Chapter 2 - THE FATHER I NEVER USED AS A NAME
My father could have made my career easy.
That was exactly why I refused to let him.
Richard Hart had built Hart Retail Group from three department stores into one of the largest luxury distribution companies on the West Coast.
His company didn’t design clothes.
It decided which designers reached wealthy customers.
A single Hart order could put an unknown label into twenty stores.
A canceled order could destroy a season.
People in fashion knew Richard’s name.
Very few knew mine.
My parents divorced when I was eight, and I grew up mostly with my mother in Pasadena.
She kept her maiden name.
So did I.
Hart was common enough that no one at Vale & Hart Atelier ever connected me to Richard.
The company name was another coincidence.
Natalie Vale’s business partner, Martin Hartwell, shortened his name professionally years earlier.
The studio became Vale & Hart.
My father had no ownership in it.
But he had power over its future.
And Natalie knew that.
For six months, she had been pursuing a distribution agreement with Hart Retail Group.
I heard her talk about Richard constantly.
“He understands luxury.”
“Richard Hart doesn’t buy trends. He buys permanence.”
“If we get Hart distribution, New York follows.”
She had no idea I heard those conversations and then called the same man Dad on Sunday nights.
Richard hated that I worked there.
Not because he knew Natalie was cruel.
Because he wanted me to use his network.
“You have talent,” he told me when I accepted the assistant position. “You don’t need to spend three years steaming dresses for people who take credit for your work.”
“I need to know I can do it without you.”
He sighed.
“You are painfully your mother’s daughter.”
My mother, Elaine, had died four years earlier.
She had been a costume designer.
Not famous.
Not rich.
Brilliant.
She taught me to sew before I could drive.
She also taught me the one rule I carried into every room:
“If your name opens the door before your work does, you’ll spend your whole life wondering whether you belonged inside.”
So I never told Natalie.
I never told Brooke.
I never told anyone at the studio that Richard Hart was my father.
Even when the insults started.
Even when Brooke stole my concepts.
Even when Natalie made me stay past midnight fixing a presentation she ruined herself.
I wanted to survive on merit.
The problem with refusing privilege is that cruel people sometimes mistake discretion for powerlessness.
Natalie stared at Richard now.
Then at me.
“Your daughter?”
Richard didn’t look away from her.
“Yes.”
Brooke’s face went almost white.
Natalie recovered faster.
She always did.
“There’s been a misunderstanding.”
I stood slowly.
Richard moved toward me.
“Emily?”
“I’m okay.”
His eyes went to my hair.
Then the scattered sketches.
Then Natalie’s shoe still resting on one of them.
Natalie immediately stepped back.
“These drawings were part of an internal dispute.”
Richard looked at the floor.
“An internal dispute requires pulling her hair?”
“No.”
Natalie forced a laugh.
“Of course not. I was stopping her from damaging company property.”
I looked at Brooke.
Company property.
There it was again.
The lie they had repeated until they believed it.
Richard bent down.
He picked up the drawing Natalie had stepped on.
He studied it.
Then looked at me.
“This is yours.”
It wasn’t a question.
He recognized my work.
He had watched me draw since childhood.
Brooke stepped forward.
“It belongs to our collection.”
Richard looked at her.
“Who designed it?”
Brooke opened her mouth.
May you like
Nothing came out.
And that was where their real problem began.
