5

The furniture arrived while I was sitting on the floor scrolling through clinic listings on my phone.

I had been at it for almost twenty minutes, cycling through the same three search results, reading the same brief descriptions without really taking any of them in. The apartment was empty except for my two suitcases and the sound of the city coming through the window I had cracked open this morning, and I was trying to be very practical and very clear-headed about the whole thing.

Aldenvale Women's Health Clinic. Confidential services. No referral required.

I clicked on it. Closed it. Opened it again.

The knock at the door pulled me out of it.

I wasn't expecting anyone. I wasn't expecting anything. But when I opened the door there were two women in the hallway in matching grey uniforms, and behind them, visible through the open elevator doors, were a sofa and a coffee table and what looked like a bed frame wrapped in moving blankets.

"Miss Morgan?" one of them said, checking a clipboard. "Delivery for unit four-twelve."

I looked at the furniture. Then at her. "I didn't order anything."

"No, ma'am. It's been arranged already. We just need a signature."

They brought it all up in pieces. A sofa in a deep olive green. A bed frame in pale ash wood, clean-lined and simple. A coffee table, two side tables, a small dining set, a bookshelf, a set of lamps. All of it careful and considered, nothing mismatched, everything chosen by someone who either had very good taste or had paid someone else to have it on their behalf.

I signed the clipboard without thinking much about it, my eyes moving automatically to the sender field.

I stopped.

The signature was small and slightly angular, written the way someone writes when they've been signing their name on important documents since they were young enough to be handed a pen and told to practice. I had seen it before, years ago, on the edge of a birthday card left at the door of my room. Not for me. He had mixed up the rooms.

Victor.

My older brother. Half-brother. The one who looked through me at family gatherings the way you look through a window when there's nothing interesting outside.

I stood in the middle of my new living room surrounded by furniture he had sent me without a note, without a message, without any indication that he wanted me to know it was from him at all. I had only recognized the signature because of that one misdirected birthday card, years ago, and because my memory does things like that without asking my permission first.

The delivery women said goodbye. I closed the door.

I stood there for a moment looking at everything.

The sofa was exactly the kind I would have chosen if I had the money for it. The bookshelf was the right height. The lamps were warm-toned. None of it was wrong.

That was what was strange about it.

I got down on my knees and checked underneath the sofa, then the coffee table, running my fingers along the undersides and into the corners. I pulled out the drawers of the side tables and looked inside them. I checked the lamp bases. I didn't find anything no small devices, no fitted hardware, nothing that looked like it didn't belong. Just furniture.

I sat back on my heels and looked around the room.

A family that has never needed to do anything for me, I thought. A brother who has never once looked at me directly. Sending furniture to a city I just moved to, unprompted, with no note, in a delivery timed well enough that it arrived the morning after I did.

I sat down on the sofa. It was very comfortable.

Something is coming, I thought. They're setting something up. They're building credit with me so they can spend it later. That was how this family worked. Generosity was always a down payment. The invoice would arrive when I least expected it.

But the rent in this area was more than I made in a month, and I was sleeping on something tonight that hadn't cost me anything, and there was a very real possibility that I was going to need money in ways I hadn't fully accounted for yet.

So, I thought. As long as I'm getting something out of it. These people are not worth more than that.

I picked up my phone and went back to the clinic listing.

The form was short. Name, date of birth, reason for visit I chose the general option from the dropdown. Preferred date. I picked Friday afternoon, which gave me tomorrow to get through my first day of work and Thursday to get through my second, and then Friday it would be done and I could stop carrying this around in the back of my mind like something I kept almost putting down.

My finger hovered over the confirm button for longer than it needed to.

What are you doing? I thought, at myself, sharply. This is a complication. That's all it is. A complication that you cannot afford and did not choose and that will not fit into the life you are trying to build. Stop hovering and press confirm.

I pressed confirm.

The screen showed me a little green checkmark and a confirmation number and the address of the clinic, which was twelve minutes away by cab.

I set the phone face-down on the new coffee table and sat back against the new sofa cushions and looked at the ceiling.

Friday, I told myself. And then it's done, and you move forward.

I was good at moving forward. I had been doing it my entire life.

The studio was on the far side of the business district, in a building that looked modest from the outside and meant it. No massive signage. No dramatic glass frontage. Just a clean brick building on a quieter street, with the name etched small and tasteful above the entrance: Chen Studio.

I stood on the pavement outside it for a moment after the cab pulled away.

I had looked at photographs of this building online so many times during university that I had the angle of the entrance windows memorized. The way the light hit the brick in the afternoon. The small row of planters along the front ledge. I had written a paper in my second year about Lucas Chen's approach to the relationship between space and human emotion, and my professor had given me the highest mark I had ever received for anything. I had not told anyone about that. It had felt too private.

I took a breath and went in.

The receptionist at the front desk looked up immediately. She was in her mid-thirties, sharp-eyed, efficient in the way of someone who managed things and knew it. Her name tag said Olly.

"You must be Victoria Morgan," she said. "I recognise your voice from the phone."

"That's me," I said. "It's good to meet you properly."

"Right on time, which is a good start." She was already moving out from behind the desk, gesturing for me to follow. "Mr. Chen is arriving in a few minutes. Head straight up to his office and get his coffee ready before he gets there. He takes it strong, two cubes of sugar."

"Of course." I followed her toward the stairs. "Should I just is there a coffee station in the office or "

"In the office. You'll find everything." She was already heading back to the desk. "First door on the left at the top of the stairs. Go on."

I found the office without trouble.

The studio floor I passed through to get there made me slow my pace without meaning to. Open-plan, light moving through the whole space without interruption, one wall of exposed brick and another painted a deep olive green that had no business looking that good and did anyway. Plants placed with real intention. Shelves with architectural models and books that had clearly been read rather than arranged. Pendant lights warm and low. It was everything I had imagined it would be and slightly more.

I made myself keep walking.

His office was the first door on the left. I knocked once, got no answer, and remembered that Olly had said he wasn't in yet. I pushed the door open.

The room stopped me the same way the studio floor had, maybe more.

Brick wall on one side, floor-to-ceiling shelving on the other, filled with books and material samples and framed sketches I wanted to look at for a long time individually. His desk was large and almost completely clear just a lamp, a small plant, a single pen placed parallel to the edge. A low sofa against the far wall with a stack of thick books on the table in front of it, all marked with paper tabs. The whole room smelled like cedar and something faintly mineral, like stone.

I stood in the middle of it and turned slowly, taking it in.

The shelves were the kind that looked casual from a distance and were completely deliberate up close. Every object had a reason for being where it was. The framed sketches were his own work I recognized the linework from a spread I had studied in a design journal two years ago. The books were organized not by color or size but by something else, some system that made sense to whoever had built it. There was a small collection of material swatches pinned to a corkboard in the corner, fabric and stone and wood, each one labeled in small neat handwriting.

I took a step toward the shelves.

Then another.

I was reading the spine of a book I had been trying to find a copy of for eight months when the door opened behind me.

I turned around.

He was tall six one, maybe six two and he came into the room with the unhurried ease of someone completely comfortable in their own space, which made sense given it was entirely his. Strong jaw, clean-lined. Almond eyes with lashes that were genuinely unfair on a person who was also this accomplished. Neat brows, short mustache, well-kept. Dressed simply, everything fitting correctly in the way that on some people is luck and on others is a daily decision.

Lucas Chen. In actual real life.

He stopped the moment he saw me.

The confusion on his face was immediate and completely reasonable. A person he did not recognize was standing in the middle of his office holding nothing, having clearly been looking at his shelves. He was displeased, I could tell, He should be.

The silence lasted about two seconds.

"Who are you," he said. It wasn't really a question.

"I… your new assistant." The words came out faster than I meant them to. "Victoria Morgan. It's my first day. Olly sent me up here and I came in and I was just I was looking at your I haven't made the coffee yet, I should do that, I'm doing that now "

I was already moving toward the counter along the side wall where the coffee machine sat. He said nothing. I could feel him watching me as I opened the cabinet above it and found the cups, found the sugar.

I went with what Olly had told me at the desk this morning.

Strong. Two sugars.

I set the machine running and stood back.

The smell hit me before the coffee had even finished pouring.

It came all at once, rich and bitter and overwhelming, filling the back of my throat before I had time to prepare for it. My stomach turned over completely. I grabbed the edge of the counter with both hands and pressed my lips together and breathed through my nose in long, deliberate counts, staring hard at the cabinet in front of me, willing my body to cooperate.

Not now, I thought. Not here. Absolutely not on the first day.

The nausea rolled through me once, hard, then sat heavy in my chest and pulsed there. The smell was everywhere in the small space. There was no direction I could turn that wasn't also directly into it. My hands were not entirely steady on the counter. I could feel sweat forming at the back of my neck and I was very aware that he was still somewhere behind me in the room, probably watching me grip a counter for no apparent reason.

The machine clicked off.

I straightened. Added two sugars. Picked the cup up with both hands and carried it to the desk and set it down and stepped back from it immediately.

He was leaning against the far wall with his arms loosely crossed, watching me with an expression I couldn't fully read. Not angry. Just taking inventory.

"My coffee," he said.

"Yes. Strong, two sugars. Olly told me "

"The document I sent you told you." He pushed off the wall and walked to the desk and looked at the cup without touching it. "One sugar. Milk, small dash. It was on the first page."

I opened my mouth.

"Did you read it?" he asked.

"I received a document, yes. I don't recall seeing the coffee "

"It was on the first page," he said again, in exactly the same tone. Not louder. Just the same, which was somehow worse. He looked up from the cup and looked at me properly. "What you're wearing."

I looked down at myself.

"The dress code is also in the document." His gaze moved to my sneakers and back up. "Also on the first page. It's specific. There's a reason it's specific." He tilted his head slightly. "Have you actually read anything that was sent to you, or did you assume that getting the job meant the rest would sort itself out?"

The heat in my ears was immediate. "I read it. I may have "

"You read it," he said, not unkindly, just flatly, He walked around to his side of the desk and stood behind it, looking at me across the clear surface. "Your file came through late. Recommendation from well above the standard process. I had candidates who had been in this industry for years. People who had worked for it properly." He paused. "I don't know which door your family knocked on. I don't need to know. But I want you to understand something clearly on your first morning, that door being opened is where the favor ends. Everything after this you will have to actually earn. And right now you are standing in my office in the wrong shoes having made me the wrong coffee after spending however long staring at my shelves instead of doing the one thing you were sent up here to do."

Every word was even. He didn't raise his voice once, which made it land harder than shouting would have.

I stood there and took it because there was nothing else to do. He wasn't entirely wrong But her document really didn’t have those details in it, He was completely wrong about the family favor, about the door being opened by someone looking out for me, about any of it but explaining that would require explaining things I was not prepared to explain to anyone in this city, least of all him, least of all today.

So I said nothing about that.

"I understand," I said. "It won't happen again."

"Don't tell me it won't happen again," he said. "Just don't repeat it. Those are different things." He glanced toward the door. "Now leave. I have guests arriving and you've already taken up more of my morning than I budgeted for." He looked back down at whatever was on his desk. "And take your bag."

I had left it near the coffee machine. I walked back, picked it up, and got to the door without leaving anything else behind.

"And in the future," he said, without looking up, "don't come into my office unless I tell you to. Not for any reason, I hate people in my space."

I pulled the door shut behind me.

Out in the studio I stood still for a moment, bag in both hands, ears still burning, nausea still sitting in the low part of my chest like something that hadn't quite decided to leave.

At the bottom of the stairs, Olly was looking up at me from behind her desk. Her smile was precisely as pleasant as it had been this morning, which was to say pleasant enough and no further.

"How did it go?" she asked.

I looked at her for a moment. The two sugars she had told me with such confidence.

"Fine," I said. "Thanks for the help."

She held my gaze one beat too long, then looked back at her screen.

I went and sat at my desk, pulled up the document from the email it had arrived in, and opened it to the first page. There was nothing mentioned there about the preference or even the dress code.

“Is someone already on my back?”