Chapter 5 - Rules of Engagement
When I entered suite 4802 at seven o’clock that evening, the room was dimly lit by the ambient glow of the city lamps outside. The executive suite was massive—two thousand square feet of marble, plush carpets, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Chicago River.
I found Clara in the small dining area off the kitchenette. She had just finished feeding the twins a dinner of room-service grilled chicken and steamed carrots. She was wiping Maya’s face with a damp napkin while Leo sat on the floor, intensely engrossed in coloring a cardboard room-service menu with a blue crayon.
Clara jumped to her feet the second the door clicked shut, smoothing her apron over her uniform. She looked exhausted, her eyes bloodshot from working an eight-hour shift after a sleepless night of terror.
"Mr. Sterling," she said breathlessly. "I was just cleaning up the plates. I made sure they didn't touch the upholstered chairs with food on their hands. We’ve been very careful."
"Sit down, Clara," I said, pulling out a chair at the glass dining table and gesturing to it. "I am not here to conduct an inventory of the furniture."
She hesitated, her eyes darting toward the children, before she slowly lowered herself into the chair opposite mine. Up close, I could see the faint tremor in her hands as she clasped them together in her lap.
"I need to establish some rules if this arrangement is going to continue through the end of the week," I said, leaning forward and resting my forearms on the table.
Her face fell, a look of grim resignation settling over her features. She obviously thought I was about to give her an ultimatum or kick her out onto the freezing streets. "I understand. If we need to leave—"
"Rule number one," I interrupted firmly, locking my eyes onto hers. "You stop apologizing for existence. You are an employee of this hotel in good standing, and you are currently my guest. You will not cower every time a door opens."
She blinked, entirely thrown off balance by my words. "I... what?"
"Rule number two," I continued, ticking it off on my fingers. "The room-service billing code I provided is not a suggestion. It is mandatory. When I checked the kitchen logs an hour ago, I saw two orders for children's meals today, but nothing for an adult. You haven't eaten since yesterday, have you?"
Her gaze dropped to the glass tabletop. "The children needed to eat first. I didn't want to abuse your generosity by ordering expensive hotel food for myself—"
"If you collapse from exhaustion while scrubbing marble floors on the thirty-fifth floor, it becomes a liability for my human resources department," I lied, masking my genuine concern behind corporate pragmatism. "You will order three meals a day for this room. That is an executive order."
"Mr. Sterling," she whispered, her voice breaking slightly. "I can't repay this. I earn twenty-two dollars an hour. Even with overtime, a week in this suite would cost more than my entire annual salary."
"You aren't paying for the suite," I said. I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out the manila folder Marcus had given me, and slid it across the glass toward her. "I had my security team look into your eviction today."
She flinched, her hands pulling back as if the folder were on fire. "You investigated me?"
"I investigated the property developers who threw you into the street in the middle of a winter freeze," I corrected. "An entity called Apex Property Group. Did they give you a written thirty-day notice before the boiler was condemned?"
"No," she said, shaking her head slowly, her brow furrowing as she looked at the papers. "A man came to the building on Monday afternoon. He showed us a city paper saying the heating system was explosive and that the building was unsafe for human occupancy. He told everyone we had twelve hours to vacate or the police would physically remove us and child protective services would be called because of the freezing temperatures. I was terrified they would take Maya and Leo, so I just grabbed what I could carry and ran."
"It was an illegal construct," I said coldly. "They bribed an inspector to sign off on a fraudulent hazard report so they could clear the building without going through the housing courts. They stole your tenancy, Clara."
Her eyes widened, tears welling up as the injustice of what had been done to her washed over her exhausted frame. "But... why? Who would do that to families?"
"People who see buildings as balance sheets instead of homes," I said, thinking of the Vanguard executives currently flying across the Atlantic on their private jets. "I have my personal corporate attorneys filing an emergency injunction in Cook County court tomorrow morning. We are challenging the condemnation order and suing Apex Property Group for illegal displacement and emotional distress."
"No!" Clara gasped, standing up so quickly her chair scraped loudly against the marble floor. "Mr. Sterling, you can't do that! If you sue them, it will be in the public records! People will ask why a billionaire hotel owner is hiring elite lawyers for a third-shift housekeeper! You could get dragged into a scandal right before your big merger! I saw the news on the lobby TV—I know how important this week is for your company!"
I sat motionless, watching her. Here she was—destitute, exhausted, carrying the weight of two children on her shoulders—and her primary concern was protecting my corporate reputation from tabloid gossip.
"Let me worry about my board of directors, Clara," I said softly, standing up to face her. "You focus on Maya and Leo. Now, I am ordering steaks and roasted potatoes from the prime kitchen downstairs. You are going to sit here and eat every bite, or I will personally sit in that chair and watch you until the plate is clean. Do we have an agreement?"
May you like
A slow, hesitant smile—the first genuine smile I had ever seen on her face—broke through the exhaustion, lighting up her brown eyes and making my heart do a strange, unpredictable rhythm against my ribs.
"We have an agreement, Mr. Sterling," she whispered.
