“Women of Wonder,” Annika corrected, shivering lightly in the breeze that had just picked up. “I know it’s no Forbes, but it’s cool because they feature a lot of women entrepreneurs. Plus, I really liked the nickname they coined for me.” She grinned.

“‘Dr. Make Up, the relationship doc,’” her dad quoted. “I have to say, Annika, that’s not what I meant when I said I wanted you to become a physician.”

Annika rolled her eyes. “Ha-ha. To answer your earlier question, Make Up’s doing really well. We have a new beta tester coming in bright and early tomorrow, a networking event on Thursday … busy, busy, busy.” There was no good time to tell your father, who still harbored dreams of you following in his doctorly footsteps, that the bank was sending henchmen out to threaten you for being “grotesquely delinquent.”

“A networking event? That could be good. You’ve been trying to set one up for a long time. It’s nice to hear you’ve had success this time around.”

“It wasn’t exactly me who had success with it.” Annika squeezed the stem of her wineglass, imagining it was Hudson’s neck instead.

“Oh. Well, who did?”

Annika sighed and took a sip of wine, pulling her legs up on the chair, her feet warm in her plushy, heart-motif socks. “A new business moved in down the hallway. It’s called Break Up.”

“Oh, yes, they’re up-and-coming, aren’t they? I remember reading about the CEO in the papers last week. What was his name? Harvey Craft?”

Of course her dad had read about him. She cleared her throat, her hand still tight on the stem of her wineglass. “Hudson Craft.”

“And you … don’t get along with this Hudson?”

Annika closed her eyes, reminding herself of all the awful things Hudson had done. “Yeah, you could say that. Although, I’m not sure anyone could get along with him. Do you know he’s already facilitated three hundred thousand breakups with his awful app? And they hit a million downloads.”

“Three hundred thousand! A million!” her dad said, totally missing the point. “Those seem like tremendous numbers. The article said he hadn’t even been in business a full year yet.”

Annika sighed, letting her head loll on the back of her chair so she could stare up at the ceiling, where she’d strung twinkling lights. “Those numbers aren’t that astronomical. Anyway, Dad, you’re missing the point.”

She heard the smile in his voice. “And what’s that?”

“That Hudson’s a brash, boastful, condescending supervillain.”

Her dad made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a snort. “Supervillain, huh? Things must be bad.”