Chapter 15: The Build

They weren’t blueprints. They were fragments. Margins filled with sketches, questions, and margins inside those questions.

But they had intent.

A note tucked between the pages read:

“The future isn’t built by those who inherit power, but by those who remember why it was hidden.”

It wasn’t a product. It wasn’t a campaign. It was, a place.

A place meant to gather those who didn’t want to be seen, but needed to be understood.

A sanctuary for the kind of minds that whisper louder than empires.

And so I began.

I didn’t launch anything. I didn’t call a firm.

I reached out to those Rivière once trusted. Architects, designers, craftsmen whose names didn’t exist online, only in ledgers and lore.

And Elise.

Elise was there for all of it.

She didn’t question the vision. She questioned me, when I needed it.

“This doesn’t need to impress,” she said once, looking over a draft. “It needs to endure.”

She challenged everything, pushed back when I slipped into spectacle, made sure the soul stayed intact.

We didn’t rush.

It took months.

Some days I was everywheree, meetings, phone calls, approvals.

Other days, I was just a man in a quiet room, staring at Rivière’s handwriting, wondering how to finish something started by someone who had vanished to save it.

But piece by piece, it began to live.

Glass that filtered light in a way no photograph could capture. Stone sourced from the same quarry as a forgotten chapel Rivière once wrote about. Interior spaces that offered silence, not luxury. Precision without pride.

We didn’t name it. It didn’t need one.

It wasn’t a monument. It was a message.

And when it was done, it didn’t feel like I had completed something.

It felt like I had begun.