The word scene struck something cold in Wescott’s chest.

He had come here only looking for a bed for his daughter, on the eve of his wife’s anniversary, carrying a long day’s exhaustion and a handful of roses he’d wanted to put in water before dawn.

Instead he was watching, live, the exact thing that explained the anonymous complaints that had been reaching his headquarters for months — guests quietly profiled by appearance, staff degraded by pay grade, plain elitism dressed up as “luxury standards.”

It was the word scene specifically that told him how deep the rot went.

Because notice what Danika was actually saying with it: not stop lying, not you’re mistaken, but don’t make this visible. The problem, in her mind, was not that a father with a sleeping child had been turned away, nor that a colleague had insulted a twelve-year employee within earshot.

The problem was the noise.