The WitchBourne Grand Hotel rose sixty-five floors into the grey Bristol sky like a middle finger made of glass and old money ambition.
It caught the weak afternoon light and threw it back at the city below—all that steel and transparency. The kind of architecture that whispered new money even when the family crest itself dated back to before the Norman Conquest.
The WitchBournes had been trying to modernize for three generations now. Trying to shake off the dust of centuries and remake themselves as something sleek. Something relevant.
They'd succeeded, mostly.
The hotel was proof of that. One of the finest in Britain. Michelin stars in the restaurant. Royal warrants on the stationery. A penthouse suite that cost more per night than most people earned in a year, and a waiting list for that privilege that stretched eighteen months into the future.
But old money never really changes.
It just learns to wear better suits.
