Page 127 of Dial F for Finance

For one suspended second, the apartment goes completely silent. No traffic thirty floors below. No refrigerator humming in the kitchen. No acquisition brief waiting on the couch. Just Jenna in my arms, midnight-blue silk spilling beside us, looking at me as if I’ve reached inside her chest and put my hand around something no one was supposed to find.

Then she says it.

“I love you, Dominic.”

Full eye contact. Not whispered into steam or softened by exhaustion or hidden inside the aftermath of sex. She looks directly into my eyes and gives me the words awake, sober, and deliberate.

My heart stops.

Then it restarts and seems to be beating at the base of my throat.

I lean in slowly, because for once I don’t want to rush a single second. I brush my nose alongside hers, feel her breath catch against my mouth, and let my lips curve.

“I know,” I whisper.

Her eyes narrow immediately. “You arrogant⁠—”

I kiss her before she can complete the performance review.

She makes a startled sound against my mouth, half laugh and half surrender, and then her hands are in my hair and the kiss changes. Deepens. All that dry precision dissolves under my tongue as I pull her across my lap and slide my hands under her shirt.

“I love you too, Jenna.”

CHAPTER 35

Dominic

By eleven on Friday morning, the Nakamura implementation review is finished and Logan Whitman has claimed the couch in my office, where he’s reading the revised management agreement for his family-office accounts the way other men read box scores—fast, muttering, personally offended by inefficiencies.

“Page eleven,” he says. “You changed the parental-contact protocol.”

“Marginally.”

“If my mother makes another approach through counsel, the notice comes to you first now. Not me.” He looks up. He’s got a red pen in his hand—he annotates his own management agreement like he’s marking my homework. “When were you going to mention that?”

“Ideally never. That was the entire design philosophy.”

For a decade, Cruz Financial has managed the portion of Logan’s fortune that supports the Whitman family machinery—the licensing income, investment distributions, and standing household obligations his parents treat as their birthright. Caroline and Edmund have been quiet since the confrontation twelve months ago, but quiet isn’t gone. Edmund sent a Christmas card last year. Typed. Logan analyzed the font for two days.

“Dominic.” Logan sets down the pen with the deliberateness he uses when he’s about to say a feelings thing, which for Logan requires the same preparation as a spacewalk. “You expanded the monitoring scope and buried the cost in my existing management fee. Again.”

“You’re welcome.”

“That’s not—” He exhales through his nose. “Charge me properly. The same way you would any other client. My parents are a lot.” His hand rakes through his perpetually messy hair. “It’s my family. My liability. You shouldn’t have to act as my human shield just because my parents view me as a distressed asset.”

“First of all, I’m an excellent shield. Top tier. Premium market value.” I lean back in my desk chair, crossing my arms over my chest to lock down the sudden, uncomfortable tightness in my ribs. I hate this part. I hate when he looks at me with that earnest, analytical intensity, trying to dissect the mechanics of our friendship. It requires me to acknowledge those mechanics exist in the first place. “Second, watching you spiral for forty-eight hours over Helvetica wasn’t exactly optimal for either of our schedules. I’m just streamlining our operations.”

Logan pushes his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose, the jerky movement betraying his irritation. “You’re deflecting with corporate jargon. You’re treating my emotional baggage like a cost absorption issue.”

“Because it is.” I pick up a stylus, tapping it methodically against my desk. “You’re building a life with Audrey now. You want to shield her from Caroline’s casual psychological warfare, and you have a habit of unilaterally absorbing that damage yourself. I’m just managing the perimeter.”

“I don’t need you to⁠—”

“Need doesn’t factor into the equation, hermano.” The Spanish slips out, and I clear my throat, immediately shifting my gaze to the monitor. “Your parents are assholes. You don’t deserve assholes for parents. I’m simply doing what I do.”

“And I’m happy for you to do it. Just bill me.”

I smile. “No.”