“I believe people do,” Mia said. “Walls just help them admit it.”
That was the moment the room shifted.
Until then, Daniel had been evaluating her.
Now he was listening.
Mia felt it the way she felt when a room’s proportions were right. Something invisible settling into place.
His assistant, Evelyn Cho, glanced up from her notes.
Jason Park, the bodyguard Mia had not realized was a bodyguard until now, stood near the door with his hands folded and his eyes on everyone except Daniel. There was another man in the corner, broad-shouldered, silent, wearing a black suit that looked more like armor than clothing.
No one relaxed around Daniel Kang.
No one except Mia the night before, apparently, when she had used him like a pillow on public transportation.
Wonderful.
A career highlight.
Daniel finally spoke.
“You have six months.”
Mia blinked.
“The previous schedule allowed nine.”
“It now allows six.”
“That’s impossible.”
“No,” Daniel said. “It’s expensive.”
Mia stared at him.
“That is not the same thing.”
“For most problems, it is.”
“For construction problems in a landmark hotel, money helps. It does not bend time, permits, supply chains, or physics.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
This time, it almost became a smile.
“Then don’t bend them,” he said. “Outsmart them.”
Mia should have walked away.
A reasonable woman would have said no to the impossible timeline, the strange client, the guards at the door, and the fact that Daniel Kang’s reputation—once she searched it later in a bathroom stall—was less hotel executive and more urban legend.
But Mia was not in a position to be reasonable.
Her design firm, Carter & Bloom, had once been promising. Then her business partner, Elise Bloom, left abruptly, taking two major clients, half the staff, and a folder of proposals Mia still suspected had been copied. The rent on their small office in Brooklyn was two months late. Their best junior designer had quietly updated his LinkedIn profile. Mia had maxed out one credit card paying a consultant and another covering payroll.
The Harrington-Kang contract could save the firm.
Or bury it.
So she signed.
For the next three weeks, Mia lived inside the hotel.
She arrived before sunrise and left after midnight. She walked through half-demolished corridors with a hard hat over her messy bun and a pencil tucked behind her ear. She argued with electricians, soothed preservation consultants, charmed city inspectors, and once physically blocked a contractor from removing an original brass doorframe because “it looked old.”
“It is old,” she snapped. “That is the point.”
Daniel appeared without warning.
Always in dark suits.
Always with Jason nearby.
Sometimes he stayed for five minutes.
Sometimes an hour.
He rarely praised anything.
He did not need to.
Mia learned to read him by absence.
If he hated something, he asked one sharp question that sliced the concept open.
If he was uncertain, he stood still too long.
If he approved, he simply moved on.
It irritated her more than it should have.
“Most clients say thank you,” she told him one night as they stood beneath exposed ceiling beams in the lobby.
Daniel looked at the half-installed light fixtures.
“Most clients are easily impressed.”
“And you?”
“I am rarely surprised.”
Mia looked at him, covered in dust, holding rolled plans under one arm.
“That sounds lonely.”
Jason’s eyes snapped toward her.
Daniel went very still.
There it was again: the thing everyone else knew not to touch.
But Mia was tired. And when Mia was tired, her filter became decorative.
Daniel looked down at her.
“Careful, Miss Carter.”
“With what?”
“Thinking you understand a room because you can see the walls.”
She should have apologized.
Instead she said, “Careful, Mr. Kang.”
His eyes narrowed.
“With what?”
“Assuming no one can see the cracks.”
