POV: Xavier
The stolen moments were the only currency they had left. A glance in a corridor, the brief sharing of an elevator with other staff. They were ghosts in the machine they were trying to dismantle, communicating in a language of pauses and loaded silence.
The meeting was not planned. It was seized. Isabella was returning from the estate, a folder of “requisition forms” in her arms, walking through the hotel’s main kitchen to avoid the lobby. Xavier, driven by a restlessness that had become his constant state, was cutting through the same route after a torturous meeting with the head of operations. They converged at the bank of service elevators used for supplies and staff.
The doors opened to an empty, steel-walled car. They stepped in, the only two occupants. The doors slid sh
