Chapter 16
Ben
The cold was different out here.
Inside the timber frame, the ghost of walls had offered some shelter. But out in the clearing, the wind was unforgiving. It stripped the heat from my skin and carried the oily, mechanical stink of diesel exhaust from Lucia’s idling Range Rover.
She was leaning against the grill, arms wrapped tight around her chest, staring at the gravel. Her camel coat whipped around her legs, and her face was a mess of smeared mascara and red, wind-chapped skin.
She looked up when she heard my boots crunch on the stone.
"Is she okay?"
I wanted to say something cruel. I didn't.
"No," I said flatly. "She just found out her husband leveraged the roof over her head to build a monument to his ego. She's not okay."
Lucia flinched. She looked down at her boots—expensive Italian leather, already ruined by the mud and the salt.
"I didn't mean for this," she whispered. "I know that doesn't count for anything now. But I need you to know... I didn't want to hurt her."
"Intention doesn't stop a foreclosure, Lucia."
She nodded, accepting the hit. She looked small against the backdrop of the massive pines, shivering in her five-hundred-dollar coat.
I walked past her, stopping a few feet from the foundation. I looked up at the house.
From a distance, it was majestic. Up close, it was a crime scene.
The yellow pine was already turning gray from UV exposure. There was water pooling on the subfloor where the drainage was pitched wrong. If they didn't get a roof on this thing in the next two weeks, the damage would go from fixable to catastrophic. The wood would swell. The frame would twist.
But it wasn't there yet. Not quite.
Ryan was a brilliant architect. But looking at this site—the disorganized lumber pile, the lack of covering, the mud—it was obvious he was a shit general contractor.
He had built a Ferrari and left it out in the rain with the windows down.
"Tell me about the money," I said, not looking at her.
"What?"
"The construction loan. How much do you owe?"
She hesitated, then pulled her phone from her pocket. Her fingers were shaking so bad she had to use two hands to unlock it.
"Three hundred and twelve thousand," she said, reading from a banking app. "That's what we've drawn so far. The bank cut us off after Ryan's last request—they said the project wasn't progressing fast enough. They froze the rest of the credit line. Whole thing’s due in July."
I did the mental math, and my stomach turned over.
They had burned through more than three hundred grand, and the house wasn't even dried in. No roof, no windows, no rough plumbing, no electric.
"How much to finish it?" I asked.
"Ryan estimated another hundred and fifty." She bit her lip, looking at the banking screen like it might bite her. "But he was optimistic. And he was... he was moving money around at the end. Paying interest with draw requests. I think we were already over budget."
"Robbing Peter to pay Paul," I muttered.
"Yes."
I looked at the house again. The damn thing was a bleeding wound.
"And if you can't finish it by July?"
"The bank forecloses," she whispered. "They take this property. And when that doesn't cover the loan..." She looked at me. "They come after the collateral. They come after…"
"Olivia’s house," I finished.
I stared at the timber frame.
Six months.
To take a shell and turn it into a million-dollar home in this market, with winter settling in? It was a suicide mission. It required a full crew, a seasoned general contractor, and perfect weather. Ryan had left us with none of those things.
"I can't do this," Lucia said suddenly.
The words came out in a rush, like she was purging them.
"I have three other projects," she said, her voice rising.
"Two of them are bleeding cash. I've got investors calling me every day.
I was drowning before Ryan died, and now.
.." She gestured helplessly at the skeleton.
"I can't save this. I sell houses. I don't build them. I don't know how to fix this."
"So what are you going to do?"
"Walk away," she said. "Let the bank foreclose. Take the hit on my credit. I don't have a choice."
The wind howled through the clearing, punctuating the silence.
If she walked, the bank would seize the property immediately. They’d auction it off as a distressed asset. Unfinished homes were poison to lenders; they’d sell it for pennies on the dollar just to get it off their books.
It wouldn't cover the loan. Not even close.
And then the bank lawyers would look for the next asset to liquidate. They’d see the lien on Olivia’s deed.
I could see the future playing out like a set of blueprints. The certified letters, the sheriff’s sale. Olivia spending the next two years in court, trying to prove she didn't sign those papers, while she watched strangers move into the only home she had left.
It would break her.
She had already lost her husband. She had lost her history. If she lost her home, she wouldn't survive it.
"I'll buy you out," I said.
Lucia blinked. "What?"
"Your half of the LLC. I'll pay you what you have in—two hundred thousand. Promissory note, due when the house sells."
She stared at me. "You're betting you can finish and sell it."
"Yes."
"And if you can't?"
"Then you're no worse off than walking away. But if I pull this off, you get your money back."
She stared at me like I’d just suggested we flap our arms and fly off the mountain. "Are you insane?"
"Probably."
"This project is underwater. It’s toxic. You’d be buying a six-figure debt and a construction disaster."
"I'll finish it," I said. "Six months. I'll get it dried in, rough it in, finish it out. I'll get it listed by June."
"How?" She shook her head, a frantic, jerky motion. "You have a job, don’t you? You have your own life. You can't just—"
"I'm a contractor, Lucia. This is what I do. I fix broken houses."
"But why?" she demanded. Her voice cracked, raw with disbelief. "Why would you do that? You don't owe me anything. You don't owe Ryan anything—hell, after what he did, you should be lighting a match and burning this place to the ground."
I turned away from her and looked back at the house.
Through the massive open frame, I could see Olivia.
She was still standing at the window opening, a small, dark silhouette against the gray sky. Her hand was pressed against one of the rough-cut beams, and she was staring out toward the hills. Toward the reservoir and the curve in the road where her life had ended.
She looked so small in that massive, arrogant space. So incredibly alone.
Ryan had broken everything he touched. He had broken his marriage and this woman next to me. He had broken himself.
I couldn't fix Ryan.
But I could build a house.
"Because I have to," I said.