Page 155 of Dial F for Finance

I close my eyes. “Jesus Christ, Logan.”

“He’s right,” Bennett says, standing up. “Jenna is not a rescue operation. She doesn’t need you to clear the territory so she can timidly return to Mercer Capital. If she wants her job back, she is perfectly capable of walking into my office and taking it. If she wants Chicago, she’ll conquer it with you in it—she’s that bold.”

“She doesn’t want me in it,” I bite out. The polished exterior finally shatters. The raw, bleeding truth spills out onto the table, staining the perfectly bound decks. “She packed her bags. She asked for the out. I signed the annulment papers, David. They’re in her hands. It’s done.”

David doesn’t flinch. “I know. Logan told me.”

“Then you know this is the only play I have left.” My chest heaves. The air in the room suddenly feels too thin to breathe in. “I have to leave. Because if I stay in this city, if I operate in the same zip code, I will spend every waking second trying to win her back. I will tear down every boundary she sets. I will suffocate her. I cannot be near her and not fight for her.”

I look down at the clicker, my small, pathetic anchor.

“And I can’t stay here, knowing my actions drove her back into the house she spent eighteen years fighting to escape.”

The silence in the conference room is no longer heavy. It’s devastating. I drop into my leather chair, burying my face in my hands. I am completely, utterly out of moves.

“You’re an idiot,” Caleb says softly. It isn’t a taunt. It’s a diagnosis.

“You’re not leaving,” Bennett states, his voice leaving absolutely no room for negotiation. “I’m rejecting the merger. Caleb and David will refuse to draft the legal transition.”

“And if you attempt to hire outside counsel,” David adds, crossing his arms and leaning back, “Caleb and I will personally bury the proceedings with every legal tactic at our disposal until we’re all drawing pensions.”

I drag my hands down my face, exhausted to my very bones. Waiting is not in my DNA. I am built for action, for leverage, for finding the pressure point in a room and pressing until the deal closes.

“Then somebody tell me what the alternative is,” I say. “Because from where I sit, the alternative is I keep my company and my city and my friends, and she spends the next thirty years in exile from her own life so I can keep mine. I’ve run it every way. This is the only structure where she gets everything back.”

“Except you,” David says. “She doesn’t get you back.”

“She doesn’t want me back, David.” It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, and the room flinches like I hit it. “She asked for the eraser. I gave it to her. This is just the cleanup.”

“And what happens when she finds out you did this?”

“We’ve established that—she comes home.”

“No. She learns you dismantled your company, abandoned your friends, and left the city because she asked you for space. You think she’ll feel free? She’ll spend the rest of her life believing her pain destroys everything it touches.”

I go still.

“You want to prove she isn’t a project?” he says. “Then stop making her responsible for what you do to yourself.”

Bennett walks to the window with his hands in his pockets and looks at the skyline he owns a respectable percentage of, and when he turns around, he’s not the wartime general. He’s the guy who taught me how to tie a bow tie in a Harvard bathroom.

“I’m not signing it,” he says. “Mercer won’t take your book. Not at that valuation, not at any valuation. If you want to dissolve your life’s work, you’ll have to find a buyer who doesn’t love you, and I’ll poison the well with every one of them, and you know I can.” He nods at David. “And your lawyer won’t draft it.”

“Conflict of interest,” David says. “The conflict being that I’m interested in you not doing this. And honestly, if you leave, it’ll break Michaela’s heart. She’s not losing one of her uncles. She’s lost enough.”

I stare at David, the sheer emotional extortion of bringing his daughter into a corporate buyout leaving me temporarily speechless.

“That’s a dirty play, Kingsley,” I say, my voice rough.

“It’s effective,” Caleb counters smoothly, a small, victorious smile touching the corner of his mouth. “And he’s right. You’re stuck with us, Dom. The exile is canceled.”

Logan taps the table. “Statistically, without Mercer Capital as a buyer, and with Bennett actively sabotaging secondary markets, your firm’s valuation will enter a forced stasis. You are effectively grounded. It is financially impossible for you to run away.”

I look at the four of them. The titans of Chicago. The men who know exactly how to corner a market, now cornering me to save my own life. I built an airtight legal cage to lock myself out of the city, and they just dismantled it in ten minutes flat.

“So what do I do?” I ask, the fight finally bleeding out of me. I let my head drop back against the leather chair, staring at the ceiling. “I can’t just sit here in a mansion while she rots in Queens.”

Bennett walks back to the table and picks up my clicker. He tosses it to me, and I catch it on reflex.