Simone appeared at Victoria's office at seven fifteen the next morning with coffee and an expression of barely contained excitement.
"Tell me you didn't sleep," Simone demanded, settling onto the sofa without invitation. She wore wide legged pants and a silk blouse that somehow looked effortlessly chic despite being rumpled. Simone had a gift for appearing comme il faut in any circumstance, a particularly French form of grace that Victoria had never mastered.
"I slept fine," Victoria lied, accepting the coffee. She'd actually spent most of the night oscillating between confidence in her decision and terror that she'd just committed professional suicide.
"Liar. You have that look you get when you've been awake since three reviewing contingency plans." Simone crossed her legs. "So. Kieran Hayes. You're really doing this."
"I'm taking a meeting. That's not the same as hiring him."
"Please. I saw your email to the board. You basically committed to presenting him as the finalist. That's not leaving yourself much room to back out."
"I can still choose one of the other firms if Hayes doesn't deliver."
"He'll deliver." Simone's certainty was absolute. "The question is whether you'll let yourself choose him even when he does."
Victoria frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I know you, chérie. You're going to love his work. It's going to be exactly what the brand needs. But you're also going to find seventeen reasons why it's too risky, too expensive, too unconventional. And you're going to default to the safe choice because that's what you've trained yourself to do."
"That's not fair."
"No?" Simone leaned forward. "When was the last time you took a real risk? Not a calculated business risk with three backup plans, but an actual leap into the unknown?"
Victoria opened her mouth to respond and realized she didn't have an answer.
"Exactly," Simone continued. "You've spent four years building a fortress around yourself. Perfect decisions, perfect image, perfect control. And it's made you incredibly successful and completely miserable."
"I'm not miserable."
"You're not happy. There's a difference." Simone's voice softened. "When was the last time you did something just because it brought you joy? When was the last time you laughed? Really laughed, not that polite thing you do at networking events?"
Victoria stared into her coffee cup. The question felt impossibly large, touching on everything she'd spent years avoiding.
"I laugh," she said weakly.
"When?"
"I don't know. Recently."
"Try again."
Victoria thought back. Board meetings, investor calls, charity galas, business dinners. An endless procession of professional obligations where she performed the role of successful CEO. But joy? Laughter? Genuine, uncomplicated happiness?
"I can't remember," she admitted quietly.
Simone's expression turned sympathetic. "I know. That's why I pushed Hayes's portfolio. Not because the company needs it, though we do. Because you need it. You need to remember what it feels like to be moved by something."
"That's not a reason to make a multimillion dollar hiring decision."
"Isn't it? You're the brand, Victoria. You're the vision, the taste, the sensibility that makes Ashford & Co. different from every other luxury retailer. If you're dead inside, that's going to show in every decision you make. The brand will become as lifeless as you feel."
The words should have stung, but they didn't. They felt relief, like someone finally saying the thing Victoria had been too afraid to acknowledge.
"I don't know how to be any other way anymore," Victoria said. It was the same thing she'd told Simone yesterday, but it felt heavier now, more like confession.
"Then learn." Simone stood, smoothing her pants. "Start with Tuesday. Meet Kieran Hayes. Look at his work. Let yourself feel something about it. And then, for once in your carefully controlled life, choose the thing that moves you instead of the thing that's safe."
After Simone left, Victoria tried to focus on the day's agenda. Conference call with the Tokyo team at nine. Lunch with a potential retail partner at noon. Review session with the legal team at three. The usual architecture of obligation that structured her existence.
But her mind kept drifting to Tuesday's meeting. To Kieran Hayes and his spaces designed for joy. To the possibility of choosing something beautiful instead of something safe.
At lunch, Victoria sat across from Marcus Whitmore, CEO of a boutique hotel chain interested in carrying Ashford & Co. products. He was fifty, divorced, wealthy, and had been politely pursuing Victoria for the better part of a year. Today's lunch was ostensibly about business, but his intentions were transparent.
"You look radiant," Marcus said, which was the sort of thing men said when they couldn't think of a genuine compliment. Victoria did not look radiant. She looked exactly like what she was: a forty three year old woman who'd slept poorly and spent the morning questioning every decision she'd made in the last decade.
"Thank you," she said anyway, because that was what you did. You accepted compliments you didn't deserve and pretended not to notice when men your age pursued you like you were a merger opportunity.
"I've been thinking," Marcus continued over salmon niçoise that neither of them was really eating, "that you and I should discuss this partnership more thoroughly. Perhaps over dinner? Somewhere less formal?"
Victoria had been dreading this moment. Marcus was objectively attractive, professionally successful, age appropriate, and utterly uninspiring. Dating him would be the sensible choice. The approved choice. He understood her world, her responsibilities, her need to maintain appearances. He would never push her to be vulnerable or authentic or any of the uncomfortable things Simone kept advocating.
He would be Edmund 2.0, and Victoria would spend another twenty years in a marriage of mutual respect and emotional emptiness.
"Marcus," she said gently, "I appreciate the interest, but I'm not in a position to date right now."
"You've been saying that for two years." His smile was patient, understanding, maddeningly persistent. "At some point, Victoria, you have to let yourself move forward. Edmund wouldn't want you to be alone forever."
The presumption of knowing what Edmund would want made Victoria's jaw tighten. "My personal life isn't something I'm looking to change at the moment."
"Fair enough." Marcus raised his hands in surrender. "But the offer stands. Whenever you're ready."
Victoria nodded and steered the conversation back to business, but the exchange left her unsettled. Was this her future? Polite offers from appropriate men that she would politely decline until eventually accepting one out of loneliness or social pressure or the simple exhaustion of being alone?
The thought was suffocating.
That evening, Victoria did something she rarely allowed herself. She went to her home office and pulled out a box from the bottom drawer of her desk. Inside were her old architecture school portfolios, sketches and renderings from a life she'd abandoned at twenty three.
She spread them across her desk, looking at the young woman's dreams preserved in ink and graphite. A community center designed to bring natural light into every space. A library that felt like a forest. A small house that maximized intimacy and warmth. The work was technically competent but more than that, it was full of feeling. Full of belief that spaces could transform lives, that beauty mattered, that architecture was about human experience and not just function.
Victoria traced the lines of a sketch she'd done of her dream house. Large windows, open plan, materials that aged beautifully. A place designed for living, not performing. She'd been so sure then, so confident in her vision. What had happened to that girl?
Edmund happened. Security happened. The practical choice happened. The slow accumulation of obligations until the dream was buried so deep she'd forgotten it existed.
But looking at these sketches now, Victoria felt something crack open in her chest. Not quite hope, but its precursor. The recognition that she'd once wanted things, once believed in things, once allowed herself to imagine a different life.
Maybe Simone was right. Maybe she needed to remember what that felt like.
Her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number: "Looking forward to Tuesday. Simone says you're tough but fair. I'll take fair. KH"
Kieran Hayes. He'd gotten her number from Simone, which should feel like an overstep but somehow didn't.
Victoria stared at the message for a long time before typing: "Prepared to be impressed. VA"
She sent it before she could overthink, then immediately regretted the tone. Too casual. Too familiar. Too unlike the professional distance she should maintain.
But his response came quickly: "Prepared to impress. Also prepared for the possibility that you'll hate everything and I'll have to start over. That's how art works."
That's how art works. When was the last time Victoria had thought about business as art?
She didn't respond, but she saved his number. And that night, surrounded by her old sketches, she dreamed about spaces filled with light.