It was a smell I hadn’t forgotten, no matter how many boardrooms I’d sat in since. Ammonia clung to the air, sharp enough to sting the back of my throat. Someone had left a rolling rack of linen napkins too close to the door; they brushed my arm when the elevator lurched, soft cotton against the smooth fabric of my navy dress.
Around me, the staff moved in a restless choreography. A bartender with sleeves rolled to his elbows steadied a crate of liquor with his foot. A florist’s assistant held a vase against her chest as if it were a newborn, petals trembling with every bump. A line cook in a faded black T-shirt leaned against the corner, scrolling something on his phone, eyes glazed with that particular tiredness that comes from working your fifth double shift in a row.
Nobody looked at me twice.
That was the funny thing about power: if you didn’t wrap it in a logo or a ballgown, people rarely recognized it. Tonight, I looked like what they expected to see. Simple dress, no name badge, comfortable low heels. The only hints were my jewelry and my watch, but those only meant something if you knew what you were looking at.
“First time up to the rooftop, ma’am?” a young server asked beside me.
He couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. There was still a softness in his face that hospitality hadn’t yet scraped away. The name tag pinned crookedly to his vest read LUCAS.
I realized my hand was resting against the rail a little too tightly, fingers whitening at the knuckles. Old instinct, I thought. Old rooms. Old elevators.
“Something like that,” I said, smoothing my grip and forcing my hand to relax.
The elevator shuddered to a stop at the service landing for the rooftop suite. The doors slid open with that particular metallic groan that told me the maintenance team hadn’t yet implemented the repair schedule I’d approved last quarter.
“The hallways can be a lot,” Lucas offered with a sympathetic smile as we stepped out. “Especially with… you know. Them.” He jerked his chin toward the direction of the main suite. “The daughter already made the florist cry twice.”
I let out a quiet breath through my nose, the closest I’d allow myself to a laugh. “Did she, now?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He winced. “She wanted the blush roses to be barely blush, not ‘aggressively pink,’ and… sorry. I shouldn’t be gossiping.”
“You shouldn’t,” I agreed mildly.
His shoulders slumped a little.
“But I appreciate the warning,” I added, and his head snapped up. “It’s always good to know the lay of the land.”
He smiled, relieved, and hurried off, balancing a tray of champagne flutes as if he’d been born doing it.
I stayed where I was for a moment at the threshold between the service corridor and the back entrance to the Pacific Ember Resort’s crown jewel: the rooftop event suite. Tonight, it glowed with soft light and expensive intentions. Tonight, it hosted my only son’s engagement party.
And tonight, apparently, I was staff.
I adjusted the vintage diamond studs in my ears—small, old-fashioned, nothing like the loud stones that sparkled in Napa’s society pages. I’d worn these on a very different day: the day I’d signed the final papers to acquire the Pacific Ember Hotel Group.
It had been hot that afternoon, the kind of heat that made glass towers feel like ovens. The lawyers had sweated in their suits, loosening ties as the ink dried. The previous owners had tried to smile. Their faces had held the look I’d seen a hundred times: the brittle pleasantness of men who believed they were losing to someone who didn’t look like they should be winning.
I’d sat at the end of the table in a tailored but unremarkable blazer, hair twisted into a low bun. Only my watch—a discreet Patek Philippe—hinted at what I really was.
Isabelle Romero: founder of Romero Urban Design.
Majority shareholder of Pacific Ember Properties.
And tonight, according to every glossy Napa Valley lifestyle magazine, importance level: barely worth a mention.
They loved to talk about my son, though.
Brilliant young architect Daniel Romero, the articles cooed, attached to photographs that captured him in golden light. They wrote about his projects, about the way he was “reimagining urban hospitality experiences” in collaboration with the most exciting design firms on the West Coast. They devoted whole paragraphs to his fiancée, Charlotte Holloway—her lineage, her impeccable taste, the texture of her dresses, the brands of her handbags.
Of his mother, I was sometimes “a single mom who raised him alone after immigrating from Mexico.” Sometimes I was “from humble beginnings.” Often, I was simply not mentioned at all.
I’d been called worse. I’d been seen less.
I pushed open the door to the suite.
It was like stepping into the inside of a champagne bottle. Golden light spilled from crystal fixtures, catching the shimmer of glassware and silver. The largest floral arrangements I’d ever seen outside of a hotel lobby framed the windows, pale roses and hydrangeas arranged in curated chaos that had likely cost more than my first semester of college.
At the center of the room, chaos reigned in softer colors.
