8
LENA
I went back to the hotel and stayed downstairs instead of going up to the apartment.
I told myself it was practical.There were things I needed to handle before tonight, loose ends to tie up, staff to brief on my “absence.”The truth was simpler and more pathetic: I couldn’t face packing yet.Couldn’t stand the thought of choosing which pieces of my life to fold into a suitcase and carry into his house.
So I walked through the lobby like I had a thousand times before, nodding at staff, smiling at guests, pretending my world wasn’t about to end at eight o’clock.The afternoon light streamed through the tall windows, catching dust motes in the air, making everything look golden and peaceful.A lie.Everything in my life was a lie now.
The Elevator Man gave me his usual silent nod from his post by the brass doors.He’d worked here since before I was born, and he’d never said more than three words to me, but there was kindness in those quiet eyes.Steadiness.I needed that right now.
I made myself useful for an hour, checking supply orders and reviewing the weekend event schedule, pretending I wasn’t counting down the minutes until eight o’clock.The work helped.Gave me something to focus on besides the contract I’d signed this morning and the man waiting at the other end of it.
The mundane details of hotel management had always bored me before.Now they were a lifeline.Linens for the presidential suite.A complaint about noise from room 412.The florist confirming delivery for Saturday’s wedding reception.Normal problems with normal solutions.Nothing like the catastrophe I’d made of my own life.
The front desk clerk, a young woman named Jessica, waved me over.“Ms.Hughes?A package arrived for you.”
My stomach tightened.I wasn’t expecting anything.
The box sat on the counter, medium-sized, wrapped in plain brown paper.No return address.Just my name written in careful, precise letters: “The Hughes Heiress.”
Not Lena Hughes.Not Ms.Hughes.
The Hughes Heiress.
Something about that felt wrong.Personal in a way that made my skin prickle.Like whoever sent it knew me.Knew what I was.Knew that the title was all I had left.
“When did this arrive?”
Jessica shrugged.“It was at the service entrance when housekeeping came in this morning.They brought it up, but you weren’t here.I was going to call you, but then you walked in.”
No delivery service.No tracking number.Just a box left in the dark, waiting for me.
I picked it up.Too light.Wrong somehow, in a way I couldn’t name.The handwriting on the label was careful, precise, each letter formed with intention.Someone had taken their time with this.
I should have taken it to the back office.Should have called security.Should have done literally anything other than what I actually did, which was pick it up and start opening it right there in the middle of the lobby.
The paper tore easily under my fingers.Inside was a white cardboard box, the kind you’d use for a gift.I lifted the lid.
The smell hit me first.
Wrong.Sweet and metallic and rotten, like meat left out in the sun.The scent crawled up my nostrils and lodged in the back of my throat, thick and choking.My brain tried to process what I was seeing, but the information came in fragments.Disjointed.A small body.Rust-colored fur, matted and wet with something dark.A rhinestone collar catching the lobby light.
Winston.
Maya’s corgi.The little dog who followed her everywhere, who yapped at room service carts and begged for scraps in the restaurant.I’d scratched behind his ears just last week, laughing at the way his stubby tail wagged.
Dead.In a box.Addressed to me.
The scream ripped out of my throat before I could stop it.The box fell from my hands, hitting the marble floor with a sound that seemed to echo forever.Winston’s small, broken body rolled out, and with it came a piece of paper, the words cut from magazine letters like something out of a crime show.
I’M WATCHING.
The lobby erupted into chaos.
Jessica screamed, stumbling backward into the counter.A guest dropped her coffee cup, ceramic shattering across the marble, the dark liquid spreading like a stain.Somewhere behind me, a child started crying, high and terrified.I heard retching from the direction of the restaurant entrance, someone losing their breakfast at the sight.
And phones.So many phones appearing in hands, cameras pointing at me, at the box, at the small twisted body on the floor.Recording.Photographing.Turning my nightmare into content.
