The smell of sawdust always reminded Olivia of loss.
She didn't know why. It wasn't rational. But something about the scent—dry, faintly metallic, like time decomposing—tugged at the shadow of memory she never wanted to revisit.
She stood in her office now, lights dim, blinds drawn, the blueprint still spread across her table like a postmortem. Her fingers traced the red line again, soft and deliberate, as if she could summon a truth from ink and paper.
Outside, the city was waking. But inside her, something had stayed buried.
Her father's voice echoed faintly:
> "The integrity of a design doesn't lie in how you build it… but why."
He had been brilliant. And unstable. A structural engineer obsessed with perfection, with detail, with legacy. He vanished when she was fifteen. Left nothing behind but notebooks filled with half-drawn beams and warnings written in the margins.
She'd buried the grief. Buried him. But now?
Now his ghosts were unrolling themselves across her desk.
And Ethan Caldwell? He was unlocking doors she'd sealed shut long ago.
---
A knock at her door made her straighten.
Rachel entered without waiting.
"Busy?" the detective asked.
"Always."
Rachel tossed a folder onto the desk. "Background on the permit trail for the Chestnut site. The one Lamont died in."
Olivia opened the folder. Her brow creased. "This says the original building was owned by a private trust."
"Yeah. M. H. Prescott Estate. Ring a bell?"
Olivia blinked.
No. It couldn't be.
"That's…" She cleared her throat. "That's the family that commissioned one of my father's last private projects."
Rachel nodded. "Exactly. Your father and Ethan's father worked together on a few early restorations—very hush-hush, invitation-only contracts. Mostly legacy families in Beacon Hill."
"That means this isn't about Ethan," Olivia whispered. "At least, not just about him."
Rachel folded her arms. "You sure you're ready to dig into that?"
Olivia looked up. Her voice was calm, but her hands were shaking.
"I don't think we have a choice."
---
Later that day, Ethan arrived at her office unannounced.
He stood in the doorway, coat still wet from the fog outside, blueprint tube in hand.
"I thought we agreed on phone calls," Olivia said without looking up.
"We didn't."
She closed her laptop. "Then I imagined that boundary."
"I brought you something."
He stepped forward, placed the blueprint tube on her desk, and opened it slowly. Inside was another sketch, hand-drawn, older than the others—faded ink, but unmistakable structure.
It wasn't a brownstone.
It was a cathedral.
Ethan unrolled it with care. "This was buried in the Caldwell archive. I only found it last night. The signature is mine."
Olivia frowned. "But you didn't draw this."
"I was seventeen. This was a draft from a private mentorship project. I designed it under supervision."
"Who supervised you?"
He hesitated. "Your father."
Her stomach dropped.
"You're lying."
"I'm not. He mentored me for three summers—one-on-one, no official records. My father arranged it through the Preservation Society. Said it would be 'visionary.' Your dad was… obsessed with structural memory. He said buildings never forget their trauma."
Olivia swallowed hard. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't want you to look at me like that."
She stood slowly, emotions swirling. "Like what?"
"Like I'm part of your past instead of your present."
They locked eyes. For a moment, the office was unbearably still.
Then Olivia whispered, "You're not part of either. Not yet."
---
That night, she returned to the Chestnut site alone.
She needed space. Clarity. Answers.
The house was dark. Cold. But the feeling in her spine wasn't fear—it was memory.
She walked past the staircase, into the room where Lamont had died. The beam had been removed. Evidence tagged. But the floor beneath still carried the dust, the imprint of the body, the faint outline of an arc carved into wood.
She knelt, brushed her hand across it.
The carving was deliberate. A small circle inside a square—ancient mason symbolism.
Her father's symbol.
She had seen it before, once, in his journals.
Someone was leaving her clues in language only she could read.
Her flashlight flickered. Then died.
She stood quickly.
From upstairs, the floor creaked.
Not the wind.
Footsteps.
She stepped backward quietly, heartbeat rapid.
Then a voice from the shadows:
> "You should've stayed buried with him."
She turned—nothing.
A whisper behind her:
> "This isn't your case, Olivia.
It's your inheritance."
She ran.
---
Outside, breath fogging in the cold air, Olivia didn't stop until she reached her car. Locked the doors. Hands trembling.
She knew now: the attacks weren't random. The sabotage wasn't just revenge.
Someone had revived a blueprint legacy meant to stay forgotten.
And she was the last piece needed to finish it.