Chapter 4 Lena #2
The next two weeks passed in a blur of eighteen-hour days.
I learned to read financial reports over breakfast and review occupancy projections over dinner.
I walked the hotel floors every morning, checking on housekeeping and maintenance and guest services.
I’d known these people my whole life, but now I saw them differently.
Elena in housekeeping wasn’t just the woman who snuck me cookies when I was little.
She had the sharpest eye for dust I’d ever seen and managed a team of twelve.
Jorge in maintenance wasn’t just the man who fixed my bicycle.
He could troubleshoot any system in the building and kept the whole place running.
Sarah at the front desk remembered every repeat guest’s preferences without ever writing them down.
These people had been running the hotel while I floated through it like a ghost. Now I saw them. Now I needed them.
Meetings with department heads revealed their concerns.
Approving purchase orders and reviewing vendor contracts, I discovered that my father had been paying twice the market rate for linens because he’d never bothered to renegotiate the deal.
A catering agreement hadn’t been updated in six years.
A landscaping contract billed us for services we weren’t receiving.
Small victories. I collected them like talismans against the looming debt.
But I needed more than small victories. I needed real money.
I called every bank that might consider a commercial loan.
First National. Paradise Peaks Savings. Three regional lenders Whitmore had suggested.
The answer was always the same: too much existing debt, too uncertain an outcome, too risky.
One loan officer actually laughed when I told him the amount we owed.
I reached out to private investors too. Friends of my father’s who’d made fortunes in real estate.
A venture capital firm in Denver that specialized in hospitality turnarounds.
A retired hotel magnate who’d once told my father he admired what we’d built.
Nothing. The debt was too big, the collateral already pledged to Apex Lending, and no one wanted to bet on a twenty-year-old with no experience running a lemonade stand, let alone a five-star hotel.
Every rejection stung. Every polite refusal was another nail in the coffin.
So I focused on what I could control.
A social media campaign targeted corporate retreat planners. Travel agencies got commission bonuses for peak-season bookings. The restaurant added a farm-to-table menu featuring local farms and ranches, and a regional food magazine picked it up for their “Hidden Gems” feature.
I redesigned our website with Sophie’s help.
She knew someone who knew someone who did web design, and he worked for half his usual rate because his grandmother had stayed at our hotel on her honeymoon.
Paradise Peaks was like that. Everyone connected to everyone else through invisible threads of history and obligation.
The numbers started to move. Not enough. Nowhere near enough. But they moved.
“You’re doing great,” Michael told me one evening, appearing at my elbow with a cup of coffee as I hunched over my laptop in the back office. “The corporate retreat from Seattle just confirmed. Forty rooms for three nights.”
“That’s…” I did the math in my head. “That’s almost what we need for next month’s operating costs.”
“Told you. You’re a natural at this.”
I wasn’t. I was exhausted and terrified and making it up as I went along. But I smiled anyway, because Michael had been my rock through all of this, and he deserved to think his encouragement was working.
“Any word from Apex Lending?”
The smile faded. “Not yet. Their lawyers have been quiet.”
Too quiet. Every day that passed without a demand letter was borrowed time. Like standing in the eye of a hurricane, waiting for the other wall to hit.
“Maybe they’re giving you a chance to get things in order,” Michael offered.
“Or maybe they’re waiting for the perfect moment to strike.”
He didn’t argue. We both knew I was probably right.
I thought about Raphael Antonov. About the way he’d looked at me in my father’s office, like he was cataloging every weakness. About the heat of his hand on mine, the predatory stillness in his eyes. He wasn’t the kind of man who forgot about a twenty-million-dollar debt.
The question wasn’t if he would come for what he was owed.
The question was when.
I pushed the thought away and checked the clock. Nearly ten. Time for my other job.
The hospital at night was a different world.
During the day, it bustled with activity.
Nurses rushing between rooms, doctors making rounds, families gathered in waiting areas with their hope and their fear.
But after visiting hours, when the corridors went quiet and the lights dimmed to a soft glow, it felt like a place between worlds. A limbo where time moved differently.
I walked the familiar path to my father’s room, my heels echoing on the linoleum.
Past the nurses’ station where Maria looked up from her paperwork and gave me a sad smile.
Past the waiting area with its plastic chairs and year-old magazines.
Past the room where an elderly woman lay surrounded by family, their voices low and loving.
No one was waiting for my father. No family gathered around his bed. Just me, coming every night after the hotel closed down and the last guests were settled.
Papa looked the same as always. Pale. Still. The machines beeped their steady rhythm, tracking heartbeats and oxygen levels and brain activity that the doctors said was stable but unresponsive. He wasn’t getting worse. He wasn’t getting better. He was just suspended.
I took his hand. Cold, as always.
“I booked a corporate retreat,” I told him. “Forty rooms. They’re coming next month for some kind of team-building thing. Michael helped me put together a package with the spa and the restaurant.”
The machines beeped. The ventilator hissed.
“I found out you were paying twice the market rate for linens. Did you know that? The same vendor has been overcharging you for eight years and you never even questioned it.” I squeezed his hand. “I renegotiated. Saved the hotel twelve thousand a year. You’re welcome.”
Nothing. Of course nothing.
I sat back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. The fluorescent lights hummed softly.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the debt, Papa? Why didn’t you let me help?” The questions I’d been asking for weeks, knowing I’d never get an answer. “You spent my whole life protecting me from things. From everything. And now I’m drowning and you’re not here and I don’t know what to do.”
My voice cracked on the last word. I pressed my free hand to my mouth and breathed through it.
“I’m trying so hard. I’m doing everything I can think of. But it’s not enough. The debt is too big and I don’t have enough time and every day I wake up wondering if today is the day they come to take everything away.”
The machines beeped.
“I need a miracle, Papa. And I don’t know where to find one.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Unknown number. A text.
You’ve been at the hospital for two hours and forty-three minutes. You should eat something. The cafeteria closes at midnight.
My blood went cold.
Another buzz.
I’ll be in touch soon, Ms. Hughes. We have much to discuss.
No signature. No name. But I knew exactly who it was.
He was watching. He’d been watching this whole time. And now he wanted me to know it.
His hand lay limp in mine. No squeeze of reassurance. No gruff voice telling me I was being dramatic. No dismissive wave sending me back to my room while the grown-ups handled things.
For the first time in my life, I wished he would dismiss me. Wished he would pat my head and tell me not to worry my pretty little head about it. At least then I’d know he was still here.
“I miss you,” I whispered. “Even though you never let me in. Even though you kept me at arm’s length my whole life. I miss you, Papa.”
The ventilator hissed its steady rhythm. The only answer I would get.
I stayed until the night nurse gently suggested I go home and get some sleep. Until the sky outside the window began to lighten with the first hints of dawn. Until I had no choice but to return to the hotel and start another day of fighting a battle I was slowly losing.
The numbers were improving. But not fast enough.
The hotel was still standing. But for how long?
And somewhere in the back of my mind, a name kept surfacing. The man on the news with the predator’s smile. The man who’d stood in my father’s office and looked at me like I was something to be devoured.
Raphael Antonov.
He owned our debt. He owned our fate. And sooner or later, he was going to come collecting.
I just didn’t know what he would want in return.