Chapter 16: Chapter 16: Project Crisis

Lila’s POV

I barely slept all night.

It wasn’t out of nervousness, but out of sheer anger. The Goodrich Group? The family enterprise that had raised me to be a “respectable ornament”? They were the client for this project! And I, a pawn they had personally sacrificed in an arranged marriage, now had to stand before them as a designer from AR Architects and present our proposal?

The cruelest irony was that the person in charge of the project was Caleb.

At ten the next morning, I stood outside the top-floor conference room of Goodrich Tower, my palms slick with cold sweat. Eleanor stood beside me and gently patted my back. “Deep breaths, Lila. You’re a designer for AR, not the Goodrich family’s adopted daughter. Remember who you are now.”

I nodded, forcing myself to straighten my spine. The moment I pushed the door open, my eyes landed on Caleb, seated at the head of the long table. He was dressed in an impeccable dark blue suit, his expression severe and his gaze sharp—the very picture of the Goodrich Group’s heir. But when his eyes fell on me, that icy facade instantly cracked, and a complex mix of emotions flooded his gaze—surprise, guilt, and a sliver of…undeniable joy.

“Lila?” He stood up, a faint, almost imperceptible tremor in his voice.

The other Goodrich executives in the room exchanged knowing glances. I forced myself to ignore their stares and gave a professional nod. “Mr. Caleb, I’m Lila Hale from AR Architects. I’m responsible for the supplementary design development on this project.”

He froze for a moment, then gave a bitter smile. “Hale… Right.” He sat back down and gestured for us to begin.

The presentation went smoothly. My proposal was built around the concept of a “vessel for living,” cleverly integrating light and shadow, circulation paths, and a sense of community. I could feel Caleb’s gaze fixed on me the entire time, so intense it nearly burned my skin.

However, during the Q&A session, a middle-aged man with glasses suddenly spoke up. “Miss Lila, the spacing of the load-bearing columns in the underground garage of your proposal seems to conflict with the data in the geological survey report. This discrepancy could create a structural safety hazard.”

My heart sank. ’That data… David and I double-checked it!’

I quickly pulled up the blueprints, my fingers trembling slightly. Just as he said, on one of the secondary structural drawings, the marked column spacing was a full 1.5 meters wider than what the survey report indicated. It was a rookie mistake, one big enough to get the entire proposal rejected.

The atmosphere in the conference room instantly froze. Caleb’s expression darkened. “How does AR conduct its business? How could you make such a fundamental error?”

I clenched my jaw, about to take the blame, but Eleanor beat me to it. She stood up, wearing a perfectly composed smile. “Thank you for pointing that out. This was indeed an oversight in our internal review process. However, we will need to conduct a thorough investigation to determine exactly where the problem occurred. After all, multiple people are involved in the circulation of these drawings.”

Her smooth save bought me some time. The meeting ended abruptly. By the time I walked out of Goodrich Tower, I felt like I was about to collapse.

“It was David.” Back at the office, Eleanor and I went over the drawings again and again. Finally, in the corner of a handwritten calculation sheet, we found the number—hastily crossed out and then incorrectly changed. “He was too tired. He miscalculated and didn’t double-check his work carefully.”

Eleanor’s face went pale. “This is bad. If they trace the blame back to him, David will definitely be fired. His wife is still in the ICU, and he has two kids to support… His whole family will be ruined.”

I looked at her anxious expression, a mix of emotions churning inside me. So, beneath that slick exterior, she had a soft spot after all.

We were quietly discussing how to fix the situation when a familiar voice came from behind us.

“Need some help?”

We whipped around. Caleb was standing at the end of the hallway in AR’s office area. He had obviously overheard our conversation.

Eleanor moved protectively in front of me. “Mr. Caleb, this is an internal matter.”

Caleb ignored her, his gaze fixed on me, deep and complex. “Lila, I can make this go away. Goodrich can issue a supplementary notice about a ’minor adjustment to survey data’ to make your proposal compliant. No one will ever know about the mistake.”

My heart skipped a beat. ’This was bait.’

“And the conditions?” I heard my own voice, surprisingly calm.

He was silent for a few seconds before slowly walking closer, lowering his voice so only I could hear. “Come back to me. Stop being Jasper Hale’s wife. I know what that marriage means to you… Lila, only I can give you a real home and warmth.”

I looked at Caleb, at this man I had spent my entire youth looking up to. His gaze was sincere, his tone earnest, as if all I had to do was nod and I could return to that warm cage he called a “home.”

But I was no longer the little girl from fifteen years ago, desperate to be loved.

“Thank you for the kind offer, Mr. Caleb,” I said, enunciating each word, my voice clear and firm. “But I don’t need your charity, nor do I need you to cover up our mistakes. I will solve this problem my own way.”

His face instantly turned ashen, a flash of hurt and disbelief in his eyes.

I didn’t look at him again. I turned and grabbed Eleanor’s hand. “Let’s go. We’ll find David. We’ll figure this out together.”

From behind me, Caleb’s voice drifted over, haunting. “Lila… are you really content to be by his side, to be an accessory he could discard at any moment?”

I didn’t turn back.

’An accessory?’

No, Jasper had never treated me like an accessory.

But Caleb… he just wanted to put me back under a glass dome in the Goodrich family’s living room, like a decorative object he could manipulate at will.

Still, as I returned to my desk and stared at the fatal error on the blueprint, my heart grew heavy.

’What about David and his family?’

’My independence and pride, versus the shattering of a family. What was I supposed to do?’

I stared at the screen, my fingers tapping unconsciously on the desk. Eleanor sat across from me, her eyes filled with anxiety. “We’re running out of time. Goodrich is going to send a formal letter of inquiry this afternoon. If we can’t provide a reasonable explanation, the project could be terminated, and David will be held responsible.”

I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down. Crying wouldn’t solve anything, and running away was even less of an option. I chose this path, so I had to take responsibility for my choices—and that included taking responsibility for my team’s mistakes.

“Eleanor,” I said, suddenly looking up, “is there a way for us to fix this mistake without implicating David?”

She was taken aback. “How? The data is wrong, period. Unless… we conduct a new geological survey, but that would take at least two weeks. Goodrich would never wait that long.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, my gaze falling on the cross-section view of the design. “Maybe… we can adjust the structural design itself, instead of changing the original data.”

“That’s too risky,” Eleanor said, sucking in a sharp breath. “If Goodrich doesn’t accept it, we’ll be exposing our own fatal flaw.”

“But what if it works?” I looked her straight in the eye, asking her as much as I was asking myself.

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