Chapter 6
I miss you.
Unread message from Grace to Amy
Grace
“How was work?” Mum asked when she heard me come in.
The delicious aroma of caramelised onions and melted cheese hung in the air.
Mum stood in the kitchen, her blond hair plaited, briskly stirring a pot without so much as a glance in my direction.
I couldn’t tell if she was just making sure nothing burnt or if monitoring the pot was a convenient excuse not to look at me.
It felt like a ridiculous thing to have to wonder.
“Stressful,” I replied, hanging up my coat on a stand that already strained and threatened to topple at any moment under the weight of five people’s jackets—Amy’s were still there.
“Because of the trial?”
“Yes and no. Mainly because of the staff shortages.” Giulia hadn’t been exaggerating.
There was a lot to do in the hotel, but at least it kept me busy enough to avoid the pitying looks of colleagues.
And it left me no time to dwell on the breakdown I’d had earlier in the week in front of Ethan Beelzebub Darlington.
I still felt queasy when I remembered how I’d clung to him.
Why did it have to be Ethan? Why not Giulia?
Or Rakesh? Even Henry would have been better.
The only good thing was that I hadn’t run into Ethan since, and with any luck, he’d be back to his usual drunk, sometimes stoned, arsehole self at the weekend.
“Are you working tomorrow?” Mum asked, still not looking at me.
I went to the fridge and took out a can of Coke. “Yes. And I’m going out afterwards with Rose. There’s a new club opening in town, and she got us on the guest list.”
“Lovely. I’m sure a night out will do you some good.
” My mum turned away from the pot to pluck herbs from a planter on the windowsill above the sink.
She loved plants, and I could remember a time when our flat had been full of them, green leaves peeking out from every corner.
But that had been before Jason was born and our place became too small.
Now the corners of our flat were crammed with clutter that had no other place to go.
We didn’t even have a living room anymore, and the kitchen had become our family’s communal room in its place.
“I’m going to my room,” I announced.
“Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll eat later. I have stuff to do.”
My mum didn’t attempt to change my mind or coax me into joining them. It hurt more than I wanted to admit—which was the reason I wanted to avoid dinner in the first place. At least this way, my parents and Jason could enjoy a few carefree moments together.
I left the kitchen. From Jason’s room came the sound of a YouTube tutorial he was watching: off-key notes and a tinny voice explaining how to play some song on the keyboard.
I shut my bedroom door behind me and kicked off my shoes with a sigh of relief.
My feet ached just as they had back when I’d first started working at The Darlington.
I hadn’t been used to being on my feet all day, and in those early weeks, I’d gone to bed with aching limbs every night.
After a while, my body had adjusted to the strain, but now, after two months away, my stamina was gone, and I felt just as worn out as I had back then.
I lowered myself onto my bed with a groan and turned on the small TV perched on my chest of drawers to wind down for a moment.
Barely ten minutes later, I heard steps in the hallway, followed by indistinct voices from the kitchen.
I felt sick at the thought of the three of them sitting at a table for five, probably relieved that I wasn’t there.
I turned up the volume so I wouldn’t have to hear them.
Half an hour later, the voices fell silent.
Jason had probably gone back to his room, and my parents had most likely retreated to their bedroom, which doubled as their office.
Once I was certain the coast was clear, I crept into the kitchen and helped myself to leftovers.
Then, carrying my plate and my laptop, I slipped into the room opposite mine. Amy’s room.
Despite the lack of space in the flat, Amy’s room had been left untouched.
It still looked exactly as it had on the night she had died.
Books about human anatomy were spread across her desk, and the turquoise blanket she always wrapped around herself when she was cold was next to her chair.
An old hoodie hung over the open door of her wardrobe, and on the armchair by the window sat Mr. Panda, the stuffed toy Amy’s boyfriend Garrett had given her because he’d thought pandas were her favourite animal. Really, it had been koalas.
I switched on the bedside table lamp and sat down on Amy’s bed.
I’d spent more time in this room than my own these past few weeks.
Her scent had long since faded, but I still felt closer to her here than anywhere else.
We’d spent so many evenings sitting here together.
Sometimes we’d talked, sometimes we hadn’t.
Sometimes I’d quizzed her on what she was learning at uni.
More often than not, she’d given me advice.
Amy had always known what to do. She brought clarity to every mess, order to all chaos.
When I’d stubbornly stuck with the law degree I couldn’t stand, afraid of letting our parents down, she’d been the one to set my mind at ease.
And when I’d been hopelessly confused over some guy, she’d set to work on my feelings as if they were a tangled chain, patiently finding the beginning and the end, teasing out every knot until the whole situation lay plain before me.
Until I did the only sensible thing and dumped him.
I’d sadly never managed to give Amy the same clarity in return.
I’d tried but failed. She’d simply been the better sister.
The better daughter.
The better student.
The better . . . everything.
Where once I’d viewed those facts from behind a veil of envy, now I just longed for her company and advice.
She would have known what to do in this situation.
I, on the other hand, had no idea how to track down her killer.
I had nothing concrete to go on—no evidence, not even a suspect.
All I had was a gnawing feeling that there was a connection between her death, the hotel, and the Pearl Gala that evening.
So I did what any twenty-two-year-old in my shoes would do: I asked the internet.
“Have a nice day, Mr. Reed,” I said with a smile, pulling the door of the luxury suite shut behind me.
Alongside the standard rooms at The Darlington, which already oozed opulence, the hotel offered deluxe suites for even more comfort and luxury.
They were larger than the entire flat I shared with my parents and Jason.
It was ridiculous that the hotel had such large suites, especially since most guests went out during the day, but I’d long since stopped asking myself who needed such extravagance.
The answer was simple: no one. It was all about desire, about being seen, about flaunting the fact that you could afford a room for ten thousand pounds a night, even if the price was nothing short of outrageous.
I hastily pushed my cleaning trolley and vacuum cleaner to the utility room on the third floor.
I’d finished right on time, which meant I could now put the plan I had concocted the night before into action.
After parking the trolley, I tossed the used bed linen and towels down the laundry chute, sending them straight to a massive container in the cellar where they were collected daily by an external cleaning company.
Then I headed down to the corridor on the ground floor where all the offices were.
Raised voices came from behind Henry’s door—probably yet another argument with his father, who seemed incapable of stepping back from the hotel business for fear of losing his grip on power.
But it wasn’t Henry’s office I was heading for.
I stationed myself in the corner next to the women’s toilets and pulled out my phone, pretending to be busy while I waited for Rakesh to get his third coffee of the day—as he always did at this time.
Normally, he left like clockwork, but today of all days, the hotel manager seemed to have been held up.
I felt like I was in a spy film—though what those films never showed was the nerve-racking wait before the mission actually begins.
My palms were sweating, and I thought I might explode with nerves when, at last, the office door opened.
I tried not to look suspicious, which probably had the opposite effect, but Rakesh barely paid me any attention beyond the same pitying look he’d been giving me for the past few days.
As soon as he was out of sight, I checked that the coast was clear before slipping into his office.
Luckily for me, he only locked it when leaving for the day, never when he was just stepping out briefly, like now.
The downside: I didn’t have much time to get everything done.
Rakesh’s office reeked of smoke. So that’s what he had been up to.
I ignored the acrid stench and headed straight for the computer.
Bingo! He hadn’t logged out, and the screen hadn’t yet locked.
A bit careless of him, but then again, this was a hotel, not a high-security prison.
Besides, I couldn’t complain—his negligence was working in my favour.
I sat down and opened Explorer, my fingers trembling.
I took a deep breath and told myself to focus as I clicked through folders that were, fortunately for me, well organised.
I quickly found the planning folder for the most recent Pearl Gala.
It contained many documents, but the guest list immediately caught my eye.
A pang shot through my chest. There was a real chance that my sister’s murderer was on that list.
Whoever had bribed the police and got rid of the CCTV footage to cover up their crime was wealthy and influential—criteria that applied to almost everyone on the list. I was fairly certain that the person I was looking for had attended the gala.
Anything else would have been too much of a coincidence.
I clicked on the printer icon, and the machine next to the computer whirred into life.
As it churned out the list, I switched to the folder containing the staff rotas.
Sure, I could have asked Rakesh or Giulia for that—the rotas weren’t exactly secret—but someone in the hotel was covering for the person responsible for Amy’s death.
And until I knew who had deleted the footage, I couldn’t trust anyone, not even Rakesh or Giulia.
I found the staff rota for the evening of the gala and printed that out too. The accomplice had to be someone who had been working in the hotel at the time. No one else could have made it to The Darlington fast enough to delete the footage before the police could secure it.
I waited impatiently for the printer to finish.
When the last page finally slid out and the machine fell silent, I let out a sigh of relief.
I erased any trace that I’d ever been there, leapt from the chair, grabbed the list, and slunk hastily from the office . . . only to collide with a solid chest.
“Fuck!” I dropped the papers in shock. Shit!
I’d come so close to getting away unnoticed!
My heart pounding, I looked up, and for a brief moment, my panic-clouded mind thought it was Henry standing in front of me.
But the reality was far worse. My already racing pulse shot to unprecedented heights.
I told myself it was due to the excitement of the situation, not Ethan’s broad shoulders, his captivating scent, or his hypnotic blue eyes, which locked onto me and froze me for a fraction of a second.
“Watch where you’re going!” I hissed, crouching down to retrieve the evidence of my crime, which lay strewn across the floor.
To my dismay, Ethan decided not to be a selfish arsehole for once.
Instead, he crouched down to help me. He was so close to me that memories of him holding and comforting me came flooding back.
I felt ashamed—not for my feelings, but for how desperately I had clung to him.
The most infuriating part of it all was how incredibly good it had felt to be held by him.
I would never admit to it aloud—even thinking it felt wrong—but Ethan gave incredible hugs, tight and warm.
Which was probably because his skin had been scorched by the fires of hell.
Still, I had felt safe in his arms. Safer than I did at home with my family.
In his embrace, I hadn’t felt the guilt of being Amy’s living ghost. I didn’t want to think about why Ethan, of all people, had been the one to lift that weight from me—just as I didn’t want to dwell on the fact that he’d caught me sneaking out of Rakesh’s office.
“What’s this?” Ethan’s question jolted me out of my thoughts. He was holding up one of the sheets of paper, scanning the printed list.
I snatched it from him, as if I could make him unsee it. “Nothing!”
“Doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t.”
“So why are you bugging me?”
“Because it’s fun?” he shrugged, making it sound like a question. I wanted to throttle him. I really didn’t need this right now. If Rakesh came back and found me here, it would be Ethan’s fault entirely.
“It’s just a list I’m photocopying for Rakesh,” I lied.
Ethan raised an eyebrow. His piercing gaze made me feel as though he’d seen straight through my lie. “Since when are you his secretary?”
I looked away, gathered the rest of the papers, and jumped to my feet abruptly. “I’m doing him a favour,” I said.
“A favour . . . ?” Ethan echoed.
“Yes. It’s something nice people do, not that you’d know anything about it.
Now get out of my way.” I didn’t wait for a response.
Pushing past him, I strode off, refusing to look back even as I felt his gaze burning into me.
I didn’t slow down until I’d turned the corner.
My heart pounded wildly—though whether from the rush of adrenaline or the usual effect of Ethan’s closeness, I couldn’t tell.