19. Monique
Monique
I stand on the pavement outside my building for approximately forty-five seconds after Adrian's car pulls away.
I move.
How did he find me? I moved six times before I ended up in The Langford. I covered every track I knew how to cover — no forwarding addresses, no linked accounts, no social media, no one knew where I was going.
But a man in a very good coat sat down in my lobby this morning and said my father's name like he'd always known where I was.
How does that happen?
And why me? Victor is the one who borrowed the money.
He's the one who borrowed the money. He's the one who should be running.
I was eighteen years old with one bag and a bus ticket.
Why am I the one standing on a subway platform in a navy blue dress that still needs pressing, being held responsible for a debt I didn't make?
I head for my car and pull out of the lot.
Victor or the money. I really don't have money. Oh god, why is this happening to me?
I park, sit for a moment, then get out of the car.
The venue sits above the bay. It doesn't need a grand introduction. Its presence speaks for itself — high ceilings, candlelight, the warm sound of a room full of people who have dressed for business.
I check the exits before anything else. Two main doors, service entrance at the back, terrace to the right. There.
Then Adrian appears near the bar, talking to two people, glass in hand, wearing the pleasant expression that I now understand is a tool. I note his position and move in the other direction.
Georgia finds me before I have a chance to look for her. She appears at my elbow with Noah a step behind. "Look at you."
"Don't start." I try not to show how shaken I am by Adrian’s news.
Noah shakes my hand. "I hope you’re enjoying the party."
"I sure am.” I smile.
Georgia grabs my hand and squeezes once. "You look beautiful, but a little worried. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, it’s nothing — just a migraine." I try to keep my face still, even as my head spins with the weight of the problem. "I think I’ll get something to drink."
I turn, and that's when I see Weston.
He's across the room, in conversation with two people from the architect meetings, a glass in his hand, nodding at something being said.
His eyes find me across the room, and he goes still — the glass stays in his hand, but his attention leaves the conversation entirely.
Before he can arrange his face into anything managed, I see what's there.
His chin comes up slightly. His mouth opens and then closes. He looks at me like he’s been waiting a long time to see me.
Then he excuses himself and crosses the room. He stops in front of me, looking at me without saying anything for a second.
"Hi," I say.
"You look…"
I smile shyly, and for a second nothing else matters — only him and me. "Don't."
"I was going to say you look exactly like someone who belongs here."
My face is warm. I look at the room over his shoulder.
The evening moves.
Throughout the gala, Weston makes a point of introducing me to people, guiding me from one conversation to the next with an ease that keeps me from ever standing alone for long.
Somewhere in the middle of the evening, in a quiet side hallway where we've slipped away from the room for sixty seconds, he kisses me once, unhurried, his hand at my jaw, and pulls back before anyone comes through.
Then he says, "I want to talk to you about something."
We find a quieter corner of the main room. He turns to face me.
"The coastal property needs a manager," he says. "Someone who understands guest experience from the inside. Someone who sees a room the way guests experience it." He holds my gaze. "I want it to be you." He smiles.
The quartet is playing something slow on the far end of the room. Glasses clink somewhere behind us.
"The property isn't inherited," he says.
"It's the first thing I built from the ground up.
I want the person running it to have built something too.
You've been building this with me — every suggestion, every meeting, every floor plan you annotated with that pencil behind your ear.
That's yours. The job is yours if you want it. "
My hands are at my sides.
Weston looks at me and asks, “Do you want it?"
My throat is tight. I've been offered things before — shifts, references, small professional courtesies, things given in exchange for things received. I know what being offered something feels like. This isn't that.
After eleven months of quiet work, no credit, no audience — I kept my promise to myself, It's real, and it belongs to you.
The tightness in my throat moves down into my chest and sits there.
"Yes," I say.
One word. No qualifier behind it, no apology after, no reflex to make myself smaller.
The corner of his mouth moves. He looks at me and flashes a grin, and this time, he doesn't manage it away.
"Good," he says.
We go back.
I dance with him later — his hand at my waist, mine at his shoulder, the string quartet giving us the excuse to stay close. Neither of us is particularly accomplished at this, and we are roughly equally unaccomplished.
Georgia watches from the edge of the floor with her arms folded and her chin up, smiling broadly.
I pull Georgia in and dance with her as well briefly when Noah goes to get drinks. She takes both my hands, and we do something the quartet definitely did not intend. For a few minutes, the Adrian problem, the debt, and the figure aren’t in the room I'm standing in.
Just this. Just the dancing and the laughing and Weston's hand finding mine between conversations.
After a few songs, I step near the terrace doors to rest my aching feet, and Adrian finds me.
He comes from my left, fresh glass in hand, and stops beside me like two acquaintances having a pleasant exchange. "Congratulations on the promotion. Weston’s been making sure everyone knows," he says. "Genuinely. It's well deserved."
"Thank you." I settle into a chair, watching him carefully.
"The spa entrance was inspired. I've been in development for a long time, and I wouldn't have seen that." He tilts his head. "You actually have a real gift."
"What do you want?" I ask, my voice flat.
He takes a sip. "I trust you've been thinking about our conversation."
"I have."
"And?"
I turn slightly to face him. "I want to be clear about something.
" I stand. "What you're asking isn't something I can simply deliver.
I don't know where my father is. I haven't known for six years.
That's fact, not evasion." I keep my voice level, hands loose at my sides.
"And I'd encourage you to consider whether the approach you're taking serves your interests as well as you think it does.
Because it doesn't serve mine, and I'm not as easy to absorb as you may have assumed. "
His eyes narrow by a fraction. "I see."
"I hope so."
"The offer remains, Monique," he says, mildly. "Victor or the money. I'm not an unreasonable man, but I’m a patient one."
"Monique." Weston's voice, behind me.
Adrian looks past me. "Blackwood. Wonderful evening."
"What are you talking to her about?"
"Business as usual." Adrian's voice is pleasant. "Ms. Castellano has excellent instincts. We were discussing the property."
"We're done discussing it," Weston says.
Adrian looks at him for a moment. "Of course." He turns to me and raises his glass. "Enjoy the evening."
He moves away.
Weston steps to my side, his voice dropping. "What was that?"
I reply, "I'll explain it properly, but not here."
"Monique…"
"I'm handling it. Later." I look at him. "I promise."
He looks back at me and reads it — that I'm not in distress, that I'm asking him to wait, that later is real.
His jaw is set but after a moment he nods. “Okay. Come here.” He pulls me into his arms.
I wrap my arms around him, watching Adrian move through the crowd with his smug face and his good coat, when the commotion starts near the service entrance.
A voice arrives first, loud enough to announce him to the room. Then the service door opens wide, and two security staff are struggling to contain a man whose jacket has been pulled sideways at the collar.
The shift of his right shoulder is the first thing I recognize. It’s Victor.
He stops struggling the moment his eyes find me across the room and points. "That's my daughter." Loud enough for the nearest thirty people to hear it. "I need to speak to her."
Every head in the immediate radius turns.