Page 154 of Dial F for Finance

“I’m executing a strategic merger,” I correct smoothly. “It’s a natural consolidation of assets.”

“It’s a distress sale,” Logan says. He finally looks up from the financials, pushing his glasses up his nose. “You’ve undervalued your own book by at least forty percent. Factoring in market share and projected yields, you’re essentially handing Bennett the keys to a kingdom for pennies. Logically, it makes no sense.”

“The valuation reflects the accelerated transition timeline,” I reply, my voice perfectly calibrated. Not a single tremor. “I want a clean break, Logan. Clean breaks cost money.”

David flips a page over, smoothing the edge of the deck with his thumb. “And the non-compete? You’ve structured this so tightly you couldn’t trade a municipal bond in this zip code for five years. You’ve built a legal cage, locked yourself inside, and handed Bennett the key.” He looks up, his gaze pinning me. “I read hostile discovery for a living, Dominic. Usually, the hostility is aimed at the other party. Not yourself.”

I hold my ground, clasping my hands behind my back so they don’t see them shake. “The legal architecture is sound. If your firm wants to bill me for a second opinion, send the invoice.”

I turn to the only man who hasn’t spoken. Bennett is staring at the closed cover of his deck. He still hasn’t flipped a single page. He hasn’t even touched it. He just sits there in his tailored charcoal suit, radiating absolute, immovable authority.

“Bennett,” I say, shifting into the pitch tone I’m trained for. “Your infrastructure can absorb my team in thirty days. We eliminate redundancies, you take the AUM, and Mercer Capital instantly corners the remaining sector market share. It’s the easiest acquisition of your career.”

Bennett slowly lifts his gaze. His steel-blue eyes are frighteningly calm, assessing the wreckage beneath my suit.

“I’m not buying your firm, Dominic.”

“Bennett—”

“And I’m certainly not accepting your professional suicide note masquerading as an M&A proposal.” Bennett slides the deck across the polished wood, pushing it back toward me with deliberate force. “You don’t get to detonate your career just because your personal life took a hit. You’re bleeding out on your own conference table and asking me to sign the death certificate.”

“It’s a business transaction,” I snap, the mask slipping just a fraction. My chest tightens, the phantom ache of a Queens zip code flaring up behind my ribs. “Treat it like one.”

“We are your friends,” Caleb says softly, the lawyer completely vanishing from his voice. “We’re not a board of directors.”

“And as my friends, you should see this for the perfect fucking deal it is.”

“Why?” Bennett’s voice is flat. “Say the actual reason, Dominic. To our faces. Not the deck version.”

I bite the inside of my lip, eyes burning. It takes a moment for the tightness in my throat to recede before I can speak. “Because she won’t come back while I’m here.” I’ve had nine days to accept it’s over, to make peace with the fact that our trial ended early and as soon as Jenna signs and files those papers, our marriage is over too. “Think it through. Jenna resigned from a job she loved and a city she half built because every hallway in it has me standing there. She’s in Queens right now, reorganizing her mother’s coupon drawer, and you all know her—she’ll be running the parish council by Christmas and dying the whole time. That woman is the best operator any of us has ever seen, and she’s benched, because of me.” I lay my hand flat on the deck. “I’m miserable here without her. But she’d be miserable there forever. This city isn’t big enough to hold both of us gently. So one of us has to give up the territory, and it’s not going to be her. Not again. She rebuilt from scratch once already. So this time it’s me—I can rebuild anywhere. I’m built for it.” I look around the table. “I leave, she comes home, Bennett gets her back, the group gets her back, she gets her life back. Everyone wins.”

Silence.

Then Caleb speaks, dangerously pleasant. “Everyone wins. Walk me through my winnings, Dom. Because from this chair, the math says we lose you.”

“Caleb—”

“No, I want my prize. Fifteen years of friendship, Dominic. Fifteen years of standing shoulder to shoulder in the trenches. And my payout is watching you exile yourself to what? London? New York? Watching you burn your own empire to the ground because you think it’ll buy her a ticket back?”

I hold his gaze. “It will.”

“It’s bullshit,” Bennett booms. He leans forward, planting his large hands on the table. “You think you’re doing her a favor. You think this is the ultimate grand gesture—the one that proves you’re not the guy who treats her like a trophy. You’re going to hand her the entire city of Chicago on a silver platter.”

“I’m giving her the space she needs to breathe.”

“You’re making her a project again, Dominic,” David says quietly.

The hit lands with such surgical precision it knocks the breath out of my lungs. I stare at David, my fingers locking so tightly behind my back that my knuckles ache.

“He’s right,” Logan chimes in, adjusting his glasses. He isn’t looking at the financials anymore; he’s looking directly at me. “You are unilaterally restructuring her environment without her consent. You are anticipating a need she hasn’t articulated, executing a solution she didn’t approve, and framing it as a sacrifice. On top of that, your model has an unsupported assumption.”

“Which one?”

“That Jenna’s location is causally dependent on yours. She never said she would return to Chicago if you left. You invented that outcome because it makes the sacrifice feel functional.”

“I know her.”

“You always know,” he says. “It’s how you predict the needs of everyone around you. But might I point out that you predicted what she needed at the gala too. That knowing is your hubris. Most of the time it’s right. But sometimes . . . it isn’t.”