“This cannot be right.”
She pulled out her phone.
“Carter, where is the infinity pool? Where is the private beach?”
Carter tried to calm her.
Then they checked in.
Two standard rooms.
Twin beds.
Simple furniture.
A view toward the neighboring buildings.
No luxury room service.
No plush robes.
Nothing remotely resembling the glamorous trip Isabella had spent the previous two months describing to friends back in Chicago.
That evening, reality settled in.
Carter opened the itinerary to check the time for the next morning’s yacht excursion.
He scrolled.
Then scrolled again.
“Everything is gone.”
Dad looked over.
“What do you mean?”
“The yacht is canceled. The private desert safari is canceled. The VIP reservations are gone. Mason canceled almost every activity.”
All that remained were their rooms and their return transportation.
Dad had apparently spent the entire flight insisting that I would eventually change my mind and restore the original itinerary.
Standing inside that modest hotel room, he finally understood that I wasn’t changing anything.
The twenty-six-thousand-dollar luxury vacation no longer existed.
Meanwhile, while my family adjusted to their new travel budget in Dubai, I stepped off a seaplane into the crystal-clear turquoise water of the Maldives.
Dylan had completely outdone himself.
The refundable money from the canceled luxury portions of the Dubai trip had secured me a week at the St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort.
As I walked down the wooden pier with warm tropical air blowing across my face, a personal butler named Christian greeted me with a chilled lemongrass-scented towel and a glass of champagne.
“Welcome to paradise, Mr. Mason,” he said. “Your villa is ready.”
When I entered the overwater villa, I stopped in the doorway.
It was enormous.
A private infinity pool seemed to merge directly into the Indian Ocean.
Sections of glass flooring revealed tropical fish swimming beneath the villa.
The king-size bed faced the water.
This was the level of comfort and luxury I had originally planned to give my family.
Later, sitting on my private deck while the sunset turned the horizon pink and orange, I realized something.
For once, I was allowing myself to enjoy what I had earned.
On my second night, I was sitting at the resort’s overwater bar with a bourbon when I heard someone say my name.
“Mason?”
I turned.
And almost dropped my glass.
Lincoln.
The CEO of my firm.
He was standing there in a tailored linen suit, looking more relaxed than I had ever seen him in Chicago.
“Mason, I thought that was you.”
He walked over and shook my hand.
“What are the odds? I come to the Maldives every year to disconnect. Are you celebrating the promotion?”
“You could say that.”
I invited him to sit.
We ended up talking for almost three hours.
And surprisingly, very little of the conversation was about asset management.
We talked about careers.
Families.
Expectations.
Burnout.
I gave him a heavily edited version of what had happened, explaining that I had recently been forced to establish some difficult boundaries with relatives and rethink how much responsibility I took for other adults.
Lincoln listened carefully.
Then he raised his glass.
“You know, Mason, in business we’re trained to recognize when an asset is consuming resources without creating value. People forget to evaluate their personal relationships with the same honesty.”
I smiled.
He continued.
“You’re an excellent manager. You have a big future at this firm. Don’t let anyone—even family—convince you that your only value is what you can provide for them.”
He lifted his glass.
“To knowing your worth.”
I tapped mine against his.
Sitting beside my CEO in the middle of the Indian Ocean felt like the exact opposite of sitting in Dad’s living room being called selfish.
I wasn’t an ATM.
I wasn’t the family emergency fund.
I was a respected professional who had built a life of his own.
Before bed that night, I walked onto my deck.
Moonlight reflected across the calm water.
I took a simple picture of my feet resting on the wooden railing, the glowing infinity pool and dark ocean stretching beyond them.
I opened Instagram.
I didn’t mention Dubai.
I didn’t explain what had happened.
I wrote one sentence.
Sometimes you have to choose yourself.
Then I posted it, put my phone on airplane mode, dropped it onto the armchair, and fell asleep listening to the ocean.
I kept my phone on airplane mode for most of the week, connecting to Wi-Fi only when I needed to check important work messages.
But whenever I logged in, I couldn’t help noticing what was happening on Isabella’s social media.
The luxury Dubai feed she had apparently planned was turning into a stream of complaints.
She posted photos from crowded public transportation and from the small balcony at their hotel in Deira.
One picture showed a distant view of the Burj Khalifa partly obscured by buildings and utility lines.
Her caption said that not everything was as glamorous as people promised and that sometimes family disappointed you when you needed them most.
Another post showed her and Carter sitting in a food court.
Carter looked exhausted.
Isabella looked irritated.