Read Chapter 1: THE WRONG ELEVATOR

On Camille Laurent's first morning in New York, the rain came sideways.

It struck the yellow cabs, darkened the sidewalks of Seventh Avenue, and turned the edges of her printed portfolio into soft curls despite the plastic sleeve she had bought at Charles de Gaulle. She had been in the city for twelve hours. She had slept for four of them on a mattress in a sublet in Greenpoint that smelled faintly of radiator dust and someone else's incense.

At eight twenty-two, she stood beneath the limestone facade of Bellwether & Rowe and told herself that no serious career had ever been destroyed by wet paper.

Then the revolving door spat her into the lobby.

Bellwether occupied twelve floors of a building that had once housed garment factories. The brass directory still listed companies that no longer existed, their names preserved like ghosts between the newer tenants. Bellwether & Rowe, floors nine through twelve. Camille pressed twelve because the woman at reception had told her Human Resources was on twelve.

The elevator stopped at ten.

A man stepped in carrying two garment bags, a paper cup, and an expression suggesting the entire city had been personally disappointing him since breakfast. He was tall, perhaps early thirties, dark-haired, wearing a navy coat with a collar cut so cleanly Camille noticed it before she noticed his face.

He noticed her portfolio.

"You'll want eleven," he said.

"I'm sorry?"

"Design studio."

"Human Resources is twelve."

"Human Resources will tell you to go to eleven, and you'll lose twenty minutes."

His accent was American, but softened by something coastal and educated. He shifted the garment bags to one hand and pressed eleven.

Camille looked at his coffee, then at the expensive shoes receiving rainwater from her umbrella. "Do you work for the building?"

He looked at her.

For one beat, she thought she had offended a security guard. Then his mouth moved, not quite a smile.

"Sometimes it feels that way."

The doors opened on eleven.

The studio was not what Camille had expected. There were no immaculate white tables floating in tasteful silence. There were bolts of fabric leaning against walls, dress forms with masking tape across their breasts, interns running with steamers, and music playing from someone's computer under the hum of industrial sewing machines.

A woman with silver glasses hurried toward them.

"Julian, thank God. Where are the Klein samples?"

The man held up the garment bags.

The woman turned to Camille. "You must be Camille Laurent."

Camille realized.

Of course.

Julian Mercer.

She had seen his name in American Vogue, in a trade profile about Bellwether's revival, beneath photographs of sharply cut coats and dresses that looked disciplined until the wearer moved. At twenty-nine, he had become the youngest associate design director in the company's history. At thirty-two, he was the rumored successor to Evelyn Rowe herself.

Camille had told the recruiter in Paris that she admired his work.

She wished now that she had said nothing.

Julian handed off the samples. "Your French prodigy is here."

"I am not anyone's prodigy," Camille said.

The woman in silver glasses smiled. "Good. Prodigies are exhausting. I'm Mara Singh, senior studio manager. Come with me."

Camille followed Mara through the room, aware of Julian behind them for approximately three seconds until someone called his name and he disappeared into the controlled chaos.

Her desk was a narrow rectangle beside a window facing west, though the view was mostly brick. A corkboard hung above it. Someone had pinned a note there: WELCOME CAMILLE — DON'T TRUST THE COFFEE AFTER 4 PM.

"You'll be on womenswear concept," Mara said. "Three-month contract with extension review. Evelyn likes your line work. Julian likes your construction."

Camille set down her portfolio. "Julian reviewed it?"

"He reviews everyone."

"Does he also warn everyone about elevators?"

"Only people he thinks might matter."

Mara left before Camille could decide whether that was flattering.

By ten, she had a company email address and access to the seasonal brief. By eleven, she had learned that Bellwether's autumn collection was built around the phrase MODERN INHERITANCE, which meant enough and nothing. By noon, she had made four pages of sketches trying to find the argument hidden inside the phrase.

At one thirty, Julian stopped behind her desk.

He did not announce himself. She knew he was there because the studio around her changed by half a degree. People straightened. Voices lowered.

He reached over her shoulder and touched the corner of her sketchbook.

"That shoulder line."

Camille looked up. "What about it?"

"It collapses when you put weight in the sleeve."

"You don't know what fabric I'm using."

"You drew wool."

"I could mean bonded crepe."

"You don't."

She stared at him.

He took a pencil from the cup on her desk without asking and made a small line near the armhole.

"Move the seam forward. Two centimeters."

Camille snatched the pencil back. "I didn't ask."

"No."

"And if I want the collapse?"

"Then make it deliberate."

He walked away.

Camille waited until he was out of sight, then erased his mark with unnecessary force.

Five minutes later, she redrew the seam two centimeters forward.

It was better.

She hated him immediately.

That evening, the rain stopped. From the elevated train, Brooklyn looked like a city made of lit windows and private lives. Camille stood gripping a metal pole while her phone filled with messages from Paris asking about New York.

Her mother: Is the apartment safe?

Her former professor: How is Bellwether?

Her ex-boyfriend Antoine, who had waited six weeks after their breakup to become curious: So? America?

Camille typed three replies and deleted all of them.

Instead, she opened the photograph she had taken of her first studio desk.

In the background, barely visible, Julian Mercer stood with one hand on a mannequin, arguing with a patternmaker.

Camille zoomed in without meaning to.

Then she closed the image.

Three months, she reminded herself.

Three months to become impossible to send home.