I felt a flash of anger hot enough to melt the ice under my boots. "Excuse me?"
"He felt stuck, Olivia." Her voice wasn't cruel, just factual. "He felt like he was spinning his wheels at his firm. Doing bathrooms and kitchen bump-outs. He wanted a win. A big one." She gestured to the house. "He wanted to prove he could execute something like this. He wanted to come to you when it was done, with the check in his hand, and say, 'Look what I did.'"
I stared at her.
Ryan, the optimist. Ryan, who hummed while he made coffee.
He hadn't just been cheating on me with a woman; he’d been cheating on me with a career. He’d been moonlighting as a developer, chasing some desperate need for validation that I apparently didn't give him.
"And the affair?" I asked. "Where did that fit into the business plan?"
She looked away. "It just... happened. We were spending hours together. Late nights reviewing plans. Site visits. He was so passionate about this place. It was contagious." She looked back at me. "He wasn't unhappy withyou, Olivia. He was unhappy withhimself. And when he was with me, here... I suppose he felt like the man he wanted to be."
I felt sick. It was almost worse than if he’d just fallen out of love. He had used her to feel important.
I'd convinced myself that "this ends tonight" meant the affair. That Ryan was driving out here to do the right thing, but standing here, looking at this house—theirhouse—I couldn't make myself believe it anymore.
"Was he going to leave me?" I asked. "Is that what Friday was about?"
"I don't know." Her voice cracked. "He texted me after lunch. Said we needed to talk. That it was important." She took a shaky breath, then gestured at the house, the movement sharp and frustrated. "I thought... I hoped it meant he was finally ready to choose. Me. The project. All of it."
"But he died before he got here."
"Yes."
I looked at the house again. The sheer scale of it was dizzying.
"This isn't a cheap build," I said.
"No."
I looked at Ben. He was staring at the structure, his eyes narrowing as he did the math. When he looked back at me, I saw the calculation in his face.Expensive.
"How much?" I asked Lucia.
She hesitated.
"Lucia. How much is in this hole?"
"The land was two hundred. Materials and labor... another three-fifty so far. And we're not even dried in."
Five hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
"Where did he get that kind of money?" My voice trembled. "Ryan didn't have half a million dollars. We have savings, but nothing like that."
Lucia looked at me, and for the first time, I saw the panic underneath her grief. She wasn't just mourning a lover. This woman was terrified.
"Where did the money come from, Lucia?"
"A construction loan," she said quietly. "Private equity. High interest, short term. We were supposed to refinance once the frame was up."
"A loan requires collateral," I said. "If he didn't use cash, what did he leverage?"
She closed her eyes. She looked small suddenly.
"He put up his equity," she said.
"What equity?"
