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The Hearing Opens
publish date:
2026-09-10 23:15:53
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RIVAL FOUNDATIONS The Hearing Opens
The Landmark Preservation Committee's review opened on a Thursday, in a hearing room considerably less friendly than the ballroom of the gala had been, all fluorescent lighting and folding chairs and a long table at the front where Eleanor Pierce sat flanked by two committee members Sienna had never met, both of them lawyers by trade, both of them looking at the assembled parties with the careful neutrality of people who had already decided this was going to be an unpleasant few weeks.Sienna sat beside Marcus, a folder of her own documentation squared in front of her, and watched Damian take his seat across the aisle with a legal team of four behind him, Nadia included, all of them dressed like they'd come from a funeral instead of a hearing. He caught her eye once, briefly, before the proceedings started, and something passed between them that wasn't quite reassurance, because neither of them had anything reassuring to offer the other, but wasn't quite despair either."This review e
RIVAL FOUNDATIONS What the Review Might Find
The email arrived on a Monday morning, forwarded from Eleanor Pierce's office with a subject line that gave Sienna no warning at all about what it contained: URGENT: WHITMORE PROJECT REVIEW REQUEST.She read it standing at her desk, the same way she'd read the original bid notice three months earlier, and felt the floor shift under her in a way that had nothing to do with the loft's slightly uneven hardwood.The Landmark Preservation Committee has received a formal complaint alleging financial irregularities in the original riverfront development deal between Cross Holdings and Marlowe Design Studio, dated three years prior. The complaint suggests these irregularities may be relevant to Cross Holdings' fitness to serve as a partner on a publicly funded restoration project, and requests a formal review before the Whitmore restoration proceeds further. The Committee is obligated to investigate this complaint and will be pausing active work on the joint venture pending review.Sienna cal
RIVAL FOUNDATIONS The Preservation Gala
Eleanor Pierce's preservation gala was held at the Ashford Historical Society, a converted mansion downtown with the kind of ballroom that made Sienna acutely aware of the difference between her closet and the closets of everyone else likely to be in attendance. Priya had solved the problem by loaning her a dress she swore she'd only worn once, and Sienna stood in front of the loft's single decent mirror that evening feeling like a woman about to walk into a role she hadn't fully rehearsed."You look like you're about to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court," Priya said, adjusting the dress's shoulder. "Which, considering the company, might not be far off."The gala was, officially, a fundraiser for the preservation committee's broader work across the city. Unofficially, everyone in Ashford's civic and business circles understood it as the public debut of the Whitmore joint venture, the first time Marlowe Design and Cross Holdings would appear together, as partners, in front of
RIVAL FOUNDATIONS The Stairwell
The storm rolled in faster than the forecast had promised, which Sienna would later think was exactly the kind of detail that belonged in a story like this one, the kind her father used to tell about buildings that seemed to have opinions about the people working on them.They were three hours into a site inspection of the Whitmore's upper mezzanine when the first crack of thunder rattled the old windows hard enough that Devon nearly dropped his tablet. Foster's team had already cleared out for the day, citing the forecast, but Sienna and Damian had stayed behind to walk the scaffolding one more time, checking measurements against the restoration plans before the next phase of work began, and by the time they realized how bad the storm had actually gotten, the building's old wiring had already flickered twice in warning."We should head down," Damian said, as the lights flickered a third time and stayed out for a long, uncertain second before stuttering back on.They were halfway down
RIVAL FOUNDATIONS Under the Painted Stars
The site visit to the Whitmore was scheduled for a Wednesday morning, and Sienna had been inside the building exactly once since her father took her there as a child, a brief walkthrough with the previous owners two years ago that hadn't prepared her for what it felt like to stand in the lobby now, hard hat on, construction lights strung along the walls, and look up at the dome.Water damage had taken a toll on the mural. Whole sections of the night sky had bled and faded, gold leaf stars flaking away from decades of neglect, but enough of it remained, enough of the original composition survived, that Sienna felt her throat tighten the way it had when she was eleven years old and had no idea yet that this building would end up meaning something entirely different to her as an adult."It's something, isn't it," Damian said, beside her, his own head tilted back to take in the dome. Foster and the rest of the engineering team had spread out through the lobby with equipment, leaving the t
RIVAL FOUNDATIONS Page Forty
It took Sienna two weeks to work up the nerve to actually pull the riverfront deal's paperwork, and when she finally did, it was almost by accident, a Saturday afternoon spent cleaning out a filing cabinet in the back of the loft that hadn't been touched since her father's funeral. She found the folder near the bottom, unlabeled except for a date, and she sat down on the floor of the storage room and read the whole thing twice before she let herself feel anything about it.The contract was exactly as bad as she remembered, in the ways she remembered, and worse in ways she hadn't fully understood at twenty six, when the whole thing had happened and she'd been too consumed with watching her father unravel to read the fine print herself. The clause on page forty was every bit as buried as family legend had made it, a restructuring provision that transferred design credit and controlling decision rights to Cross Holdings under a set of conditions that, on paper, looked like standard risk
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