“I mean it,” Michael continued.“You’ve been incredible.Running the hotel, dealing with the legal issues, managing the staff.Most people would have fallen apart completely.But you’re still here.Still fighting.”
I looked up at him.He had a kind face.Boyish, despite being only a few years older than me.Ruddy cheeks like he had just come in from the cold, though it was warm spring now.A smile that reached his eyes.
He had been at the hotel longer than I had been involved in running it, hired by my father years ago.And in all that time, he had never been anything but supportive.Never tried to undermine me.Never made me feel like I didn’t belong.
“You know you can lean on me, right?”He took the tablet back when I finished signing.“Whatever you need.That’s what I’m here for.”
“I appreciate that.”
He paused at the door.Hesitated.Like he wanted to say more but wasn’t sure if he should.
“I know what it’s like,” he said finally, his voice softer.“Losing a father figure.Mine was… complicated too.Never really saw me for who I was, you know?Always wanted more than what I could give him.”
His eyes held mine a beat too long.Then the moment passed.
I nodded, not trusting my voice.The sympathy in his expression was genuine.Earned.
“Anyway.”He cleared his throat, professional mask sliding back into place.“I’ll let you get back to it.Just remember you’re not alone in this, okay?”
After he left, Clara watched the closed door for a long moment.
“He’s good,” she said.“Loyal.You’re lucky to have someone like that running things.”
“I know.”And I was grateful.Michael had been a rock through the funeral, through the chaos, through all of it.At least one person in my life wasn’t trying to manipulate me.
Clara stood, gathering her coffee cup.“I’m going to make some calls.Lawyer.Accountant.Anyone who might see a way out of this.”She squeezed my shoulder as she passed, her hand warm and steady.“Don’t give up yet, okay?We’ll find a way out.”
I didn’t answer.Couldn’t answer.
After she left, I turned my chair toward the window.
The gardens stretched out below me, still brown in patches but showing the first signs of spring.Green shoots pushing through dead earth.Daffodils swelling in their beds, yellow buds not quite ready to open.My mother had designed these gardens, thirty years ago.She had planted roses along the south wall that still bloomed every June, though she had been dead since I was four.
I barely remembered her.Just impressions.The smell of her perfume.The sound of her laugh.The way she used to hold me in her lap while she pointed out different flowers, naming them in a voice I could no longer recall.
The hotel had been her dream.My father’s prison.And now it was mine, for three hundred and five more days.Unless I figured out how to escape a trap that had no exits.
The rage that had been keeping me upright for the past week wavered.Dimmed.Underneath it was exhaustion so deep it was drowning.And beneath that, waiting like a predator in tall grass, was despair.I refused to look at it directly.Looking at it meant admitting I might not be strong enough for this.
What if I just stopped fighting?
The thought came unbidden, seductive in its simplicity.I could break the contract and accept ruin.Let the hotel go to charity.Walk away from all of it, the debt and the marriage clause and the memory of his hands on my skin.Start over somewhere no one knew the name Hughes or Antonov.Become someone else.Someone who had never been stupid enough to fall for a monster’s lies.
But even as I thought it, I knew I couldn’t.
The hotel was all I had left.The only piece of my family that still existed in the world.The only proof that I had ever mattered to anyone at all.
I wouldn’t break.That was all I had left to hold onto, and it would have to be enough.No plan, no strategy, no clever scheme to turn the tables.Just the stubborn refusal to shatter completely.
My father had thought I was weak.Raphael had thought I was convenient.I would survive this if only to prove them both wrong.
It wasn’t much.But it was mine.
My phone buzzed against the desk.Unknown number.
I nearly ignored it.Telemarketers.Scammers.Another condolence call from someone who had read the obituary.But my hand reached for it anyway, fingers moving before my brain caught up.
“Hello?”
