Chapter 30
Chapter
Thirty
Christian
She’s gone.
Angelica stared at her phone, her heart in her throat.
Wind rushed through her ears, and she plopped down into the makeup chair as Ansel continued to prepare for her.
She couldn’t imagine the chaos going on in that hospital room.
The explosion of emotions. Her mother was the chaotic matriarch of the family on a good day.
Which left everyone squarely in the camp of not knowing what the fuck to do now that she was gone.
Had anyone else in her family texted and said her mother was dead, she wouldn’t have believed them. But Christian? He had no reason to lie. They’d talked about this. And as much as Angelica didn’t want to deal with it, she did want to be there for her brother, for her niece and nephew.
Putting her phone in her lap, Angelica stared at the back of it. She couldn’t look at the screen. She had no idea what to even text back to Christian, not right now. Fear, pain, guilt, relief—it all flooded her at once. And she didn’t know which one was going to win out in the end.
Her mother was dead.
A woman she hadn’t wanted to see ever again, and yet a woman who was still managing to have such a stark impact on her life. As much as Angelica hated that fact, it was, indeed, a fact.
“Chin up, Ange.”
Angelica moved on instinct, closing her eyes as Ansel worked to put the makeup on her face.
Memories flooded her brain, all those good moments she’d had with her family.
Though they were few and far between and most of them were before Christian was even alive.
Once he was born, she’d been usurped by the son they had always wanted.
Which, she didn’t care.
But their treatment of her had only gotten worse throughout the years.
“Ange, you okay?”
Angelica snapped her eyes open, staring into Ansel’s concerned gaze. “Yes, of course.”
“O…kay.” He straightened his back a little and handed her a tissue.
Staring down at the paper in her hand, Angelica was more confused now than ever.
“It’s for your tears.”
“Oh.” Angelica tensed sharply. She lifted the tissue to her face and wiped her cheeks.
Sniffling, she got hold of herself again and then nodded to him when she was ready to continue.
She couldn’t even find words to explain anything, and she’d never been more grateful for the fact that Ansel didn’t ask.
Angelica steeled herself for the day with each new layer of makeup and hair product that Ansel used on her. She took the time the silence offered and made the best use of it that she could. She’d call Christian as soon as she was done with this and blame the delay on work.
In reality, she needed this forty-five minutes.
Slipping out of the makeup area, Angelica made her way to the main office because everyone would be in the staging room.
And she still wasn’t ready to face reality.
Standing in the office with the door shut, she tapped Christian’s name and lifted her phone to her ear. It rang three times before he answered.
And his voice was rough.
“Hey,” Christian said.
“Hey,” Angelica answered, her stomach churning because she knew she wanted to say something, but she wasn’t entirely sure what to say.
“We’re still at the hospital,” Christian said quietly. “Dad won’t… he won’t let them take her yet.”
So they were still just sitting in the room with her mother’s dead body? Angelica winced. Her dad was prone to overdramatics, but even this was a bit much for him. She wasn’t going to comment on it, though. “I’m sure the nurses and staff will help move him along soon.”
Christian grunted. “Maybe.”
Angelica sighed, keeping the phone to her ear. “How are you holding up?”
Christian sighed again, this time so heavily that it nearly broke Angelica’s heart. “I’m not ready for this.”
“I’m not sure anyone is prepared for one of their parents to die.
” She certainly hadn’t been, even though she’d thought she was.
She’d thought she’d left that part of her life behind, but still, the knowledge that her mother was gone from this world struck her far harder than she’d expected it would.
“True.” Christian hummed, and in the background, Angelica could hear their father sobbing. “Thanks for calling.”
“Anytime,” Angelica murmured the words.
The knock on the door was loud. Angelica whipped around, the phone still to her ear. Florence poked her head inside, a momentary look of concern in her gaze before she focused on Angelica’s face. “We need to start up.”
“Of course,” Angelica said, still clutching her phone. “It’ll just be another minute.”
Florence didn’t seem happy about that, but she did back away and shut the door.
“I know you’re busy. Just call me tonight, and I’ll probably have more information then,” Christian said confidently through the phone.
“Okay. And if you don’t, that’s okay too.
Take the time you need to plan and prepare.
You’ve got a lot of decisions to make coming up.
” Angelica’s lips pulled tight. She did hate the fact that she was forcing him to deal with all of this.
But she’d be there in what ways she could, the ones that didn’t cross the boundaries she’d made years ago.
“Thanks.”
Christian hung up without another word. Angelica put her phone down to her side, rolled her head forward, and took a deep breath. She closed her eyes. She hated this. She hated it far more than she’d ever anticipated.
“Ange!” Florence’s voice echoed through the door.
“Coming!” Angelica called back.
Time was up.
She had work to do, and she needed to get it done. The worst part about Hope being gone every day with the food truck was this. Florence had no one else to bother other than Angelica. Which meant all of the attention was on her—and she hated that.
More than she hated this feeling building in the pit of her stomach.
The one she couldn’t define or label.
“Ange?”
“Yeah. I’m coming.” Angelica turned sharply in her heels and gripped onto the doorknob. Within seconds she was out of the office and making her way toward the front of the hotel.
Her brain kept spinning between work, Christian, and her mother.
The pain of loss wasn’t what she’d expected to feel at all.
Brushing her fingers through her hair, Angelica blinked her focus onto the task in front of her.
She was already days behind where she needed to be in terms of figuring out this hotel and what their problems were, and for the life of her she couldn’t force herself to focus on anything.
“Good morning,” Angelica said, reaching her hand forward to shake the elderly man’s hand. He looked studious, small glasses perched on his nose, balding head.
“Morning,” he answered, his voice creaking out as if he was nervous. “I’m Theo.”
“It’s good to meet you.” Angelica tried to plaster on a smile, but she was damn sure she failed at that.
Even a glance toward Rex told her that he picked up on the fact that something was off.
She really needed to rectify that. “I hear we’re going to have a talk in the office.
” Angelica pointed over her shoulder toward the room that she’d just come from.
Theo nodded. But he didn’t say anything other than that.
“Will…” Angelica’s brain stopped. There was a second owner, isn’t there? She searched for a name, combing her memory banks the best that she could and coming up completely empty. “Will it just be you?”
That was the best way she could cover up that mistake.
Theo nodded at her.
“All right.” She made her way back toward the office, followed closely by Theo.
She knew that she and Hope were supposed to film the opening sequence that evening when Hope returned, and they had a few scenes with Theo and some other staff together so that they could try and catch back up on the filming schedule that had been interrupted by Josef.
Once again.
Didn’t that man ever stop?
Angelica sat down in a chair, barely even registering that Theo was sitting at the table with her instead of in the chair behind the desk.
She really needed to get herself together, to stop thinking about Josef and everything that had gone wrong in the last few months—hell, years.
Josef had been tormenting her since they started filming Hotel Bombshell and she just needed to admit that already.
There she was again.
Always putting herself directly into the line of abuse with a controlling figure at the helm of tearing her down one day at a time.
How was Josef any different from her dead mother?
She still allowed the harassment to continue far longer than she should have.
She never stood up for herself.
“Ange?” Rex’s smooth and gentle tones reached her ears.
She snapped her gaze up, meeting Rex’s compassionate gaze.
“Everything good?” he asked.
If he wasn’t telling her to immediately start filming, then she must have been more out of it than she’d thought. Angelica dashed her tongue across her lips, using the extra two milliseconds to find a center. Except she couldn’t find that.
“Yes, I’m good.”
“You sure?” Rex asked again.
Angelica nodded and cleared her throat lightly. “Yes, let’s begin.”
She put her hand on the desk as if to touch her iPad and realized belatedly that it wasn’t there.
She furrowed her brow in confusion, but she had nothing else to work off right now.
And no one that could help her find it. Snagging her phone, she sent a text to Lyric to ask her to find it and bring it to her.
“I’m ready,” she said again, this time meaning it.
“Okay.” Rex didn’t seem convinced, though. He did step behind the camera and call action.
“Theo, your hotel here is lovely, it’s in a stunning and beautiful location with lots of foot traffic since it’s near the downtown area. Why don’t you tell me what you think the problems here might be?” That should at least get the conversation started until Lyric could get there with her iPad.
Angelica couldn’t make eye contact with Theo. She could barely even hold her chin up as she listened to his soft monotonous voice drone on with explanation after explanation after—no, he wasn’t actually answering her question. He was telling her the history of the hotel.
Angelica snapped her gaze up briefly.
“Theo,” Angelica interrupted. “What is the current problem when it comes to the hotel and food truck?”
He stared at her, lips parted in surprise. “Money. We have none, and it’s not producing any.”
Had he said that already and she had just missed it? Angelica ignored that thought and put her hand onto the top of the table. “Where do you think you’re bleeding money?”
“We don’t have a restaurant like most hotels do, so people don’t want to stay here because we can’t provide them complimentary breakfast.”
Angelica disagreed with that statement. Her hotels didn’t have complimentary breakfasts and they were thriving. So she dismissed that thought immediately. It wasn’t because of that, though it may be a symptom of a greater problem.
“We just can’t keep up with expenses.”
Furrowing her brow, Angelica pursed her lips.
“You and I are going to deep dive into your expenses then.” Tomorrow, please let it be tomorrow, when she had a bit more of her head on straight and could think better.
“Today, however, I just want to observe everything that you’ve been doing and how you handle the hotel itself. All right?”
Theo nodded, but he looked confused.
Had she said something wrong? Or something contradictory to what he’d been told already? Angelica hated the fact that she hadn’t been there that first day to get everything set up well and make sure the production was going to run smoothly.
“Perfect.” Angelica tapped her palm once more against the table. “We’ll start on that shortly.”
Without another word, she stood up and walked out of the office.
She just needed to escape.