Page 43 of Dial F for Finance

“Layla knew he was texting me,” she corrects. “Everyone knew he was texting me. The man flirted via legal precedent and signed off Respectfully yours, Caleb, with a smiley face. Subtlety is not a Kingsley trait. No—what I hid was that it was working.”

“Ah,” I say, like a woman with no relevant case history.

“You have to understand the timing.” She watches the crosswalk count down instead of me, which somehow makes it easier to breathe. “I’d been in shitty relationship after shitty relationship. And just when I’d sworn off men, Caleb set his sights on me. But I wasn’t ready for what he was offering, so I ghosted.” She sighs and shifts her attention back to me. “Then Luminous handed my entire life to the press with a bow on it. Framed for espionage by my own protégée—it was brutal.” She shakes her head. “But it’s the thing that made me finally face what he meant to me.” Her mouth curves, then settles. “And finally accept what I meant to him.”

The light changes. Neither of us moves.

“My point is,” she says, “nobody could have argued me into seeing what I had before I was ready. Not Layla, not a licensed professional, not the man himself standing in my apartment telling me he wasn’t going anywhere. I had to get there myself. So I’m not going to push you, and I’m not going to report back to the table. I just wanted you to know that I see what you did today, and that I once did it better and for longer, and it cost me almost a year with a man I love.” She shrugs, elegant and unbothered, like she didn’t just hand me something with her chest cracked open. “If there ever comes a day you need to say something out loud—to make sure it’s real, or to dissect why it isn’t—I’m around. No shrieking. No follow-up questions.”

And it’s the strangest thing. Out of all of them—Layla with her support, Nora with her warmth, Audrey with her spreadsheet of my behavioral anomalies—it’s Serena, the one who didn’t push, who gets closest to cracking me open on a street corner at one in the afternoon. Because she’s not offering to fix anything. She’s just opening a door in case I want to step through.

For one reckless second, I almost do it. I can feel the whole ridiculous confession climbing my throat—Tokyo, the deal, the texts, the promises we made when we should have known better⁠—

“There’s nothing to say, Serena.”

My phone buzzes in my hand.

We both look down at it. DO NOT ANSWER glows up from the screen, bright as a signal flare.

Serena reads it. Looks back up at me. One eyebrow rises, slow and eloquent, and the corner of her mouth curves into something that isn’t quite a smirk and isn’t quite mercy.

“Interesting vendor name,” she says.

The Girls Group Chat

Audrey:

So are we all in agreement that those two totally banged while they were in Tokyo?

Serena:

Define banged.

Layla:

Serena.

Serena:

What? I’m asking for scientific clarity.

Audrey:

I’m using banged as a broad umbrella term for sexual contact, emotional destabilization, and whatever caused Jenna to say “busy, thanks, next topic” like a woman who tells lies professionally.

Nora:

I don’t think we should be cornering her.

Audrey:

This is not cornering. Jenna is not in this chat.

Layla:

That doesn’t automatically make it ethical.

Serena: