Measure Twice
Adrian Pafistis built things the way his father played poker — with patience, calculation, and the discipline to never move before he was certain. He built homes across two states, a company with his name on it, a house that was his manifesto in stone and glass. Then one morning he drove to a job that wasn't a job, and everything he'd built was behind him. They didn't take him because he'd done something wrong. They took him because he was good. He's still building. And he hasn't forgiven a thing.
A builder looks at rubble and sees materials. Adrian learned this young — calculation from his father's card games, patience from a boxing gym, precision from the quiet satisfaction of a joint that holds. He built homes across two states, each one a promise that things could be made right if you measured carefully enough. He believed that. His company bore his name. His house was his proof.
His wife came from Cornwall. His daughters grew up in a house he'd designed to the last hinge. Everything about his life was load-bearing — deliberate, structural, built to last. Then someone rang about a renovation. He drove out and never came home. They took him through a door he didn't know existed and he landed bruised, furious, and alone. They brought his wife and daughters through later, as though that settled it.
The settlement had nothing when he arrived. Adrian looked at it the way he'd looked at every site since apprenticeship: what does this need, and what do I have? He built. Not because he'd forgiven the people who'd taken him. Because a builder who stops building isn't angry anymore — he's finished. The settlement has towers now, structures engineered to hold. Adrian has the same quiet fury he arrived with. The measuring hasn't stopped. Neither has the rage.
