The security guard looked at me like I’d just crawled out from under a rock.
His eyes swept from my faded jeans to my old college sweatshirt, lingering on the frayed cuffs like they were personally offensive. I could practically see him calculating my net worth at about twelve dollars and some pocket lint. Behind him, under the glass awning of the Grand Meridian Hotel in downtown Chicago, the revolving doors spun a steady stream of tuxedos, sequins, and designer shoes. Cold air rolled in off the river, carrying the smell of city and money.
He shifted his weight, stepping right into my path with all the authority of someone who’d been doing this job for exactly three days.
“Ma’am, deliveries use the side entrance,” he said, jerking his chin toward the alley.
“I’m here for the Wong–Ashford engagement party,” I replied.
The smirk that crossed his face could have curdled milk. He actually laughed, short and disbelieving, then pointed his thick finger toward the side of the building where a small metal sign read: SERVICE ENTRANCE.
Apparently, “the help” needed to use the appropriate door.
My name is Kinsley Wong. I’m thirty-two years old. And at that moment, standing in my deliberately casual clothes, I probably looked like I’d gotten lost on my way to deliver takeout. The irony wasn’t lost on me, considering what I actually did for a living, but I kept my mouth shut. Sometimes the best revenge is served in courses, like a five-star tasting menu.
Before I continue, please hit that like button and let me know in the comments where you’re listening from and what time it is there. Thank you—it really helps.
Two weeks earlier, my sister Madison had called me with the enthusiasm of someone inviting you to her own execution.
“I need you here, okay?” she’d said, breathless, the faint hum of New York traffic buzzing in the background. “The Ashfords are… very particular. Please try to look presentable for once.”
She’d done the little air quotes around “presentable.” I didn’t have to see her to know. I could hear them in her voice.
She’d also mentioned—so casually it was practically a performance—that maybe I shouldn’t talk too much about my little “online business thing” because the Ashfords were old money, and they “wouldn’t really understand internet jobs.”
Sure. That’s what they wouldn’t understand.
Back in the present, the security guard’s radio crackled like it was delivering national security updates instead of table changes and valet requests. I could have pulled out my ID. I could have made one phone call that would have changed his entire night. But where was the fun in that?
Instead, I smiled like I had all the time in the world and started walking toward the service entrance, my beat-up sneakers squeaking against the pavement.
I’d barely rounded the corner when a voice shrieked across the parking lot.
“Kinsley?”
Madison, of course.
She came clicking across the asphalt like a runaway runway model, resplendent in what looked like a couture dress that cost more than most people’s rent in the city. Her heels were the kind that weren’t designed for walking, just for being seen. The Grand Meridian’s glass façade reflected her perfectly: polished, perfect, and terrified of appearing anything less.
Her expression was a masterpiece of confusion and barely concealed horror. She looked right at me… then through me… then at the security guard.
“Sir,” she said, a little breathless, “I told you the delivery person should go around the back. The guests use the main entrance.”
He nodded, proud of himself.
“I sent her to the service door, ma’am. She was headed for the front.”
Madison actually giggled. It was the same nervous, high-pitched laugh she’d had in high school when she’d pretend not to know me in front of cooler friends.
“These people,” she said, waving her manicured hand dismissively. “They always get confused about where they belong.”
These people.
Her own sister.
I bit down on my tongue so hard I tasted copper, and I walked through that service entrance with my head held high.
The kitchen hit me like a wave.
Noise, heat, steam, the smell of garlic and searing beef—pure, beautiful chaos. Stainless steel gleamed under fluorescent lights. Pots hissed. Timers beeped. Somewhere, a dishwasher was singing off-key to a pop song on the radio. The Grand Meridian’s main ballroom might have been glamour and illusion, but this was where reality lived.
A sous chef in a white jacket and serious expression spotted me and didn’t hesitate.
“You’re late,” he snapped, shoving a black apron into my hands. “Lockers are to the left. We need hands on shrimp, now.”
“I’m not actually—”
He was already gone, yelling at someone else for chopping herbs too thick.
The head chef, a mountain of a man named Felipe who looked like he’d been carved out of granite and fed only espresso and disappointment, turned when he heard my half-hearted protest. He muttered something in rapid French that definitely wasn’t a compliment, eyed me from head to toe, and jabbed a finger toward a massive pan of shrimp.
“Shrimp station,” he said. “You peel, you devein, you don’t talk.”
Within minutes, I was elbow-deep in crustaceans, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a line of cooks moving like a machine. No one cared who I was. That was the beauty of kitchens in big American hotels—if you had hands and moved quickly, you were one of them. Titles didn’t matter back there. Only plate times did.
And they were busy talking about my sister.
“She sent back three champagne deliveries,” one server said, balancing a tray with casual skill. “Said they weren’t ‘champagne-colored’ enough.”
“What does that even mean?” a prep cook muttered.
“Means she’s going to make someone cry before dessert,” another replied.
They laughed, but it wasn’t kind.
I learned more about Madison in that kitchen than I had in the last five years of strained holiday dinners. She’d been terrorizing the staff for weeks—changing the menu seventeen times, rejecting floral arrangements for looking “too local,” and insisting the roses be flown in from Ecuador because Chicago flowers were “too pedestrian.”
Apparently, she’d made the pastry chef cry. Twice.
The real gossip, though—the tea, as the younger servers called it—was about the Ashfords.
“Old money,” one of the bartenders said, polishing glassware. “Like, dust-on-the-family-portrait old. They keep talking about their estate in Connecticut like it’s Buckingham Palace.”
“Mrs. Ashford came in earlier to ‘inspect’ the venue,” another added. “Told me her family’s been hosting parties since before this hotel was even built. I swear she gave a history of every generation and every chandelier they’ve ever owned.”
“She name-dropped so many dead relatives,” someone joked, “we should’ve set up a memorial table.”
The kitchen door slammed open like someone had kicked it, and the temperature in the room shifted instantly.
Madison.
Her face was the particular shade of red that meant someone, somewhere, had dared to displease her. Her dress sparkled under the harsh lights, but she looked like a diamond about to crack. Her heels clicked on the tile like angry typewriter keys as she cut a path straight through the chaos.
“Why,” she snapped, “is the champagne not chilled to exactly thirty-seven point five degrees?”
Felipe answered without flinching. “The champagne is at the correct serving temperature, madam.”
“That’s not what I asked,” she said, voice rising. “My future in-laws have very refined tastes. If this champagne isn’t perfect, it reflects on us. Do you understand that?”
Refined tastes. Right.
She swept past the prep station where I was wrist-deep in shrimp, close enough that I could smell her expensive perfume—the same bottle she’d “borrowed” from my apartment three years ago and never returned. Her eyes flicked over the shrimp, the burners, the line of workers.
They didn’t stop on me.
In that moment, I wasn’t her sister. I was an invisible pair of hands making her perfect evening possible.
When she finally stormed back out, one of the younger servers whistled low.
“Future Mrs. Ashford is on a rampage,” he muttered. “Heard the Ashfords are upstairs telling people their son could have done better.”
The kid at the dishwashing station laughed and leaned closer.
“Better?” he said. “I just heard Mrs. Ashford on the phone in the bathroom talking about how to convince her son to call off the engagement before it’s ‘too late.’ Her words, not mine.”
I kept peeling shrimp. But my mind was racing now.
The Ashfords trying to sabotage my sister’s engagement. Madison terrorizing the staff to impress them. A fancy Chicago hotel, a long guest list, money in the air, and nobody being who they really were.
It was turning into quite the soap opera, and I hadn’t even made it to the main event.
I finished my shrimp duty, rinsed my hands, and told Felipe I needed a bathroom break. He waved me away like I was a fly buzzing near his pans. I slipped out of the kitchen with my apron still on and stepped into the service elevator.
The doors closed. The noise cut off like someone hit a mute button.
For the first time that day, I was alone.
I pressed the button for the penthouse level—not the ballroom floor, but the executive floor above it. The floors blurred past: conference level, guest rooms, club level. My reflection in the brushed metal walls looked nothing like what people expect when they hear “owner.” No designer dress, no diamonds, no perfect blowout. Just an old sweatshirt from a state college, my hair in a messy bun, and a face that remembered long nights and longer to-do lists.
Three years ago, I had signed the papers that changed everything.
I bought the Grand Meridian Hotel chain.
Not just this hotel—all seventeen properties across the United States. From the one near Times Square that tourists flooded, to the one in Phoenix where business travelers lived in the bar after 6 p.m., to this one, tucked along the Chicago River, a short walk from an American flag fluttering over the bridge.
The deal had run through my holding company, KU Enterprises. My personal name was deliberately buried under layers of LLCs and corporate structures. It was cleaner that way. Safer. It also meant I could walk through my hotels without every conversation changing the second someone realized the owner was listening.
You learn the truth about your business when people think you’re just “the help.”
The elevator chimed and opened onto the quiet executive floor. Thick carpet swallowed the sound of my sneakers. I walked down the hall to my office, pressed my thumb to the biometric lock, and stepped into a different universe.
Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the Chicago skyline, all glass and steel and city lights starting to flicker on as the sun dropped. The river cut a dark ribbon below, boats drifting lazily under the bridges. My desk sat in front of the windows, lined with neatly stacked reports my assistant had left earlier, but my eyes went straight to the wall of security monitors.
Every public space in the hotel fed into those screens.
I sat, adjusted one of the angles, and zoomed in on the ballroom camera.
There they were.
The Ashfords.
Mrs. Ashford looked like she’d been vacuum-sealed into her dress. Everything about her was pulled, polished, and preserved—dress, hair, expression. Her face had that particular tightness that suggested her plastic surgeon in Connecticut was on speed dial. She stood near the bar, a cluster of women around her in designer gowns that all looked like they’d come from different brands but the same mindset.
Her posture said, This is my stage.
I leaned back in my chair, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.
The story of how I’d built all this while my own family thought I was scraping by with a “little online job” still made me laugh sometimes. Madison had spent years sending me job postings for entry-level positions, talking slowly about “stability” and “benefits” like I was a child learning the alphabet. She was proud of her marketing role at a mid-tier company, proud of her Manhattan apartment she could barely afford, proud of her ability to sound like she belonged to the glossy-world side of America.
Meanwhile, I’d been using a software platform I’d built to manage hotel bookings, selling it to small independent hotels across the country. When it took off, the profits became a down payment on my first property: a tired, carpet-stained hotel in Ohio that smelled like old air freshener and regrets. I’d signed that loan with shaking hands and a stomach full of fear.
I painted walls, stripped rooms, learned how boilers worked and why occupancy rates mattered. I spent nights at the front desk when staff called in sick. I scrubbed floors when housekeeping was short. That hotel turned a profit in a year. Then I bought another. Then another.
Until one day, a broker called and asked if I’d ever considered something bigger.
Something like the Grand Meridian chain.
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