The Plan

Phoenix

I’ve had a crush on Uncle Victor since I was twelve years old.

As I’ve gotten older and learned my body, it’s become something else entirely. Every morning I touch myself with his name on my lips.

My imagination runs full of him— the kind of pleasure I know only a man like him could give.

I have a diary dedicated to him. Every dirty thing I want him to do to me, written down in my own handwriting.

I know how that sounds. I’m not twelve anymore, so let me say it the way it actually is, the way it lives in my chest on a morning like this one, when I’m standing outside the most intimidating building in the city with my portfolio bag on my shoulder and my heart doing something embarrassing inside my ribs.

I am twenty years old. I have wanted this man for the better part of a decade. From when I was twelve years old and he came bearing chocolates and flowers for my birthday.

And today, for the first time in my life, I am walking into his world on my own terms.

That’s the plan. That’s the only plan.

Make Victor Crowe fall in love with me.

I know what you’re thinking. He’s my father’s best friend. He used to ruffle my hair at dinner parties and call me *little architect* when I showed him my sketches.

He is forty-either years old and the founder of Crowe Atelier and one of the most powerful men in this industry, and I am his newest intern.

I know all of that.

I also know this: I have spent ten years studying him. Not the way you study a textbook, but the way you study something you can’t stop thinking about. I watched every interview. I read every profile. I know the way he takes his coffee, the way he pauses before he disagrees with someone, the way his voice drops when he means something.

I know the scar on his left hand from a childhood accident my father told me about once, and I know he hasn’t worn his wedding ring in two years, and I know he is the reason I chose architecture.

He said *I think you’ll do it* when I was twelve, and I never forgot it.

I never forgot anything about him.

The lobby is all glass and pale stone and the kind of silence that costs money. Behind the front desk, a woman in a headset barely looks up as I approach.

I give her my name. She types. Slides a visitor lanyard across the desk.

“The internship coordinator will be with you shortly. Please wait…”

“You’re Phoenix Veyl?”

I turn.

A woman is cutting across the lobby toward me, heels sharp on the limestone, tablet tucked under one arm. Pretty, precise, somewhere in her late twenties. Her whole body moves like she’s already three tasks ahead of this moment.

“Yes,” I say.

“Jenna Hale. Mr. Crowe’s personal assistant.” She doesn’t stop moving, just pivots and expects me to follow, so I do. “You were supposed to be here forty minutes ago.”

My stomach drops. “I… the email said nine o’clock—”

“The email said eight-fifteen.” She’s already at the elevator, pressing the button. “Mr. Crowe addresses the new interns personally on the first morning. He started without you.”

The doors open. We step in.

I stare at my reflection in the mirrored wall, pressed blazer, hair done, portfolio bag, all of it — and think, *not like this. This is not how this was supposed to start.*

“Is he going to…” I stop. Rearrange. “How bad is it?”

Jenna looks at me sideways. Something in her expression that isn’t quite sympathy.

“He doesn’t love tardiness,” she says. “That’s the polite version.”

The elevator opens on the thirty-seventh floor and the first thing I hear is his voice.

I haven’t heard that voice in eight years. And God, it’s deep, laced with authority that makes my skin pull tight. A voice that could command me to do anything. And I would. Without question.

I follow Jenna around the reception desk and through a set of glass doors and into a wide open studio where maybe fifteen interns are seated in a loose semicircle, all of them facing the man standing at the front of the room.

Victor.

He has his back half-turned to the door, one hand in his pocket, the other gesturing at something on the screen behind him. Grey suit, no tie. Sleeves still down. He’s taller than I remember, or maybe I’m just more aware of it now — the way he occupies space, like rooms reorganize themselves around him without being asked.

My mouth goes dry.

Eight years of preparation and my mouth goes dry.

Jenna touches my elbow, steers me to the edge of the group. A few interns glance over. I keep my eyes forward.

Victor stops talking.

The room gets quieter, which shouldn’t be possible because it was already silent, but it does. He turns.

He looks directly at me and my reaction to him is immediate and potent.

I completely forget how to breathe.

I have imagined this moment. The exact moment he sees me again— really sees me, not as my father’s daughter or the little girl with the oversized sketchbooks — but as a woman. I imagined him smiling warmly at me when he recognizes me.

What I did not imagine was this.

“You.” His voice is flat. “You’re late.”

He doesn’t know who I am.

It hits me so fast I almost laugh. I’m standing here with eight years of feeling everything for this man and he is looking at me like I am a stranger who had the audacity to interrupt his morning.

“I… yes,” I manage. “I’m sorry, I thought—”

“This session started forty minutes ago.” He tilts his head, just slightly. “Do you know what I think of people who can’t respect the time of the people around them?”

I open my mouth. Close it.

“No sir,” I say honestly.

“You’re not joining this session,” he says. “Wait outside.”

“Sir please…”

“Get out!” He thunders, not letting me finish.

Heat crawls up the back of my neck. Behind me I can feel every intern in the room absolutely burning to look. Nobody moves.

“Yes, sir,” I say.

I walk back out. The glass doors swing shut behind me.

I stand in the corridor with my portfolio bag and my carefully planned morning in pieces at my feet, and I stare at a potted plant across the hall and think, *this is fine. This is recoverable. I have a plan and one bad morning does not ruin a plan.*

I think that for about twelve minutes.

Then the glass doors open and the interns file out in twos and threes, and none of them look at me, which is somehow worse than if they had. Jenna slips out last, raises her eyebrows at me, and tips her head toward the end of the corridor.

A door. Heavy wood. A nameplate.

*Victor Crowe, CEO.*

“He wants you to wait in his office,” she says. “Which is surprising, because Victor Crowe doesn’t allow interns in his office.”