Page 1 of Dial F for Finance

Prologue

AKA what happened at the end of book four . . .

DOMINIC

“Ihear the Nakamura team has been making things difficult,” Landon James says.

“Making things difficult” is an elegant way to describe a team of Japanese executives who have turned delay into an art form and bureaucracy into a blood sport.

I take a sip of my whiskey and glance at Landon over the rim of the glass. “They’re not making things difficult. They’re making a point.”

Landon’s mouth flattens. “Same difference.”

“No. Difficult is a missed deadline. A point is when three consecutive meetings begin with compliments, proceed through philosophical objections, and end with everyone agreeing to circle back after ‘internal reflection.’”

He exhales through his nose, already annoyed. Landon is always one half step from annoyance anyway. It’s part of his ecosystem. Tall, sharp, expensive, perpetually affronted that other people don’t immediately arrive where his brain got ten minutes ago.

Across the reception tent, Jenna throws her head back and laughs at something Layla says.

My attention goes there with the inevitability of gravity.

Plum dress. Sleek lines. Hair perfect in the way that looks effortless and absolutely isn’t. She’s standing with Audrey, Serena, and Nora now, champagne in hand, one shoulder angled toward the exit in case the emotional climate becomes excessive. Which, given this crowd, is sensible.

And yet she’s smiling.

Beautiful.

She catches my eye, holds it half a beat, then looks away with a tiny shake of her head. The message is clear: don’t even think about it. I think about it anyway.

Landon follows my gaze, then allows himself a half-second scan of the room. “You realize half our key players are here tonight, right? Is there some kind of alumni newsletter I’m not on?”

“It’s post-merger season in Chicago. Don’t overthink it.”

He grunts. “You’d think everyone at this wedding could take a single day off from business.”

I clink his glass. “Don’t act surprised. You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Bennett is an important partner. I show up for important partners.” He sips, then gestures with his drink in the direction of the dance floor, where Bennett and Layla are tracking each other’s every move like they’re the only ones in the room. “It’s nice. Domestic tranquility. I’m happy for them. I just hope the next generation avoids the compulsion to self-destruct publicly.”

“Hope isn’t a strategy,” I say, and Landon laughs—a sharp, dry thing. “You seem more tense than usual. Everything OK with Carmichael and NeuraTech?”

He glances back at the bar, where Logan stands with one foot propped on the rail, quietly demolishing a craft beer and ignoring half a dozen people trying to talk to him.

“It’s fine,” he says. “The approval was the easy part. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” He sets his glass down. “We have a device that works. That’s confirmed. What we don’t have is a way to get it into patients at scale. Manufacturing is six months behind because half our component supply chain runs through South Korea, and they’ve just revised their medical-device export framework. Logan’s building surgical-training protocols for a device we can’t produce at volume yet. And CMS is sitting on our reimbursement application like it’s a meditation exercise.”

“So the device is approved and functionally unavailable.”

“Correct. Which is why your deal with Nakamura matters. They were supposed to be our manufacturing and distribution partner for Asia-Pacific. Domestic production plus PMDA approval in one move. Elegant solution.” He pauses. “Was elegant. Before they decided to spend three months relitigating the equity structure because they know we’re exposed on the supply chain and they’d like to be compensated for that knowledge.”

“How bad is the ask?”

“Bad enough that the legal team flagged it. Not bad enough to walk away—which is the problem. They’re in the sweet spot where the deal is still worth doing but the terms have shifted enough to require someone in the room who can move the conversation without conceding the position.”

I let that settle. The picture clicks into place with the clarity that comes from seeing the board when someone finally shows you the piece you were missing. I’ve been treating the Nakamura delays as cultural friction—the careful Japanese approach to negotiation, the consensus-building, the deliberate pace. It’s not cultural. It’s strategic. They know about the NeuraTech bottleneck. They know James Tech and Mercer need them for the Asia-Pacific rollout. And they’re using that leverage to squeeze harder on my deal with Bennett because the underlying position has shifted, and they’re smart enough to press the advantage.

“They’re not circling back after internal reflection,” I say. “They’re waiting for us to blink.”

“Now you’re caught up.” Landon lifts his glass. “So the question is whether you can get in a room with them and close this before they realize exactly how much leverage they have. Or before some analyst at Nakamura does the math on our supply chain exposure and the ask gets worse.”