Relatives Called My Hotel Greedy; Cheapness Caused Regret

My cousin's company was turning ten, and Saul Dickerson, who was running the anniversary gala, wanted to rent the hotel under my name.

Since we were family, I gave them the at-cost rate: fifty thousand for half a day, all inclusive.

But my aunt, Agnes Whitney, cursed me out for being a heartless crook squeezing money from her own relatives, screamed at me to cancel the whole thing, and turned around and handed the gala to her brother's little hotel instead.

The gala turned into a disaster, and there was even a safety accident.

And Agnes didn't go after her own brother for damages. Instead she showed up at my door raising hell, saying I hadn't warned her in advance, demanding I admit they only switched venues because I cancelled on them, and ordering me to bring my people over to clean up the mess for her.

I turned her down flat.

She'd trashed my venue as worthless, and now I was supposed to wipe her backside? There's no such sweet deal in this world.

......

My cousin's company was throwing its tenth-anniversary gala, and they'd rented the hotel under my name.

Three days out from the event, I was walking the space with my team for final checks when Saul's mother, Agnes Whitney, suddenly came charging in, cursing me for being a soulless leech bleeding her son dry.

"Mason Dickerson, do you have a conscience at all?" She stormed into the half-decorated venue, jabbing a finger in my face, spit flying as she screamed, "We're family, and it's just half a day, and you're charging my son fifty grand!"

Agnes had always been a penny-pincher, so I made myself stay patient and explained. "Aunt Agnes, fifty thousand really isn't a lot. Look, the gala isn't until two days from now, but we started setup today. There's the LED screen build for the whole event, the lighting, the staging, the dinner, the servers, all of it at cost. And after the gala, the crew fees to tear down the decorations and the big screen, plus the cost of the venue being tied up, I didn't even charge you for any of that."

"Bull!" Agnes shrieked at the top of her lungs, not caring who heard. "I already asked around. My brother's hotel could do it for ten thousand. You really are rotten to the core, cheating your own family!"

"I know exactly what a ten-thousand package is. That's usually just one day's venue fee. It doesn't cover the setup days beforehand, or the dinner, and it definitely doesn't include the screen build or the service I mentioned. What I gave you is genuinely the all-inclusive cost price."

"Oh, cost, is it?" Agnes curled her lip in contempt. "Mason, who do you think you're kidding? This hotel of yours is dead empty most days, not a soul in sight. It's sitting there anyway. My son renting it is doing you a favor! Setting up early? Isn't that your job to begin with? What, you throw a few things around and you've got the nerve to charge me for it?"

She jerked her chin at the decorations around her, working herself up. "And that meal package of yours, who even wants it? Who actually sits down and eats at a gala? Everybody's carrying a glass around toasting people!"

The setup was already underway and couldn't just be stopped, so I drew a deep breath and kept arguing it out with her. "Aunt Agnes, our hotel does great business. If it weren't for my cousin's company gala, I'd have rented it out already. And about the dinner, the regular employees still want a real, decent meal. Our ingredients are all fresh, the dishes are all five-star standard"

"Don't waste my time with all that." She waved a hand and cut me off, contemptuous. "Just tell me, we're family, aren't you going to give me an honest price?"

"This is already the lowest price. If I gave the same thing to anyone else, it'd be at least a hundred and fifty thousand." I told her the normal quote.

"A hundred and fifty thousand?" Agnes hollered, pointing at me. "Mason, put your hand on your chest and ask yourself! When your dad got laid off, you ate plenty of meals at my house, didn't you? Now that you've made it, you turn around and don't know your own people, huh? Aren't you ashamed of being this heartless!"

Out of options, I pulled out my phone and called my cousin Saul.

After hearing my side of it, Saul hemmed and hawed on the other end. "Mase, my mom keeps insisting it's too expensive, there's nothing I can do... How about... you knock it down a little more?"

I got it. This wasn't just Agnes's idea.

I looked straight at Agnes and said it out one word at a time. "Fine. If you think it's too expensive, then let's renegotiate. We cancel the three-tier lift stage and the computerized light array we'd agreed on, and I'll do it for thirty thousand. That work for you?"

"No, no, no, wait" Saul panicked on the phone. "That won't do. Our boss is all about putting on a show. If you pull the lift stage and the light array, how's the chairman supposed to take the stage?"

Before I could say anything, Agnes was hollering again. "Don't try to threaten me with that. I already asked. My brother does it all-inclusive for ten thousand, lift stage, lighting, sound, everything! And a professional planning team on top of it! You just won't cut me a deal! Cheating your own family!"

My assistant, Zachery James, couldn't stand it anymore and took half a step forward. "Ma'am, Mr. Dickerson and Manager Dickerson already went over every detail. We really aren't overcharging you."

"You shut up!" Agnes shoved Zachery so hard he nearly went down. "I'm talking to my own nephew. Since when does an outsider like you get to butt in?"

She turned back and fixed her eyes on me, hands planted on her hips. "Give me a straight answer. Ten thousand, yes or no? If not, forget it! If you weren't family, I'd have gone with someone else long ago!"

Now I finally understood the whole thing.

Back when Saul first came to me, he'd been fishing around about invoices, hinting at something. And when I told him we could only issue receipts for the actual amount, he'd looked reluctant. But he knew my hotel was the best in the city, so he didn't want to fall out with me over it.

That was probably why he kept stalling and never signed the contract.

Now he'd sent Agnes to deal with me. First, so her brother could pocket the money. Second, because they were after something else entirely.

"If you think your brother's place is better, then give it to him. We'll cancel the contract." I hung up on Saul and looked calmly at Agnes.

"Youyou said it yourself!" Agnes jabbed a finger right at the tip of my nose. "Cancel it, then! Think you're something special just because you run a hotel?"

At her shouting, every staff member in the lobby stopped what they were doing, dozens of pairs of eyes swinging toward me.

I looked at that flushed red face of hers, and I smiled.

"Then we cancel." I slapped the run-of-show sheet down on the table. "We're family, so I won't charge you the cancellation fee. Go find someone else for your gala."

Agnes froze, like she hadn't expected me to agree so readily. But she'd gotten what she came for, so she said nothing, just gave a cold snort, turned, and walked off, muttering as she went, "Big fancy hotel, who needs it. The way you do business, you'll be out of business before long!"

Watching her go, I just found it funny. I'd have no trouble renting out the space. But some people were about to have a very bad time.

Because I knew that hotel her brother, Stanley Whitney, ran.

It wasn't small, either. Top five in the city, easily.

The problem was, his place had built its name on weddings and birthday banquets. The equipment looked impressive, but it couldn't come close to handling the scale and spectacle of a corporate gala.

For starters, the rising stage was built for a bride's grand entrance, rated for maybe two hundred pounds. And that lighting board of his went unstable and cut out the moment you ran more than twenty groups of lights.

Worst of all, his so-called professional team was really just the wedding-and-funeral outfit the hotel worked with. They had zero experience running a corporate gala.

A wedding banquet just needs to look festive. A corporate gala runs on a full, professional program, and for a company like Saul's, with thousands of people, there was no way they could pull it off.

I'd thought about giving Saul a heads-up. But the moment I pictured that smug, arrogant look on Agnes's face, I dropped the idea.

The two of them had made it clear they were running a scam on me. Why go out of my way to be the unwelcome one?

Right then my phone rang. The caller ID said it was my old classmate, Leo Perry.

I picked up.

"Mase, I hear your hotel's got the weekend free?" Leo and I went way back, and this time he got straight to it, skipping the pleasantries entirely.

I paused. "You've got some sharp ears. I cancel one minute, you know about it the next?"

"Heh." He laughed, pretty pleased with himself on the other end. "Surprised? Didn't see that coming?"

"I'll be straight with you. My cousin Horace Lawrence is on your scaffolding crew, right? He just told me somebody left you hanging, so I gave you a call."

I glanced over at Horace, up on the scaffolding, and he grinned at me.

Leo kept going. "Mase, listen, I'm going out of my mind here. Our annual influencer night is next Wednesday, and none of the other hotels are cutting it. At first I heard you'd booked yours to a relative, so I didn't ask. Now that it's open, can you hold it for me?"

Leo was a director at a sizeable influencer agency now, and their influencer night was the highlight of the year. They invited all the big names in the business, and the boss showed up in person to hand out the awards.

I asked him about the headcount, the program, the equipment list. By the time he finished, I had it all mapped out in my head.

"We're old classmates, so I'll give you the at-cost rate. Fifty thousand, all-inclusive. Half-day venue, equipment, setup, and dinner."

Leo burst out laughing on the other end. "Fifty grand? Mase, the company's paying, not me. Who are you trying to save money for? I turn that number in and finance and audit will both chew me out for having no taste, going with the cheap option! I've heard about you, you know. You charge fifteen thousand minimum to outside clients. Full price. Full price, and I'll head over right now to sign the contract!"

Leo hung up, and all of a sudden I found the whole thing a little ironic. Zachery looked at me, puzzled. "Mr. Dickerson, are we taking it?"

He knew I'd always gone easy on relatives, and he was afraid I'd still want to hold the space for Saul.

But not this time.

I nodded. "We're taking it. Tell the guys to get started."

In under ten minutes, the whole lobby was buzzing again.

Watching the venue come together bit by bit, I felt something almost like anticipation. In three days, I wondered just how much of a mess Saul's corporate gala was going to turn into.

Three days later, Leo's award gala went ahead as planned.

My old classmate hadn't cut me a single dollar on price, so naturally I'd make it up to him somewhere else, in the shape of face.

The venue setup, the lighting crew, everything I gave him was the best I had. I even called in a favor to rent the only 3D projection rig in the state, and put a full dome overhead in the hall with Leo's company logo projected across it.

The dinner got bumped up a tier too. Every table was set to the standard of the head table, so nobody just ate their fill, they ate well and had something worth showing off on their feed.

Leo, for his part, had lined up a live stream, and once he saw how well I'd done the room, plenty of the influencers took the hint and started filming.

Watching all those cameras, professional and otherwise, sweep across the hall I'd built, I already knew the payoff. After tonight, my hotel's name would climb another notch.

And this gala didn't waste my effort or Leo's trust.

The dazzling open, the lavish set, the food that actually tasted good, all of it held up beautifully under every lens.

Leo couldn't wipe the grin off his face. The boss was still up on stage giving his speech and Leo had already come down to find me. "Mase, not bad at all. Our VP said I did a solid job this time. If I land equity by year-end, brother, I owe you big."

"A little equity and look at you strutting. Why don't you call me Daddy while you're at it?"

Leo slung his arm across my shoulders and pointed down at the influencers, grinning like the same idiot he'd been back in college. "Look at them. Half of them are million-follower names. Their videos go out and your hotel blows up. So? Aren't you going to thank Daddy?"

I did what I'd always done in college. I kicked him and told him to get lost.

After dinner started, Leo even dragged his boss, Frank Finch, over to meet me. Frank shook my hand. "Mr. Dickerson, this place beats a lot of the big hotels back in D.C. After the gala, I'd like to bring some people to look your hotel over. If the hardware holds up, I'll have my business team sit down and talk a long-term partnership with you."

I hesitated, didn't say yes outright, and had Zachery bring someone in to handle the first contact.

Not that I was above the deal. I just had this bad feeling I couldn't shake.

Saul's company was holding its gala today too.

Given the shape Stanley's hotel was in, I couldn't help thinking something was going to go wrong tonight.

But I'd underestimated just how good I was at jinxing things.

What went wrong over at Stanley's wasn't small. It even made the local news.

While everyone on my side was drinking and having the time of their lives, Zachery slipped quietly over and handed me his phone. "Mr. Dickerson, take a look. Something happened on Saul's end."

I took the phone. On the screen, sure enough, white text on a blue background: NOTICE: Safety incident at the corporate group's tenth-anniversary gala. Lift platform collapse injures three.

Zachery gave me a loaded look and swiped to a blurry video. On screen, the hotel's lift platform rose slowly, three big-bellied men standing on it, six hundred pounds of them all told, each holding a mic in one hand and waving to the crowd with the other.

The staff below cheered. I could even hear Saul whistling.

That was when it all went sideways.

Halfway up, the platform started to shake. Then, with a sharp crack, one of its support columns snapped.

The video filled with screaming, the frame jerked wildly, and then the screen went black.

Zachery cut to another clip.

In it, the stage was a wreck, a thick ring of people crowded below, someone yelling to call 911.

The three executives who'd been standing tall up there a minute ago, one was crouched on the ground clutching his head, blurred out under a mosaic; one was flat on his back hugging his leg and wailing; and the third didn't appear in frame at all.

I froze.

This was serious.

Zachery was watching me, worried too.

I understood what he meant.

He'd been with me five or six years. He probably knew what kind of people Saul's family were better than I did.

If nothing had gone wrong, Agnes would only have gone around telling everyone I was a lowlife who deliberately fleeced my own relatives. Everyone knew what she was like, so nobody would actually think I was in the wrong.

But now that something had gone wrong, she'd almost certainly try to pin the whole mess on me. And if she stirred up enough talk on top of it, I'd be like mud dropped down my own pants, no way to ever explain it clean.

Sure enough, right about then, messages started popping up one after another in the family group chat.

It was Agnes, firing off a string of voice messages. I hadn't meant to listen, but I tapped one by accident, and her booming voice nearly blew out my eardrum.

"Mason, you get over here right now. Something's happened on Saul's end, and you're going to take responsibility for it!"

"If you hadn't insisted on cutting corners, we'd never have switched hotels at the last minute. Now that it's blown up, it's all your fault!"

"Saul's bosses have already been rushed to the hospital, and one of them's still in the ER. You did this to them!"

"And Saul might lose his job over it. They're saying it's on him that the gala turned out like this. You get over here and shoulder the blame, or you're no relative of ours!"

I thought about it, then went ahead and typed back: "I offered you the cost price, fifty thousand, and you two insisted I was gouging you, that ten thousand should cover four days at my hotel. That wouldn't even cover my labor costs, so there was no way I could do it. That's why I had to cancel, unfortunately."

The moment she read that, Deborah Dickerson, who had never gotten along with Agnes, jumped straight into the chat: "Agnes, that's on you. Mason's hotel is the most luxurious one in the whole city. When my college classmate's son got married, one day alone cost fifty thousand. And you think ten thousand should buy you four days? Dream on. You never know when to stop mooching."

Charlotte Dickerson chimed in right behind her: "Exactly, Agnes. I know Stanley's place. That lift platform is for the bride's entrance. It can only hold one slim little girl. You put three grown men on it, so what did you expect it to do besides collapse?"

Getting piled on by her two sisters-in-law only made Agnes angrier: "You're just taking his side because Mason's got money now, sucking up to him! Let me tell you, I asked an AI. If Mason hadn't insisted on canceling, Saul never would've moved venues, and if he hadn't moved, none of this would've happened. When you get right down to it, Mason caused all of it!"

"Pay up. You have to pay up. And paying isn't even enough. You'll come to the hospital and kneel down and apologize to Saul's bosses, and beg them not to fire him!"

"Mason, get over here this instant, or I'll bring a crowd to make a scene at your hotel and let everybody know Mason Dickerson is a black-hearted, rotten piece of work who screws over his own family! I'll shut your hotel down!"

I actually laughed out of sheer anger. Right then my dad called me on voice chat to ask what was going on. After I told him, he went quiet for a moment, then said, "Mason, I'm staying out of this one. You just handle it by the rules."

My dad has always been the peacemaker among the relatives, and I'd honestly been afraid he'd tell me to go apologize just to smooth things over. Now that he'd said that, I actually felt better about it.

I was about to switch back to the group and say a few things, but my sharpest mouthpiece, Deborah, had already fired off another snide voice message.

"Oh, aren't you trendy, using AI and all. Well, did you ask your AI whether your precious brother Stanley bears any responsibility in a situation like this? Whether he ought to be paying up?"

"Right, I think so too. Your brother going down on his knees to Saul's bosses would definitely be more useful!" Charlotte piled on, needling Agnes right alongside her.

Back when Agnes married into the family, Charlotte was still young, and Agnes bullied her plenty, openly and behind her back. Deborah was always defending Charlotte, so she and Agnes fought constantly.

That's why, even now, with Deborah married off to D.C. and Charlotte living abroad, neither of them gets along with Agnes and they poke at her in the chat at the drop of a hat.

Watching the three of them go at it, my third uncle, who always loves a bit of drama, dropped in a sweating emoji.

I hesitated a while, then decided not to deal with her for now. Agnes was clueless, but my cousin Saul had at least clawed his way up to middle management. And if I wasn't wrong about the Stanley situation, Stanley had taken plenty of kickbacks himself.

To keep himself from getting investigated, he'd definitely try to stop Agnes from blowing this up.

Zachery had heard the whole thing, and he was looking at me, at a loss for words. "Mr. Dickerson, this..."

I shook my head. "Leave them be. Go handle the reception for Mr. Perry's people."

Zachery nodded and left, though he kept glancing back the whole way, clearly not easy about leaving me.

I figured that was the end of it. But as it turned out, I'd thought too simply.

Just as Frank was thoroughly pleased with our hotel and getting ready to sign a long-term partnership agreement with me, Agnes showed up with a crowd to make a scene.