Chapter 8 Lena #2
The sobs came in great heaving waves, ugly and uncontrolled.
I slid down the door until I was sitting on the floor, knees pulled to my chest, and cried until my throat was raw and my eyes burned like sandpaper.
The smell of death still lingered in my nostrils, phantom and persistent.
Winston’s broken body. The cut-out letters of that note.
I’M WATCHING.
Who would do this? Why?
The questions circled like vultures. I ran through the possibilities, each one worse than the last.
Angry employees. We’d had to let go of three people last month, and there would be more cuts coming after today’s losses.
Someone could be retaliating, punishing me for decisions I’d been forced to make.
But this felt too planned, too calculated.
Too personal. Firing someone didn’t usually result in mutilated pets.
Debt collectors. If the hotel failed, then Apex Lending would take the collateral. Maybe this was designed to force us into default, to accelerate the timeline. But I’d signed the contract with Raphael this morning. The money would start flowing. There was no reason to—
Raphael.
The thought surfaced like something rotten, and I couldn’t push it away.
He benefited from my fear. The more isolated I felt, the more dependent I became. If someone wanted to make sure I had nowhere else to turn, that I was too frightened and overwhelmed to think clearly, this was exactly how they’d do it.
My phone buzzed. Unknown number.
I answered before I could think better of it.
“Someone left you a gift today.” Raphael’s voice was ice. No greeting. No pretense of concern. Just that cold, controlled fury that somehow felt more dangerous than shouting would have.
“How do you know about that?”
“I know everything that happens to you, Lena.” A pause. “I told you. You’re mine now. Someone sent a message to my property. That’s not something I take lightly.”
Property. The word landed like a slap. I’d signed a contract that made it true, but hearing him say it stripped away any illusion of dignity.
“Did you do it?” The question came out before I could stop it. “Is this part of your… process? Break me down so I’m easier to control?”
Silence. Long enough that I thought he might have hung up.
“If I wanted to break you, Lena, I wouldn’t need a dead dog.” His voice dropped, taking on that edge that made something clench low in my belly despite everything. “I have far more efficient methods. And far more pleasurable ones.”
“Then who—”
“I’m looking into it. My people are already reviewing your hotel’s security systems. They’re inadequate, by the way. We’ll discuss improvements later.” Another pause, weighted with something I couldn’t name. “Someone threatened what belongs to me. That’s not something I forget. Or forgive.”
The line went dead.
I stared at my phone, heart pounding. He hadn’t asked if I was okay. Hadn’t offered comfort or reassurance. He’d called to inform me that someone had touched his property and that he would handle it.
The thought made me sick. But I couldn’t dismiss it. I was about to walk into the house of a man who’d told me he wouldn’t be gentle, who’d looked at me like I was prey. Was it really such a stretch to think he’d try to break me down first?
There was also my father. Richard Hughes had run this hotel for thirty years.
He’d hosted politicians, celebrities, business leaders from around the world.
Who knew what enemies he’d made? What secrets he’d kept?
He was lying in a hospital bed, silent and unreachable, and I had no way to ask him what I was inheriting along with his debt.
I didn’t know anything anymore. That was the worst part. I was supposed to take over this legacy, and I didn’t even know what it was.
A knock at the door made me scramble to my feet, wiping my face with the back of my hand.
“It’s Marjorie, child.”
I opened the door. She stood there with a tray of food I knew I wouldn’t eat, her eyes soft with worry.
Marjorie had been our family’s housekeeper since before my mother died.
She’d helped raise me, dried my tears, snuck me cookies when my father wasn’t looking.
She was the closest thing to family I had left.
“I heard about what happened.” She set the tray on the side table and turned to face me. “Maya’s beside herself. Poor Winston.”
Guilt twisted in my stomach. I’d been so focused on my own fear that I hadn’t thought about Maya, alone in her suite with her grief.
“Is she okay?”
“She’s with Sophie. They’re having tea.” Marjorie paused, her hands smoothing her apron in that familiar nervous gesture. “Alice called earlier. She wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Who’s Alice?”
“Mr. Antonov’s housekeeper.” Marjorie’s voice was careful, measured. “We’re old friends. Known each other for years. She’s good people, Lena. Whatever situation you’re walking into, Alice will look out for you.”
I stared at her. There was something in her tone, something that suggested she knew more than she was saying.
“What do you know about… about where I’m going?”
“I know you’re scared.” She reached out and touched my cheek, her palm warm and papery against my skin. “I know you’ve made some kind of arrangement with that Antonov man, and I know it’s not my place to ask what. But whatever you’re going through, child, you’re not as alone as you think.”
The words loosened something in me. I wanted to tell her everything. The contract. The debt. The year of my life I’d sold to a man who looked at me like I was something to be devoured. The dead dog in the lobby and the fear that he might be the one who sent it.
But I couldn’t. The NDA. The shame. The crushing weight of everything I’d become.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. The words tasted like ash.
Marjorie looked at me for a long moment, her eyes seeing right through the lie. Then she sighed, kissed my forehead the way she had when I was small, and left.
I checked the time. Six-fifteen. Less than two hours until Raphael’s driver arrived.
I showered, letting the hot water pound against my back until it ran cold, washing away the last traces of the day. The smell of the soap, familiar and comforting, couldn’t quite cover the memory of that other smell, the wrongness of death in a gift box.
I changed into clothes that were a shield. Dark jeans, a silk blouse, low heels that I could walk in. Nothing too revealing, nothing that might give him ideas. As if anything I wore would matter to a man who owned me.
I threw the last few items into my suitcase. Toiletries. My mother’s photo. A book I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on. The sum total of my life, reduced to a single bag.
At seven-thirty, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and studied my reflection.
The woman looking back at me had dark circles under her eyes and a jaw set with determination she didn’t feel.
She’d signed her life away this morning and opened a box of death this afternoon.
She was about to walk into the house of a man who might have sent her that dead dog to break her down.
A man who’d warned her, in no uncertain terms, that he would not be gentle.
She was terrified.
But she was still standing.
“I can survive this,” I told my reflection. “All of it.”
The face in the mirror didn’t look convinced.
At eight o’clock exactly, my phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number.
Parsons is waiting. Don’t make me send him up to collect you.
A second message, seconds later. Tonight, we establish exactly what ‘mine’ means.
The words sent a shiver down my spine. Threat or promise, I couldn’t tell. Maybe both.
I picked up my suitcase, took one last look at the apartment that had been my home for twenty years, and walked out the door toward whatever waited for me next.