On the third day of our cold war, Dominic agreed to take his little assistant on a month-long road trip just to spite me.
He expected me to throw a fit like always, to cry and beg him not to go.
I walked him to the door and wished them a safe drive.
When he came back, he told everyone I'd finally changed.
He let Sienna steal my projects, and instead of quitting in a rage, I stayed late writing her proposals for her.
He shredded the design I'd worked months on so she could win the year-end bonus, and I took the blame without a word.
He fast-tracked her to general manager, and I quietly signed over every share I owned for him to hand out as he pleased.
Sienna laughed and said the cold treatment had worked, that I was finally scared of losing him.
Dominic believed her, praised her, then pulled me aside to offer me a raise and promise me an unforgettable wedding.
He seemed to have forgotten one thing.
During that trip, he'd already signed my resignation papers.
And I had already ended us.
He just doesn't know yet that the company he keeps giving away has only ever belonged to me.
***
"The cold treatment worked wonders, Dom." Sienna’s voice slipped through the narrow gap of the general manager’s office door. "She was terrified of losing you. Look at how obedient she is now."
I stood motionless in the corridor. The thick marketing proposal I had spent the last three nights drafting rested heavily in my hands. My index finger tapped the edge of the plastic binding once, twice. My face did not move. I did not even frown.
"You always know exactly how to handle people, Sienna," Dominic replied, his warm tone softened by a low chuckle. "I thought she would put up a fight over the equity transfer. Instead, she just handed it over. You were right. Ignoring her tantrums broke her."
"She knows her place now," Sienna murmured.
I pushed the heavy glass door open.
The soft laughter inside snapped to a halt. Sienna sat on the edge of Dominic’s mahogany desk, her legs crossed, leaning close to his shoulder. She didn't scramble away. Instead, she offered me a bright, practiced smile.
"Rowan," Sienna chirped. "We were just talking about the new campaign. Did you finish the outline?"
I walked forward and dropped the folder onto the desk beside her thigh. "Everything you need is in there. Market analysis, budget projections, and the vendor contacts."
Sienna picked up the file, flipping through the pages with feigned interest. "You really are a lifesaver. I was so overwhelmed with the design team, I could not possibly manage this too. Thank you for stepping up."
"It is part of my job," I said evenly.
Dominic leaned back in his leather chair, watching me with a satisfied gleam in his eyes. He looked like a man congratulating himself for taming something wild. "Sienna, why don't you take that to your office and review it? Rowan and I need to discuss a few administrative details."
"Of course," Sienna said. She slid off the desk, brushing a speck of invisible dust from Dominic's lapel. "I will see you at dinner, Dom."
She walked past me, a heavy scent of vanilla perfume lingering in her wake. The door clicked shut, leaving Dominic and me alone in the expansive room.
Dominic gestured to the chair opposite him. "Sit down, Ro."
I remained standing. "I have a lot of emails to catch up on. What do you need?"
He smiled, a practiced expression of benevolence, and opened his top drawer. He pulled out a crisp sheet of paper and slid it across the polished wood.
"I want to reward you," he said.
I glanced down. It was a formal corporate letterhead. A promotion to Director of Operations, complete with a twenty percent salary increase.
"You have been incredibly supportive this past month," Dominic continued, lacing his fingers together. "I know things were tense between us for a while. You were stubborn about the company structure. But seeing you step up, helping Sienna with her workload, taking responsibility for the spring design failure... it showed me a lot of maturity."
I stared at the paper. Taking responsibility for the spring design failure. That was his sanitized way of saying I had willingly acted as Sienna’s scapegoat when she authorized the wrong fabric order, costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"I just wanted what was best for the team," I replied, keeping my voice flat.
"And giving up your shares," Dominic added, his voice dropping into a softer, more intimate register. "That proved to me that you value our relationship over money. You trust me to run the business. That means everything to me, Ro."
I picked up the promotion letter. The paper felt heavier than it should have, weighted by his arrogance. For thirty days, I had played the part of the desperate, clinging woman. I had swallowed the blame for Sienna's incompetence. I had signed away my thirty percent stake in the company we built together. I had written the very proposals Sienna would use to secure her own promotion next quarter.
They thought they had bled me dry. They thought I was an empty husk, dependent on Dominic’s affection.
They had no idea that the core algorithm patents powering the entire software platform were registered exclusively in my name, their certificates sitting quietly in the bottom of my locked desk drawer. The company was just an empty shell without them.
"Director of Operations," I read aloud, forcing the corners of my mouth upward. The smile felt stiff, nowhere near my eyes. "This is very generous."
"You earned it," Dominic said, standing up. He walked around the desk and stopped right in front of me, reaching out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear. I forced myself not to pull away from his touch. "I want us to move forward without any more arguments. We make a great team when you aren't fighting me at every turn."
"I am not fighting you anymore," I said.
"I can see that," he murmured, his thumb brushing my jawline. "You have been perfect lately. Exactly the woman I fell in love with."
I folded the letter neatly in half, sliding it into the pocket of my blazer. "Is there anything else? The marketing team needs my approval on the new ad buys before noon."
Dominic dropped his hand, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. "Actually, yes. There is one more thing."
He leaned against the edge of his desk, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked out the floor-to-ceiling window at the city skyline before looking back at me.
"My parents called last night," he said. "They are getting impatient. And honestly, so am I. We have been engaged for two years. We kept putting it off because of the startup, but the company is finally stable. Now that we have restructured the equity and streamlined the management, there is nothing holding us back."
I met his gaze directly. "You want to talk about the wedding."
"I want to plan it," Dominic corrected. "Sienna knows a fantastic wedding planner. She offered to help us organize the whole thing. I figured we could do something grand. An event everyone in the industry will remember."
I let the words hang in the air. Sienna helping plan my wedding to the man she was sleeping with. It was almost poetic in its cruelty. A month earlier, I would have screamed. I would have thrown the promotion letter in his face and demanded answers. Now, I merely felt a cold, clinical distance, like a spectator watching the final act of a badly written play.
"A grand event," I repeated softly.
"Exactly," Dominic said, stepping closer again. He reached out and grabbed both of my hands, squeezing them tightly. "Once this busy period is over, let's set a date for the wedding."
I looked down at his hands covering mine, then back up to his confident, smiling face.
"Sure," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "Just don't regret it when the time comes."
