It was the effort of a lifetime for Jules to keep the shock off her face. Vivian remembered where Jules had gone to college? Vivian remembered what she’d majored in?

“English and communication at Penn, yeah,” she said, trying to keep it cool. “I’m from around there. Outside of Philly.”

Vivian frowned.

“Philadelphia,” Jules mumbled.

“Simon,” Vivian repeated.

And with that, Jules fled the office. It felt like the luckiest escape of her life.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

When Jules arrived at his glass-walled office, Simon looked up and sighed. “What did she do?”

“Fired Mallory.”

“Ah.” He removed his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

She didn’t blame him for getting a headache. She’d served as his assistant before Vivian poached her, and there wasn’t a harder working creative director in the business than Simon Carvalho. Many times, he and Jules had burned the midnight oil as he tried to make creativity and capitalism play nice together: reaching out to advertisers, wrangling hot-tempered artistes who didn’t want to sully their hands with business concerns. It was exhausting.

Vivian’s frequent power plays didn’t make it any easier. Jules had spent many hours at Simon’s side wondering why Vivian couldn’t just relent a bit. Working with Vivian directly hadn’t enlightened her as she’d hoped.

“I thought Mallory would get one more shot,” she said. “She’s done good work in the past.”

“Welcome to fashion, where the past will only be relevant in twenty years. Maybe we’ll see Mallory then. In the meantime, don’t question Vivian’s decisions. At least not to her face.”

Like I don’t know that. “She says to remember the salary budget in the next job ad.”

Simon sighed. “I wonder if Mark’s finally getting to her.”

She had to agree. Mark Tavio, chairman of the Koening publishing group, was nobody’s favorite human. Top executives weren’t usually known for being warm and fuzzy types, but Mr. Tavio was a special kind of sour. Sometimes it seemed he had it in for Vivian personally. If Vivian hadn’t rescued Du Jour from folding five years ago, Jules had a hunch he’d have tried to get rid of her.

True, Vivian wasn’t the easiest personality in the world. Jules still smelled misogyny in the room. Hard to avoid when a man resented a woman who was better at her job than he was at his. Among Mr. Tavio’s petty tactics: summoning Vivian to his office for updates that only wasted her time, constantly implying that she was on thin ice, and neglecting to include her in company-wide decisions. Somehow, though, she always managed to influence those decisions, whether she was invited to the meetings or not.