Chapter One: The Pitch
Chapter One: The Pitch
Adrian Voss had exactly eleven minutes before the biggest presentation of his career, and he was spending four of them trapped in an elevator with the one man guaranteed to ruin it.
"You're in my elevator," he said.
Andrew Calloway didn't look up from his phone. "It's a building elevator. It belongs to whoever pays the lease. Which, as of eight a.m. this morning, is Calloway & Reyes."
"You signed a lease for the fourteenth floor. I'm going to the twenty-second."
"Then I suppose we're both riding it up," he said, finally glancing at him. He had the kind of face that made you angry at yourself for noticing it — sharp jaw, a permanent half-smile like he already knew how the argument would end, dark hair he clearly didn't spend much time on and didn't need to. He was wearing a charcoal suit with no tie, sleeves not quite rolled, like a man who had been called into something on short notice and simply looked better for the rush.
Adrian straightened his own jacket, aware that he'd rushed out the door that morning and probably still smelled faintly of the coffee he'd spilled on himself in the cab. "Some of us have to earn our floors."
"Some of us did," Andrew said. "I earned mine by being better than the firm that had it before me."
"That firm was Halston Group. They didn't lose the lease, they merged."
"They lost the Delacroix account, Adrian. Everyone in this city knows why."
He felt his jaw tighten and hated that Andrew could see it. Three years ago they'd been in the same graduating cohort at Pratt, seated two rows apart in every studio critique, forced into the same competitions by professors who thought rivalry built character. It had built something, all right. Just not character. By the time they'd both ended up bidding on real buildings instead of thesis models, "rivalry" had calcified into something colder and more specific — a private, exhausting war neither of them would admit to enjoying.
The elevator doors opened on fourteen. Andrew didn't move.
"This is your floor," Adrian said.
"I know." He was watching him now, properly, the half-smile sliding into something more assessing. "You're pitching the Bellrose waterfront redevelopment today."
It wasn't a question, so Adrian didn't treat it as one. He kept his eyes on the numbers ticking upward instead of on Andrew, which was a skill he'd had to develop specifically for his benefit.
"So am I," Andrew said.
The number 15 lit up. Adrian's stomach did something complicated.
"You're lying."
"I don't lie. I don't need to." He finally stepped back to let the doors close, but he didn't get out. "Reyes and I got the invitation to submit three weeks ago. I assumed you knew, since apparently everyone in this industry needs to know everyone else's business before they can sleep at night."
"Three weeks," Adrian repeated. His firm — Voss Architecture, four years old, eleven employees, every one of whom he'd hand-picked and half of whom he was still paying out of his own pocket some months — had gotten the invitation eleven days ago. He'd assumed it was because the city's redevelopment committee wanted a fresh, hungry firm in the mix. He had not assumed it was because they wanted a spectacle.
"You look like you're doing math you don't like," Andrew said.
"I'm doing math that makes perfect sense, actually." The elevator reached twenty-two. The doors opened onto a glass lobby with the city stretched gold and hazy behind it, the East River a ribbon of light past the skyline. "They invited us both because they want to watch us tear each other apart over exactly the piece of land we've both wanted since architecture school. It's not subtle."
"It's efficient," Andrew said. "Best proposal wins. That's supposed to be your favorite kind of story — the one where talent decides things instead of connections."
There was an edge under that last word, and Adrian knew exactly what he meant by it, because he always meant something by it. Andrew's father had been on the board of two major developers before Andrew ever picked up a pencil. Adrian's had been a contractor who'd walked concrete forms for thirty years and never once set foot inside the buildings he helped raise, at least not through the front door.
"Don't," Adrian said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You never do. You just leave the door open and wait for me to walk through it."
Something flickered across Andrew's face — not quite an apology, but close enough to its neighborhood that Adrian almost didn't recognize it on him. Andrew stepped out of the elevator finally, half onto Adrian's floor, one hand braced against the closing door.
"Good luck in there, Voss," he said, and for one disorienting second it sounded like he meant it. "You'll need it. I've seen the other submissions."
"Have you seen yours?"
"I designed it. I don't need to see it to know it's better than whatever you've got."
"Then I guess we'll both be surprised," Adrian said, and stepped past him into the lobby without looking back, though he could feel Andrew watching until the doors slid shut between them.
