A week since I said I loved him out loud. A week since he handed me a company and a hotel like they were just . . . pieces on a board he could move around.
I still wasn’t entirely sure how to process that.
The hotel remained mostly abstract. It was still run by the Renault Group, systems and management already in place, moving like a well-oiled machine that I didn’t need to interfere with yet.
But Merry Band of Maids, that was real, and that was mine.
And I wasn’t going to just let it sit.
I had spent too long working in spaces where people like me were replaceable. Where cleaners were invisible. Where the work was necessary, but the people doing it were treated like an afterthought.
Not anymore.
If it were mine, then I got to decide what it looked like.
So I changed it. I was restructuring it into a co-op.
It had taken a few long conversations, some confusion, and a lot of skepticism, but once the women understood what I was offering, something shifted. There was ownership and profit sharing. But there were also benefits, insurance, and schedules that didn’t break people. It wasn’t charity. It was equity.
And for the first time, the business felt . . . right.
Tripp, unsurprisingly, did not land on his feet.
It would seem like once his son’s antics jeopardized a business contact as important as the Renault Group, he was done fixing his messes. I didn’t love the fact that if it hadn’t been for Raph, we all would still be in the same boat. But as the women who worked there began to understand what this meant for them, it mattered less and less.
And then the rest came out. Other women. Other stories.
It was like something ugly had finally been dragged into the light.
But that wasn’t the only thing I found. The numbers didn’t line up. At first, it was small. A name here. A check there. Employees who technically existed on paper but didn’t show up on any active schedules.
I thought it was a bookkeeping error.
Then I thought it was sloppy management.
I showed the discrepancies to Raph, and he slid his glasses down his nose, looking at all of it. I loved it when he had his glasses on and his sleeves rolled up, even if it did make it hard to focus.
“Was he stealing?” I had asked Raph, sitting across from him with the reports spread out between us.
He had glanced at the numbers once.
Then looked at me. “It looks like embezzlement,” he corrected.
He didn’t hesitate. He reported it. No sweeping it under the rug.
And just like that, it was another mess that was no longer mine to carry alone.
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the spreadsheets again. A week ago, I had been worried about making rent. Now I was restructuring a company. My company. It was surreal.
And for the first time, I was building something. The house felt full in a way it hadn’t before. Dad sat at the table, a plate of half-finished dinner in front of him, hands moving as he talked through some idea that made perfect sense to him and just enough sense to the rest of us to follow along.
Raph sat across from him, listening. Actually listening.
It still caught me off guard sometimes.
“How is the business progressing?” Raph asked, turning his attention to me.
I leaned back in my chair, letting out a small breath.
