I thought about calling Raphael’s security team.For half a second, my thumb hovered over the contact.
My phone buzzed before I could decide.
Raphael:I know about the break-in.My people are already reviewing your hotel’s security footage.
My blood went cold.How did he know?It had been less than an hour.The police had barely left.
Another message:You should have called me first.
Not “are you okay.”Not “is Marjorie hurt.”Just that cold statement of fact, wrapped in expectation.I should have called him first.Because I was his.Because my safety was his concern, his property to manage.
A third message:We’ll discuss this tonight.
The words felt like a summons.Like a threat.Like a promise of something I wasn’t sure I wanted to face.
I put the phone away without responding.
For all I knew, he was behind this.The man who’d maneuvered me into a contract that gave him access to my body, who watched me with those dark eyes like he was cataloging every weakness.The man who’d admitted, outright, that what he felt for me was dangerous.
Maybe this was part of it.Scare me.Isolate me.Make me dependent on him for protection from threats he’d orchestrated himself.
I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.
“I’m calling hotel security,” I said instead.“And a locksmith.We’re changing every lock on this floor, and I’m posting one of our night guards outside your door until we figure out who did this.And I want every second of security footage from last night pulled and reviewed.”
Marjorie’s eyes softened.“You don’t have to?—”
“Yes, I do.”I sat down across from her and took her cold hands in mine.“You raised me, Marjorie.You’re the only family I have left.I’m not letting anyone hurt you.”
“I know you won’t.”She squeezed my fingers.“You’re stronger than you think, Lena.Stronger than your father ever was.”
We sat like that for a long moment, holding hands in the kitchen where I’d grown up, while the sky lightened outside and somewhere in the building, a person I’d trusted had let a monster walk through our home.
I made the calls myself.Hotel security arrived within twenty minutes, grim-faced and professional.The locksmith came an hour later.I stayed with Marjorie until she’d eaten something, until the color had returned to her cheeks, until she insisted I had work to do and she wasn’t going to crumble just because some coward had pawed through her books.
Then I went back downstairs to my father’s office, where the spreadsheets were waiting, and tried to work.
The budget numbers made sense in a way nothing else did.Numbers didn’t have feelings.They didn’t look at you with dark eyes that saw too much, didn’t make your pulse race with a single word, didn’t hold you like you mattered and then pretend it meant nothing.
Numbers were safe.
I buried myself in them.
An hour later, our head of security knocked on my door with the footage review.Nothing.Whoever had broken in had known exactly where the cameras were, had moved through the building’s blind spots like they’d memorized the layout.The only image they’d captured was a blur of dark clothing disappearing into the service stairwell at 3:47 AM.
Someone who knew our security system.Someone who worked here, or had worked here, or had access to information they shouldn’t have.
The list of people I could trust was getting shorter by the hour.
The rest of the morning crawled past.Staff trickled in as morning light replaced the darkness outside the office windows.I walked over to the interior windows which overlooked the lobby, watching the hotel come to life below.Sophie texted asking if I wanted to grab lunch in the spa cafe, and I told her I was too busy, which was true and also a lie.
The truth was I couldn’t face anyone who might look at me and see what I was trying to hide.That something had split open in me two nights ago, something I didn’t know how to close again.
You think if you’re cruel enough, I’ll hate you.
I’d said that to him.Stood there naked with his release cooling on my skin and told him I could see right through his games.
And he’d looked at me like I’d reached inside his chest and squeezed.
