"Ben—"
"And because I can't watch you lose this house."
He took a step closer to the counter, invading my space, forcing me to look at him.
"I can't sit back and watch you get buried in legal fees and bankruptcy hearings because Ryan decided to play make-believe with your life. I won't do it."
I didn’t know what to say, other than the obvious.
"This isn't your mess to clean up," I said, my voice trembling.
"Maybe not. But I'm the only one who knows how to hold a hammer." He pushed the folder toward me across the granite. It slid with a soft hiss. "So here's what's going to happen. I'mgoing to finish that house. I'm going to get it dried in, roughed in, and finished out in six months. And then we're going to sell it, pay off the bank, and you're going to walk away from this whole nightmare intact."
I looked down at the folder. Inside was my salvation, bought with his ruin.
I pulled it closer and opened it. Inside was a handwritten agreement—basic terms, both their signatures at the bottom. And underneath, pages of notes: construction schedules, material lists, cost breakdowns. All in his handwriting.
He'd spent the last three hours planning this.
"And if we can't?" I asked, looking back up at him. "If six months isn't enough?"
Ben didn't flinch.
"Then we both go down," he said. "But we go down swinging."
Chapter 18
Ben
Iwas about to blow up my life, and I'd invited everyone to watch.
The shop was packed. Eleven people crammed into a space meant for half that, breath fogging in the January cold despite the space heater rattling in the corner. The fluorescents hummed overhead, throwing harsh light on faces I'd worked with for years—some of them a decade or more.
I'd called an all-hands meeting. The last time I'd done that was five years ago, when we'd landed the Hadley Elementary renovation. That had been champagne and back-slapping.
This wasn't that.
Nobody was sitting except Linda and Walt. Linda perched on a stool near the workbench, laptop open, already running numbers in her head. Walt had his bad leg stretched out, leaning against the drill press like he always did. Everyone else stood with their hands shoved in pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold.
Dave Sullivan stood near the door, arms crossed over his Carhartt jacket. Fifty-two, broad-shouldered, my most senior project manager. The guy who'd been running jobs for me since I opened this place fifteen years ago.
Collins leaned against the table saw. He already knew why he was here—I'd told him three days ago, right after I signed the papers with Lucia. The kid hadn't blinked. Just nodded and said,When do we start?
Frank Delaney worked a toothpick across his jaw, eyes narrowed. Walt Turner watched me with that steady gaze he'd had since I was twenty-three and didn't know a miter from a table saw. Jimmy and Carlos from the framing crew. A couple of younger guys whose names I knew but whose faces still felt new.
The shop smelled like sawdust and coffee and fifteen years of sweat.
I cleared my throat. Eleven faces turned toward me.
"Thanks for coming," I said. "I know it's late."
Frank pulled the toothpick from his mouth. "You called an all-hands, boss. Must be serious."
"It is." I looked around the room—at the faces I'd worked with for years, the people who trusted me to keep the lights on and the paychecks coming. "Ryan Hartley's dead. You all knew him."
A few nods, some uncomfortable shifting. Frank looked down at his boots. Collins had gone to the funeral. Walt had helped Ryan pick out the timber for his own back deck three years ago.
"What you don't know is that he left behind an unfinished house and a three-hundred-thousand-dollar construction loan. The bank's coming for it in six months. And when they don't get their money from the house, they're coming for his widow's home." I hesitated, then led with the truth. "The one she didn't know he'd put up as collateral."
