Todos os capítulos de His Greatest Regret: Capítulo 31 - Capítulo 40

TARIKThe floor is dark when I get in. The overhead lights wake one bank at a time as I walk to my office, and Marissa won't be here for another hour.I set my coffee on the desk and don't drink it. The photo is still open on my phone: Malik asleep on top of his blanket, the little gold ballplayer hooked under his arm.I've looked at it enough times that it has stopped being a picture and started being a list of what it leaves out. One frame, chosen by someone else and sent to me. It doesn't tell me what he said at breakfast, or whether he fought bedtime, or what he does with his hands when he's nervous. I could get a photo a month for ten years and still not know him.I lock the screen. There's nothing to send back, and I'm not going to look for something. Whatever Malik gets from me, if he gets anything, will be on terms his mother sets and he can live with. What I can do is find out what showing up actually takes.***Elena's kitchen still smells faintly of dinner, with a playlist

TARIKThe Brightwater amendment is still open on my desk when I check the figures again.Eleven point six million dollars. The approvals are in place, and the numbers reconcile with the documents I have. I can’t identify what’s wrong, only that I don’t have enough to establish whether everything is as it should be.The original subcontract is in Records. Monday, at the earliest.I close the file for now.At five, I take my coat off the hook. Ivy’s recital starts at five-thirty.⸻The auditorium is already filling when I get there. Parents work their way down the rows, pulling coats off children who immediately want them back on. A woman in the front row holds her phone up, testing the angle. Somewhere behind me, a child asks how much longer until they can go home.I take a seat near the front.Ivy spots me before the lights go down. Her whole face opens, quick and unguarded, the way children’s faces do before they learn not to hide it. She lifts a hand. I lift mine.She turns back tow

SOPHIAI read the authority's draft brief on the edge of the bed with a pencil, slowly, because that's the only way I trust a contract.It's nine pages. *Specialist Design Consultant, Public Waterfront. The promenade, the pier park, the seawall edge, and the public routes from the street down to the water. About a quarter of the site by area, and all of it that people will actually touch.I like it more than I want to.My name would be on the part of Hudson Quay I care about, with a credit line, direct access to the authority at every design review, and real control over the edge. The fee is a fixed lump sum paid on milestones, which looks fair against the hours as scoped. Then I reach page six and the pencil stops.Changes to the Consultant's design require the approval of the Design-Build Lead.I underline it. The Design-Build Lead is Bennett & Stone. Under that clause, a cost-cutting meeting could take my public edge apart one line item at a time, and I'd learn about it afterward.

TARIKOn Sunday the fortieth floor is dark except for my office and the hum of the vents. I unlock my screen, and procurement's email is sitting at the top of the inbox.Subject: Waterfront Specialist Role. Consultant Response to Redline.It's short. Cole & Bennett has declined the position we sent yesterday and restated its original request: the authority's decision on any change to the public edge is to be binding on the Design-Build Lead. Under that, Teague has added a paragraph in bold. The selection panel needs the commercial terms settled before Monday's 9:00 a.m. hearing, so procurement requires our acceptance or rejection by 6:00 p.m. today to circulate the agreed position to the panel tonight.There's a firm's name on the request and nobody else's. That's how it should be.The Stage 3 packet is still on the corner of my desk, the sticky note on its cover curling at one edge. Ask her about Malik.Ethan comes in at half past eight with two coffees. Sunday Ethan is weekday Ethan

TARIK Teague's forward sits at the top of my screen Tuesday morning with one line above it. Please see below and advise on response. Under it is Sophia's request, three sentences long. She wants the supporting documentation for the Calloway Street reference, so her pricing rests on the same basis as ours. There is no adjective in it and no edge. I read it the way I'd read it if it came from Harlow. I almost manage that. Marissa sets a coffee at my elbow and leaves without a word, her glasses swinging on their chain. I open the public-edge cost plan and find the foundation and seawall line. Rate benchmarked against Calloway Street (Midtown), the foundation works by Brightwater Civil. The number is the one I approved two weeks ago. Nothing about it is new except that someone has asked what stands behind it. I'm glad she asked. It's a fair question, and I'd rather be asked it now than in a hearing. I press the intercom. "Is Ethan in?" "On his way up," Marissa says. "He saw th