I had six days to save my future, almost no money to do it, and a family that wanted me to fail.

The trophy was small, made of heavy Waterford crystal, but it weighed nothing in my hands.

The ceremony had been a blur of flashing lights, frantic whispers from production assistants, and the sight of Julian Thorne disappearing out the service exit before the final scores were even read. Brianna and Vanessa were gone; they had left thirty minutes before the presentation, their limousine tires screeching out of the hotel drive while local fashion bloggers were already live-streaming photographs of Brianna’s torn bodice side-by-side with Simone’s architectural triumph.

The headline on *The Style Chronicle* had already shifted:

*“CARTER COUTURE COLLAPSE: Stepsister’s Stolen Glory Crushed by Nia Carter’s Masterpiece of Steel and Silk.”*

They knew. Within two hours, the entire local circuit knew. The embroidery patterns had been matched to my mother’s original sketchbooks, which Leo had retrieved from the house while Vanessa was at the ballroom. There would be no polite family dinners anymore. There would be no small room with a broken lock.

My father had called four times. I hadn't answered. I left the phone on the edge of the backstage vanity, right beside the scissors I had used to cut my way out of his house.

Now, at two in the morning, the after-party was dying down on the rooftop terrace of the Ritz-Carlton.

Simone leaned against the marble railing, holding a glass of sparkling water, the wind whipping through her short hair. The burgundy gown had been packed safely into a heavy canvas garment bag, resting on the luggage cart beside us.

“She’s coming over,” Simone murmured, nodding toward the glass doors of the terrace.

The woman with the silver hair and horn-rimmed glasses—Madame Laurent, the scout who had started the standing ovation—stepped out into the cool night air. She wasn't wearing an evening gown; she wore an impeccably cut black tuxedo that fit her like a second skin.

She stopped two feet from me, looking down at my hands.

My knuckles were still rough, my thumb wrapped in a piece of adhesive tape where the industrial Consew needle had bitten me twenty-four hours before.

“Your wrist is bruised, Mademoiselle Carter,” Madame Laurent said, her accent clipped, precise, and entirely devoid of southern softness.

“It doesn't hurt anymore,” I said.

“Good. Because you will need your hands in Paris.”

The breath caught in my chest. “Paris? The scholarship was for Parsons in New York.”

Madame Laurent gave a short, elegant shrug that dismissed New York with the flick of a shoulder.

“Parsons is for students who need to learn how to draw. You already know how to build. The Young American Couture prize covers the New York showcase, yes. But my house—we do not wait for American schools to polish a diamond that already has edges sharp enough to kill.”

She pulled an ivory card from her pocket and pressed it into my hand. It had no company name, only a single phone number embossed in matte black ink and an address on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

“There is an apartment above our atelier in the Eighth Arrondissement,” she said, her voice dropping lower. “It used to belong to an apprentice who had the same look in her eye that you have—the look of someone who has eaten dust and decided she prefers the taste of gold. You report on the first of next month. If you are twenty-four hours late, I give the table to an Italian.”

She turned on her heel and walked back into the warmth of the penthouse, leaving the scent of amber and bitter orange in the air.

I looked down at the card.

The brass wire, the industrial hemp, the wine-red satin, my mother’s old jacket—they were all behind me now, packed into a dark bag that smelled of machine oil and vengeance.

Simone tapped her glass against the crystal edge of my trophy.

“Well, Carter?” she asked, a fierce, brilliant smile breaking across her dark face. “Are we going to Paris to teach them how to use a hammer, or are you going to stay here and iron your sister’s laundry?”

I looked past the railing, past the sprawl of Charlotte’s miniature skyscrapers, out toward the dark horizon where the interstate wound north toward the coast, toward the sea, toward a world that had no room for cowardice and no locks on the doors.