Chapter 1 - PICK THEM UP
Natalie’s fingers were already tangled in my hair when my knees hit the studio floor.
The force of it shocked me more than the pain.
One second I was standing beside the cutting table trying to explain why three sketches had been moved out of the presentation stack.
The next, my head was pulled backward and my palms slapped against polished concrete.
Fashion drawings slid everywhere.
Croquis sheets.
Fabric notes.
Color studies.
Weeks of work scattered around my hands while Natalie bent over me in a fitted black dress and hissed:
“Pick them up, you worthless little nobody!”
Behind her, Brooke laughed.
Not nervously.
Not because she didn’t know what else to do.
She enjoyed it.
That was the moment something inside me finally stopped trying to explain them.
My name is Emily Hart.
I was twenty-six years old, a junior design assistant at Vale & Hart Atelier in downtown Los Angeles, and until that morning I had believed humiliation was simply part of surviving fashion.
Natalie Vale had spent twelve years building her reputation as one of the most feared creative directors in the city.
She was beautiful, polished, photographed constantly, and terrifying when doors closed.
Brooke Mercer, her senior designer, had learned how to imitate her perfectly.
They never screamed when clients were around.
They never insulted anyone where investors could hear.
They saved that version of themselves for assistants.
Interns.
Pattern cutters.
People without famous last names.
People like me.
Natalie finally released my hair.
I swallowed hard and began gathering the sketches.
My hands were shaking.
“Faster,” Brooke said.
I didn’t answer.
One page had torn at the corner.
I smoothed it gently.
Brooke stepped forward, snatched the stack from my hands, and threw it back onto the floor.
“Touch my collection again and you’re finished.”
My collection.
That word mattered.
Because six of those drawings were mine.
Not copied.
Not “inspired by.”
Mine.
I had drawn them at two in the morning at my kitchen table after working twelve-hour days in Natalie’s studio.
Three weeks earlier, Brooke had found them in my portfolio.
Two days later, nearly identical silhouettes appeared in her new resort collection.
When I asked questions, she called it coincidence.
When I showed timestamps, she told me junior assistants didn’t own ideas created while employed.
When I quietly saved copies, Natalie summoned me to the studio.
Now I reached for one drawing.
Natalie planted the heel of her shoe firmly across its edge.
I stopped.
Then slowly looked up at her.
“Women like you survive by knowing their place.”
Neither Natalie nor Brooke noticed the man standing behind the glass doors.
He carried a bouquet of sunflowers.
He had come to surprise me.
And when he saw me on the floor beneath Natalie’s shoe, his entire face changed.
Richard Hart opened the door.
The bouquet dropped onto the desk.
Natalie turned.
Brooke’s smile disappeared.
Richard looked at me first.
Then at Natalie.
“Then explain why you’re abusing my daughter.”
The room went silent.
Because Richard wasn’t just my father.
May you like
He was the man Natalie had spent the last six months desperately trying to impress.
And she had absolutely no idea who I was to him.
