The studio lights felt hotter today, or maybe it was just the collective tension coiling in the air.
We stood at our workstations, polished stainless steel and pristine white countertops gleaming under the relentless glare, a sterile arena for our floral bloodsport.
Magnifico, the show’s flamboyant host, glided into the center of the room, his sequined blazer catching the light like a shattered mirror.
“Gladiators!” he boomed, his voice echoing in the cavernous space.
“Yesterday, you introduced yourselves to the world with your signature arrangements. You laid your souls bare upon a bed of petals and stems. But today…”
He paused, letting the drama hang thick and cloying as a hothouse fog.
“Today, we separate the poets from the predators. Your challenge is to create a large-scale installation that embodies… a hostile corporate takeover.”
A ripple of confusion went through the contestants. A few, like the ever-eager Bradley, nodded as if this made perfect sense.
I saw Giselle’s lips curl into a predatory smile; she’d probably been staging hostile takeovers in her dollhouse since she was five.
But Julian… Julian looked utterly lost. His brow furrowed, the elegant line of his mouth tightening in distaste.
He glanced down at his immaculate hands, as if he couldn’t imagine them creating something so… vulgar. I almost felt a flicker of pity for him.
The man spoke in flowers, and the language of asset stripping and leveraged buyouts was clearly foreign.
For me, however, a slow, wolfish grin spread across my face. A hostile takeover. I understood that.
It was the law of the jungle, dressed up in a suit. It was the Venus flytrap closing on an unsuspecting fly.
It was what I saw in Giselle’s eyes when she looked at Julian’s orchids. This wasn’t just a language I spoke; it was my native tongue.
“You have three hours on the clock,” Magnifico declared, gesturing to the massive digital timer on the wall. “Your time… starts… now!”
The controlled chaos erupted. Contestants scurried towards the supply room, a refrigerated haven packed with every botanical wonder imaginable.
I, however, stayed put for a moment, my sketchbook already open. My mind was racing, images snapping into place with thrilling clarity.
A sprawling bed of lush, verdant pillow moss—the unsuspecting, long-established company, rich and complacent. And rising from it, devouring it, would be the aggressors.
Jagged, architectural pitcher plants, their gaping mouths hungry for more. A phalanx of electric-blue eryngium, sea holly, like spiky, blue-chip executives in sharp suits.
And for the infrastructure, twisted, skeletal branches of manzanita, stripped bare and unforgiving.
While Julian was still staring at his blank page, his pencil hovering indecisively, I was already moving.
I strode to my corner of the supply room, grabbing armfuls of the moss, the scent of damp earth and decay filling my senses.
I found the most menacing pitcher plants, their veined hoods and slick interiors looking particularly carnivorous. My hands moved with a certainty that felt like a coiled spring finally released.
This was my element. Ugliness made beautiful. Brutality given form.
Across the studio, Julian was finally beginning. His approach was, predictably, esoteric.
He was carefully wiring individual stems of pristine white calla lilies onto a severe, geometric frame. He seemed to be interpreting “hostile” as “minimalist and cold.”
It was elegant, of course. Everything the man did was elegant. But it lacked teeth.
It was a sterile, artistic rendering of a concept that should be visceral and bloody.
His takeover was a silent, bloodless affair in a boardroom. Mine was a street fight.
An hour bled into the next. My installation was taking shape, a landscape of beautiful violence.
The soft moss was already being encroached upon, the sharp, angular forms of the pitcher plants and eryngium creating a palpable tension.
It needed one final element, something to represent the insidious, creeping nature of the takeover—the backroom deals, the poison pills.
A vine. Something dark and tenacious that could weave through the chaos and choke the life from the moss.
I remembered seeing something perfect when we’d first toured the supply room. A rare cultivar, something I’d only ever seen in catalogs.
I wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my wrist and headed for the refrigerated storeroom at the back.
The air inside was a blessed shock, cool and fragrant with chlorophyll and cold stone. It was quieter in here, the frantic energy of the studio muffled by the thick, insulated door.
Rows upon rows of buckets held floral treasures from around the globe. I scanned the shelves, my eyes searching for deep, dark foliage.
And then I saw it. On a high shelf, tucked behind a bucket of flamboyant ginger flowers, was a single pot containing a vine with leaves so dark a purple they were almost black.
Scindapsus treubii ‘Dark Form’. Perfect. It was glossy and sleek, like spilled oil.
It was just out of my reach. I stood on my toes, my fingers stretching, brushing against the cool plastic of the pot.
At the exact same moment, another hand reached for it from the other side of the shelving unit.
A hand that was long-fingered, clean, with immaculately cared-for nails. Julian’s hand.
The back of his hand brushed the sensitive skin of my knuckles.
It wasn’t a bump. It was a connection. A current, sharp and unwelcome, shot up my arm, making the fine hairs stand on end.
It was like grabbing a live wire, a sudden, shocking jolt of pure energy that had nothing to do with static electricity.
It was heat and friction and a startling awareness of the man I had dismissed as a pampered peacock.
My hand recoiled as if burned. My gaze snapped up, meeting his over the top of the shelf.
His eyes, usually a cool, assessing blue, were wide with the same surprise that was thrumming through my own veins.
The professional disdain was gone, replaced by something unguarded and raw. In the quiet, cold air of the storeroom, I could see the faint flush rising on his high cheekbones.
His lips were slightly parted, as if he’d been about to say something that the shock had stolen from his lungs.
The world narrowed to the few feet of space between us. The frantic ticking of the clock, the distant shouts of the producers, the entire artifice of the competition dissolved into a low hum.
All that existed was the scent of damp earth, the chill on my skin, and the unexpected heat where we’d touched. My heart was hammering against my ribs, a frantic, panicked rhythm.
This was not part of the plan. He was the rival, the antagonist, the embodiment of everything I fought against—privilege, classicism, art without grit.
He was not supposed to make my breath catch in my throat.
He recovered first, his mask of cool composure sliding back into place, though it didn’t quite settle right. It was like a beautiful vase that had been cracked and hastily glued back together.
“I need that,” he said, his voice a low murmur, huskier than usual.
“So do I,” I shot back, my own voice tight. I forced myself to reach for it again, my movements jerky.
Our fingers brushed once more. This time it was worse. A fleeting, searing contact that sent another ridiculous jolt straight to my core.
I snatched my hand back, cradling it against my chest as if he’d actually injured me.
He stared at me, his blue eyes searching my face. That brief, unguarded moment had shown him something, and now he was trying to decipher it.
I felt exposed, furious at my body’s ridiculous, hormonal betrayal.
Animosity I could handle. Competition I thrived on.
This tense, humming awareness was a foreign country with no discernible landmarks.
He looked from my face to the vine, then back again. For a long, stretched-out second, I was sure he would fight me for it, that this would devolve into an undignified tug-of-war.
Instead, he slowly retracted his hand. “Fine,” he said, the word clipped. “Take it. Your… creation seems to be crying out for a touch of darkness.”
The insult was there, wrapped in his silken delivery, but it lacked its usual sting.
It felt like an afterthought, a desperate attempt to re-establish the familiar lines of our battlefield after we had accidentally stumbled into a truce.
Without another word, I grabbed the pot, my fingers trembling slightly. I didn’t thank him. I didn’t even look at him.
I turned on my heel and marched out of the storeroom, the precious vine held out in front of me like a shield.
Back at my station, the heat of the studio lights felt suffocating. I could feel Julian’s eyes on me from across the room, a weight on the back of my neck.
I refused to look his way.
With hands that were not quite steady, I began to carefully weave the black-leafed vine through my brutal landscape.
It coiled around the pitcher plants, slithered over the moss, and crept up the bare branches, a perfect, sinister finishing touch.
It was exactly what my piece needed. But as I worked, all I could feel was the ghost of his touch on my skin, a phantom warmth that refused to fade.
The hostile takeover on my workbench was complete, but a far more confusing and volatile one had just begun inside of me.