I’d hired Tai six years ago, right after I got promoted myself. Like me, she went to Roosevelt and was enrolled in their hospitality master’s program. As a boss, I chose people based on my gut, and my gut said she was smart and would be running the whole hotel someday. She was twenty-eight now, with a conservative Catholic family back in the Philippines. Tai had a deeply religious streak herself, but it was tough to stay conservative in a metropolis like Chicago. In the past few years, she’d discovered tequila and hip-hop music and tight dresses that emphasized her bony curves.

She was a wisp of a thing, a five-foot-nothing dynamo in high heels. Her black hair was very long and straight and parted in the middle. Her dark eyes twinkled below wicked eyebrows, and her lips were always bright red. Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled, which was often.

If I were posting about our relationship on Facebook, I would say it was complicated. I liked mentoring her. I liked that she flattered me by telling me how good I was at my job. I liked the snarky little jokes she whispered about couples getting married in the ballroom. To me, she was a younger sister, and as an older brother, I tended to confide my secrets to her. Most recently, I’d told her about Karly’s one-night affair, and like any good sister, Tai was quick to assure me that I was right and Karly was wrong.

All of this seemed safe to me because I had no romantic interest in her. Karly didn’t see it that way. From the moment they met, she didn’t like Tai at all. Karly had a habit of making up words to suit what she wanted to say, and she invented one for Tai. Manipulatrix. In Karly’s dictionary, that was a dominant, controlling woman who got what she wanted by pretending to be submissive. To Karly, who was strong in her own right, that was the worst kind of sin.

“So what can I do for you, Dylan?” Tai asked when she put away her radio. She took my chin with her long fingers and turned my face so I was looking at her. “I want to help with anything you need.”

“I don’t even know yet,” I replied, which was true. “Just hold down the fort here, okay?”

“Absolutely.”

“I thought I could go back to work, but I don’t think I can. Not yet.”

“No one would expect you to be ready so soon,” Tai said.

I checked the time on my watch. “I need to go. I’ve got to meet Edgar at the Art Institute in an hour. It drives him crazy if I’m late.”

“Does Edgar know? I mean, about Karly?”

“I called to tell him, but I don’t know whether he really understood what I was saying. Plus, his short-term memory is shot.”

“Sure.”