“You were right,” I whispered.
The words hurt less than I expected.
Then I corrected myself.
“We were both late learning it.”
I thought about Richard’s final letter, about the page I had signed before sunrise, and about Thomas sitting in that conference room certain the future belonged to him simply because he had arrived to claim it.
Richard’s empire had never truly been ships, contracts, offices, or money.
It was the discipline of showing up when people depended on you.
Thomas missed his father’s burial because he believed there would always be another chance to handle the important things later.
There wasn’t.
And for the first time in his life, I loved him enough not to erase the consequence.
