It’s everywhere. Social media. The tabloids starving for a scandal despite half the world at war.
I’ve dealt with financial blows before, but this is different. This isn’t just numbers on a balance sheet. This is people queuing for hours at reception while staff scribble names on scraps of paper and cross-reference bank accounts. Families staggering off long-haul flights only to be told their rooms don’t exist. Wedding parties threatening reviews that’ll live online forever.
We’ve turned ourselves into a bloody case study in hownotto run a hotel. Reputational damage is what kills me. Guest loyalty. Word of mouth. The Forbes Five Star I’ve been grinding toward for months, the one Grandad would’ve been proud of, slipping through my fingers while the whole country watches me fail.
Craig was in my office at six a.m., shaking, showing me everything. Deployment logs with Georgie’s credentials.
I went nuclear on him. Demanded to know how the fuck this happened under his watch. But he insisted she made the change without his authorization. Went against direct orders. Negligence, he said. She’d been “irritated” after her stint in Skye. She wanted to prove something. His accusation hung there, unspoken but clear.
The Georgie I know would never sabotage a system out of spite. But anger changes people. Makes them do things they’d never normally consider. I’ve seen it before.
She’d been unreachable all weekend. Her phone off. Almost like she knew what was coming and didn’t want to face it.
All of it traces back to one feature push on Friday night.
That’s the part I can’t stomach. Did she fuck this up by accident? Or did she do it to make a point?
I want to believe it was a mistake. That this wasn’t done maliciously in the heat of her annoyance with me.
“Patrick, we need a holding statement by noon,” Siobhan says, tapping her pen so hard I want to snap it in half. “If we don’t get ahead of this, the story writes itself.”
“Guests are already posting photos of the queues,” Fraser adds, voice clipped. “It’s a fucking circus.”
I drum my fingers on the desk and force myself to focus. The rhythm keeps me from putting my fist through something. “Keep it neutral. Technical issue, identified and resolved. Emphasize guest care. We’re going to have to take a big financial hit here. Give guests what they want to appease their misery and inconvenience.” My voice sounds steady, but inside my head’s a roar.
There’s a knock on the door.
“Come in,” I call.
Sarah from HR steps in. “I’ve got Georgina Fitzgerald waiting.”
The way her eyebrows lift tells me exactly what she thinks of this situation. Can’t blame her. I disclosed the relationship to HR and senior staff this morning—had to. Whatever Georgie’s involvement in this mess, my poor judgment started it.
“Send her in. Everyone else, give us ten minutes.”
They file out, their expressions ranging from curiosity to disapproval.
She steps inside, wide-eyed and clearly trying to hold herself together. Her hand darts up to tuck a strand of dark hair behind her ear, but more hair escapes immediately.
She’s lost weight. Even in the few days since Scotland, her cheekbones are sharper. That fitted blazer hangs loosely at her shoulders now.
My chest tightens. I’ve missed her. Looking at her heart-shaped face, those green eyes that show every emotion she’s ever felt, all I want is to fix this. To make that devastated expression disappear, despite her change causing the biggest crisis in my company’s history.
“I’m being suspended?” Her voice cracks, and it lands in my gut.
“Sit down,” I order, before I do something reckless like cross the room and touch her.
She drops into the chair like her legs won’t hold her, pale and trembling. Her fingers find that necklace, the one I climbed a bloody mountain to retrieve. I know all her tells now. The way she bites the inside of her cheek when thinking. The way her eyes go bright when she’s about to cry but trying not to. That rapid pulse at the base of her throat that I’ve felt flutter under my mouth.
Even now, with my hotels in crisis mode, I notice everything about her.
“What happened, Georgie?”
“Craig forced me to deploy a change that I wasn’t comfortable with and that went against all our processes. I tested it thoroughly in dev, then handed it to him for QA. He signed off and told me to push it live.”
“Do you have proof that he told you to do it?”
“It was a phone call.”
