Chapter 1
It looks like the place that God forgot.
Charlotte Wretlind knows that she ought to be horrified, standing here in front of the Storlien mountain hotel. It is Easter season, but the sky is overcast. The afternoon light is gray. The whole area is enveloped in a desolate mist.
And yet Charlotte sees something else. She doesn’t care about the shabbiness or the general decay, the sense that time has left the hotel behind. Instead she sees it as it used to be during its golden age, when she was a child and her family spent every Christmas holiday here.
When she was a little girl, her body tingling with excitement and anticipation.
She remembers the almost ceremonial atmosphere as the night train from Stockholm pulled into the station on December 23 and they were collected by a horse-drawn sleigh. There was a huge Christmas tree in the elegant foyer when they arrived, and sparkling garlands hung from the ceiling.
Charlotte recalls the feeling on Christmas Eve as they walked up the imposing staircase to the restaurant. How the hem of her mother’s full-length velvet gown brushed each step, how beautiful she was with her red lips and her dark back-combed hair.
In Charlotte’s memory those Christmases at Storlien are still surrounded by a magical glow. For many years she has dreamed of building a new exclusive mountain hotel here, just like her father always talked about.
And now it is going to happen.
It took a great deal of persuasion to convince her business associate, Henry, to come on board with the project, but at long last she has a partner who is prepared to supply the necessary capital.
For decades she has worked on realizing others’ projects in the property and financial sector, but now it is time to carry through her own plans.
She is fifty-six years old, and she wants to build something that she will be remembered for.
Daddy would have been so proud, if only he could have been here.
She can see it now: the new main building, the wing housing a luxury spa, the panorama windows. The footprint will be twice as big. There will be exclusive suites and specialist restaurants offering top-class gastronomic experiences.
Storlien will spring back to life, and the guests will come flocking, just as they had when she was a child.
When she is done, the mountain hotel will be the destination of choice for premium international visitors.
Tourists from the Arab countries, from China—she has already begun sketching out a marketing strategy to attract them all.
She smiles to herself and heads for the car to return to ?re. She is spending the whole of Easter week at Copperhill Mountain Lodge, with the intention of doing some skiing when she isn’t working. It is only a forty-five minute drive from Storlien to ?re.
She has been preparing herself for so long; she has dreamed of this for years and years.
It has taken countless hours of planning, meeting after meeting.
She has had to cajole and threaten in order to secure all the necessary permissions.
On Monday she has one last important meeting with the local council to finalize things, followed by a press conference at five o’clock in the afternoon.
Bengt Hedin, the council’s representative, will be there too, and Henry is flying up. Charlotte frowns. She must remember to call him this evening—she needs to keep him sweet.
As she slides in behind the wheel, she can’t help taking one last look at the building on the mountainside. If only Daddy were here to share her triumph, but he passed away some years ago, and her mother is in a home, suffering from advanced dementia.
Daddy will never be able to rejoice in Charlotte’s greatest success, even though she has spent her whole life proving her capability to him. However, she is looking forward to showing the plans to Filip, her beloved son, who has promised to come to ?re next week.
She can’t wait to see him.
Darling Filip.
She is doing this for his sake too. He is her only child, and she has raised him on her own since she divorced his father, Mats, when Filip was little.
Secretly she dreams of working with Filip, so that one day he can take over. Admittedly they have fought quite a lot over his failure to stick to any kind of study program, but she is hoping that a few days together in the mountains will make everything better.
He has just dropped out of yet another course, this time at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and the news made Charlotte both angry and upset. They had a huge quarrel a couple of weeks ago, and she said things that she deeply regrets.
Since then he has barely responded to her text messages.
All she wants is to support her son, but she finds it so hard to understand why he doesn’t make more of an effort.
Charlotte rests her hands on the wheel.
She hates to see Filip wasting his talents. He is intelligent and quick thinking. He could achieve so much if he would just take things seriously. Which is why she can’t keep quiet when she sees him playing computer games twenty-four seven.
At the same time, she hates the tension between them. She has never been afraid of conflict, but being at odds with your only child is another matter.
Filip means the world to her, she can’t bear his silent remoteness.
When he comes to ?re, she must try to fix their relationship. She has already made an attempt to compensate by inviting his sweet girlfriend, Emily, but that’s not enough to salve her guilty conscience.
It is warm inside the car, and Charlotte lowers the temperature. Her phone on the passenger seat buzzes, the display glowing in the darkness. It is a message from Bengt Hedin, the chair of the town council’s planning committee.
We need to talk about the land purchase. The opposition is asking questions and I don’t know if it’s going to go through.
Charlotte manages to hold back an angry exclamation. She has paid a great deal to secure Hedin’s support. He must realize it’s too late to back out now. He can’t change his mind just a few days before they go public.
The entire project in Storlien depends on Charlotte being able to buy the land for the expansion.
Releasing the necessary acreage has been a complicated process, and some council officials have fought her every step of the way.
First of all they insisted that she renovate the dilapidated existing hotel; then they refused to approve the new architectural drawings.
They had the nerve to claim that the design didn’t fit in with the general ambience of Storlien.
After many lengthy and fruitless discussions, when it finally became clear that the council did not share her vision, she realized she was going to have to use more unorthodox methods to achieve her aim.
She glances at her phone again. Everything is due to be signed on Monday, then the project will be revealed at a press conference. No way is she going to allow Hedin to sabotage things at the last minute. Obviously she has meticulously documented all the payments he has received from her.
That is her insurance, in case he gets cold feet.
Slowly she types a response that leaves no room for misunderstanding.
That is not my problem, it’s yours. The press conference is on Monday and it is too late to postpone.
She presses send. That will have to do. She puts down her phone and is about to drive off when it buzzes once more.
What does he want now?
She picks up the phone and sees that she has received a text message from an unknown number.
Get out of here, or you’ll regret it.
She sighs wearily.
This isn’t the first threatening message she has had since her plans became known in the area.
And it probably won’t be the last. There are reactionaries everywhere who don’t like change, who want things to remain the same as they have always been.
A Facebook group has also been set up, where people spew their hatred of her and the hotel project.
She will have to call Stefan over the weekend and ask him to sort this out.
He is one of Sweden’s most skilled lobbyists, a former agriculture minister with contacts throughout the community.
That’s the advantage of being a well-known ex-politician.
He has worked on the project from the very beginning, and has helped to smooth the way for the new hotel.
And that isn’t his only talent.
Charlotte smiles at the memory of their most recent night together.
With a shrug she decides to ignore the troll, then pulls out onto the slush-covered road. Her phone buzzes again, but she takes no notice. She has no intention of letting herself be scared by cowards who refuse to reveal their identity.