Lana’s POV
I’d gone over every stitch a hundred times.
And still, I couldn’t sleep.
The red lambskin heels sat in their glass box beside my desk, and even in the dim light of my atelier, they glowed like they were mocking me. I hated how much of myself I’d poured into them. Not just technique. Not just form. But fear. Rage. Love.
They weren’t just shoes. They were confessionals.
My fingertips were raw from shaping the arch. I’d bled on one of the soles the night before. Cried into a thread spool two weeks ago when Julian told me my second prototype “lacked soul.”
I didn’t want to admit it, but every part of this show had cost me something.
I wasn’t just competing against a man. I was competing against a history I couldn’t rewrite.
Artemis Quinn.
I ran my thumb across the sketch of
