you could break me overnight
but there's no one like u s . . .

〰️〰️〰️

My job wasn't hard.

Let me rephrase that – my job didn't require the brain of a rocket scientist, but it also couldn't be done by any average joe on the street. There were certain requirements, a certain something you needed to be able to handle Donatella DiNardo.

Donatella, my boss and the founder (frankly, the brain) of the company that was DiNardo Designs (an oh-so unique name), was a spitfire. She had the body of an eighteen-year-old and the spirit of a senior citizen who had seen some shit in her day and served her time. I never really found out exactly how old she was; she never mentioned a birthday and I just assumed she was middle-aged. She had jet black hair that she never let go a day past a dye job, for fear of anyone seeing "her true self". I'd been working for her for four years and I still didn't know who that was.

To put it simply, job hunting was a bitch after I graduated college. Allow me to paint a picture for you.

I grew up in a mid-sized, very basic suburban town roughly two hours west of Philadelphia. Clearloft – more appropriately nicknamed "The Loft" by locals – was the type of town you dreamed of escaping once you were a teenager, because everyone knew too much and if you didn't get out, it'd suck you in forever. Sort of like how it did to our parents. So Gus and I, being the high school sweethearts that we were, moved to Philly prior to starting college since we both decided to attend major universities in the city.

We stayed at our respective schools for the first three years of college because there really wasn't any other option. Gus lived at University of Penn and I was at Drexel. By the time we were a year or so away from graduating, we got our own small, shitty, and astronomically priced apartment just outside of the city's central business district in an up-and-coming hipster neighborhood. With the help of Gus' distinguished investor for a father, no less, because we barely had enough money to buy groceries let alone pay rent every month. He was a little giving in that way, yet still so goddamn intimidating and powerful.

It was a studio apartment with mediocre lighting, a toilet that would flood too often, and the whole complex smelled on Tuesday mornings when they'd pick up trash. It served its purpose for just under two years before we moved to the place we were currently in. Still in the same hipster district, just in another area of it. The main thing was that this place was pet friendly, hence how Ziggy came into our lives.

Be that as it may, we made it out of college alive. Gus double majored in finance and business, focusing on economics to somehow follow in his father's footsteps, and I ended my educational career with a degree in design and merchandising. He secured a job long before we could even imagine what graduation day looked like, but I was slightly more disadvantaged.

If I was gifted with the ability to work with numbers and understand whatever it was that Gus did, I probably would have had it a lot easier. Instead, I went the somewhat fun route and ended up in the fashion world. Not that I couldn't have gone to college to be a nurse, or a lawyer, or a teacher, and not that there was anything wrong with those occupations – it was just that I didn't want that for myself. I didn't want to be like every other girl I went to high school with, and for that reason, that was why I was working for Donatella.

I'd done an internship with her while I was in school, since it was a requirement for me to graduate, and she kept me with her ever since. Turns out, fashion-related jobs in the Philadelphia area were pretty scarce, and everything seemed to be up by New York. Me, being the more realistic type, figured I definitely didn't have the money to move or commute there. At least, not yet.

Besides, I loved Philly too much to leave it, but I guess that could be said about a lot of things in my life.

So I found myself walking into her office three minutes before I'd be deemed late on that glorious Monday morning which started off with Ziggy destroying Gus' Nike's.

Frazzled with my hair still in a ponytail I was trying to pull off as "messy chic", I dropped my black leather tote bag, along with my half-empty travel mug full of coffee I inhaled on the cab ride there, on my cluttered desk. As I tried to get my life together, I heard frustrated muttering and fingers typing furiously on a keyboard. I knew without even looking that Nadia was at her own desk across the room, which was always a lot tidier than mine.

"Wouldn't be a Monday here if there wasn't something to complain about, am I right?" I laughed a little through my remark. I pressed the button on the side of my monitor to start up my computer, plopping down in the creaky rolling chair and looking over at Nadia.

"I love when people send e-mails and I try to reply back, but it says 'E-Mail Address Not Found'," she growled while not taking her eyes off her computer screen, "I hate technology."

Squeezing the bridge of my nose, I agreed, "You and me both, girl."

Whatever she said next was too low for me to understand, but I knew it wasn't nice.

I'd known Nadia since I began working for Donatella. We basically had the same job as personal merchandising assistants, but sometimes she got to travel more than I did and she likely made a little more money. We called each other our "work wives" because we spent every waking second at work together and we'd never survive without each other. She was, without a doubt, one of my favorite people.

She was two years my senior, two inches shorter, and I never let her forget that I was taller or that now she was a quarter of a century old. Her dad was from Pakistan, her mom from Australia, and they created what was probably one of the most beautiful specimen I'd ever seen in my life.

Nadia Abasi had killer bone structure, green eyes that could make you freeze in your place, thick brunette locks, and stunningly clear brown skin. If she wasn't one of my closest friends, she'd scare the shit out of me.

The deafening ring of her desk phone jolted me, as she snatched up the handset and rambled off our rehearsed greeting with the most believable amount of false enthusiasm she could force out. I glanced at my computer's screen to see it was nine o'clock on the dot, and my phone started to ring, too.

"Four more hours until lunch," I whispered to myself before picking up the phone and caroling into the mouthpiece, "DiNardo Designs, this is Bayla. How can I help you?"

〰️〰️〰️

Donatella claimed the entire fifteenth floor in a high-rise building that had a handful of other businesses being run in it. Her atelier stood out tremendously among the mundane cable, insurance, law, and remaining miscellaneous firms on the premises. As soon as you walked through the spotless glass doors with bronze carved handles just left of the elevators, you were drowned with the aroma of warm, citrus, floral notes. It paid homage to her homeland, the Amalfi Coast, though it used to give me daily headaches when I first started. By four years later, I was numb to it and nearly all of my belongings smelled of it.

For a foreign fashion designer with a studio in an office tower that was filled with big-headed men in pricey suits, along with being the only woman executive, it was evident that Donatella dominated everyone else. She was the type of person to walk in a room and have all eyes on her, backs straightened and fingers crossed that she wouldn't throw a snide comment your way.

It'd always be lined with encouragement, even if it felt like she was poking at your deepest insecurity. I was immune to it, myself. Things like, has that gym membership paid off, yet? or when's the last time you got your hair done? were nothing but white noise to me now.

But Donatella was kind, even if she was a terrifying perfectionist with a nitpicking problem. She just wanted things to go her way; so be it when you were the head honcho of a company you created from nothing.

It was safe to say whenever her name came up on the caller ID on my desk phone, my heart stopped. That was exactly what happened when Nadia and I returned from our forty-five-minute-long lunch break.

"Oh, fuck," I swore as I scrambled to answer her call. I could barely get a hello out before she brusquely cut me off.

"Nadia. Did those samples come in from TCC yet?"

I rolled my eyes at the fact that after all this time, she still could never differentiate our voices, when clearly one of us (Nadia) had a faint Middle Eastern accent and the other (my boring ass) didn't.

Not bothering to correct her, I surveyed the room and spotted three gigantic cardboard boxes by the doors, which were most likely delivered while we were out for lunch. "Yeah, they did," I answered, absentmindedly chewing on my thumbnail. Nadia was watching me from her chair with narrowed, speculating eyes, putting the pieces together without even hearing the other side of my phone call.

Donatella sighed with relief. "Oh, good. Have you steamed them?" She asked, and it wasn't so much a question as it was a command that if I hadn't done by the time she came in, she'd have my head for.

My eyes almost popped out of my head. "Yes, right now. We're doing it right now," I recovered quickly, snapping my fingers at Nadia and pointing frantically at the boxes. She almost fell out of her chair but knew exactly what to do.

If there was anything I'd become good at while working here, it was lying and multitasking.

"Perfect. I'll be in... approximately in an hour. My meeting went longer than I thought it would. Have them all hanging for me so I can make sure the order is right. Last time, they sent me things I never requested," she explained to me as I hummed in agreement, grabbing the steamer out of the closet and wheeling it over to Nadia who was tearing open the boxes with a knife.

"Will do, we'll see you then," I wheezed out the words, trying to balance the phone on my shoulder and rip open a bag containing something soft and violet-colored at the same time.

"Ciao," she said, followed by a click which ended the call.

The next hour was absolute pandemonium.

Comfy slip-on sneakers were definitely the best idea I'd had all day and if my ponytail wasn't a disgrace earlier in the day, it certainly was by now. Nadia and I were running around our office space like maniacs, steaming dresses and tops and everything in between at an inhumane speed. For as panicked as we were, we managed to seamlessly get all the pieces wrinkle-free and hanging on the rolling racks in an organized manner. Although we really didn't have a choice because if we didn't, there was no telling what Donatella would do to us.

I'd burnt the inside of my forearm with the steamer, which was nothing new because I'd done that plenty of times before, but that didn't mean it hurt any less. The volume at which I'd roared the f-word caused Pierre from the showroom to come bursting through the doors to see what was wrong. He saw me, steamer clutched in my hand and pain drawn on my face, then nodded his head before disappearing.

By the time the elevator dinged and Donatella made her grand entrance, Nadia and I were standing beside five rolling racks full of new sample pieces with our hands folded and tight smiles on our faces. Clad in snakeskin leather pants, a silky black blouse, and knee high boots, our boss floated into the room.

"Buongiorno, girls. How has the day been?" She questioned, holding her faux fur coat in my general direction so I could lean forward and grab onto it.

That was another thing about Donatella – she may have been the most fashionable person I'd ever met, but she was a huge philanthropist and animal rights advocate. Her furs and skins were always fake and she'd never tasted a piece of meat in her entire life.

"Oh, you know, nothing unusual," Nadia spoke up first, her voice unwavering. "I've got a couple messages for you about the Milan trip and Miami Swim Week. Your brother also called, too."

Donatella inspected all that was hanging before her, espresso eyes darting from one item to the next as she hummed to herself and nodded a few times. I cradled her coat in my arms like a lifeline, watching her reach for something in the racks every now and then, letting it fall back into place when she was done looking at it. A bead of sweat trickled along the side of my hairline, and I wasn't sure if it was because I was still out of breath from steaming all of that shit or because Donatella's face read neither content nor displeased.

"Good, good," she said quietly, and a wave of relief flowed through me from head to toe. I heard Nadia next to me release a heavier breath than normal, serving as a subtle sigh. Our boss was mumbling gibberish to herself, half in English and half in Italian, before she spun around to look at us with her hands clapping together. "Thank you, girls. I have to go call a few vendors, and my brother. Can you go get me a cappuccino? I need... something warm, and slightly sweet."

Though she wasn't talking to one of us specifically, I jumped at the offer to get out of the office, even if it was for a quick coffee run to the cafe in the lobby downstairs. "Absolutely. Is that all you want?" I asked.

"That'll be it, grazie," she thanked with a smile before she strutted into her office, the over-sized frosted glass doors shutting behind her and blurring her figure.

"You want anything, Nad?" I called over my shoulder as I went into the closet to hang Donatella's coat.

Nadia's desk chair creaked as she sat down again, groaning before declining, "No thanks, I'm alright. I'd better start taking these into the sample room." She said it, but she didn't make a move to actually do anything.

"Okay," I chuckled, grabbing my leather jacket off the back of my chair and slipping a few extra dollars into my pocket for a much-needed coffee for myself. "I'll be back as fast as I can to help you out."

"Yeah, sure you will," she retorted, her eyes rolling when I glanced over at her. Both of us knew damn well that I was about to take my sweet old time and be in no hurry to come back up.

I just blew her a kiss after she shooed me away and I skipped out to the elevators.

〰️〰️〰️

A/N - i hope we're off to a good start with this story. i mean i like it (obv bc i'm writing it) but i wanna know what you guys think!! we've got our introduction to nadia in this chapter who's actually so stunning i could cry. we've got a background on bayla's job and stuff. we've got so much more to uncover and i know it's just the beginning but i hope y'all are liking it so far. i'm so stoked for this story.

so idk if i'm going to have an actual update schedule with this one bc life is just ridiculous anymore and it's hard to just sit down and write, which means i'll prob post a chapter whenever i have one finished. very unlike me but that's how it is when you grow up and have all kinds of dumb adult responsibilities. anyway before i get too emo i have ZERO christmas shopping done (as always, i am last minute with it) and i'm like not freaking out :) at all :) nope :) ha :) love the holiday season :)

let's hope i can get my shopping AND some writing done in the next week or so. thanks for reading. thanks for supporting me. thanks thanks thanks. love ya lots.

xoxo, sabbbycat