Chapter 33

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"Lucy, wake up."

I felt a hand on my shoulder, shaking me. The movement of my body felt uncomfortable, almost painful. I should have known that was the direct consequence of falling asleep on your desk, bent over your laptop. It wasn't the most ergonomic position for one's back or other muscles of the body.

"What? Did your landlord kick you out because you and Julian are too loud when you have sex?"

"Back off, Chris," I said as I stretched my back and craned my neck. "Just back off."

But it was too late. The memories of last night all came back to me. A wave of sadness, anger, desperation, and disbelief washed over me. I felt the tears well up in my eyes but I didn't want Chris to see, so, I squeezed them shut. I should've known it wouldn't work, but a girl could try, right?

As I would've suspected, my emotions haven't gone unnoticed by my brother. I swear, when it comes to me or Ava, nothing went past him. It's like he had a sixth sense for the exact purpose. A part of me hoped that particular sense would disappear after the coma. Life would have been a whole lot easier.

"Lucy, what happened?"

I just shook my head. I didn't want to talk about this. Especially not with my overprotective brother.

Chris took a step closer. Once he stood in front of me he lay one hand on my upper arm and with his other he lifted my chin, forcing me to look at him. A look of worry was showing on his face. It was a look I couldn't deal with at this time. It was a look that pushed me and my tears over the edge.

My emotions burst out of me with a heartbreaking sob. Soon, the tears that were building up, streamed over my cheeks freely. Chris was quick to pull me into a hug and to rub soothing strokes on my back. After a few minutes of me crying into his chest, he broke the silence.

"Lucy, you've got to talk to me. What happened?"

I sniffed my nose and used my hand to wipe away the tears from under my eyes. "He broke up with me. His sister said something, I started to doubt everything, mostly myself. And then doubted me as well so he called it quits." A few more tears escaped my eyes and I wiped them away as fast as I could. "I should've known you couldn't build a strong relationship when you start lying right from the get-go. I screwed up."

I wiped away the last tears that I allowed myself to shed over this. I was a big girl. I made a mistake, I needed to face the consequences. "So, let's get back to why we're here in the first place. Let's get some work done." I walked back over to my computer. "Come, see what I've done. You know, before I fell asleep?"

I didn't miss the suspicious look on Chris's face before he followed me. "Okay, I'm listening."

I presented a plan for the renovations that needed to be done for different hotels. I told him where to start and on what timeframe we could work.

"If we start in the cities that attract a lot of tourists on a yearly basis like here in New York. We have a hotel in the center of Manhattan, a Walhalla for tourists. We can't afford to be careful or scared. We need to go for it. We need to take risks."

Chris took a few minutes to look through the carefully outlined plan I worked on over the night.

"This is good, Luce. I think this could actually work."

That morning we worked on finetuning everything. We thought about how to present this to the board in such a way that they could not be against this plan because there were no alternatives. If they were stopping us from doing this, there wouldn't be a board seat left for them, because there would no longer be a company.

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