"What the fuck are you doing?!"
Ah, yes. The sweet sound of Lucien losing his carefully constructed, silk-wrapped mind.
He burst into the room like an expensive thunderstorm—hair perfect, expression not. His usual calm had cracked wide open, and I was honestly kind of flattered I'd finally gotten a reaction out of him that wasn't curated.
I leaned back in my chair, very aware of the screen still glowing behind me.
"See," I started, raising my hands, "I'm trying to do something useful. You're setting me up as a plastic figure—nod, sign, smile, repeat. I didn't like that."
I gave him a look that said sue me.
Not literally though. I can't afford that kind of lawsuit or that level of attention.
"I just thought it would make more sense if I made it work somehow."
"Make what work, Reed?" His voice was pitched higher than usual, something close to actual panic laced underneath. It was… almost adorable.
I grinned. "I acquired a lead."
"A what?"
"A lead," I repeated, proud as hell. "Like, a real person. Someone who wants to be consulted. They saw the ad and reached out."
He blinked at me.
"The ad, Reed?"
"Oh. Yeah. That."
There was a pause.
It was the kind of pause that felt like the air had stopped circulating.
Lucien's eyes darted to the side of my desk, where the mock-up flyer I had designed was sitting—complete with our company name (stolen from one of the empty offices), a vague tagline about legacy planning, and a contact email that, yes, I had absolutely routed to a burner inbox I set up last night while listening to lo-fi beats.
It was beautiful. Minimalist. Convincing. Possibly incriminating.
He reached over, grabbed the nearest paper cup, and threw it at me.
Thank God for my reflexes. I dodged it like a seasoned dodgeball veteran with trauma.
"Hey!" I said, laughing now, unable to help it. "That's company property."
"Do you have any idea what you just did?" he snapped, pacing now like a CEO whose intern just scheduled a press conference with Interpol.
"I know exactly what I did," I said, standing up to meet his energy, arms crossed. "I turned your weird fake consulting scam into something with actual engagement metrics."
Lucien dragged a hand down his face like he was wiping away the will to live.
"We don't want engagement, Reed. We want silence. We want to exist in the space between real and invisible. Not throw out digital breadcrumbs to strangers on the internet."
I shrugged. "Well, one stranger bit."
He gave me a long, hard look. "And what exactly did you say to this person?"
I smiled. "That someone from our 'advisory team' would reach out shortly."
Lucien closed his eyes and whispered something in French that I'm 99% sure was a prayer for strength and/or my disappearance.
Lucien was mid-spiral, pacing like a man trying to out-walk his regrets, muttering legal terminology under his breath, when the front door's sensor chimed.
The sound was so innocent. Cheerful, even.
He stopped.
I stopped.
We looked at each other like two raccoons caught with a trash bag.
"Please tell me that's someone delivering coffee," Lucien said quietly, almost begging the universe.
It was not someone delivering coffee.
A voice echoed down the hallway.
"Hi? Hello—I had an appointment at eleven? I saw the ad online. Reed Mercer?"
Lucien slowly turned to me. "You gave them your name?"
"I… may have," I said, all false bravado and zero remorse. "I mean, I was the contact person. Branding."
"Branding," he repeated, like the word was poison in his mouth.
But we couldn't panic now. The footsteps were approaching. A real human with actual legal rights and expectations was about to step into our beautifully hollow lie.
Lucien inhaled sharply. Shoulders squared. Sweater tugged down.
He became someone else in that moment—not the panicking man who threw a paper cup at me, but the prince again. Elegant. Poised. Prepared to lie so hard it turned into truth.
A woman appeared in the hallway. Early thirties, tailored blazer, confident heels, sleek ponytail, and an expression that screamed I do not have time for nonsense but I'll pay you if you solve my problems.
"Hi," she said, smiling politely. "I'm Carla Dawson. You must be Reed."
Lucien stepped forward before I could speak.
"Actually," he said smoothly, offering his hand, "I'm Lucien D. Ivarelle. Head of Strategy. Reed is one of our client onboarding specialists."
Client onboarding specialist. I was going to put that on my fake business card immediately.
Carla shook his hand firmly. "Nice to meet you. I was surprised by the ad, honestly. It seemed a bit… vague. But the tone was smart. Direct. That's why I reached out."
I opened my mouth to say thank you. Lucien jumped in.
"We believe in discretion," he said, gesturing toward the polished glass door of the fake conference room. "Shall we?"
She followed him in like this was all perfectly normal. Like we weren't two steps away from a Netflix true crime documentary.
I stood frozen for a beat, then scrambled after them, heart racing, but also—dare I say—buzzing.
Was this… working?
Was this actually happening?
Because it kind of felt like we were about to sell consulting services we didn't technically offer to a real person for real money in a fake company that had, somehow, just become legitimate through the sheer force of audacity and Lucien's cheekbones.
And if that wasn't business innovation, I didn't know what was.
The conference room looked better in theory.
Lucien pulled the blinds shut with practiced ease while I turned on the projector screen—purely for ambiance, since it wasn't actually connected to anything. The air inside the room was a cocktail of lemon-scented cleaner and lies.
Carla sat at the table with her notepad, her phone screen lighting up intermittently with alerts she clearly wasn't interested in right now. She was focused. Ready. She looked like the kind of person who negotiates casually over brunch and closes deals while getting her nails done. She didn't come here to waste time.
Unfortunately, we were fresh out of time and full of waste.
Lucien took the seat across from her, posture straight, voice velvet.
"So, Carla," he said smoothly, "what kind of challenges are you currently facing?"
She leaned in slightly. "I run a boutique marketing agency. Most of our clients are legacy brands trying to modernize. The problem is, we're scaling too fast. I need help organizing our operational flow—client onboarding, internal communication systems, delegation structures. Everyone's doing everything, and it's becoming a mess."
Lucien nodded slowly, like he was processing equations in his head. I could tell he had no idea what half those words meant in this context.
I jumped in before the silence got suspicious. "So it sounds like you're looking for an internal realignment of core processes—tightening the funnel, clarifying role ownership, and setting automation where applicable."
Lucien glanced at me with the faintest trace of shock. Then, like the rat bastard he is, he rolled with it.
"Exactly," he said. "That's where we come in. We specialize in strategic workflow recalibration and adaptive structure design. You're not alone—many companies plateau during rapid scaling because their foundation wasn't designed to carry that weight. We help reinforce that."
I had no idea what he just said, but it sounded like success.
Carla looked impressed. She nodded, scribbled something down.
"And what's your typical engagement process?" she asked.
Lucien looked at me.
I looked at him.
We were both bluffing.
And then something clicked. I saw it in his eyes—he decided to trust me. Or gamble with me. Either way, he gestured toward me like he's got this.
"Yes," I said, like I'd given this speech a hundred times. "We work in phases. Phase One is diagnostic—we audit your current structure, interview department leads, identify friction points. Phase Two is realignment—we present a revised structure, prioritize pain points, and offer short-term fixes with long-term integration. Phase Three is sustainment—we equip your team with tools and SOPs, and we offer optional bi-weekly follow-ups to support implementation."
Lucien added, "We also build custom dashboards if needed. We don't just recommend change—we track it."
Carla blinked. "That's… incredibly thorough. Honestly, I wasn't sure what I was walking into, but this is exactly the level of structure we're looking for."
I tried not to die of shock.
Lucien just smiled. Cool. Calm. Sinisterly competent.
"And what's your pricing model?" she asked.
Lucien answered without hesitation. "Tiered. Based on scale and urgency. For companies your size, we typically start at five figures for the first 30-day cycle. That includes your full diagnostic and the initial proposal."
She nodded, unfazed. "That's fair."
That's fair?!
We had just made that number up.
She was writing it down like we were established. Like we had a backend system and billing department and something other than panic and improvisation.
"Would you be open to drafting a scope of work by Monday?" she asked.
Lucien nodded. "Of course. Reed will send over our preliminary intake document this afternoon."
I smiled. "Looking forward to working with you."
She stood, shook both our hands, and exited gracefully like she hadn't just accidentally become our first client.
The moment the door closed behind her, I collapsed back in my chair, face burning.
Lucien turned to me, wide-eyed.
"What the hell did we just do?"
"I think," I breathed, "we just sold a service we don't provide."
He exhaled slowly. "And we're going to have to provide it now."
I nodded. "Yeah."
He looked at me again. And smiled.
"Reed," he said softly, like he still didn't quite believe it, "we may have just accidentally founded a real company."
We didn't leave the office.
By the time Carla's follow-up email hit the inbox—complete with three PDFs, a company snapshot, and a Google Drive folder titled Operational Pains – Internal Use Only—Lucien and I were still sitting at the same conference table, now littered with cold tea, scribbled notes, two laptops, and a visible aura of mild panic.
"She's serious," I muttered, skimming the files. "She's very serious. These documents have structure. Tabs. Color-coded cells."
Lucien rubbed his temples. "She used project management terms I thought were made up by bored interns."
I typed "SOP vs. OKR difference" into Google.
He typed "how to write a consulting intake document" and clicked the first ten links like he was defusing a bomb.
We sat in silence for a while, heads bowed to our respective search engines, the glow of desperation casting shadows under our eyes.
"I think we need to sign up for something," I said after ten minutes.
Lucien glanced up. "Sign up for what?"
"Like… a real tool. Something legit-looking. Something with boxes and graphs. Something that feels like we know what we're doing."
Lucien frowned, chewing on the inside of his cheek. "I'll make a dummy account on Notion. You start building a template on Google Docs."
"Do we know how to build templates?"
"No."
We did it anyway.
There was a rhythm to it—me translating Carla's notes into vaguely professional language, Lucien skimming free online courses on organizational design like he was studying for a test he forgot was tomorrow. He even found a YouTube video called "Mapping Scalable Workflows in 30 Minutes" and muttered "this man is either a genius or a war criminal" halfway through.
The intake doc started as a joke.
Then it wasn't.
We added headers. Intake Questions. Client Priority Level. Stakeholder Identification. Internal Communication Chains. "What do your Mondays look like?" (That one was mine.)
We color-coded. We created drop-downs. Lucien got emotionally invested in a font.
By the time the draft was complete, it was midnight.
The office was dark except for our laptops and the security light down the hall. The air smelled faintly like stress and the crumpled wrappers of snacks we didn't remember eating.
Lucien sat back in his chair and read the intake doc like it was a holy text. His fingers tapped the edge of the keyboard rhythmically.
"This… is actually usable," he said.
"Usable and aesthetically pleasing," I added.
He didn't smile.
He looked at me instead.
Long. Still. Something strange flickering behind his eyes.
"You know this is the first time I've done something that looks legitimate in years?" he said quietly.
I blinked. I didn't say anything.
But I understood. Because same.
We didn't plan for it. Didn't intend it. But somehow, in the middle of fake titles and tea-stained lies, we'd built something real enough to hold weight.
And that scared me more than all the rest.
Lucien was still staring at me like I'd suddenly grown a second head. Or a management degree.
We were back at our desks, unwinding from what could only be described as a controlled professional hallucination. Now Lucien was nursing a cup of very necessary tea.
Then he looked over at me.
"How did you know all of those terms you threw at her earlier?"
I shrugged, trying to downplay the very slight ego inflation that came from watching him look impressed.
"We had this class in college. It was technically a set design module, but one of the lectures was about how production companies function in depth—like, full-on operational logistics. It covered budgeting, team structuring, production pipelines, scheduling breakdowns, equipment rentals, the works. Our professor used to say, 'You can't build the fantasy if you don't understand the bureaucracy underneath it.'"
Lucien raised a brow. "Sounds unreasonably practical for an arts degree."
I sipped my lukewarm coffee and snorted. "Yeah, well, it was the only class that didn't make me feel like I was drowning in vibes and unpaid internships. I actually liked that one. We had to create mock production firms and pitch real proposals. I was the only one in my group who volunteered to do the admin stuff—everyone else wanted to be the creative lead."
"Of course you were," he said quietly, almost to himself.
I rolled my eyes. "It wasn't noble. I just liked knowing where everything went. What made things tick. Which wires to pull. I thought if I understood how the machine worked, maybe I could cheat it better."
Lucien was still watching me, head tilted, eyes a little too warm.
"I didn't realize you were the type to want control."
"Oh, I don't," I said, grinning. "I just hate surprises."
He laughed at that—low and genuine, like it startled him.
"I'm impressed."
"You say that like it's unusual."
"It is," he replied, taking another sip of tea. "You spend most of your time pretending not to care about anything."
I shrugged again. "It's easier than looking like I'm trying. People expect less from you when you act like you expect nothing."
He didn't answer right away.
Instead, he looked down at the document we had just created together—real, clean, functional—and then back up at me like he was recalibrating something in his head.
"Well," he finally said, setting the cup down, "you may have just saved our asses."
I smirked. "Add it to my résumé. 'Unpaid intern. Lead idiot. Accidental co-founder.'"
Lucien smiled faintly, but his expression stayed soft, thoughtful, like he was still trying to figure out whether this whole thing—this business, this partnership, this us—was a fluke or the start of something that neither of us had the language for yet.
And honestly?
Same.