Chapter 7 - The Shadow of the Past
That afternoon, while Lupita and Arthur Pendelton conducted an emergency staff briefing in the main boardroom to address the restructuring of the front desk operations, I retreated to my private office on the penthouse floor—a space I hadn't occupied in over three years.
The office smelled faintly of aged leather, old paper, and lemon polish. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined the eastern wall, filled with leather-bound ledgers, architectural blueprints of every Grand Regent property across North America and Europe, and photographs of the early days when we were nothing more than a ragged band of dreamers sleeping on office floors.
I walked over to the mahogany desk and unlocked the bottom middle drawer, sliding it open.
Inside sat a small, velvet-lined wooden box. My fingers brushed the latch, lifting the lid. Resting on the dark velvet was a tarnished silver pocket watch—the exact watch my father had given me when I graduated from college, the one I had pawned in 2012 to make payroll for our very first hotel in Chicago when the bank accounts hit zero.
Patrick and Karl thought I was just a tired woman in a worn leather jacket. They had no idea that every brick, every marble tile, and every carved inscription in this empire was bought with my sweat, my tears, and the sacrifices of people who believed in something greater than corporate greed.
My phone buzzed on the desk. It was an incoming text from Arthur Pendelton: Local police have booked Patrick and Karl into precinct holding. Forensic audit is securing all digital archives across regional servers. The board has been notified of your emergency executive takeover.
I typed a brief reply: Good. Call an emergency board meeting for tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM. We are rewriting the corporate charter from top to bottom.
As I set the phone down, a soft knock echoed at the open office door.
I looked up to see Lupita standing in the doorway, holding a fresh, unbruised bouquet of red roses wrapped in simple brown paper.
"May I come in, Ms. Vance?" she asked hesitantly.
"Always, Lupita. Come on in."
She walked over to the desk and placed the roses down gently beside my laptop. "Some of the staff... well, we found these in the floral staging cooler downstairs. I thought you might want an upgrade from the ones you brought in last night."
I looked down at the vibrant, velvety red petals, completely unblemished and radiating fresh life. A slow, genuine smile spread across my face.
"Thank you, Lupita. They're beautiful."
"How are you holding up?" she asked softly, leaning against the edge of the desk. "It’s been a whirlwind twenty-four hours."
"I'm actually feeling more at peace than I have in years," I admitted, spinning the silver pocket watch between my fingers. "Sometimes, you have to let the rot expose itself so you can cut it out completely. For a long time, I let distance make me blind to what was happening on the ground here. I forgot that an empire isn't built on marble pillars or quarterly earnings reports—it's built on the everyday interactions between human beings."
May you like
Lupita nodded thoughtfully. "Well, the staff downstairs is already talking about the changes. For the first time in a year, people actually feel safe coming to work."
"Good," I said, standing up and buttoning my suit jacket. "Because starting tomorrow, we have a lot of work to do."
