This was going to be a bigger fight than Angelica was ready for tonight. “Where is she?”
Lisa shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Based on what you do know, where do you think she is?” Angelica was going to push this, because she needed an answer.
“She’s at her apartment, probably asleep. She hasn’t answered or read any of my texts or calls this morning.” Lisa bit her lip nervously. “I knew I should have driven by to wake her up.”
“How old is Kayla?” Angelica asked, trying to prove her point. “Is she a teenager or is she an adult?”
“She’s twenty-six.”
“So she’s an adult, and if she hasn’t learned how to get up to come to work in the mornings, then that’s on her, not you. And if she hasn’t figured out that this week might be a bit more important than any other week, then that’s really on her. I assume you told her we were coming.”
“We did,” Lisa answered.
“Then where is she?” Angelica raised her eyebrows. “If my manager didn’t show up for a shift, an important shift, without any communication or a major reason why she couldn’t be there, she’d be fired. Or at least put on suspension. How many times in the last six months has Kayla not shown up for work?”
She didn’t get an answer. Neither Lisa nor Sydney was willing to dole out that information, and Angelica could understand why, but she needed to know, and she needed them to be on her side in this.
“How many times?” Angelica repeated the question, and then she held the silence with a pointed stare until one of them broke.
Lisa was first.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know because you’re not paying attention or because it’s too many times for you to count it up?” Angelica crossed her arms, once again looking between Sydney and Lisa. “Here’s the deal. I need you two to be honest with me, otherwise nothing we do here this week is going to help you in the long term. It’ll fix things for this week and that’s it. But if you two don’t start taking control of your hotel and running it andbeingowners, then nothing is going to get better and you’re going to stay in this same situation that got you into this problem.”
How many times had she said that this season? Hell, how many times had she said that since they started filming? It was like each time at each hotel she had to give this pep talk. Then again, that had been the point of the show, wasn’t it? Create a formula that people became addicted to so that they could keep the show running as long as possible.
Angelica licked her lips, focusing back on Sydney and Lisa. “Well?”
“We don’t know because it’s been too many,” Lisa said, raising her chin up as if she’d finally understood what Angelica was really asking.
“And how many times has she faced consequences for performance and attendance?”
“None,” Sydney said, his chin dropping and his gaze locking somewhere on the table.
That was at least a start. Angelica could work with that. Maybe there was still hope for them yet. She rolled her shoulders and leaned back in the chair, eyeing both of them again. “You need to fire her.”
“No,” Sydney said firmly, his eyes widening slightly. “She’s our daughter, and I won’t do that to family.”
“This is why I preach no one should hire family members to work for them and why family-run businesses are so difficult.” Angelica clenched her jaw tightly. “You’re telling me right now that Kayla is one of the worst employees you’ve ever had. Before her, did you have a manager who was good?”
“Yeah,” Lisa said. “And we laid Troy off when Kayla got old enough to take over. That was always the plan.”
“Plan?” Angelica gave her an incredulous look. “You should have only planned for that if Kayla had shown some sort of aptitude to actually do the job she’s hired to do. And from what I’ve seen, and from what I’ve read about in your records and heard about from your other employees, she doesn’t have those skills. She’s not a manager. She’s dead weight.”
“Don’t talk about our daughter that way.” Sydney’s cheeks reddened with anger.
“You need to hear it. And you’re either going to hear it now from me, or you’re going to hear it for the rest of the week when we’re digging deeper into the mess that you two created. This isn’t all on Kayla, please don’t hear that as what I’m saying. You two are the owners of this hotel, and you hired her and then took your hands off the wheel, thinking that she would do right by you, but she didn’t. She took advantage. And you two fed right into that.”
Angelica’s voice rang through the room, and nothing but silence was reflected back at her. Did they see that?
“I’ll agree to work with her, if she shows up for a shift on time tomorrow. But if she doesn’t, I fully expect you two to pull the plug and fire her. You need a manager who works for you, not themselves.” Angelica closed her iPad loudly. “You tell Kayla that when you talk to her next. Until then, I have to talk with Hope about the kitchens.”
She stood up and left the room, leaving tension in her wake. It was exactly what Rex had told her to do when she got to the end of the conversation. Create more drama, more tension, but not have it be between her and Hope. And it had worked perfectly. Hopefully, Josef would see it that way. Because Angelica didn’t want to go back to what they had before.
Not again.
