I Had to Reject a Design Draft from Tehran Because I Couldn't Clear the Master Artisan's Deposit

Dear Delyara, I had to write an email to our master artisan in Tehran tonight, making up a pathetic, professional lie about "timeline adjustments" because I couldn't afford the three-hundred-pound deposit required to start casting the wax mold for our new silver ring. I sat there looking at his beautiful, intricate digital rendering—a design inspired by ancient Persian royalty that I spent three months researching—and my eyes filled with tears. I am a graduate of business management, I talk about luxury positioning and high-end brand equity, yet I am currently stalling our production because I don't have three hundred pounds of liquid capital to my name. The sheer humiliation of having to hide my poverty behind corporate jargon from the very people who trust my vision is a form of psychological torture. I closed the laptop and just sat in the dark, feeling like an absolute pretender.