The residential building project hit a wall in March.
The developer, a man named Patrick Chen who had been reasonable throughout our early meetings, decided three months in that he wanted to change the design direction. Not a small change. He wanted the entire aesthetic shifted from the warm, material-forward approach I had developed to something colder and more commercial, citing a market research report his assistant had produced.
I asked to see the report. I read it. It was not wrong about the market. It was wrong about what distinguished this building from every other building in that market.
I requested a meeting.
Lena came with me because she was better than me at keeping her voice steady when she was angry, and Marco came because he had spent three months building the concept an
