Part 7
Tomas looked relieved, though he had no reason to be.
“He’s right,” she said.
“He usually is about carpets.”
Mara continued toward the lift.
Inside, mirrored walls returned her image from three directions. Burgundy satin. Loose dark hair. bare feet. gold earrings. She looked composed from a distance.
Up close, her hands were trembling.
She set the heels on the floor.
For several seconds, she watched her fingers shake.
The lift began descending.
She pressed the button to stop at the staff administration level instead of her guest room.
When the doors opened, the corridor was empty except for a vending machine humming beside the copy room. Mara walked into her office, closed the door, and leaned against it.
Her desk held two unopened bottles of sparkling water, a yellow legal pad, and a ceramic mug printed with the words NUMBERS HAVE FEELINGS TOO. Her younger brother had given it to her after she complained that hotel managers treated budgets as personal insults.
She sat.
The trembling moved from her hands into her shoulders.
She breathed through it.
In for four. Hold. Out for six.
She had learned the exercise after a panic attack in a London audit room twelve years earlier, when a partner had thrown a stapler against the wall and told her she would never survive senior management if she could not defend a projection without turning pale.
She had survived him.
She had also spent years pretending she had not been afraid.
Her phone showed twenty-seven unread messages.
Most came from staff who had seen security enter the private dining corridor or had heard fragments through the hotel’s informal network.
Are you okay?
What happened upstairs?
Is Lucien being arrested?
Did he hurt you?
Please don’t answer if this is monitored.
One message came from Emil in pastry.
I did not know he was going to break the plates. I only brought them because he said there would be extra guests.
Another came from the cellar attendant.
I have the removal-log photo. I’m sorry I didn’t send it before.
Mara put the phone facedown.
She rested her forearms on the desk and lowered her head.
For one minute, perhaps two, she let herself feel the cost before converting it into tasks.
The cut on her knee stung.
Her feet smelled faintly of wine.
She wanted to call her brother, but it was past midnight and he had two young children who woke before sunrise. She wanted to hear someone say she had done the right thing. She also knew she might resent anyone who said it too easily.
Her office door opened.
Mara lifted her head sharply.
Nadia entered and closed it behind her.
“You should lock that.”
“I thought security had the building.”
“Security has doors. People have keys.”
“Not Lucien.”
“Not tonight.”
Nadia removed her earpiece and placed it on the desk.
Without the uniformed alertness, she looked tired. Fine lines showed beside her eyes.
“Mrs. Vautrin is in 412,” she said. “She rejected the presidential suite because it had flowers.”
“She doesn’t like lilies in bedrooms.”
“They were roses.”
“She dislikes those too when she’s upset.”
Nadia sat in the visitor’s chair.
“You knew she would react?”
“No.”
“You knew the mother better than the son did.”
“That is not difficult.”
Nadia studied her.
“Are you all right?”
Mara looked at the mug.
“No.”
“Do you need a doctor?”
“No.”
“Do you need company?”
“I don’t know.”
“That usually means yes for ten minutes.”
Mara leaned back.
Nadia took a bottle of sparkling water from the desk, opened it, and poured some into the mug without asking.
The water fizzed around the printed words.
“You contaminated my coffee mug.”
“There was no coffee.”
“There will be.”
“In that mug?”
“Eventually.”
Nadia handed it to her.
Mara drank.
The carbonation hurt her throat.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“Lucien signs the inventory. Sabine escorts him to the residence. An officer stays outside the suite.”
“Will he leave?”
“Probably at dawn, if the road opens.”
“His passport?”
“We have no authority to take it.”
Mara nodded.
Nadia watched her carefully.
“You expected something else?”
“I expected him to be louder.”
“He may be later.”
“I expected Henri to defend him more.”
“He may do that later too.”
Mara turned the mug between her palms.
“You’re comforting.”
“I work in security.”
“Fair.”
Nadia put the earpiece back in.
Before standing, she said, “You should know something.”
Mara waited.
“The deletion attempt did come from Lucien’s tablet.”
“You said that upstairs.”
“I didn’t say the device camera was active.”
Mara set down the mug.
Nadia’s expression remained professional, but her voice lowered.
“The tablet uses facial verification before administrator commands. The first attempt failed because the face did not match Lucien’s profile. The second succeeded with a manual override code.”
“Whose face?”
“The image is poor. The tablet was lying flat. We have part of a jaw, a hand, a sleeve.”
“Male or female?”
“Unknown.”
“Why didn’t Sabine say that?”
“Because Lucien’s reaction suggested he may not know.”
Mara stared at her.
The financial theft was clear. Lucien had signed the transfers, created the vendors, and used the money.
But someone else might have tried to erase the records.
Someone with his override code.
“Who knew about the audit mirror?” Mara asked.
“Your team.”
“Three people.”
“Executive technology.”
“Two.”
“Sabine.”
“She arrived tonight.”
“Henri’s chief of staff.”
Mara thought of the declined meetings, the rerouted requests, the way information moved through the hotel before decisions had names.
“Did you secure the chief of staff’s devices?”
“No authority yet.”
“Where is he?”
“Zurich, according to his calendar.”
“According to access logs?”
Nadia’s eyes narrowed slightly.
May you like
“That is why I came here.”
The hotel’s chief of staff was Alain Morel, fifty-six, precise, discreet, and so deeply woven into the Vautrin family’s operations that guests sometimes mistook him for a relative. He managed Henri’s schedule, coordinated board communication, approved executive travel, and knew which family arguments should be called strategy meetings.
