Chapter 3 - The Inventory
At seven o'clock the next morning, my assistant, Maya, let herself into the studio holding two large coffees and a paper bag full of almond croissants.
She took one look at me—still wearing my rain-stained dress, sitting on the cutting table with my laptop open and my hair pinned up with a pair of pattern weights—and set the coffee down very slowly.
"Who died?" she asked.
"The wedding," I said without looking up from the screen.
Maya paused, a croissant halfway to her mouth. She was twenty-four, had a degree from FIDM, and possessed the sharp, protective instincts of a feral cat. "Tell me you're joking."
"I threw the ring at his head at the Wilshire gala last night," I said, tapping a key to print a bank statement. "It hit him right under the eye."
Maya stared at me for three full seconds. Then she set the pastry down, leaned back against the doorframe, and let out a long, low whistle. "Did it leave a bruise?"
"A pink mark."
"Disappointing. Should've aimed for the bridge of the nose." She walked over, took my coffee out of the carrier, and pressed it into my hands. "Drink that. Then tell me how much money we need to get rid of his ghost."
"Forty-two thousand for the rent assistance he provided last year," I said. "Plus another six thousand for the fabric shipment he cleared through his freight company in July."
"Forty-eight total." Maya pulled out her phone, her thumb flying across the calculator app. "We have twelve key wholesale accounts paying on the net-thirty terms next Friday. If we factor those, we can raise twenty-five thousand today. But that leaves us short for the textile suppliers in Milan for the spring launch."
"We don't delay Milan," I said, my tone flat and unyielding. "If we delay Milan, we miss the buyer showcases in New York, and if we miss New York, Catherine Sullivan Atelier is dead by autumn."
"Then how do we pay Brad?"
"I sell the archives," I said.
Maya stopped typing. She looked at me like I had suggested burning the building down. "The sample archive? Kate, those are your master patterns from your senior collection at Parsons. You've kept those pieces sealed in the back room for six years!"
"They're vintage silk, hand-dyed organza, and custom beadwork," I said, standing up and walking toward the storage room at the back of the studio. "And right now, they're sitting in garment bags doing nothing while Brad Miller thinks he owns forty percent of my floor space."
We spent the next four hours pulling sixty-five garments out of the climate-controlled racks.
They were beautiful. They were the raw, unpolished proof of who I had been before I spent three years softening my lines to fit the muted palette of the Westside country club set. Deep rusts, bruised plums, sharp structural shoulders, and bias-cut skirts that moved like liquid metal.
At eleven-thirty, my phone rang on the desk.
The screen showed Charles Miller. Brad’s father.
I let it ring until it went to voicemail, then immediately dialed the office line for Miller Capital.
"Charles Miller's office," his executive assistant, Brenda, answered with that smooth, iron-clad professionalism common to administrative gatekeepers who make six figures.
"Brenda, it's Kate," I said. "Is Charles available?"
A three-second delay on the line—long enough for me to know she had already been instructed on how to handle me.
"He's in a meeting, Kate," she said softly, her voice carrying a hint of genuine sympathy that made my stomach turn. "He left a message for you, though. He said he was very sorry about the events of last night, but he thinks it’s best if you and Brad take a few weeks of space before discussing any... outstanding financial entanglements."
"Tell Charles I'm not looking for space," I said. "I'm looking for the routing number for the Miller Family Trust's private lending arm."
"Kate—"
"I will have forty-eight thousand dollars wired to that account by four o'clock today," I continued, my voice steady and cold. "I want a signed release of lease interest emailed to my attorney by five. If I don't have it, I'll bring the cashier's check down to his office during his two o'clock meeting with the port authority board."
Silence on the other end.
Brenda knew Charles Miller’s schedule better than his wife did. She knew he would rather hand over a building than have his former almost-daughter-in-law cause a scene in front of municipal infrastructure investors.
"I'll email you the routing details in five minutes," she said quietly.
"Thank you, Brenda."
May you like
I hung up, turned to Maya, and handed her the key to the archive lockbox.
"Call Julian at the consignment house on Melrose," I said. "Tell him I have sixty-five piece originals. Tell him I need private buyout pricing, not consignment, and I need the wire cleared before three."
