What do I do with this now?

“What the fuuuuuuck,” I muttered under my breath. I’d escorted Ada to the elevators and sent her off towards the top suite level of the hotel, then walked back to my office before collapsing onto the comfy seat in front of my desk.

This was… Nucking Futs. Which, in my head, was a greater value of crazy than fucking nuts. Where the hell did these people come from that they thought it was appropriate for a prestigious hotel like the Vaso to run a party that was maybe two steps from an orgy. And that was coming from someone who had played stupid adult party games within the last two weeks - that dumb kissing game the first night of the trip had led to a lot off amazing stuff, and the truth or dare game had been the tipping point that had started the avalanche of Cattie landing in my life permanently.

But still. This wasn’t a makeshift drinking game that went too far. This was planned. This was organised.

And Angeloff was fucking engaged to the heir of a very Muslim family, and wanted to use their resources and business to host the almost-an-orgy event.

Nucking. Futs.

Did I even bring it up to Doug? Technically, technically, I could find a place for it in the smaller ballroom schedules, maybe get him off my back about booking stuff in there. Just say it’s the Angeloff event, keep everything else as low-detail as possible on any paperwork. That way Doug would have no connection to it, which would give us both some plausible deniability if things went upside-down.

When in doubt, blame it on the client - and I’d gotten strict instructions to do everything we could to get Miss Vera Angeloff whatever she wanted.

Of course, the flip side was that maybe I shouldn’t give her what she wanted. I shouldn’t even start on this project without floating something by the Al Maktoums, either Rashid himself or his father, Khalid. Find out if ‘anything’ really meant anything. Because I couldn’t imagine either one of them being thrilled at the idea of the fiancee of the heir of the Al Maktoum fortune getting naked and partying, let alone with a selection of the who’s who of Las Vegas.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, knocking me out of the doom spiral my mind was in as I tried to figure out what I wanted to do, or who I should talk to. I fished it out of my pocket, expecting it to be a work question from someone downstairs - the girls all knew I was on ‘quiet mode’ now, and I’d gotten texts earlier from Cattie and Cass that they were both about to take off on their flights.

But it was from Becca, not work.

‘Brodi has shown his face. Wanda is with him now.’

It was like a punch in the chest. I knew she didn’t mean that Wanda was with her husband, though the phrasing of the text could have meant that. She just meant Wanda was starting the break-up. The messy, awful situation where she had to confront the betrayal of her husband. His secrets. His mistreatment.

I’d never met him, but I kind of hated him for what he’d done to such a beautiful, caring soul. Maybe they’d just never been the right match, and things escalated slowly. Maybe Wanda had been just as much a part of that escalation, and I was biased looking at it all from her point of view, but in the end I was on her side. Completely.

All of that combined into an ache that I hadn’t been expecting. An ache to be with her, to assure her. To stand with her. She didn’t need me to help her with this, but fuck did I want to be there for her.

‘I’m staying nearby. Don’t worry.’ Becca texted after a long moment. ‘I’ve got her.’

I let out a hard sigh. They were both in Seattle - I couldn’t just hop in my car and go. And Becca had known Wanda so much longer than I had that she was definitely the right friend to have ready to go. Our relationship was probably too complicated for me to be of proper use right now.

But still, God did I want to call her. Or text her.

Something.

I typed a quick thank-you to Becca and added a heart emoji for good measure, then slipped my phone into my pocket and shook my head. There was nothing I could do for Wanda right now that wouldn’t be disruptive, and it was entirely possible she wouldn’t be ready to talk to me for hours, days, or even a couple of weeks. She knew I would be there for her when she was ready, and I had to give her space to do her thing. To process.

And in the meantime, I had to deal with the fucking mess that was this party.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Dayana said, looking at me with her jaw hanging open slightly. “¿Esta perra está loca?”

“Dead serious,” I said. “I almost choked on it, the assistant was so serious. They’re offering a cash tip incentive for staff who will go along with it. If we decide to organise it.”

“Jesu,” she muttered, shaking her head. We were in her office - I hadn’t wanted to have this conversation anywhere we could be overheard - and she was leaning against the front of her desk with her arms crossed over her chest. “We-”

She cut off before saying what she thought we should do, probably because she knew she was asking the same questions that I had been.

“If we take this to Rashid, we might be spotlighting something he doesn’t want to know about, but is OK with and can’t be connected with. Or he does know about it, and it was included in that ‘everything’ clause that already got passed down to us. Or, he doesn’t approve and gets into it with Angeloff, and she throws me under the bus,” I said.

“And if you take it to Khalid, if you can even get a hold of him, then he might be thankful initially, but he needs to clean up the mess. Even if you escape the initial blast radius, Rashid might be majorly pissed. And we can’t take it to anyone else on the ownership board or in the C-Suite because it would be embarrassing for the Al Maktoums,” she continued the train of thought.

“Exactly,” I said.

“We’re sure that the order for her is to facilitate anything or everything she wants?” Dayana asked.

“I triple checked already,” I grimaced.

Dayana just stared at me for a long moment, shaking her head slowly as she pursed her lips. I could see her mind running a mile a minute behind her eyes.

“OK,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got two waitstaff who would do it. And maybe one bartender. So what, one more waitstaff and the dealer?”

“Fuck,” I said. “We’re doing this.”

“I guess we’re doing this,” Dayana nodded. “We’re party planning a game of strip poker for an uber-wealthy Russian widow engaged to a Kuwaiti prince.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t put this one on our resumes,” I deadpanned.

“Probably not.”

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