let us know."

"Just like that? Think about us going after a woman we all love and then what? What if I don't have that in me?"

"Then you're going to have to live with that choice," he laid out. I didn't like the sound of that. "When we went into real estate and finance, we took a chance together. It paid off. It's like that."

"But what if?—"

"Life is full of choices and risks. We could have failed when we started this business, Mal," Jett calmly started. "And we almost did." His lips twitched. "A lot of times. But we didn't give up. We were relentless and kept working hard. That's what a relationship is. That's how we would be with Rosie."

"Rosa is a person, not a business venture. We've never had a relationship?—"

"That's bullshit, and you know it," Casey cut in, shocking the hell out of me with how he spoke. "We have a relationship." He pointed at the three of us. "The healthiest, sanest one of our lives is the one we have with one another. All we're suggesting is bringing one more person into it. All we're asking you to do is to think about it, not just cut it off at the knees because you're a scared little bitch."

"I'm not being?—"

"Okay, enough!" Jett shook his head and extended his arms toward both of us. "Name calling's not helpful, Case."

"Sorry," Casey muttered and ran his fingers through his hair and tugged at the ends. "I'm tired of keeping her at arm"s length," he rasped. His blue eyes pleaded with me. "When you suggested it at the beginning, I understood, Malcom. I did. I thought it was a fucking crush. Lust. Something we'd get over. But come on, none of us has looked at another woman, much less thought of someone else. Do you know why?" It felt like my heart was lodged in my fucking throat. "Because she is the one for us. Every day that passes that she's under our roof and we get to spend time with her, we know it. It became clear a while ago, but out of respect, I stayed away."

"And now?"

"Now I'm telling you something has to change. It feels wrong not to claim her."

"So, if I'm not up for claiming her like you said, you two"—I pointed at them—"are going to anyhow? And what, just not give a shit about how I feel about her?"

"If you don't take a chance that tells us just how you feel about her," he responded.

"I know how I feel, how we feel about her. Seeing her with someone else would kill."

"You don't know what you are doing." I sat down and wiped my face. My head started to throb. Pressure built between my eyes.

"And you don't know the mistake you're about to make if you don't pull your head out of your ass and take a fucking chance. The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. Isn"t that what you say when we make million-dollar deals without blinking?" Casey challenged.

"Or the bigger the mess we have to clean up when shit hits the fan," I added because he needed to be reminded. "We made huge business deals that paid off, but the ones that didn"t were always been a pain in the ass to figure out afterwards."

"Maybe," Jett cut in, and Casey scowled. "Maybe," he repeated. "He's not wrong, Case. This could blow up in our faces." He shrugged, and there was the man I knew.

The one who couldn't seem to be bothered by much.

Or at least that's what I thought. When he turned his attention toward me, his dark almost black eyes were intense. "But at least we know we tried. We took a chance. We won't live the rest of our lives with regret." He sighed and looked fucking exhausted. He tapped the top of my desk with his fingertips like he usually did. "Think about it. We're leaving at six." He nodded, and without a glance behind him, he walked out of my office.

My head hit the back of my office chair, and I glanced over at Casey.

"He's right, and you know it." Casey sounded a little defeated. "Just… please think about it, Mal. We love her. The three of us do, whether you want to admit it or not. And you know no one in the rest of the fucking world could ever feel what we do for her. No one else would bend over backwards to give her everything she deserves and then some." With a tight smile, Case disappeared out of my office, closing the door behind him, filling my space with nothing but silence.

I usually loved the quiet, but I hated it in that moment.

No one would love her the way we could. The way we did.

Who was I fucking kidding? Who was I going to fool, as if I really had anything to think about? Casey and Jett were right.

Rosa was ours, and it was time to claim her.