Chapter 3

Three days later, Leo's award gala went ahead as planned.

My old classmate hadn't cut me a single dollar on price, so naturally I'd make it up to him somewhere else, in the shape of face.

The venue setup, the lighting crew, everything I gave him was the best I had. I even called in a favor to rent the only 3D projection rig in the state, and put a full dome overhead in the hall with Leo's company logo projected across it.

The dinner got bumped up a tier too. Every table was set to the standard of the head table, so nobody just ate their fill, they ate well and had something worth showing off on their feed.

Leo, for his part, had lined up a live stream, and once he saw how well I'd done the room, plenty of the influencers took the hint and started filming.

Watching all those cameras, professional and otherwise, sweep across the hall I'd built, I already knew the payoff. After tonight, my hotel's name would climb another notch.

And this gala didn't waste my effort or Leo's trust.

The dazzling open, the lavish set, the food that actually tasted good, all of it held up beautifully under every lens.

Leo couldn't wipe the grin off his face. The boss was still up on stage giving his speech and Leo had already come down to find me. "Mase, not bad at all. Our VP said I did a solid job this time. If I land equity by year-end, brother, I owe you big."

"A little equity and look at you strutting. Why don't you call me Daddy while you're at it?"

Leo slung his arm across my shoulders and pointed down at the influencers, grinning like the same idiot he'd been back in college. "Look at them. Half of them are million-follower names. Their videos go out and your hotel blows up. So? Aren't you going to thank Daddy?"

I did what I'd always done in college. I kicked him and told him to get lost.

After dinner started, Leo even dragged his boss, Frank Finch, over to meet me. Frank shook my hand. "Mr. Dickerson, this place beats a lot of the big hotels back in D.C. After the gala, I'd like to bring some people to look your hotel over. If the hardware holds up, I'll have my business team sit down and talk a long-term partnership with you."

I hesitated, didn't say yes outright, and had Zachery bring someone in to handle the first contact.

Not that I was above the deal. I just had this bad feeling I couldn't shake.

Saul's company was holding its gala today too.

Given the shape Stanley's hotel was in, I couldn't help thinking something was going to go wrong tonight.

But I'd underestimated just how good I was at jinxing things.

What went wrong over at Stanley's wasn't small. It even made the local news.

While everyone on my side was drinking and having the time of their lives, Zachery slipped quietly over and handed me his phone. "Mr. Dickerson, take a look. Something happened on Saul's end."

I took the phone. On the screen, sure enough, white text on a blue background: NOTICE: Safety incident at the corporate group's tenth-anniversary gala. Lift platform collapse injures three.

Zachery gave me a loaded look and swiped to a blurry video. On screen, the hotel's lift platform rose slowly, three big-bellied men standing on it, six hundred pounds of them all told, each holding a mic in one hand and waving to the crowd with the other.

The staff below cheered. I could even hear Saul whistling.

That was when it all went sideways.

Halfway up, the platform started to shake. Then, with a sharp crack, one of its support columns snapped.

The video filled with screaming, the frame jerked wildly, and then the screen went black.

Zachery cut to another clip.

In it, the stage was a wreck, a thick ring of people crowded below, someone yelling to call 911.

The three executives who'd been standing tall up there a minute ago, one was crouched on the ground clutching his head, blurred out under a mosaic; one was flat on his back hugging his leg and wailing; and the third didn't appear in frame at all.

I froze.

This was serious.

Zachery was watching me, worried too.

I understood what he meant.

He'd been with me five or six years. He probably knew what kind of people Saul's family were better than I did.

If nothing had gone wrong, Agnes would only have gone around telling everyone I was a lowlife who deliberately fleeced my own relatives. Everyone knew what she was like, so nobody would actually think I was in the wrong.

But now that something had gone wrong, she'd almost certainly try to pin the whole mess on me. And if she stirred up enough talk on top of it, I'd be like mud dropped down my own pants, no way to ever explain it clean.