Thirty-seven minutes after the doors closed, his phone rang.
Bradley.
Music thundered behind his voice.
Thomas could hear people laughing somewhere in the distance and waves breaking against the shore.
“Dad, what did you do?” Bradley demanded.
Thomas stared at the red light above the operating-room door.
“What do you think I did?”
“My corporate card stopped working.
My assistant says compliance locked my access.
Are you trying to humiliate me today of all days?”
Thomas almost laughed.
Instead he asked, “Where are you?”
“You know where I am.”
“Say it.”
A pause.
“Cabo.”
“And Rachel?”
Another pause, shorter this time.
“I filed for divorce.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Bradley’s voice hardened.
“Rachel is an adult.
She can handle herself.”
Thomas looked through the narrow window in the operating-room doors.
All he could see were moving blue gowns and the edge of a surgical light.
“She is thirty-two weeks pregnant with your twins and undergoing emergency surgery.”
The music behind Bradley seemed to disappear.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Bradley recovered quickly.
“She always makes things dramatic.”
Thomas closed his eyes.
“She is bleeding in an operating room.”
“I didn’t cause that.”
“You emptied accounts today.”
“They were mine.”
“You attempted to remove her from a trust property.”
“That house was always supposed to be mine.”
“You submitted a marital-status change to terminate her medical coverage.”
“I filed the divorce.”
“You filed paperwork.
You were still married when you held your ceremony today.”
Bradley exhaled sharply.
“This is none of the company’s business.”
“It became the company’s business when the audit system flagged company resources touching your personal transactions.”
Silence.
Then Bradley said the sentence Thomas would remember for the rest of his life.
“She isn’t my problem anymore.”
Thomas looked at the operating-room doors.
“No,” he said.
“Apparently she never was.”
He ended the call.
Inside the operating room, Dr.
Kline delivered the first twin, a boy weighing barely four pounds.
His cry was thin but unmistakable.
The second baby, a girl, needed help breathing immediately after delivery.
