Epilogue 2
DOMINIC
Later that same night . . .
“I hear the Nakamura team has been making things difficult,” Landon James says.
“Making things difficult” is an elegant way to describe a team of Japanese executives who have turned delay into an art form and bureaucracy into a blood sport.
I take a sip of my whiskey and glance at Landon over the rim of the glass. “They’re not making things difficult. They’re making a point.”
Landon’s mouth flattens. “Same difference.”
“No. Difficult is a missed deadline. A point is when three consecutive meetings begin with compliments, proceed through philosophical objections, and end with everyone agreeing to circle back after ‘internal reflection.’”
He exhales through his nose, already annoyed. Landon is always one half step from annoyance anyway. It’s part of his ecosystem. Tall, sharp, expensive, perpetually affronted that other people don’t immediately arrive where his brain got ten minutes ago.
Across the reception tent, Jenna throws her head back and laughs at something Layla says.
My attention goes there with the inevitability of gravity.
Plum dress. Sleek lines. Hair perfect in the way that looks effortless and absolutely isn’t. She’s standing with Audrey, Serena, and Nora now, champagne in hand, one shoulder angled toward the exit in case the emotional climate becomes excessive. Which, given this crowd, is sensible.
And yet she’s smiling.
Beautiful.
She catches my eye, holds it half a beat, then looks away with a tiny shake of her head. The message is clear: don’t even think about it. I think about it anyway.
Landon follows my gaze, then allows himself a half-second scan of the room. “You realize half our key players are here tonight, right? Is there some kind of alumni newsletter I’m not on?”
“It’s post-merger season in Chicago. Don’t overthink it.”
He grunts. “You’d think everyone at this wedding could take a single day off from business.”
I clink his glass. “Don’t act surprised. You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Bennett is an important partner. I show up for important partners.” He sips, then gestures with his drink in the direction of the dance floor, where Bennett and Layla are tracking each other’s every move like they’re the only ones in the room.
“It’s nice. Domestic tranquility. I’m happy for them.
I just hope the next generation avoids the compulsion to self-destruct publicly. ”
“Hope isn’t a strategy,” I say, and Landon laughs—a sharp, dry thing. “You seem more tense than usual. Everything OK with Carmichael and NeuraTech?”
He glances back at the bar, where Logan stands with one foot propped on the rail, quietly demolishing a craft beer and ignoring half a dozen people trying to talk to him.
“It’s fine,” he says. “The approval was the easy part. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
” He sets his glass down. “We have a device that works. That’s confirmed.
What we don’t have is a way to get it into patients at scale.
Manufacturing is six months behind because half our component supply chain runs through South Korea, and they’ve just revised their medical-device export framework.
Logan’s building surgical-training protocols for a device we can’t produce at volume yet.
And CMS is sitting on our reimbursement application like it’s a meditation exercise. ”
“So the device is approved and functionally unavailable.”
“Correct. Which is why your deal with Nakamura matters. They were supposed to be our manufacturing and distribution partner for Asia-Pacific. Domestic production plus PMDA approval in one move. Elegant solution.” He pauses.
“Was elegant. Before they decided to spend three months relitigating the equity structure because they know we’re exposed on the supply chain and they’d like to be compensated for that knowledge. ”
“How bad is the ask?”
“Bad enough that the legal team flagged it. Not bad enough to walk away—which is the problem. They’re in the sweet spot where the deal is still worth doing but the terms have shifted enough to require someone in the room who can move the conversation without conceding the position.”
I let that settle. The picture clicks into place with the clarity that comes from seeing the board when someone finally shows you the piece you were missing.
I’ve been treating the Nakamura delays as cultural friction—the careful Japanese approach to negotiation, the consensus-building, the deliberate pace.
It’s not cultural. It’s strategic. They know about the NeuraTech bottleneck.
They know James Tech and Mercer need them for the Asia-Pacific rollout.
And they’re using that leverage to squeeze harder on my deal with Bennett because the underlying position has shifted, and they’re smart enough to press the advantage.
“They’re not circling back after internal reflection,” I say. “They’re waiting for us to blink.”
“Now you’re caught up.” Landon lifts his glass. “So the question is whether you can get in a room with them and close this before they realize exactly how much leverage they have. Or before some analyst at Nakamura does the math on our supply chain exposure and the ask gets worse.”
“I can be in Tokyo by the end of the week.”
“Good. Just don’t let them see the NeuraTech angle. If Nakamura figures out we need this deal more than we’re showing, the equity ask doubles.”
“I don’t show my hand.”
“You’re showing your hand right now.”
“Excuse me?”
He grins and nods toward Jenna. “Every time you look at that woman.”
I take a sip of whiskey to cover the hit, but Landon has already moved on—scanning the room, cataloging attendees, his brain processing social data with the same speed he applies to balance sheets.
“Enjoy the wedding,” he says, which is Landon’s version of goodbye.
He moves toward the bar, where his wife, Willa, joins him.
She touches his arm. He covers her hand with his.
The gesture is small and private and so at odds with the man who was just coolly dissecting supply-chain vulnerabilities that it reminds me—not for the first time—that the sharpest people are often the softest in the places they don’t let anyone see.
I look back to Jenna. She’s moved—Layla has pulled her toward the dance floor and Jenna is going reluctantly, the way she does everything she secretly wants to do, with visible resistance and invisible willingness.
Layla spins her once, and Jenna catches herself with a laugh that’s surprised and unguarded and so unlike her public face it makes something in my chest physically hurt.
I’ve been in love with Jenna Pemberton since the day she walked into Bennett’s office and told him his filing system was “an insult to alphabetical order and the concept of retrieval.” She was twenty-six.
She was furious. She was the most competent person I’d ever seen, and I thought: there.
That one. Whatever it takes. However long.
It’s been a long however long.
The evening moves the way wedding receptions move—in waves.
Dancing, then sitting. Champagne, then coffee.
Conversations that start at tables and migrate to corners and eventually to the terrace, where the lake is black and the air is cold and the music from the pavilion carries just enough to be atmospheric without being intrusive.
I’m outside sometime around eleven. Not avoiding anything. The room just got warm, my jacket got heavy, and I needed two minutes where I wasn’t performing for anyone. I lean against the stone balustrade, look at the lake, and breathe.
The door opens behind me.
I know it’s her before I turn around. I don’t know how. Some combination of the sound of her heels, the displacement of air, the way my body has spent three years calibrating itself to her proximity with a precision that would embarrass a satellite.
“Sneaking away?” Jenna says.
I turn. She’s standing in the doorway with her champagne, backlit by the warm light from the pavilion, and she looks . . . she looks like the thing I’ve been afraid to want because wanting it too loudly might make it disappear.
“Needed air,” I say. “It’s hot in there.”
“It’s spring.”
I look at her. There’s nothing to say. It is spring, and yet the world is still cold, and the air is sharp, and she is standing in that light looking like a problem I intend to solve even if it ruins me.
Jenna steps onto the terrace, not shivering, not rushing, just walking like the night belongs to her.
I can’t help but watch the subtle way her hips move, the unstudied precision of every step.
She comes to stand beside me, not touching but close enough I could reach out and wrap a hand around the curve of her waist if I wanted. Which I do.
She tips her face up at me. “You’re out here avoiding everyone, but especially me. The question is why. We’ve had fun tonight, haven’t we?”
I exhale slowly. She’s not wrong. I’ve been hiding from her, but only because proximity is an invitation I can’t say no to, and tonight I’m trying not to fuck up the years-long campaign to get her to want what I want.
She is not a woman you chase with bravado.
If you come at her with the wrong velocity, she’ll sidestep you and leave a vapor trail, and I won’t be the man who loses her because of too much, too soon.
“It’s Bennett’s night,” I say. “I’m just a guest star.”
Her mouth curves. “You hate being a guest star.”
“Do I?”
“Dominic, you believe the sun rises out of your own ass most days.”
She says it so evenly I have to laugh. I lean in, not quite closing the gap, voice low enough for only her. “The sun could learn a thing or two from me.”
Jenna stands there, facing the lake, the curve of her mouth betraying her even as she keeps her eyes on the black water.
“You know what I used to think about you?”
“Do tell.”
“That you weren’t serious about anything. That the flippancy was a defense mechanism.”
I don’t disagree. “And now?”