Page 20 of Dial F for Finance

“Yes and no. Her name is Hailey. Younger than me by six years. She also works as an EA, but it’s for this hotel chain out on Long Island, and she hates it—because she’s good at it and her boss isn’t, and he takes credit for her work, and she’s twenty-nine and broke and tired, and she calls me on her break to vent and then won’t let me help.”

“Why won’t she let you help?”

“Because she thinks I think I’m too good for them.” I say it lightly. The lightness is the giveaway, and I suspect he hears it.

“Are you?”

He asks it so directly that I look at him. Then I look back at the pavement. “No. But I’ve been folded into your group of billionaires long enough that me showing up to fix things looks like that, even when it isn’t.”

“It’s not my group of billionaires.”

“Please. I’ve sat in on plenty of your meetings. You run Chicago—all of you do to an extent. There’s a gravity to it. Not everyone gets to orbit without burning up on re-entry.”

“Re-entry.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “That’s the tell, Pemberton. You still think you’re watching from outside the glass.” We reach a crossing and wait for the bright mechanical chirp of permission. “Bennett would lose a limb before he lost you. Layla texts you when she needs to think out loud. Audrey talks about you like you’re load-bearing. Serena quotes you. Caleb respects you, which from Caleb is basically a signed affidavit. David trusts you with his logistics, and David doesn’t trust just anyone with anything.” A beat. “And me⁠—”

He stops there.

A cyclist glides past. A train rumbles somewhere overhead. He doesn’t finish it, so I do it for him.

“And you,” I say, evenly, “have terrible timing.”

He laughs once, under his breath. “That too.”

We cross. The hotel glows warm at the end of the street.

“You really think you don’t belong?” he asks.

“I think there are rooms where everyone was born knowing which fork to use, and rooms where you learn by watching, fast. I’m not sure I belong in either. Yours, or the one I grew up in. I’m somewhere in between.” I don’t know why I keep going. “My mother still says axe instead of ask. My father keeps cash in an envelope in the freezer because he doesn’t trust banks not to suddenly become theoretical. My sister thinks my lipstick brand means I betrayed the borough. And when I’m with your people⁠—”

“Our people,” he says.

I shoot him a look. “That. That’s exactly what I mean.”

He smiles. “You’re making my case for me.”

“When I’m with your people,” I go on, “I know the rules now. I know the wines, the schools worth mentioning, the vacation spots you’re supposed to say casually. I can do all of it. But I learned it. I wasn’t raised in it, and when I go home, it shows.”

“You know what I hear?” He keeps his voice easy, which I’ve learned is what he does when he means something. “I hear that you built yourself. That you can walk into a room of old-money sharks, take the contract, then go home to Queens, stand in your mother’s kitchen, and still know exactly who you are.”

“That’s generous.”

“It’s accurate.”

I don’t know what to do with that, so I change the subject. “Do you go home much? To Greenwich?”

“Every couple of weeks.”

I glance at him, surprised. “That’s . . . often.”

“Most people assume that once you have enough money, family becomes a Christmas activity.” He shrugs. “Mine didn’t get the memo.”

Something in the way he says it makes me leave it alone. “That’s nice,” I say, and mean it.

We make it to the hotel, the lobby enveloping us with its after-hours hush. The elevator opens on cue—empty, just us. Three floors up, I say, “Tonight was kind of fun. As far as business dinners go.”

“Kind of fun.” He smirks. “Put that on my headstone.”

“I’ll email your secretary with that request as soon as I’m in my suite.”