I closed my eyes against the memory.Against the image of his face, stone-hard and empty, looking at me like I was a stranger.Like I was nothing.Like the woman he’d made love to hours before had simply ceased to exist.
I’d given him everything.My body, my heart, my virginity.I’d said I loved him and meant it with every fiber of my being.And he’d looked at me the next morning and told me I was convenient.
A warm body with a debt to pay.Nothing more.
The tears came faster.I let them fall.There was no one to see.No one to care.Parsons kept his eyes on the road, his silence somehow worse than judgment would have been.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.It had been buzzing for hours, I realized.I’d silenced it sometime in the night, not wanting anything to interrupt what I’d thought was the most important night of my life.What a joke.What a pathetic, naive, stupid joke.
Now I pulled it out and stared at the screen with eyes that felt swollen and raw.
Seventeen missed calls.Twelve from Clara.Three from the hotel’s front desk.Two from a number I didn’t recognize.
Dread coiled in my stomach, cold and heavy, temporarily pushing aside the grief.That many calls meant something was wrong.Something beyond my own personal catastrophe.Clara wouldn’t call twelve times about nothing.
I should call back.I should find out what happened.
But first, I needed to pull myself together.I couldn’t let anyone see me like this, couldn’t let them know how thoroughly I’d been broken.I was still Lena Hughes.I was still the woman who had just saved her family’s hotel.I had to remember that.Had to hold onto it.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand.Straightened my spine against the leather seat.Forced myself to breathe.In.Out.In.Out.
The contract was fulfilled.That was what mattered.The $20 million debt was paid.The hotel was saved.I’d done what I set out to do.I’d sacrificed a year of my life, and now it was over.
It was over.
I could rebuild from this.I could focus on the hotel, on making my father proud, on proving that I was more than everyone thought I was.More than Raphael thought I was.More than my father had ever believed.
The thought steadied me, gave me something solid to hold onto.I wasn’t just a warm body.I wasn’t just convenient.I was Lena Hughes, and I had just saved my family’s legacy.No one could take that from me.
Not even him.
I dialed Clara’s number.
She answered on the first ring.“Lena?Oh my God, Lena, where have you been?I’ve been calling and calling, we’ve all been frantic, we couldn’t reach you anywhere, nobody knew where you were?—”
“Clara, slow down.”My voice came out steadier than I expected.“I was… I’ll explain later.What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?”Her voice pitched higher, cracking on the words.“Lena, it’s your father.He… we tried to reach you all night.The hospital called, and then we called you, and you weren’t answering, and we didn’t know where you were, and Marjorie was crying, and Sophie kept trying different numbers?—”
The dread in my stomach turned to ice.Sharp, jagged ice that seemed to pierce through every organ.
“Clara.”I gripped the phone so hard my knuckles went white.“What happened to my father?”
Silence on the other end.A shuddering breath.The sound of someone trying to find words that shouldn’t have to exist.
And then, in a voice I barely recognized: “He’s gone, Lena.He passed early this morning.Around four a.m.You weren’t there.We couldn’t find you.”
The words didn’t make sense at first.They were just sounds, syllables strung together without meaning.My father.Gone.Passed.Four a.m.
Four a.m.
At four a.m., I had been in Raphael’s bed.In Raphael’s arms.Crying out his name while my father drew his last breath alone in a hospital room.
“No.”The word came out as a whisper.“No, that’s not… he was stable.He was getting better.The doctors said he was improving.They said?—”
“There was a complication.His heart.”Clara was crying now, I could hear the tears in every syllable.“Lena, I’m so sorry.I’m so, so sorry.We tried to reach you.We tried everything.I must have called a dozen times.The hotel staff tried.Marjorie was frantic.Nobody knew where you were.”
My phone.Silenced.Because I hadn’t wanted to be interrupted while I gave myself to a man who would throw me away the next morning.Because I’d chosen him over everything else, and while I was choosing him, my father was dying alone.
