Bound by Design

Three

Nadia’s POV

I want to get this out of the way — Kyle Sullivan was exactly as awful as he was rumored to be.

If anything, he was worse because the rumors had been secondhand. The reality was firsthand and smacked me in the face at seven in the morning, when I hadn't had enough coffee.

In the first week of this, he overrode my directions to the flooring contractor without my knowledge. I came in Tuesday morning to find the wrong material being installed and spent two hours tearing it all out.

He sent three separate messages through his assistant — as if I were too beneath him to be contacted directly — two of which were complaining about why work hadn't started in the kitchen despite the fact that the kitchen work couldn't begin until the countertop delivery came in. A fact documented on the project timeline I submitted day one.

And on Friday afternoon, he walked into the library, looked at the plan I spent a week creating, and stated: “I don’t like this. Change it.” And then left.

No explanation, no suggestion for an alternative. “I don’t like this. Change it.”

I stood in the library after he’d left, hands on my hips, and took three deep breaths. Then I went back to my plans because $47,000 doesn’t care how you feel.

What I had understood going in — what all the other designers who worked for him had tried to explain, and what I had thought I understood but hadn’t — was that he was not accustomed to rules. Not in an obnoxious, performative way. In a quieter, embedded way like it simply never occurred to him that another person's system could be valid; he had created something substantial.

His opinion was proven right so many times that it had calcified, had become something that was simply no longer open to question. Anyone who dared to question it, to push back on it, was, by definition, the problem. So, I was going to be the problem then. And that was okay.

The second week was the corridor lighting argument. The argument that almost made me quit.

He cornered me on a Wednesday morning while I was on the phone with a contractor and waited. Arms crossed. With an impatience that suggested he had already determined whatever I was doing to be less important than whatever he needed to say. I ended my call. I looked at him.

“The corridor lighting,” he stated. “I need it done tonight.”

“The electrician is booked for tomorrow. It's in the timeline.”

“I need it done tonight,” he repeated. Like repetition would be a form of reasoning.

I placed my notebook on a nearby flat surface so I could free my hands. So I could focus on giving him my complete attention.

“Mr. Sullivan,” I began, slowly and carefully. “Changing the schedule to tonight, as requested, would require bringing in a team that has not been briefed on this specification. The arch in the corridor is, by far, the technically most important element in this entire renovation.”

I paused and took a deep breath. “Any errors in construction cannot be hidden and would require the wall to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch. I am not willing to take that risk for sixteen hours of my timeline which is already on track.”

He looked at me as if I were refusing to cooperate for the first time. “The current team is available tonight.”

“The current team is booked for tomorrow. That’s when they’re coming, to make sure the arch can be built as planned.” I met his gaze directly. “If you would like to assign another team and risk the construction of the arch, I would need that documented. Because I’m not putting my name on a result that I have no control over.”

He paused, the kind that showed that he was recalculating, but not necessarily an admission of defeat.

“Fine,” he said. And walked away.

I turned back to my notebook and did not allow myself react in any way. Reaction isn't professional. Professional is the only thing I could afford to be. But I was surprised; 'fine' was not a word I had expected to hear from him this quickly, or this easily.

I filed that observation away and went back to work.

The renovation moved on, despite him. With each attempt to interfere, I had to acknowledge it, re-direct it, provide the reasoning and hold my line until eventually the project moved forward in the way that I had planned it. It was exhausting in the sense that I could not simply do the work; I had to perform it, maintain an awareness of his next potential infringement at all times, prepare my response, deliver it without my temper snapping, and then go back to work.

All day. For three weeks.

But the arch was built on Thursday. By the crew who understood the specification. When I stood in the corridor later and looked at the lit arch as I had envisioned it, the sense of satisfaction was profound enough that the three weeks of Kyle Sullivan felt momentarily worth it.

I stood there for maybe ten seconds. Then I went back to my to-do list.

The gala came before I was ready for it.

The afternoon of the gala, I wandered through the space, doing a final walkthrough on my own while the catering team did their thing around me.

The space looked right. Not merely good, right. Like everything made sense and nothing fought with anything else.

I had done good work here, regardless of how. I tried to keep that in mind as I put on the black dress I’d had for three years and the borrowed heels that were half a size too small and headed back to the building I’d spent every weekday of the last three weeks in, now dressed as someone other than the designer.

I still wasn’t sure what I was there as. I stood at the window and stared at the city. I tried not to think about my hurting feet.