It was a small sentence, but it cost her more than anyone at that desk understood.

Bea was the person in that lobby with the least power and the most to lose.

The receptionists could insult a guest with near impunity; the manager could bury a complaint; but a housekeeper who contradicted the front desk, who inserted herself where she’d been told she didn’t belong, was risking the only thing she had, which was a job she needed.

Every instinct that twelve years had drilled into her said to keep her head down, set the towels on the cart, and walk back to her floor — that this was not her fight, that speaking up would only paint a target on her back, that people like her did not correct people like them and keep their positions long.

She knew all of that better than anyone.

And she crossed the lobby anyway.