Too bad for her that the position she wanted was the one I currently occupied.
“Good morning, Greta. Is now a good time, Mr. Russo?” she asked, her tone making it clear that she didn’t care if it was or wasn’t.
“Dominic,” I reminded her for the one-hundredth time. “Of course.” I gestured toward my office.
At least with Shayla I didn’t have to pretend to be something I wasn’t. Like kind or caring. Or interested in her life in any capacity. She recognized me as the uncaring bastard I was.
While I hung up my coat, Shayla crossed to the lightboards in the corner and clipped a page layout in place.
So it was going to be one of those meetings.
“These aren’t right,” she said, slapping a long-fingered, ebony hand to the board. Brushed gold rings glittered against the glowing glass.
“In what way?” I joined her in front of the board and crossed my arms. It was a series of product images organized around a shot of two models in a studio. Something did feel off, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. And I certainly wasn’t going to show off my ignorance by playing a guessing game.
“The model shot. It’s too small. It needs to be the anchoring piece, not the cardigan and the belt. The people are always the point, even if it’s the products we’re talking about,” she lectured. “The people are the story.”
I made a noncommittal noise. I’d delegated—dumped—the artistic details to the page designer and let him run with it because I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.
If there was one thing I hated more in this life than being wrong, it was not knowing what the hell I was doing in the first place.
“It needs to be laid out again. Dalessandra won’t okay it as is,” she said.
“Do you have any other suggestions?” I ventured.
“I would think the creative director of the world’s second-largest fashion magazine wouldn’t need any input.” She didn’t say it snidely. Didn’t have to. It was fact.
We glared at each other for a long beat.
“Say what you need to say,” I told her.
“You shouldn’t be in this office,” she said. “You didn’t earn it. You haven’t spent years of your life working in this industry, reading these magazines, and living and breathing fashion. Now, someone else has to make it their job to babysit you.”
“And that someone is you?” I ventured cooly. “It’s in your job description to advise on fashion layouts?”
“No. But it’s in yours. And if you can’t do it, then it falls on someone who can.”
I wished that she was wrong. Wished that she hadn’t landed a direct hit to my already dented ego. I was struggling with this job, and it irked me that others could tell.
I hated not being good at something.
I hated failing.
And I really hated being called out on it.
“I do a thousand things a day that don’t fall within my job description. We all should,” she continued, her words coming out at a fast clip. The cool finally giving way to the angry heat beneath. “We’re a team with the goal of making every piece of content as valuable and as eye-catching as it can be. You shouldn’t be making these decisions when you’re not equipped to make them. You shouldn’t be at that desk.”
I met fire with ice. “I’ll take that under advisement. Is there anything else?”
I got the feeling Shayla was fantasizing about pushing me into my chair and shoving it through the windows at my back.
Ambitious. And rightfully angry. But being pissed off didn’t change what was. I was Label’s creative director. And I would find a way to do this job.
“Redesign this before your mother sees it.” She’d added the “your mother” as a jab.
I knew it because I would have done the same.
I was about to press her for suggestions or at least a recommendation on a designer who would have better instincts than the first when there was a knock on my open door.
“Dominic, my boy. Have you got five minutes for an old man?”
Managing editor Irvin Harvey strolled into my office in suit and tie, a smile on his face. The man was the sole surviving crony from my father’s unceremonious ousting. He’d been with Label for fifteen years after my mother—heavily influenced by my father—poached him from a fashion house. At sixty-five, he was the stereotypical Manhattan executive. Well-compensated, he excelled at schmoozing and golf and was a master at maintaining relationships. He knew everyone worth knowing in the industry from designers to photographers to buyers and advertisers.
My father had been Irvin’s best man in his third wedding.
The only reason he was still here was because there had never once been a complaint made against the man, and he’d sworn to my mother that he had no idea what his old pal Paul had been up to.
I wasn’t as inclined to take him at his word. But I understood that replacing another title so high on the masthead would have only added to my mother’s nightmare.
“Are we done here?” I asked
“Sherry, get me a coffee, will you?”
“Shayla,” she said crisply.
I felt the punch of anger that radiated off her.
The man probably snapped his fingers at servers in restaurants.
I flashed back to my pepperoni pizza and the woman who’d served it, then winced.
“Help yourself to the machine,” I said to Irvin, nodding in the direction of the beverage bar just inside the door. Until recently, its primary function had been to display bottles of champagne and scotch. It was now home to a tea station and espresso machine. Though, I still kept it stocked with my mother’s favorite white wine and a bottle of bourbon for particularly frustrating days.
“Never could figure those monstrosities out,” Irvin said cheerfully, winking at Shayla then grinning at me.
“I’ll speak with you later, Shayla,” I said, dismissing her. I’d make the damn coffee if it meant I didn’t have to figure out how to get blood stains out of the carpet.
She gave us both a cool nod and left.
“What can I do for you, Irvin?” I asked, starting an espresso for the man.
“I had drinks with the buyers from Barneys last night. Catching up, gossiping like teenage girls.” He wandered over to the windows to study the skyline. “You know how Larry is,” he said conversationally.
I didn’t know who Larry was. But this had been the hallmark of my relationship with Irvin since taking over the position. I was his stand-in for my father. I imagined the two of them had shared many a scotch in this very room.
But I wasn’t my father, and I didn’t have time for gossip. I handed him the coffee.
He seemed to recognize that I wasn’t Paul. “Anyway, after a few gin martinis, Larry gets loose. Runs his mouth. He mentioned hearing some rumors about your mother, the divorce. Is she seeing someone new?” His silver-tufted eyebrows raised suggestively.
I had no idea. I wasn’t sure if I should know if she was seeing someone or not.
“I see,” I said, pointedly ignoring the question. Whether I should know if my mother was dating again was entirely different than if Big-Mouthed Guess-What-I-Heard Irvin should know.
My mother, this magazine, didn’t need the shadow of Paul Russo to cause further harm. Every inquiry, every interview question about the situation had been met with stoic silence. The Russo Modus Operandi. Protect the name at all costs.