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1122 Words
The morning passed slowly.
Around me, the studio operated the way it always did, with the particular focused energy of people who knew exactly what they were doing and where they needed to be. The designer two desks over was spread across her workspace with fabric swatches and color boards, making notes in a sketchbook without looking up. The two men near the window were going back and forth over a scaled floor plan laid flat between them, one of them occasionally reaching over to tap a specific point on it. Someone was on the phone in the corner speaking quietly about load-bearing specifications.
I sat at my desk and watched all of it and waited to be given something to do.
Lucas had not called for me since I arrived. His office light was on. Through the glass, I could occasionally see him moving, sitting, standing at the board on his wall, but his door stayed closed, and my landline stayed quiet, and I was beginning to develop a very specific anxiety about whether being ignored was better or worse than being spoken to again.
I organized my desk for the third time. I re-read the studio document cover to cover. I looked up the ongoing projects listed in the overview section and read everything publicly available about each of them, which took about forty minutes and left me with nothing new to do.
My foot started going under the desk, that same unconscious tap against the floor.
Olly came through from the front carrying two large boxes stacked against her chest, both of them stuffed with rolled papers and colored texture sheets that were already threatening to slide out from the top. She was moving quickly toward the meeting room and the stack was clearly heavier than it looked, the boxes tilting slightly with each step.
I was up before I thought about it, crossing the floor toward her.
"Let me help "
"I'm fine." She said it without breaking stride, and with her elbow she moved me firmly to the side as she passed, a clean efficient nudge that left no room for argument. She pushed through the meeting room door with her shoulder and it swung shut behind her.
Through the glass the people already seated in the meeting room looked up at the door. A couple of them glanced out at me standing in the middle of the studio floor having just been elbowed out of a helping attempt.
I turned back to my desk.
Fine, I thought. Not thinking about it.
Today I was in a black dress, structured at the shoulders, and heels that were six inches, and not a problem. I had worn worse on evenings out in Merrath without thinking about it, but now I was a little sceptical about it because of the baby. . I had done my hair and my makeup, and I had sat down at my desk looking the part of someone who belonged here, even if the rest of the morning was doing its best to suggest otherwise.
The landline rang.
I had the receiver off the hook before the second ring finished.
"Come to my office," Lucas said, and hung up.
I stood up too fast and caught my knee hard on the corner of the desk. The pain was sharp and immediate, and I pressed my lips together against it and kept moving, crossing the studio floor toward his office, arriving at the door and knocking and pushing it open in the same motion.
He was standing beside his desk, pulling on his jacket, not looking at me. There was a man seated in the chair across from the desk ,fifties, wide-set, with the particular ease of someone accustomed to being received rather than kept waiting.
"Here's my assistant," Lucas said to the man, still not looking at me, smoothing the front of his jacket. "Tell her whatever you need done and she'll handle it." He picked up his phone from the desk. "I hope." He glanced at me then, just briefly, a look that communicated something between doubt and a warning, and walked out of the office.
The door clicked shut.
I held my smile in place, turned to the man, and extended my hand.
"Hi. I'm Victoria Morgan, Mr. Chen's assistant."
The man stood slowly, and his eyes made a full, unhurried trip from my face downward and back up before he took my hand. It lasted long enough to register in my stomach as something unpleasant, which I kept entirely off my face.
"Marcus Maron." His grip was a beat too firm and a beat too long. "Supplier for Chen Studio. Pleasure."
"Likewise," I said, and sat down in the chair Lucas had vacated, which put the desk between us. "What can I help you with?"
He settled back into his seat and laced his fingers together. "There's an ongoing mall project, interiors, decoration, the full scope. We're at the materials stage. I supply the studio with everything they need for it: fabric, stone, and structural finishes. We're working through the selections now, and Mr. Chen wanted someone to sit in on the details." He smiled. It was an easy smile, the kind that had opened a lot of doors. "Someone to make sure everything is moving as it should."
I nodded and opened the notebook I had brought.
My phone buzzed against the desk.
A message from Lucas. I angled the screen slightly away from Marcus and read it.
That man has been our supplier for three years and has been overcharging us since the beginning. Your job is to go through everything he presents materials, pricing, sourcing and do a full market comparison. Find where the numbers don't hold up. I want a reason to terminate the contract and move to a better supplier. Find me one. Don't let him know what you're doing.
I set the phone face down on the desk.
Marcus was still talking, something about delivery timelines for the stone panels, and I looked back up at him and nodded at the right moment and smiled the right amount.
I was new to this city. I had no contacts here, no market knowledge, no existing sense of who charged what and where the better suppliers were.
And my boss had just handed me what was essentially an investigation to be conducted invisibly, with the subject sitting directly in front of me.
"So," Marcus said, spreading a printed sheet across the desk toward me, columns of figures and material codes. "Shall we start with the stone?"
I looked at the sheet. Then I looked at him.
"Let's start from the beginning," I said. "Walk me through everything."
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