Chapter 4 Twelve Hundred Reasons

Sloane

It’s been three months since the reading of the will. It had been a blur of resentment and a desperate attempt at moving forward I had settled back into my life as a consultant, trying to ignore the ticking clock of the six-month deadline my grandmother had imposed from her grave. I had been firm with Cade. I had told him we were done. I even looked at my uncle Richard and told him I wouldn't be thrown away like trash again. But today, the weight of that decision started to crumble.

I was sitting in a small diner three blocks from the flagship Hartford Hotel when I saw Maria, one of our head housekeepers, sitting at a table nearby. She looked older. Her shoulders slumped in a way I don’t think I had ever seen when Grandma was alive. I got up and walked over to meet her.

"Maria?" I asked, sliding into the booth across from her.

She looked up, her eyes looking a bit red. "Oh, Miss Sloane. It’s good to see you."

"What’s wrong?", I said, noticing the despair in her tone.

She hesitated, then pulled a folded document from her bag. It was a restructuring notice from Melissa Hartford’s office. It wasn't just a memo. It was a death warrant for the hotel. It detailed a plan for total liquidation of the hotel’s assets upon the transfer of the property in three months.

"They’re selling it, Sloane," Maria whispered, her voice shaking. "To some tech group. They don't want a hotel. They want the land for a data center. They told us we’d all be jobless by the end of the year. Twelve hundred of us, Sloane. Some of us have been there for thirty years because of your grandmother."

My stomach did a slow, sickening roll. I thought about Melissa’s evil grin in the dining hall and her bitter smile at the funeral. This wasn't just about the family, it was just a means for her to get rich.

Maria’s hand was trembling as she gripped her coffee cup, and the sight of it broke my heart. This woman had spent three decades making sure every guest felt at home, and now she was being discarded like an old piece of furniture.

I reached across the table, squeezing her hand firmly. "Maria, look at me," I said, my voice low and fierce. "I didn't know she had gone this far. I promise I am not going to let her erase everything my grandmother built. I’m going to handle this."

I left the diner, my vision blurring with a white-hot rage and drove straight to Melissa’s house. When she opened the door, she was holding a glass of vintage champagne. She didn't look like a woman in mourning, she looked like a woman who had just won the lottery.

"Sloane," she purred, leaning against the doorframe. "To what do I owe the pleasure? Come to finally concede?"

I pushed past her into the living room, my hands trembling with a fury I could barely contain. "Is it true, Melissa? The rumors about the tech company? The new data center?"

Melissa laughed, a sound that struck on my nerves. She strolled to her sofa and sat down, crossing her legs. "You always were the sentimental one. Grandma loved that about you. Me? I prefer liquidity. The hotel can be for much more, Sloane. It’s sitting on the most valuable real estate in the district. It’s worth three times more as a server farm than as a place for tourists to sleep."

"You haven't even inherited it yet!" I snapped, my voice rising. "There are three months left. You can't make moves on property that isn't yours."

"Oh, but I can negotiate," she said, her eyes flashing with a cruel triumph. "The Letter of Intent is already signed. The moment you officially forfeit, which we both know you will, the deal closes. I’ve already got the demolition crews on standby for the East Wing."

The anger flared in my chest so much that it was getting hard to breathe. I looked at her, truly seeing the depth of her greed. "How can you do this? Grandma spent her entire life building that legacy. She treated every employee like family. There are twelve hundred people working there, Melissa. Families who have relied on the Hartfords for generations. You’re going to throw them all away for a payout?"

Melissa wore a smirk so vile it made my skin crawl. "Grandma’s legacy is too much of a burden I have no interest in carrying. And those 'families'? They aren't my problem. They’re yours."

She leaned in, her voice now a whisper. "You’re the one holding the keys, Sloane. But we both know you won't turn them. Because to keep the hotel, you have to marry the man who tossed you aside like a used napkin in front of the whole city. You’d rather see a thousand people lose their jobs than swallow your pride and crawl back to Cade Whitmore. You’re just as selfish as I am. You just hide it behind a better conscience."

"I am nothing like you," I hissed, my teeth gritted so hard my jaw ached. I turned away to walk out

"Aren't you?" Melissa laughed again, equally raising her voice as the distance grows between us to be sure that I can still hear her. "I’m confident, Sloane. I’ve already started spending the commission. I know you. You’re too fragile, too hurt to get back with him again.' So go ahead and walk away. I’ll be sure to send you a photo when we tear down the lobby."

I left her penthouse in a daze, the door slamming behind me.

The drive back was a blur of internal warfare. I was suffocating under the weight of a thousand conflicting emotions. I hated my grandmother in that moment. I hated her for putting this on me, for tying my family’s survival to the one person who represented my greatest humiliation. It felt like a betrayal from beyond the grave, a cruel joke designed to see how much I could endure. And Cade. Every time I thought of his name, I felt the sting of that night he broke. Now the thought of standing at an altar with him, of the city whispering that I was so desperate for money that I took back the man who publicly shamed me, made me want to scream.

But then, I saw the faces of the staff. I thought of Maria, the housekeeper who had tucked me into bed when I was six. I thought of the porters, the chefs, the gardeners. Twelve hundred lives. Twelve hundred families that Melissa would crush without a second thought.

If I walked away, I was "free," but I was a coward. I would be exactly what I accused Cade of being: someone who chose their own comfort over the people they were supposed to protect.

The guilt was a physical weight, pressing into my lungs until I pulled the car over. I couldn't let Melissa win. I couldn't let her erase ninety years of history because I was too afraid of a ghost.