6. Daniel
DANIEL
The Linden tower looks best at night.
That's the kind of thing people say in interviews, so I don't say it out loud. But it does.
Eighty-six floors of glass and steel lit against the Singapore sky, every line clean, every angle expensive, every window catching the city back at itself.
From the roof deck, the harbor looks like a black sheet with gold thrown over it.
Ferries move through the water. Cars slide along the roads below in thin white lines.
It should feel like winning. It mostly feels like standing high up.
"Daniel," Marcus says behind me. "They're ready for you."
I turn from the edge.
The photographer is waiting near the temporary railing with Charlotte, Davis, Marcus, and two men from Linden who always look like they're measuring the room for weakness. Charlotte has a folder under one arm and my phone in her other hand.
My phone. Again.
"Your SIM dropped," she says when I look at it. "I got it back on the local network, but don't restart it."
"I didn't touch it."
"I know. It just hates you."
I step into the photo because that's what I'm here to do. Smile, shake hands, look like the man whose life is working.
The photographer counts down. Flash. Another.
The tower rises behind us, bright and impossible, and everyone around me is pleased in the exact way people get pleased when money starts becoming real.
Not theoretical money. Not projections. Real.
The first vesting notice comes through that morning. Then the performance bonus estimate. Then the amended equity schedule from Welling, because the board has decided my role in the Linden delivery needs to be "appropriately recognized before the market narrative hardens."
That's how rich men say, We should pay him before another firm does.
Marcus calls it transformational. Davis calls it overdue.
My father texts: This changes the family position. Proud of you.
The press team wants comments. The board wants availability. Someone from a magazine I've never read wants to do a profile on "the engineer behind Welling's billion-dollar Singapore moment."
Billion-dollar. That word keeps showing up.
Billionaire engineer, one headline says, which makes Marcus laugh into his Scotch and makes me want to throw my laptop into the pool.
I was already rich. That's an ugly thing to admit, but it's true.
I was rich in the way Welling men are rich before they earn anything.
Trust money. Equity. The right name on the right documents.
A house in New York with too many rooms for two people and a kitchen Nora loved more than most of the rest of it.
This is different. This is mine. Or it should feel like mine.
Instead I stand under the Singapore sky while people congratulate me, and all I can think about is Nora in our kitchen the night before I left, asking me what she was supposed to do with the months I was about to take from her.
I had answers then. Good answers. Temporary, necessary, worth it.
I remember her face when I said it.
Like I had asked her to be lonely now so we could be richer later.
Which is exactly what I did.
The photographer lowers the camera.
"One more with just Daniel and Charlotte," he says.
"No," I say. It comes out too fast.
Everyone looks at me.
"I mean no solo combinations," I say, because apparently I can design an eighty-six-floor tower but not a sentence. "Use the team shot."
Charlotte's expression does not change.
That's one of the things I respect about her. She doesn't make moments messy. She just shifts, smiles at the photographer, and says, "Team shot is stronger for the release anyway."
Useful. Competent. Always there.
That has been the shape of Singapore.
Charlotte is in the hotel lobby at six-thirty in the morning with coffee and schedule changes.
Charlotte is in the site office with marked drawings.
Charlotte is at the hotel bar at midnight with Marcus, Davis, Shen, and three exhausted analysts, moving numbers around while the bartender pretends not to hear words like acceleration clause and gross margin.
It's never just Charlotte and me. Almost never.
That's not the point. The point is she is always there.
She handles the local vendors. She handles the calendar. She handles the press team. She handles the fact that my phone refuses to keep the Singapore SIM active for more than six hours unless someone whispers prayers into the settings menu.
When we go into closed sessions with Linden, she collects devices because their legal team is paranoid about leaks.
When Marcus wants me focused, she says, "I'll hold it. Nora can reach the hotel if it's urgent."
I don't like that sentence. I also let her take the phone.
That's the problem with useful people. They make your bad choices feel efficient.
Charlotte is beautiful. I'm not blind.
She has pale hair and sharp black dresses and the kind of controlled, expensive face that photographs well under bad lights. Men notice her when she walks through the lobby.
I see it. I don't care. Not the way people mean. If anything, being around Charlotte makes me miss my wife more.
Charlotte is useful. Nora is home. Those aren't the same thing. They've never been the same thing.
The only reason I stay is because the harder I work, the sooner I can go back.
That's what I tell myself. It sounds noble if I don't look at it too long.
After the roof deck photos, we go down to the hotel bar because of course we do.
It's nearly midnight.
Marcus takes one end of the table. Davis opens his laptop. Shen orders coffee. Charlotte sits to my left, because she has the annotated packet and the external battery that keeps my laptop alive.
I sit down and think about Nora. Again.
It happens at stupid times. In elevators. During calls. When I smell lemon because the hotel puts slices in the water jugs and it reminds me of her hands zesting fruit over a bowl.
During the day, I can work around missing her. At night, I'm worse.
At night there's too much space in the bed and too much city outside the windows. The flat has a view people would pay terrible money for, and I hate it a little. It has beige walls, glass tables, expensive linens, and no Nora.
No mug in the sink. No flour on the counter.
I miss my wife. I miss her so badly sometimes it feels physical.
Then she reaches for me from the other side of the world, and the timing is impossible.
That is how I think of it. Pressure. Deadlines. Bad timing. The kind of thing a marriage can absorb if both people understand the bigger picture.
Nora understands. She has to.
"Daniel."
Marcus snaps his fingers once over the revised schedule.
I look up.
"Are you with us?"
"Yes."
I am. I'm always with them. That's the job.
The subcontractor crisis hits the next day.
It's not dramatic in a way anyone outside our world would understand. No fire. No collapse. Just a supplier who changed material allocation without sign-off. A subcontractor who decided the words equivalent substitution meant cheaper, then hoped nobody would notice.
I notice. The whole day disappears into it.
Nine in the morning becomes noon. Noon becomes four. Four becomes a site walk, a legal call, three revised load tables, and Davis turning red in a conference room while Marcus says, "Let's keep our heads."
At some point, Shen says, "Your wife called?"
My head comes up.
"What?"
"Your phone buzzed. Earlier."
My stomach tightens.
Charlotte has the phone because we were in a closed Linden session when the first message came in. She hands it over immediately. No hesitation. Nothing strange. Just my phone, face up, Nora's name on the screen.
Nora: Can you call me when you wake up? It's important.
Then:
Nora: Nothing bad. I just need to talk to you.
Then, later:
Nora: Are you awake?
My chest pulls tight. I stand up.
Then Davis says, "Daniel, if we don't answer Linden on this before their morning, they'll freeze the change order."
I stop.
The change order is forty-eight million dollars. That's a ridiculous sentence. It's also true.
If Linden freezes it, the closing schedule slips. If the closing schedule slips, the board gets involved.
Nora said nothing bad. I hold on to that. Nothing bad. Important, yes, but not bad.
So I tell myself ten minutes won't matter. Ten minutes becomes the whole day.
I text her instead.
Me: In session. Will call as soon as I can.
It doesn't send. The SIM has dropped again.
"Damn it."
Charlotte looks over. "Network?"
"Yes."
"Give it here."
She taps through settings while I watch the change-order numbers bleed across my screen. A minute later, she sets the phone beside me.
"It's connected," she says. "I sent your message."
"Thank you."
For the next eleven hours, the delivered text feels like enough. Not good. Enough.
I intend to call. That has to count for something.
By the time I finally do call, the hotel bar has turned into another office.
Marcus is at the end of the table. Davis is glaring at the revised equity slide.
Shen has three coffees lined up in front of him like he is preparing for battle.
Charlotte sits beside me with my phone charger, the marked packet, and a pen tucked behind her ear.
Nora sounds strange. I catch it.
But I'm tired. The room is loud, my brain still half in the numbers. So instead of asking the right question, I ask practical ones.
Is something wrong?
What happened?
Why did you text like that if nothing was wrong?
I hear myself get clipped about the time difference, and I don't like it, but I also don't take it back. Because some part of me thinks she should understand.
I'm here for us. I'm doing this for us.
I'm weeks away from bringing home the kind of money that changes everything. Not only rich. Welling rich. Board-seat rich. The kind of rich where Nora can reopen Honey & Rye on the exact street she wants, with the exact tile she wants, and never have to ask whether the commercial rent is insane.
I picture that while she's quiet on the phone. Her bakery open again. New ovens. A sign out front with her name under the logo if she wants it.
I can give her all of that. So when she says everything is fine, I let myself believe her. Not fully. Enough.
Charlotte comes over at the worst possible moment.
"Daniel, Marcus needs you on the revised equity slide."
Nora goes quiet.
I tell Charlotte one second, and the silence on the phone changes. I hear that too.
I tell myself I'll smooth it out tomorrow. It sounds reasonable.
Nora says goodnight like it's a door closing.
Then the call ends.
For a few seconds, I hold the phone.
"Everything all right?" Charlotte asks.
"It's fine," I say.
It's not fine. But it's manageable. That's different. Manageable means I can handle it later.
Then I text her because I don't like the way she hung up.
Don't hang up on me like that.
We'll talk tomorrow.
Please don't send urgent messages unless it's actually urgent.
The last one is too sharp. I know that. But the equity slide is still wrong, and Marcus is waiting, and I tell myself I'll fix the sharpness when I have more than one hand free.
I go back to work.
By two-thirty, Welling is wealthier. So am I.