5. Once Upon an Unraveling #2
“Tell me about your family.” Chiara traced the seam of the bodice before taking Vi’s hand and allowing it to come down to her side. But Vi shook her head, and when Chiara looked up suddenly, their faces were inches apart, worried amber eyes on dejected gray ones.
“Family… is hard. So no family talk. Plus, you promised me an answer to a question.” Where had that boldness come from? Desperation for her own secrets to not be touched? Vi didn’t know, but Chiara’s eyes narrowed minutely before she gave a small nod and bent her head to her task again.
“Didn’t I already answer the one about the view?”
Vi tsked, and Chiara gave her a mischievous gaze from under those impossibly inky lashes.
“Another one then? Please?” Vi knew she was pouting, and even as she tried to swiftly pull back her lower lip, Chiara bumped her hip.
“If you’re allowed to keep your secrets, Ms. Courtenay, and be nosy, the least I can do is tease you, wouldn’t you say?”
Vi stuck out her lip again and sighed in mock exasperation.
“Fine. So why did you leave the catwalk?”
Chiara faltered slightly, but that was the only tell that she’d heard the question, because the silence stretched for so long, Vi thought she’d put her foot in it again. She was about to say something, to apologize, when Chiara spoke up.
“To quote this bratty intern of Aoife’s, family is hard , Ms. Courtenay.
” The deft hands resumed, making quick work of folding and pinning the fabric across her back.
Soon, Chiara turned her around to face the mirror where their eyes met again.
The now familiar sadness was back, and Vi cursed herself for putting it there.
“We all do what we must. Am I right?”
What did Chiara know about her family? Vi’s eyes widened, burning hot with unshed tears. Chiara observed her in kind silence.
“Yes. We love them, and we want them to love us. Want ourselves to be good enough to be loved.” Something hollow darkened Chiara’s gaze before she took a step back from Vi and looked her up and down.
Her name fell off those sensual lips in an exhalation, like deliverance, and Vi suddenly wanted to cry.
“Vi, when you are loved, you believe yourself eternal. Have you ever felt it?” Chiara’s faraway look told Vi that she wasn’t really seeking an answer.
“And then I imagine it’s like being cast out of heaven.
Or thrown down from Olympus. The titans had a lot to begrudge the Olympians, didn’t they? ”
A mirthless laugh and a tilt of the head, and Chiara’s eyes turned empty on a dime. “I guess what I’m trying to say via this very circuitous route is that the people in our lives… they should love us already.”
Vi didn’t know how Chiara knew, but something in her opened up with a twin ache, one of empathy, of understanding, of recognition.
They were talking about completely different situations that had nothing and yet everything in common, and Vi wished she could rest her head on the cool glass of the mirror and let her tears fall.
She had long ago resigned herself to not having love in her life, but for this woman, this beautiful soul, to know what having affection withheld felt like? It just seemed like such a tragedy, such a complete injustice.
A hand on her cheek made her flinch, and then they both stood absolutely still before the fingers trailed higher and came away with what Vi realized was a tear. She was crying, after all.
Vi shook her head again and dared not lift her eyes to Chiara’s.
It didn’t matter, as the wet fingers tipped her chin up again in a characteristic gesture that was becoming more and more familiar.
Vi’s skin was getting accustomed to the touch and to Chiara’s eyes on her, and it felt both amazing and like blasphemy to ever get used to any of it.
This time, however, the grip held a touch of ice to it and when she finally looked up, there was no warmth in Chiara’s gaze. The steel that Vi always knew was beneath the velvet was on full display. She gasped, but Chiara’s grip just tightened.
“If these are for me, I don’t want them, Ms. Courtenay. You can change back into your clothes. I will finish on the mannequin.”
“I’m sorry—” Regret rang loudly in her voice, and Vi almost reached out to grasp the hand that was already letting go of her.
“I will see you tomorrow. We can talk about your photography assignment. I have some ideas.” And with that, Chiara was gone, leaving Vi alone with her regret.
* * *
As Vi trudged to work the next day and passed Zizou’s bistro, the cover of Le Figaro caught her attention. She picked it up and was reading the headlines screaming from the front page when his grumpy voice interrupted her.
“Catching up on current events? You know, despite the whole ‘dad got me a job at the important fashion house’ vibe, you don’t really look like anyone who’d give a damn about said events, or fashion, for that matter.” He waved his scrawny hand at her, and Vi’s temper shorted.
“What? You’re not even going to say ‘no offense?’”
Zizou did not look deterred in the least, but before he could answer, a voice from one of the tables on the sidewalk interrupted their squabble.
“If you think you can shame him into apologizing for being rude, you are mistaken, Ms. Courtenay. He’s Parisian. And he’s a man.”
Vi thought how unfair the assessment was to all Parisians, but to her surprise, Zizou blushed to the roots of his dark hair and looked discombobulated.
Vi understood his predicament. She had only interacted with Renate Lilienfeld twice.
When they met and when she’d briskly handed her the non-disclosure agreement along with her contract and a pen.
They must have exchanged all of ten words in the couple of weeks that Vi had been at Lilien Haus.
The matron—as that was how Vi thought of her, mostly due to her age and to being Frankie’s older sister—was always ensconced in her glass office, ruling over the administrative side of running a fashion house.
Vi was never dispatched to bring her lunch and generally steered clear of her.
Not that she wasn’t curious about the woman.
“Take a seat, Ms. Courtenay. I see Aoife has not beaten the bad habit of staring out of you yet. And she’s had weeks to do it. Her famed powers of intimidation must be waning.”
An eyebrow rose in challenge, and Vi found herself smiling. They may be sisters, but Frankie and Renate were nothing alike. For one, Renate possessed a sense of humor. Dry as a slice of Pecorino Romano cheese, but a sense of humor, nonetheless.
Her insides quivering, Vi gathered all her wits about herself. She felt that she would need every last one of them.
“Aoife might wish she was intimidating, but she isn’t, and she doesn’t possess the dubiously effective method of beating her employees. Browbeat maybe?” Vi made a show of getting comfortable on the iron-wrought chair opposite Renate’s, despite her hands going numb.
“I’m glad to not be forced to deal with lawsuits from that direction down the line then. I’m not the one looking for more legal trouble, as it were, don’t you agree, Ms. Courtenay?”
More legal trouble?
Unreadable eyes held Vi’s for a second, and then, before Vi could comprehend what Renate was asking her, her interlocutor took a sip from her delicate coffee cup.
“Zizou, make yourself useful and bring Ms. Courtenay breakfast.” Vi blinked at his raising an eyebrow in her direction then, as if shaking himself, quickly scrambling into action. Renate smirked. “He’s spoiled by all of you kowtowing to him. A genius with food, but he needs a shorter leash.”
Vi’s anxiety conjured an image she really didn’t need in that particular moment, despite it being a humorous, if highly pornographic, one. She valiantly chose not to look at him as he brought her a tray with scrambled eggs and, inexplicably, a mug of herbal tea. She stared up at him.
“Ugh…”
Renate lifted her chin to dismiss Zizou before he could answer.
“Like you need more caffeine, Ms. Courtenay.”
Vi granted her the point and decided to eat her food. If her mouth was occupied, there was less chance she might say something to offend the formidable woman in front of her. Plus, she had a feeling Renate had flagged her down for a reason.
Silence reigned for a while, with Renate seemingly oblivious to her breakfast companion and Vi biding her time.
Renate placed her hand on the front page of Le Figaro, and Vi felt everything inside her tense up.
Here it comes…
But Renate turned away for a second, as if prolonging the moment, drawing out the expectations, or perhaps considering her next words.
Her eyes took in the busy street coming alive around them, with people hurrying about their mornings, dogs being walked, and pigeons overlooking the bustle with disgust and feigning indifference towards the scraps.
Finally, she turned back, and the eyes leisurely observing the street were now honed on Vi with determination.
“Lucci will be foregoing all shows for the next year, both their spring and the fall haute couture collections scrapped. This…,” she said, tapping a finger on the cover of the newspaper, “is what attracted your attention earlier.”
Something in Renate’s tone made Vi take notice. With her heart already in her throat, she struggled to swallow her rather excellent food. Since it had been phrased as a statement and not a question, Vi forced herself to continue to eat and allow Renate to say what she obviously wanted to say.
“Word is that their designs for the spring and fall of next year were stolen.”
Vi concentrated on not allowing her hand to shake as she forked up more eggs, while Renate proceeded, never taking her eyes off Vi.
“Fashion espionage is both very common and absolutely uncommon at these levels, Ms. Courtenay.” When Vi raised her eyes, Renate’s burned with strange fervor.
“What do you mean?” She almost gave herself a high five for keeping her voice steady.
“Concepts get stolen all the time, we just don’t call it theft.
Fashion is not a precise science and two things can look alike without being a carbon copy of each other.
You can be inspired by someone else’s design, you can even come up with something that is astonishingly close to what another designer has envisioned. ”
Renate took a small silver case out of her gigantic purse and lit up a long, black cigarillo.
“However.” She took a long drag, and Vi was mesmerized by how Zizou materialized seemingly out of thin air with an ashtray, which Renate accepted with an almost imperceptible nod.
“When the whole collection appears as a cheap knockoff with an online outlet, stitch for stitch, a year before it is supposed to go into production? That is corporate espionage and subsequent theft, Ms. Courtenay. And that is why Lucci pulled next year’s entire lineup. ”
Vi gulped and hoped that the street noise covered the sound. Her palms were wet and her stomach was in knots.
“Do the police have any leads?”
Renate made a face. “I have no faith in the French police. But rumor has it that Alberto and Romina hired a very expensive private investigative firm to look into the whole thing.”
Before Vi could reply, Renate made a dismissive gesture.
“Waste of money, if you ask me. But insurance? That’s a different story.
They will dig and dig and dig, because if Lucci’s theft insurance is anything like ours, the payout will be massive, and the insurance company will be desperate to find the culprit. ”
Vi gulped again and tried to cover it with a cough, though she suspected Renate could see right through her, and through all of her sudden suspicions regarding the true reasons for her internship. Even so, Renate seemed to choose to ignore it for now, and continued.
“They’ve shut down the website that sold the designs, but it already made millions overnight.
And once this kind of genie is out of the bottle, putting it back will be impossible.
Thousands of websites will sprout up in the coming weeks, carrying Lucci knockoff designs that will look and feel like the pulled collection and cost a fraction of what Lucci would have charged for them. ”
She took another drag of her cigarillo, and Vi could see how much the conversation was affecting Renate, the knuckles of her other hand white against her coffee cup.
“The efforts of a great number of people, the efforts of countless days, millions of dollars, were in vain because someone just wanted their work product. And then took it. Because they had the opportunity to do so.”
The look in Renate’s eyes made the hair on Vi’s neck stand on end, except not in a good way this time. She reached for her tea, and now her hand did tremble. Renate watched her take a sip, then extinguished the cigarillo by stabbing it in the ashtray with considerably more force than necessary.
“I’ve never heard of anything like this happening.” The words left Vi’s mouth before she could stop them.
What an inane thing to say.
Who was she to think herself an expert? But Renate didn’t mock her, nor did she wave at her dismissively as Vi had expected.
“It’s because when it does happen, it is mostly kept quiet. The fact that the Luccis are going to the media with this and are willing to withstand public scrutiny and law enforcement involvement is new and unprecedented. And maybe, just maybe, they will be able to stop this.”
“Stop what?” Vi’s voice was barely a whisper as she watched Renate’s eyes look at her through the cloud of smoke as she lit a new cigarillo.
“Stop this from happening again. Happening elsewhere. Happening at Lilien.” The pit in Vi’s stomach widened, and the food churned in it unpleasantly.