“How are we doing?” Dominic’s voice slowed my blood flow.

“Excellent. Just what we needed after a long day at the office. Grab us a few shrimp cocktails too, please. Will you eat New England clam chowder?” Peter turned to me. I shook my head and wrinkled my nose, just tired and just buzzed enough to not be completely amenable. “Fried calamari?” I smiled and nodded. Dominic turned and made his way to the kitchen.

Hadn’t he just told them we weren’t eating, and the kitchen staff should go home? Did anybody ever say no to this man?

I took another sip of the wine, tasting the citrus mingling with the milky residue of the oyster on my tongue, and felt Peter watching me.

“Oysters are best in the winter. The whole month with an r thing is true, you know,” he said.

“A very smart man once told me that I could be perfect or I could be alive. I think that gives me license to eat oysters in summer.” I cocked my head playfully.

Peter leaned back and laughed freely, as though I had released something chaining him down. He had the confident, windblown quality of somebody who had been on adventures in foreign lands, gotten in a fair bit of trouble, and had never experienced darkness or loneliness. It made me want to be close to him, to steal it from him when his head was turned.

“You’re different from the other first-years,” Peter said, then shook his head, as if remembering himself. “You know, the first job I ever had was shucking oysters at this fish shack in the town where I grew up.”

I couldn’t picture him wearing anything but a suit. “Where did you grow up?”

“Boston. You know, prep school and lobster rolls. My old man made me work on the dock to learn the value of a dollar. Came in handy for summers on the Cape. Embarrassingly cliché.” He held out his hands and pointed to the small white lines of faded scars on his large palms. “As you can see, I wasn’t very good at first.”

I had the overwhelming urge to trace his scars with my finger, but instead pressed my knees tighter together and took a long sip of wine.

“So,” Peter said, and cleared his throat, indicating that the social portion of the evening was concluding. “The real issue with valuing a private company is that there is no market value for the equity. And the financials tend to be messier, and not as robust. So, you need to find the right metrics or comparable companies to base valuation off . . .”

I listened intently, in awe of his depth of knowledge, and trying to catch every word.

“And when it was suggested that our operating margins were . . . Eat!” he commanded, gesturing to the calamari that had appeared in front of us. I took a glistening golden ring and popped it into my mouth absentmindedly, still focused on his commentary on our valuation analysis. I wished I had a notebook to write everything down, but instead I tried to clear a path in my head for his words.

“Use sauce!” He shoved the dish toward me, and I complied. “Anyway, they were way off when they said the operating margins . . .”

When he had finished his explanation, I excused myself to the ladies’ room and slipped down off my stool.

“Restroom is that way.” Peter pointed over my right shoulder. “Enjoy those lips!”

I felt my cheeks flush. Do I have something on my mouth? I wiped at my face. Did I wipe my lips with my napkin in a sexual way? Do I need to apologize?

I fell through the door to the bathroom and leaned my head back on the closed door with my eyes shut. I opened them and laughed out loud in relief.

Directly in front of me in the ladies’ room was a red leather lounging couch shaped like an enormous pair of lips. I ran the water until it was ice cold and wet a paper towel. I slipped it under my hair and over the nape of my neck, shutting my eyes as I impatiently waited for my body to cool down.

When I exited the bathroom, Dominic was sitting at an empty table with a stack of bills and receipts and his notebook, one hand holding a pencil and the other buried in his hair. He looked up at me over his half-glasses, which rested low on the bridge of his nose.

“Thank you for staying open for us,” I said as I passed. “It’s my first time here. Everything was delicious.”

“So glad you enjoyed.” He looked at me curiously for a moment and then added, “He’s one of the best.”

I nodded in implicit agreement as I turned and walked back to our seats.

“Shall we?” Peter asked, taking his coat.

I stared at him.

“What?”

“Do you own this place?”

He snorted, surprised. “No. No. Not at all.” He paused and then coughed, looking embarrassed. “I’m an investor. Did Dom tell you that?” I shook my head. “Well, why did you think that?”

“We’re here after closing, and we’re leaving without paying a bill. When I thanked Dom for staying open for us, he looked at me the way I look at Matt when he thanks me for pulling an all-nighter. Like it’s not really a choice.”

Peter put a finger to his nose and pointed it at me. “Sharp girl.”

I laughed up at him as I slipped my arms into my coat and braced myself for the cold night air.

Q. After you met Gary, what was your impression of him?

A. That he was powerful. And that he didn’t seem to notice me at all.

Q. How did that make you feel?

A. Not great. But motivated to work for his acknowledgment, I suppose.

Q. Did it make you dislike him?

A. No, I wouldn’t say the initial encounter made me dislike him especially. I would say that all my encounters with him after that made me dislike him.

Q. I was asking about your first encounter. Please focus your responses on the questions asked. Now, I’d like to ask how this dislike came to manifest itself—what exactly did Gary do to cause you to seek vengeance against him?

[objection] [stricken from record]

Q. Where did this dislike come from, if not from the first encounter?

A. If you had let me simply elaborate rather than explaining I should only answer within the scope of the question, I’d have gotten to that.

Chapter 9

I glanced at the time in the lower right-hand corner of my computer screen.

3:07 AM

I tried Jordan. No answer. I hung up the phone and rubbed my eyes with my fists.

Even before my deal with Peter had closed, I was staffed on a new deal, Project Duke, for National Bank with Matt and Jordan that would close on an accelerated timeline. The days leading up to Project Duke’s closing were a mess of greasy hair and stacks upon stacks of paper teetering like the tower at the penultimate move of a Jenga game on my desk. I had closed the blackout curtain to my office because I found that the rise and fall of the sun messed with my brain, signaling that I should be going to bed when work commanded otherwise. I had no idea whether I was supposed to send the term sheet I had spent the last three hours on out myself, or whether Jordan wanted to review it again.

I tried Jordan again. No answer. Why wasn’t he answering? I knew he was there. His firm instant messenger light was still green. Maybe he just went to take a nap. I could use one myself.

I looked at the other names on my instant messenger. The circle next to Derrick’s name was green too. I dialed his extension.

Derrick picked up halfway through the first ring. “I was just about to call you!”

“I’m dying. I’m so tired.”

“Come down to my office! I have coke!” he sang.

I paused, providing him with a beat to see if he was kidding. “Pass. I was more thinking a walk around the block to wake myself up.”

“Uh, pass. I can’t take a real break. I have to get something out.”

“Okay, talk soon.” I aimed for cheery, but heard the worry deepen my voice.

“Yes. Soon. Call you tomorrow,” Derrick assured me.

I slumped forward, resting my cheek on my desk, where it met the cold, smooth wood, and slid my palms under my face. I was exhausted, anxious, and uncomfortable, and I couldn’t stop wondering if I should pop into Derrick’s office to ask him how he was doing. Instead, I stumbled out of my door and down the hallway to the “restoration room.” The thought of collapsing onto the cool leather cot and snuggling up under one of the fleece blankets was so delicious that I was almost salivating, but when I reached the door I saw the red “Occupied” indicator in the half-moon above the lock. I wilted in disappointment; the idea of traveling to another floor to lie down felt so burdensome that I nearly collapsed. But I was only a first-year associate, and I felt certain that whoever was sleeping in the room needed it more than I did. He or she had probably been tired for the better part of a decade, whereas I only had a few months of late nights under my belt.