Chapter 6 - SHADOWS OF ARCHITECTURE
Before Victoria had poisoned her, Clara had spent three years working as an anonymous ghost-designer for Vance Global Developments. Her father had refused to give her an official title, keeping her tucked away in a basement annex, while Victoria was heralded as the "prodigy architect" of the family.
The truth was grotesque: Victoria could barely read a structural load blueprint. Every sketch, every calculation, every award-winning eco-sustainable rendering Victoria presented to international boards had been drawn by Clara’s midnight labor.
Sitting in the studio apartment, Clara logged into an encrypted cloud server she had created years ago under a digital pseudonym: Daedalus.
"What are you looking for?" Julian asked, bringing over two mugs of hot tea.
"The Carrington Harbor Project," Clara said, typing rapidly. "It’s a two-hundred-million-dollar waterfront cultural center. Richard staked our family's entire liquid capital to win the bid, and Victoria is listed as the chief design architect. The groundbreaking presentation is scheduled in four weeks at the Metropolitan Gala."
She opened a massive CAD file, displaying an intricate, soaring pavilion of timber and curved reinforced glass that mirrored the wings of a sea bird.
"You designed this," Julian observed, tracing the breathtaking curve of the roofline on the monitor.
"I designed the concept," Clara corrected, zooming in on the foundation grid. "Before I was attacked, Victoria demanded the final construction blueprints. I hadn't finished the load calculations for the cantilevered roof over the eastern basin. Look here."
She highlighted a series of red stress vectors.
"The structural steel brackets they ordered are designed for a thirty-ton load," Clara explained, her eyes widening with genuine horror. "Because Victoria wanted to cut costs to boost the project’s profit margins, she altered my material specifications from titanium-steel alloys to substandard hollow carbon beams. If they build this pavilion as it sits in these blueprints, the first sixty-mile-per-hour coastal gale will collapse the central atrium."
"She’s going to kill people," Julian said, his jaw tightening.
"She doesn't know any better because she never cared to understand the physics," Clara said, leaning back in her chair. "Richard knows, but he thinks he can bribe the safety inspectors, just like he did ten years ago with your sister's company. He thinks wealth makes him immune to the laws of gravity."
"Can we go to the building commission?"
May you like
"With what?" Clara asked, turning to face him. "A scarred woman whom Richard legally declared mentally unstable two weeks ago? The media has already reported that I had a nervous breakdown and entered a private psychiatric clinic in Switzerland. If I walk into City Hall alone, Richard will have me committed before I reach the third floor."
"Then we don't go to City Hall," Julian said, a spark of resolve kindling in his eyes. "We go to the one person Richard Vance cannot buy."
