LOGINHANNAH'S POV:Martin was there too. He and Lucas had been rebuilding things carefully, which was the right way to rebuild them, not rushing or even pretending that the weeks of ignoring each other had not happened, just being honest about what they both wanted and working toward it with the patience that real things require. They were not back to where they had been, not yet, but they were moving in the right direction and it was visible in the way they stood near each other, its thr very ease of two people who have decided to keep trying.Sam, at some point, found his way to me.He looked up at me with James Osei's eyes, according to Martin once again who had told me about James's eyes, and said, "Are you the lady who makes the dresses?""One of them," I said. "It is a team effort."He considered this seriously. "Uncle Lucas says you are the one who is in charge though.""Uncle Lucas is correct," I said.He nodded. "My gran says the person in charge should always say thank you to the
HANNAH'S POV:He called me from the board meeting when it was over. I was in the warehouse and I stepped outside to take it and I stood in the loading area where I had spoken to Dara and he said, "It went well. Prentiss used the word integrity and I think he meant it." I said good. He said, "Are you working?" I said yes. He said, "Of course you are." There was warmth in his voice when he said it."Go back to work," he said. "I will get the twins. We will have dinner at home.""Normal dinner?" I said."Normal dinner," he said. "Andrew requested the pasta thing and Amelia immediately said she also wanted the pasta thing even though last week she said she was tired of pasta.""Amelia reserves the right to change her mind," I said."She has informed me of this," he said. "Several times. I have accepted it as a household policy." A pause. "I love you.""I know," I said. "I love you too. See you at home."I went back inside and I finished the review of the spring pieces and Sandra told me
HANNAH'S POV:Better late than losing her somewhere else. I was choosing to hold onto that.The next morning she arrived with a printed document and placed it in front of me.I looked at the number at the top."That is the market rate," she said.I looked at the number for a moment."It is on the higher end of the market rate," I said."It is accurate for this city and this level of responsibility," she said. "I can send you the sources if you would like.""You have sources?" I said."I have three sources," she said. "And a comparison table."I looked at the comparison table she produced from behind the printed document. It was thorough in a way that was so completely Maya that I almost laughed."You prepared this before I offered you the role," I said."I prepared it when I started to suspect you were going to offer me the role," she said. "That was approximately four months ago."I stared at her. "Four months ago I had not decided.""I know," she said. "But you were going to. It was
HANNAH'S POV:The case against Voros was no longer just about my mother. It was about a pattern that had been running for decades and that nobody had been in a position to challenge because he was powerful enough that the cost of challenging him had always been higher than the cost of staying quiet.Until now.Lucas sent me a message that said: I am writing the press release and I want you to know I have used the word reckoning twice in the first paragraph alone and I feel completely fine about this.Paige called that same afternoon.She had been following everything. She said she had been following it since the collection, since she had sat in the front row and cried before the show even started, since I had mouthed I told you at the end of the runway and she had completely fallen apart in a way she was not embarrassed about at all."I wanted to tell you," she said. "My wedding is in six weeks. And I am going to wear the dress. I was going to even before all of this but I wanted to t
HANNAH'S POV:The fashion world, when it decides to respond to something, does not do it quietly.By the afternoon the article had been shared more times than our team could track accurately. By the evening the first industry response pieces were appearing. By the following morning, three things had happened that none of us had specifically planned for.The first was that a designer named Celia Marcos, who had been in the industry for thirty years and whose work I had admired since I was in school, posted a statement on her professional platform. It was three paragraphs long and it described a meeting she had with Aldric Voros twenty-two years ago in which he had made her an offer that had felt wrong and which she had declined and which she had never spoken about publicly because she had not seen the point of speaking about something she had no way to prove. She saw the point now, she said. She wanted it on record.The second was that a retired editor from one of the major internation
HANNAH'S POV:I put the phone face down on the worktable and kept looking at the pieces.Sandra, who missed absolutely nothing, said without looking up from the hem she was examining, "Go and look boss. Then come back and be present here."I looked at her."It is your mother's name," she said, still not looking up. "You are allowed to look at what happens when it goes out into the world. Then you come back and we finish the review."I picked up the phone.The case had been filed in two jurisdictions simultaneously, which was Castellan's strategy and which she had described as making it expensive and noisy and difficult to absorb cleanly. The filing document was public record and the press had received embargoed information the night before through the journalist Castellan's team had been working with, a woman named Lura Mike who had been writing about intellectual property and the fashion industry for fifteen years and who had asked every question I had hoped she would ask when we fi
HANNAH’S POV:THE NEXT MORNING:“Good morning mummy!” Amelia excitedly greeted and gave me a kiss on my cheek which only made me smile.“Good morning, baby. You slept well?” I asked and she nodded with a smile on her face, darting her attention to the television where I was watching the news waitin
ELIJAH’S POV:FEW DAYS LATER:“Calling me to go golfing on a weekday is so unlike you.” Jacob pointed out as soon as he saw me at a distance.I was in a black polo shirt as well as some black pants. While Jacob was grinning in white shirt and white shorts with Gucci glasses. He was flexing his club
HANNAH’S POV:THAT SAME DAY:It felt so unreal standing there with the two people I had not seen in a long time. I never prepared myself for how I would react when I would see them again. I just stared at them dumbfounded. But yet here I was, frozen in the middle of a crowded food court, clutching
HANNAH’S POV:Janet laughed under her breath, though there was no humor in it. “God, you really have no shame, do you?”My stomach twisted and I frowned deeply at her words. “Excuse me?”“You disappear for years, after wrecking everything, and now you show up acting like nothing happened. Elijah ha







