Page 141 of Dial F for Finance

“Guilty,” he says. “Completely guilty. Because somewhere in those three years, the challenge stopped being the point.”

Somewhere in the tidal surge of laughter, I lose the thread. I know there is more—Dominic is never careless with his words for longer than a heartbeat, and he would never, not in a million years, want to humiliate me in a room like this. But something in the way he said it, the rhythm and music of those words—challenge, ice queen—have smuggled me backward in time and now I’m fighting, hard, to climb out.

“I watched Jenna build systems other people took credit for. I watched her save rooms that never knew they were in danger. I watched her turn impossible into finished before most of us had found the right folder. And when Nakamura threatened to stall one of the most important medical technology rollouts this world has seen in a decade, Jenna didn’t panic. She opened the paper, found the pressure point, and saved the deal using a pen as her sword.”

Applause this time.

Real applause.

For me.

I breathe.

At least, I try to.

Breathe, Jenna.

Dominic looks at me again, and there is pride on his face so bright it hurts.

“She is brilliant,” he says. “Relentless. Terrifying. Elegant in the way only genuinely dangerous women can be. And yes, if you are wondering, she is even more intimidating over breakfast.”

The room laughs.

I’m supposed to laugh too. I know that. This is charming. Affectionate. Public devotion wrapped in tuxedo-black timing.

But my skin has gone too tight.

I hear the rest of Dominic’s speech like it’s coming from a TV in another room. He says the city is better for having me in it. He says the future is safer in my hands than in any committee’s. I can tell by the way the governor at the next table mouths “wow” that the words are the right ones, and the delivery is flawless, and all of Chicago is being gifted a perfectly wrapped Jenna Pemberton with a bow on top.

It should feel good. It does, in the abstract. But the back of my neck is slick with sweat, and my hands are shaking so badly I have to clamp them together under the table to hide it. I keep smiling, the way you’re supposed to when the spotlight is on you and the clapping is happening, but my brain is sixteen steps behind the rest of me, covered in the paint and welts of my own memory.

The applause crests, and I catch the closing remarks.

“So tonight,” Dominic says, voice warming, “I stand here a very lucky man. Victorious, some might say, though only because Jenna allowed me to survive long enough to be chosen.”

Victorious.

The word detonates quietly.

Dominic lifts his glass from the podium.

My pulse trips.

“Jenna, sweetheart,” he says, and half the room makes the soft little sound people make when they think they are witnessing romance. “This room already knows what you can do. Chicago is beginning to understand it. I have had the privilege of watching your career up close, and the even greater privilege of being impossible enough that you finally married me anyway.”

The applause starts before he finishes.

I cannot move.

He smiles at me.

God, he is so beautiful.

Why is he doing this?

“To you,” he says, glass lifted high. “My brilliant, impossible wife. My Mrs. Cruz.”

The room rises as one, an ovation in black tie. Champagne flutes shiver. My cheeks lock into a perfect political-wife smile that only I know is a grimace.