The yard had fallen quiet by the time Kat stepped off the trailer's metal steps. She glanced over her shoulder, the crew's laughter had faded into the distance, and the last echoes of machinery were gone. What remained was the faint clink of a wrench and the soft scrape of graphite across paper, coming from inside the old site office. The narrow window glowed dimly with the amber warmth of a desk lamp.
She knew who it was.
Kat walked in without knocking.
Mikhail sat hunched at the desk, sleeves rolled to the elbow, collar unbuttoned. Spreadsheets lay scattered beneath his elbow like fallen cards. His pencil scratched a set of revised numbers into the margin of a blueprint. The calculator beside him blinked back red digits. He didn't look up.
"You're still here," Kat said quietly.
"I'm always here," Mikhail muttered, circling a cost overrun. His voice was strained, half-present. "Cement's gone up another four percent since Tuesday. If I don't rebalance the pour timeline, we'll lose more on labor standing idle."
"You haven't eaten," she said, walking over.
He shrugged. "There's coffee."
Kat leaned against the desk, crossing her arms. "You're not sleeping either."
"Didn't come here to sleep."
She didn't reply immediately. Instead, she looked at the waste bin beside him — full of scrapped estimates and crumpled revisions. A small streak of dried blood on the side of his thumb told her how long he'd been working without rest.
"Mikhail," she said, softer now. "This pace… it's not heroic. It's dangerous."
His pencil stopped. Slowly, he looked up at her.
"Do you think I don't know that?" he asked. Not defensive, but bare, exposed. "Do you think I want to do this alone?"
Kat didn't move. The silence stretched between them like a fault line.
"You're afraid," she said at last.
He blinked.
"You're afraid that if you stop moving for five seconds, it'll all fall apart again."
He didn't deny it.
"I know the signs," she added. "You forget, I was there last time. Not in your boardroom or your failure, but in someone else's. I've seen people burn themselves down thinking they could hold a structure together by sheer will."
Mikhail leaned back in the chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose. For a moment, he looked older than she'd ever seen him.
"I lost everything once," he said. "Not because I was reckless. Because I trusted the wrong people. Because I missed one critical detail. That one detail collapsed a ten-year project."
He turned back to the desk and picked up a new sheet.
"I can't afford that again."
Kat exhaled through her nose. Her eyes softened, not pitying, but clear.
"Then stop trying to brute-force the entire plan. You've got people now. Let us carry some of it."
Mikhail didn't answer right away. His eyes lingered on the numbers. Then, with visible hesitation, he slid a fresh sheet of forecasts across the table toward her.
"Redline what you don't trust," he said, voice low.
Kat pulled the paper closer, sat down, and uncapped her pen.
"Alright," she said, clicking it once. "Let's see if this thing can hold."
Behind them, the desk lamp flickered. The wind outside picked up, rattling the sheet-metal siding of the trailer.
The trailer creaked again as another gust rolled through the yard. Kat's pen hovered over the cost sheet, her brow furrowed. Mikhail sat silently beside her, the rhythmic tapping of his pencil against the desk betraying his tension.
Kat finally spoke. "You're double-counting drainage mitigation here."
Mikhail leaned in, following her line. "No. That's for the secondary retention basin."
"Then it's miscategorized. If Erik's auditing this, he'll flag it. We'll lose two days explaining something that could've been labeled correctly from the start."
He hesitated. "Right. Fix it."
She scratched it out, rewrote the line item. Her movements were deliberate, careful, but without the sharpness of someone looking to win an argument. Just a quiet confidence, the kind that built foundations under other people's storms.
"You know," she said after a moment, eyes still on the paper, "I didn't come back just because of the project."
Mikhail didn't respond, but his pencil stilled.
Kat continued. "The way you talked at the quarry... it wasn't just talk. You looked like a man who wanted to build something right, this time. That meant something to me."
He exhaled, tension bleeding from his shoulders. "I meant it. I still do."
Kat set down her pen.
"I've seen too many men in this business push forward with charm and half-truths. I thought you were the same."
"I was," he said, without hesitation.
She looked at him.
"I was that guy," he went on. "Smiles through lies. Outsourced the hard calls. Acted like it was a strategy when really, I was just afraid to be wrong in public."
He looked her in the eyes. "But this time, I'm owning every inch of it."
Kat studied him. No ego in his face. No desperate attempt to prove something. Just the blunt, tired determination of someone with too much to lose and too little trust left to give out.
"You ever think maybe it doesn't have to be that heavy?" she asked gently.
He cracked a faint smile. "Only every morning between four and five."
She laughed, quietly, but genuinely. The kind of laugh you only give when the tension between two people has started to shift.
Kat reached for the next blueprint roll and uncurled it over the desk. "Okay. If you're serious about letting me in on this, I'm going to start from soil stability. The limestone's fine, but I don't like the old slurry trench path. It's too shallow."
He nodded, already adjusting his chair. "We'll replot the trench run and reroute the basin if we have to."
"Good," she said, brushing a thumb across the edge of the page. "Because if we're building this together, I'm not signing off on shortcuts."
The trailer groaned again as another gust of wind pressed against it. Outside, the portable floodlight flickered and buzzed back to life.
Mikhail glanced at it through the window, then turned back. "Come morning, we'll go through the schedule again. Bring Lars in. I want every timeline red-checked before Erik calls the suppliers."
Kat nodded. "Then we'd better get some sleep."
But neither of them stood up. Not yet.
From outside, boots crunched over gravel. Someone was approaching the trailer door.