Chapter 1

The air on the construction site was thick with the smell of wet concrete and sawdust, a smell that was supposed to be the perfume of my dream coming to life. Instead, it felt like the stench of a funeral.

I stood on the muddy ground, my expensive boots sinking slightly, and stared at the skeleton of my house. It was all wrong. The lines were wrong, the angles were off, the flow was completely broken. It wasn't the fluid, light-filled space I had spent a thousand hours designing. It was a clumsy, awkward box.

The site foreman, a big man with a sun-beaten face named Gus, stood beside me, shifting his weight. He held a set of rolled-up blueprints. They weren't my blueprints.

"See, Ms. Chen," he said, pointing a thick finger at a load-bearing wall that was in completely the wrong place. "We built it exactly to spec. The plans say the support goes here. It chops the whole living space in two, but that's what the plans say."

My heart hammered against my ribs. I knew my plans. I knew them by heart. I had never designed something so structurally idiotic.

"Those aren't my plans, Gus."

"They're the ones we got from Mr. Davis. The official set. Stamped and everything."

Mark Davis. My ex-boyfriend. The struggling real estate agent I had finally gotten out of my life three months ago. A cold dread washed over me. He was the one who had offered to handle the plan submissions with the contractor, a "parting gift" to show there were no hard feelings. I was a brilliant architect, but a trusting fool.

I pulled out my phone, my hands shaking slightly. I scrolled to his name and hit dial. He picked up on the third ring, his voice slick and cheerful.

"Chloe! To what do I owe the pleasure? Calling to tell me you miss me?"

"Mark, what did you do?" My voice was tight, low.

"What are you talking about? I'm in the middle of a showing. Big commission."

"The house, Mark. The plans. They're wrong. This isn't my design."

There was a short pause. I could hear the faint sound of him walking, the echo of his shoes on a tile floor. Then he chuckled, a sound full of condescension.

"Look, Chloe, not every idea that looks good on paper works in the real world. I might have made a few practical tweaks. Made it more sellable, you know? Your artsy stuff doesn't always move."

"You... you swapped them? You swapped my architectural plans for something else?"

"Let's just call it a professional consultation," he said, his voice dripping with false sincerity. "You'll thank me when you see how much easier it is to build."

He hung up.

I stood there, phone in my hand, the world tilting on its axis. He didn't just tweak them. He had gutted my work, replaced my soul with cheap, ugly trash.

I drove back to my office in a daze, the city lights blurring past the windows. The construction company was just a tool; they did what the plans told them to do. The city inspectors would have approved the plans Mark submitted, not the ones I created. They were "official institutions" that were powerless because they had been fed the wrong information. The sabotage was perfect.

Back in the sterile, white light of my studio, I pulled up my original files on my main monitor. The design glowed on the screen, a symphony of light and space, my masterpiece. I then unrolled the copy of the blueprints Gus had given me.

Side by side, the difference was a crime. My design was a living thing. His was a prison. As I scanned the fraudulent plans, my eyes caught something in the title block. A tiny, almost invisible watermark beneath the main seal. It was the logo of a cheap, online design firm, one known for selling generic, knock-off house plans. And next to it, a digital signature I didn't recognize at first, but after zooming in, my blood ran cold. It was a variation of his own signature, one he used for his real estate LLC.

He had stolen my dream and replaced it with a lie he had bought for a few hundred dollars online.

The connection was undeniable, but the malice was incomprehensible. Why? We had broken up, but I thought it was amicable. Was it jealousy? Greed?

I took a deep breath and sent him one last text message. I didn't accuse. I appealed to the five years we had spent together.

"Mark, I don't understand why you did this. But this project is my life's work. Please, just tell the contractor there was a mistake. Give them the right plans. We can fix this."

I stared at the screen, waiting for the three little dots to appear. Instead, a notification popped up.

You can no longer send messages to this person.

He had blocked me. The finality of it was a slap in the face. My masterpiece was being built into a monstrosity, and the man responsible had just slammed the door in my face and vanished.