39. Jenna #2
“—there are deals I’ve chased for less time than I chased Jenna Pemberton’s real smile,” Dominic says. “Three years, ladies and gentlemen. Three years of dedicated pursuit where I was ignored, corrected, dismissed, and occasionally threatened with regulatory action.”
Laughter again.
Bigger now.
“He loved every second of it,” someone says near the back.
Dominic laughs too.
My stomach turns.
“Guilty,” he says. “Completely guilty. Because somewhere in those three years, the challenge stopped being the point.”
Somewhere in the tidal surge of laughter, I lose the thread.
I know there is more—Dominic is never careless with his words for longer than a heartbeat, and he would never, not in a million years, want to humiliate me in a room like this.
But something in the way he said it, the rhythm and music of those words—challenge, ice queen—have smuggled me backward in time and now I’m fighting, hard, to climb out.
“I watched Jenna build systems other people took credit for. I watched her save rooms that never knew they were in danger. I watched her turn impossible into finished before most of us had found the right folder. And when Nakamura threatened to stall one of the most important medical technology rollouts this world has seen in a decade, Jenna didn’t panic.
She opened the paper, found the pressure point, and saved the deal using a pen as her sword. ”
Applause this time.
Real applause.
For me.
I breathe.
At least, I try to.
Breathe, Jenna.
Dominic looks at me again, and there is pride on his face so bright it hurts.
“She is brilliant,” he says. “Relentless. Terrifying. Elegant in the way only genuinely dangerous women can be. And yes, if you are wondering, she is even more intimidating over breakfast.”
The room laughs.
I’m supposed to laugh too. I know that. This is charming. Affectionate. Public devotion wrapped in tuxedo-black timing.
But my skin has gone too tight.
I hear the rest of Dominic’s speech like it’s coming from a TV in another room.
He says the city is better for having me in it.
He says the future is safer in my hands than in any committee’s.
I can tell by the way the governor at the next table mouths “wow” that the words are the right ones, and the delivery is flawless, and all of Chicago is being gifted a perfectly wrapped Jenna Pemberton with a bow on top.
It should feel good. It does, in the abstract.
But the back of my neck is slick with sweat, and my hands are shaking so badly I have to clamp them together under the table to hide it.
I keep smiling, the way you’re supposed to when the spotlight is on you and the clapping is happening, but my brain is sixteen steps behind the rest of me, covered in the paint and welts of my own memory.
The applause crests, and I catch the closing remarks.
“So tonight,” Dominic says, voice warming, “I stand here a very lucky man. Victorious, some might say, though only because Jenna allowed me to survive long enough to be chosen.”
Victorious.
The word detonates quietly.
Dominic lifts his glass from the podium.
My pulse trips.
“Jenna, sweetheart,” he says, and half the room makes the soft little sound people make when they think they are witnessing romance.
“This room already knows what you can do. Chicago is beginning to understand it. I have had the privilege of watching your career up close, and the even greater privilege of being impossible enough that you finally married me anyway.”
The applause starts before he finishes.
I cannot move.
He smiles at me.
God, he is so beautiful.
Why is he doing this?
“To you,” he says, glass lifted high. “My brilliant, impossible wife. My Mrs. Cruz.”
The room rises as one, an ovation in black tie. Champagne flutes shiver. My cheeks lock into a perfect political-wife smile that only I know is a grimace.
Somewhere inside, I’m dialing out, counting each second it will take for oxygen to return to this room.
I’m not mad at Dominic. I’m not. I know he didn’t mean it like that.
That sentimental, bombastic sugar is his love language, and I’m thirty-six years old and entirely unprepared for the fact that love languages can land like old injuries if you aren’t careful.
Willa squeezes my hand.
“Speech, darling,” she whispers.
My worst nightmare. But I stand, because I am the ice queen, and also because my knees have locked against the table and refusing is not an option.
I walk the short distance to the podium. The first step is harder than the rest.
From up here, the blue-white light saps color from everything.
I grip the acrylic rails so hard my veins ladder along my wrists.
The applause pings off the high ceiling, echoing back like a threat.
I breathe once, twice, as Dominic’s hand gently grazes my back on his way to the wings.
Normally, his touch is grounding, but in this moment, it’s like antiseptic on grazed skin.
I flinch away. Step up to the podium. Adjust the mic.
“I’m trying to remember the last time anyone called me ‘impossible,’ and the only answer I can come up with is ‘last night at dinner.’”
It works. They laugh, all two hundred of them, releasing a fraction of the pressure.
“I’ll keep this as brief as possible,” I say, which is the corporate way to say “I did not plan on speaking,” but also a lie—I have three speeches for three separate emergencies saved in my Notes app, and none fit this moment.
“Tonight, I want to thank the people at this table—” I make eye contact with the judge, who gives me a short, judicial nod—“and all the other tables, as well, for supporting the work, and the mission, and the spirit of innovation in this city.
“For years, Chicago ran on muscle and air. Then it found its brain. What you see in this room tonight is the nervous system—the people who write the code, balance the budgets, debug the timelines, and make the impossible operational before anyone important realizes it was ever in danger.”
I pause and look around the room, hands still shaking.
“I am not an ice queen.” I say it flat, deadpan, and feel the micro quake of suppressed laughter ripple through the tables.
“I just hate inefficiency. But you already knew that.” An actual laugh this time, clipping against the ceiling like a glass knocked against tile.
“And as for challenges—Mr. Cruz may have run up a respectable chase, but as my father liked to say, the chase is only impressive until you catch the fox and realize she’s been running the hunt the entire time. ”
The room erupts. Even the governor two tables over doubles over, and I hear the judge on my left cackle before muting herself with a linen napkin.
The words give me ballast, steadying my field of vision enough that I can see Dominic, standing against the back wall, arms crossed, but smiling as he studies me.
I glare at him, letting the laughter ride. I wait for it to almost, almost die out before I turn my attention back to the room.
“My only regret is that this city does not yet have a word strong enough for the women working at its center—the ones who keep the machine running while everyone else is still deciding who gets the credit. If you know one, I suggest you promote her. Or at the very least, try not to challenge her unless you enjoy losing.”
Willa’s rings glint as she brings her hands quietly together, and the whole table follows; a ripple of applause. Even the venture partner, who until now has looked seconds from expiring, goes full-body with the ovation.
I should close there. I know that. But the voice in my head, the one that’s been running cold simulations all night, steps forward with a final suggestion.
“And since everyone’s favorite topic is the future of NeuraTech: don’t bet against the women running it. They remember everything.”
I step back from the microphone. The applause detonates for real this time—long and full and uncoached, and I can’t even pretend to be above it.
The back of my neck is fire, but I see Dominic still watching me, expression unreadable, his arms still crossed.
He’s waiting, like always, for me to make the next move.
I step down, the adrenaline running its hot, familiar wires through my limbs.
Dominic is moving to intercept—a smooth arc, calibrated for audience and wife—but I cut across the floor, squinting against the sudden camera flare from one of the event photographers who’s eager for “the power couple shot.”