The audit was a slow, suffocating siege. For two weeks, Lena lived in a purgatory of spreadsheets and legal documents, her every waking moment consumed by the need to justify every line item, every Bulgarian location fee, every compromised orchestra session. The completion bond accountants were like human-shaped voids, their questions draining the creative life from the project and reducing it to a series of debits and credits.

She became a ghost ...