25. Dominic #2
“We play to win, sweetheart.” I squeeze Jenna’s hand under the table. She’s rigid as a missile, but her eyes burn with a competitive light that makes my blood accelerate.
Serena takes the shuffled deck from Logan and deals the cards. “Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”
First round: Serena throws a wild, and the table devolves into chaos in under thirty seconds.
Logan plays a blue four; David challenges with a skip; Bennett lays into him with a reverse.
Jenna, who has never played with the group, is stuck between panic and calculation as her hand inflates into a fan of intricate humiliation.
I watch it all unfold, delighted, even as Jenna narrows in on the ruthless mechanics. She’s tracking color flow, player tells, and subtle betrayals. She’s built for the game in ways that would terrify less secure men.
“Who shuffled this?” Jenna mutters, narrowing her eyes as Logan lays down a Draw Four. He beams at her with a kind of deranged innocence, as if he’s doing a public service. Jenna fingers the edge of her card, then sets it aside with the patience of a landmine.
By round three, any pretense of friendship has left the room.
There’s a hollow silence between moves, the taut anticipation of a firing squad.
The deck passes from hand to hand, consequence ratcheting until even Bennett, who could hold a poker face through a market crash, begins to show strain in the hard set of his jaw.
Jenna develops a tell: she lifts her glass and hesitates when she’s about to drop a dirty move. Audrey is the first to weaponize this intelligence, goading Jenna into a standoff that has Logan muttering “optimal subgame” under his breath and Serena spitting her drink.
It becomes clear that this group plays Uno the way professional chefs play Chopped: as a performance art, and possibly as a ritual of mutual destruction.
“What the hell is this?” Jenna mutters as she draws a seven, then a five, then three more sevens in succession. No one looks at her, but everyone is listening. I whisper, “Statistically speaking, this is probably not random. Bennett’s been known to palm a card or two.”
Bennett’s expression is ironclad, but one of his eyebrows hikes up just enough to telegraph, “prove it.”
Jenna’s lips press into a blade. She’s going to take it as a personal attack—my favorite part of any game.
Caleb rage-quits midway through the third round, throwing his remaining cards onto the table in disgust while David laughs so hard he chokes on his beer.
“I demand an audit,” Caleb grumbles, pointing an accusatory finger at Audrey. “There is no universe where Audrey draws three wild cards organically.”
Audrey takes a slow, unblinking sip of her tequila soda. “Skill issue, Caleb.”
The play passes to Jenna. I feel the shift in her posture before she even moves. Her spine locks and she reaches into her hand—now aggressively whittled down to just two cards—and lifts her water glass.
There it is. The hesitation.
She sets the glass down, and her burgundy lips curve into a smile that contains absolutely zero warmth. It’s the exact smile she uses right before she dismembers a non-compliant vendor contract.
“Draw four, Bennett,” she says, her voice as smooth as glass as she drops the black card onto the discard pile.
The table erupts.
“Oh my God!” Layla shrieks, clapping her hands with vicious glee.
Bennett stares at the card, the muscle in his jaw giving a solitary, impressed tick. He looks at my wife with a sudden, profound respect. “Retaliation is a risky strategy, Jenna.”
“Only if you miss,” she counters without breaking eye contact. “And I don’t.”
I lean back in my chair, utterly captivated.
God, I want to take her right here on this table, amidst the scattered cards and half-empty drinks.
I wrap my hand around the back of her neck, my thumb stroking the soft skin just beneath her sleek updo.
She glances at me, her eyes dark and triumphant, and the heat that flares between us.
“Uno,” Jenna says, exactly as Bennett reaches for the deck, pulling his four cards with his mouth in a grim line.
Logan slow-claps from across the table. “Flawless,” he whispers, pushing his glasses up his nose. “A mathematically perfect execution of spite. Dominic, you married an absolute monster.”
“I married a prodigy,” I correct him, leaning in to press a kiss just behind her ear. She smells like bergamot, taco spice, and the heat of victory. “And if any of you try to palm a card against my wife again, I’m personally funding her legal defense.”
David groans as the brutal turn rotation skips past him. “I thought this was supposed to be a friendly game.”
“I’m being friendly,” Jenna says, her voice a masterclass in deadpan delivery. She doesn’t even blink. “If I were being unfriendly, I would have waited until Bennett called Uno to deploy the strike.”
Bennett finishes incorporating his four new cards into his hand, his expression a mask of stoic suffering. “Remind me of this moment during your next salary review.”
“Ouch,” I say, sliding my hand from Jenna’s neck down to her waist and pulling her flush against my side. “Let’s not bring office power dynamics onto the Uno table, Mr. Mercer. Especially when Canfield tried to poach her recently.”
Jenna’s gaze snaps to mine. “That reminds me—did Roz send Xavier Hailey’s CV?”
“She did. Xavier wants to conduct a preliminary interview with Hailey over the phone on Monday.”
Her whole face opens. “Already?”
“Of course. She’s a Pemberton. They’re jumping on it.”
“She’ll love that.” Her smile turns pure and unguarded. “Thanks, Dominic.”
“Ends of the earth, sweetheart.”
The moment stretches. I’m completely lost in that rare, blinding smile of hers, my thumb idly tracing her skin when a sudden, suffocating silence registers across the table.
I drag my gaze away from my wife to find eight pairs of eyes fixed entirely on us. The Uno deck sits abandoned.
Layla rests her chin on her hands, her eyes sparkling with delight. “Oh my God,” she coos, her voice pitched to maximum sweetness. “Look at them. You two are so sickeningly adorable I might actually need a minute.”
“It’s true,” Audrey chimes in, swirling her tequila soda with a knowing smirk. “I think Logan might need to calculate the exact probability of Dominic Cruz looking at a woman with actual, genuine cartoon heart-eyes. It’s an anomaly.”
“I can run the numbers,” Logan offers immediately. “But preliminary estimates suggest a highly significant correlation between Jenna’s presence and Dominic’s compromised baseline heart rate.”
Beside me, Jenna immediately stiffens. Her professional armor snaps back into place, though it does absolutely nothing to hide the furious, magnificent crimson creeping up her neck. She sits ramrod straight, staring fiercely at her remaining Uno card.
“The game is still in play,” Jenna announces, her voice clipped and desperately professional. “Serena, it is your turn. Blue or a wild.”
“And we’re back to deflection,” Caleb whispers loudly to David. “Classic Pemberton maneuver.”