Hand over the master key, Eleanor, before I have security drag you out like

I didn’t move. I just looked at her, the way you look at a child throwing cereal on the floor. ‘Brittany,’ I said quietly, ‘are you sure you want to do this here?’ She laughed. ‘Oh, I’m sure. You think because you’ve scrubbed toilets here since the nineties you’re untouchable? Mr. Ashford himself authorized your termination this morning. Effective immediately.’ She held out her hand for the master key. The lobby went silent. I reached into my pocket. But instead of the key, I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I knew by heart. ‘Daddy,’ I said softly, ‘she’s doing it. Right now. In front of everyone.’ Brittany’s smirk faltered. ‘Daddy?’ From the private elevator behind her, the brass doors slid open. Out stepped Harold Ashford the Third, seventy-two years old, silver-haired, in the same charcoal suit he’d worn the day he walked me down the aisle of the staff Christmas party twenty years ago, after my own father passed. He’d been my godfather since I was nine. My mother had been his late wife’s best friend. I’d worked every position in this hotel because he insisted I learn the business from the ground up. Brittany hadn’t read past page one of my file. ‘Mr. Ashford,’ she stammered, ‘I was just—’ ‘Just firing my goddaughter,’ Harold said, his voice like granite, ‘who, as of nine o’clock this morning, is the new General Manager of the Ashford Grand. The promotion I announced at the board meeting you skipped.’ Brittany’s mouth opened and closed. He turned to security. ‘Please escort Ms. Brittany to HR. Her position has been eliminated.’ As they walked her past me, I leaned in. ‘The bleach smell,’ I whispered, ‘comes out in the wash. Public humiliation doesn’t.’ I slipped the master key back into my pocket, smoothed my gray uniform one last time, and walked toward the office that now had my name on the door.