Palm Springs, Last November

The bull shark of Wall Street had come to the desert, and Eleanor's palm was sweating against her champagne flute. Richard—the man who'd eviscerated her team's quarterly projections, the man who'd whispered "corporate restructuring" with the glee of a serial killer—now stood by the hotel pool in Palm Springs, surrounded by yes-men whose laughter sounded like broken glass.

This retreat was supposed to be about synergy. Instead, it was becoming a wake.

Eleanor slipped away from the patio, needing to breathe. The pool area was empty at twilight—the water still, the surface reflecting the first stars and the artificial glow of pool lights. She'd spent twenty years building her division. Richard had spent twenty dismantling them.

Her phone buzzed. A text from her husband: "Can we talk about the house?"

The bull of Wall Street was coming for her livelihood; her own personal bull—her marriage—was charging from the opposite direction. And here she was, fifty years old, standing beside a pool in the desert, wondering where everything had gone wrong.

Richard appeared behind her, silhouetted against the patio lights. "Eleanor, there you are."

She turned, palm pressed against her racing heart. "Richard."

"I wanted to apologize," he said, something almost genuine flickering across his face. "The board meeting—I was riding a high, took it out on you. Your team's solid. The numbers... the numbers were never the problem."

Eleanor laughed, a bitter, dry sound. "Then what was?"

"Politics." He stepped closer. "Your division's profitable. That's the problem. Makes my department look like dead weight. The board needs a sacrifice."

The water was dark now, the pool lights casting rippling shadows across Richard's face. "So you threw me under the bus to save your own skin."

"It's just business, Eleanor."

"No," she said, setting down her glass. "It's something else entirely."

She walked past him toward the patio, toward the noise and laughter and bullshit. The bull market of their careers had turned, and now they were all just waiting to see who'd be first to drown in the pool.