Page 153 of Dial F for Finance

“I’m fine, Ma. Just give me a minute. Please.”

I grab the folder and the small velvet box, carrying everything up the narrow, carpeted stairs.

My childhood bedroom hasn’t changed. It’s still the same faded floral wallpaper, the same twin bed where I used to lie awake and meticulously plan my escape from this exact house. Now I’m back, and the same mirror I used to stand in front of, wishing I were anyone but the oversized outsider I was, is now reflecting the adult version of me, circles under my eyes, clutching a marriage’s worth of emotional shrapnel.

I drop the bags on the floor and sink onto the edge of the mattress. My hands are shaking violently as I open the black velvet box.

Two rings sit nestled in the dark silk.

They aren’t just standard wedding bands. I recognize the subtle curvature of the metal immediately. They were forged to interlock, explicitly designed to fit flush against the simple gold bands we bought in that tiny shop in Tokyo. He didn’t want to replace our impromptu beginning. He wanted to build around it.

My hands shake so badly I nearly drop the box. I carefully lift the smaller ring. It’s a slender gold band, paved with small, brilliant diamonds that catch the overcast Queens daylight, wrapping all the way around in an unbroken circle. I tilt it, squinting through the blur of my own tears to read the microscopic engraving on the inner band.

To the ends of the earth

A ragged breath tears its way out of my lungs. It isn’t a brand marking me as his. It’s a reminder of what he said to me the last night in Tokyo—that his heart has always been mine and always will be. To the ends of the earth . . .

I slide it against the ring that’s still on my finger and admire it with tear-filled eyes. Then I pick up the larger ring and study it. It’s a simpler, heavier band, meant to nestle against the gold ring he just returned to me in the front pocket of my luggage. I angle the metal to the light.

Not the worst thing

A laugh punches out of my chest, harsh and entirely involuntary, immediately cracking into a violent sob. It’s our joke. It’s him. The impossible, arrogant billionaire who let me correct him, who practically begged me to hold him accountable, mocking himself just to make me smile. You don’t engrave a self-deprecating punchline onto a ring for a woman you consider a trophy. You don’t immortalize a joke for a challenge you’re just trying to conquer. You do it for a partner.

You do it for a wife.

I pick up both of his rings and link them together, twisting them in the light as I shudder out a breath. Very slowly, I slide them both down the middle finger of my right hand and just stare.

“Fuck.”

I pull my knees tight to my chest, balling my hands and the rings against my sternum. The pain is absolute, radiating outward from my ribs until it swallows the entire room.

I ran because I was terrified of what would happen when he finally won me over completely. I thought I was protecting myself from the inevitable end. But he didn’t push me. He didn’t trap me. When I demanded my freedom, he didn’t deploy his lawyers or corner me with his limitless resources. He packed my bags with a ruler, signed his own defeat, and handed me the exit, wrapping it in the undeniable proof that I was entirely, catastrophically wrong.

He didn’t want to win. He just wanted me.

Me.

I bury my face in my knees, alone in my childhood bedroom, and finally let the ice queen shatter into a million irreparable pieces. I weep until my throat is raw, mourning the beautiful, devastating truth that the only person who truly destroyed my marriage was me.

CHAPTER 44

Dominic

“Gentlemen. Thank you for coming on short notice. I’ve provided you each with a deck.”

“A deck,” Caleb repeats, from the far end of my conference table, his tone incredulous.

The deck is eleven slides, printed and bound, because some part of me apparently believed that if I formatted my own disappearance properly, the four men across the table from me would treat it like business. Bennett hasn’t touched his copy. David is reading with his brows pinched tight. Logan turned to the financials page ninety seconds ago and hasn’t moved, which from Logan means the numbers are clean and he hates them. And Caleb is just staring at me with his mouth open.

Nine days since a courier drove what was left of my marriage to Queens in a cargo van, five days since the official end of our sixty-day trial. I’ve stopped drinking, started running again, and discovered that a man can be technically functional in the way a building with the power cut is technically standing. Roz met me in my office this morning with a look I haven’t had the courage to interpret. The proposal on the table is the first piece of business I’ve put together since the gala.

It’s good work. That’s the horror of it. It might be the best structuring of my career.

“Slide one,” I say, clicking the PowerPoint so it comes to life on the screen behind me. “Cruz Financial merges into Mercer Capital. Full integration—my book, my team, my carry. Bennett’s shop absorbs everything at a friends-and-family valuation your board will frame and hang. Slide four covers retention packages for my people; nobody so much as loses a parking spot. Slide seven, transition timeline: thirty days, during which I hand off every relationship I have.” I click through the slides, noting they’re not turning pages with me. “And slide nine. On close, I step down. Full exit. Non-compete, advisory title if the optics need it, but I’m out—of the firm, and of Chicago.”

The silence that follows is heavy enough to buckle the floorboards. I set the clicker on the boardroom table, making sure the plastic aligns perfectly with the wood grain. It’s a small, necessary anchor.

Caleb is the first to break. “You’re liquidating yourself.”