The meeting with Daniel Xu happened three days later.
Sienna arranged it at a private club in Midtown—the kind of place with leather armchairs and whiskey older than most employees at Ren Industries. Xu arrived nervous, sweating through his suit despite the November chill.
Dominic didn't use gambling. He didn't need to.
What he had was worse: emails. Xu had been forwarding internal board discussions to a competitor for eight months, taking consulting fees that never appeared on any tax return. The competitor was a shell company. The shell company traced back to Raymond Vance.
Xu hadn't known who he was really working for. His face went gray when Dominic explained it.
"You have two options," Dominic said, voice calm. "You go back to your board and undo the vote on Chen Industries. Or I send this file to the SEC, your board, and every major financial outlet in the country."
Xu left with shaking hands. The Chen deal was back on the table by Friday.
Sienna watched it all from the corner of the room, taking notes, saying nothing. This was the job. She'd stopped being surprised by it years ago.
---
The weekend came and went.
Sienna spent Saturday cleaning her apartment, doing laundry, catching up on the life that piled up while she was working. Sunday, she took the train to Jersey.
Her mother's house sat at the end of a quiet street in Edison—a two-story colonial with a yard that was too big for one person to maintain. Her father had planted roses along the fence before he died. Her mother kept them alive out of stubbornness more than skill.
"You look tired," her mother said before Sienna was fully through the door.
"Hello to you too, Ma."
"I'm serious. Are you eating? Sleeping?" Her mother pulled her into the kitchen, where something was already simmering on the stove. "Sit. I made jjigae."
Sienna sat. The kitchen looked the same as it always did—cluttered counters, a calendar from 2019 still hanging on the wall, magnets from places none of them had visited holding up grocery lists and old photos.
"Where's Justin?"
"Working. He got a job at that coffee shop on Main Street." Her mother ladled stew into a bowl, set it in front of her. "It's not a career, but at least he's doing something."
"That's good."
"Is it? He has a degree. He should be using it."
"He's twenty-four. He's figuring it out."
Her mother made a sound—half agreement, half dismissal. She sat across from Sienna with her own bowl, watching her eat.
"You never told me about Japan."
"There's nothing to tell. It was work."
"You were gone for a week."
"Four days."
"Same thing." Her mother picked at her food. "You know Mrs. Cho's daughter just got engaged. She's a lawyer. Works normal hours, comes home for dinner, has a life."
Sienna kept eating. This was an old song, lyrics she knew by heart.
"I have a life."
"You have a job. It's not the same thing."
"Ma—"
"I'm not nagging. I'm just saying." Her mother reached across the table, squeezed her hand. "You're thirty-one. When I was thirty-one, I had you and Justin and a husband. You have an apartment and a boss who calls you at midnight."
"He doesn't call me at midnight."
"He called you at midnight last Thanksgiving."
Sienna didn't have a response for that. He had called at midnight last Thanksgiving. A crisis with a vendor in Singapore. She'd spent two hours on the phone while her mother's turkey went cold.
"I'm fine," she said. "Really. The job is good. The money is good. I'm fine."
Her mother didn't look convinced. But she let it go.
They spent the rest of the afternoon talking about neighbors Sienna didn't remember, relatives in Korea she'd never met, the leak in the bathroom that Justin was supposed to fix but hadn't. Normal things. Easy things.
At five, Sienna's phone buzzed.
Dominic:Monday meeting moved to 7 AM. Prepare the quarterly projections.
She typed back: Done.
Her mother watched her. Said nothing.
Sienna left at six, promising to visit again soon. Her mother stood on the porch as she drove away, arms crossed against the cold, getting smaller in the rearview mirror until she disappeared.
---
Monday started with a fire.
Not literal—though Sienna sometimes thought that would be easier to manage. This fire was a lawsuit. A former executive named David Heller was suing Ren Industries for wrongful termination, claiming Dominic had fired him as retaliation for raising concerns about workplace safety.
The claims were garbage. Heller had been fired for falsifying expense reports to the tune of two hundred thousand dollars. Sienna had personally compiled the evidence.
But garbage claims still required lawyers, statements, hours of documentation. By noon, Sienna had been in three meetings and answered forty-seven emails, all related to a man who should have been forgotten months ago.
"He's going to the press," Marcus said, dropping into the chair across from her desk. "Heller. His lawyer called three outlets this morning."
"With what? We have the receipts. Literally."
"Doesn't matter. The story isn't 'executive steals money and gets caught.' The story is 'Dominic Ren fires whistleblower.'" Marcus rubbed his eyes. "We need to get ahead of this."
"Has legal drafted a statement?"
"They're working on it. But Dominic wants to handle it personally."
Sienna looked toward his office. Through the glass, she could see him on the phone, pacing, one hand gesturing sharply.
"Handle it how?"
"No idea. He just said clear his schedule for Wednesday and book a flight to Chicago."
"Chicago? Heller's in New York."
"Heller's lawyer is in Chicago. So is the journalist he's been talking to." Marcus stood. "Whatever he's planning, it's not going through legal."
He left. Sienna pulled up flight options, hotel reservations, the research file she'd built on Heller six months ago when they'd first fired him.
She added the journalist to the file. The lawyer too.
By the time Dominic's door opened, she had everything ready.
"Chicago," he said, stopping at her desk. "Wednesday. Early flight."
"Already booked. You're at the Peninsula. I have files on Heller's lawyer and the journalist—Margaret Chen, writes for the Tribune, has a history of anti-corporate pieces."
He picked up the folder she'd prepared. Flipped through it.
"You anticipated this."
"Heller's been posting on LinkedIn for weeks. It wasn't hard to see where he was going."
Dominic studied her for a moment. That flat gaze that made most people squirm. Sienna held it without blinking.
"You're coming with me," he said. "I need someone who knows the file."
"I'll adjust my schedule."
He nodded once and walked away.
Sienna watched him go. Chicago meant two days minimum—travel, meetings, whatever Dominic was planning that Marcus clearly didn't approve of. Two days away from her desk, her routine, her carefully managed life.
She opened her calendar and started rearranging.