Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
THERESA
I’d been holed up in Marco’s office—my office now, though I still couldn’t think of it that way—for nearly four hours. I’d traced Arthur’s sabotage to specific sections, identifying each false claim and misleading omission, but the question remained: how to fix it in time?
Six days. The board meeting was in six days.
I pushed back from the desk, my shoulders aching from hunching over paperwork.
From downstairs I could hear kids shouting, Michael’s deeper voice attempting to referee, and the back door slamming. The normal sounds of family life continuing while I hid upstairs, trying to keep the company from crashing and burning.
I stretched, feeling guilty. I’d promised to join them for dinner, to be present, to stop being the ghost who haunted the upper floor of the house.
But every hour I spent with the kids felt like an hour stolen from my battle with Arthur.
And every hour I spent dealing with Arthur felt like an hour stolen from my family.
“Fire in the hole!”
Rome’s voice. I smiled despite my exhaustion. Whatever contraption he’d convinced Michael to help build was apparently operational. Rome had been obsessed with siege weapons since our trip to the science museum last month, sketching catapults and trebuchets in his school notebooks.
I turned back to the report, searching for the paragraph where Arthur had inserted the problematic reference to the abandoned military research.
A sharp crack of splintering wood tore through the afternoon, followed instantly by a cry of pain.
Then Michael’s voice, tight with terror: “Theresa! THERESA!”
My body moved before I even understood why. I was down the stairs and through the kitchen in seconds, bursting onto the back porch.
Michael stood at the far end of the yard, looking down. Rome lay on the grass, curled on his side, cradling his right arm against his chest. He looked so small against the green lawn.
“What happened?” I was already running across the grass, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
“The catapult backfired,” Michael said, kneeling beside Rome. He hovered his hands over his nephew, afraid to touch him. “The tension was too high. When it released, the arm snapped back and hit him, and then he fell off the platform.”
I dropped to my knees in the dirt. Rome’s face was chalk white, his eyes wide and swimming with tears.
“Rome, sweetheart, where does it hurt?”
“My arm,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “And my head bounced.”
His right forearm was already swelling, an angry red mark visible just below his elbow where the wood had struck him. When I gently touched his head, he flinched away.
“We need to go to the hospital,” Michael said. “That arm doesn’t look right.”
“I’ll get the car,” I said. My voice sounded calm, almost detached, but my hands were shaking. “Can you carry him?”
Michael nodded, slipping his arms under Rome. My son bit his lip hard, letting out a small, sharp whimper that tore straight through me. “I’ll stay with the others,” Michael added. “Shelly’s on her way home.”
The next ten minutes were a blur of adrenaline. I grabbed my purse, car keys, and Rome’s favorite stuffed dinosaur from his bed. Michael settled Rome in the backseat buckling him in with extreme care.
“It’s going to be okay,” I told Rome, meeting his frightened eyes in the rearview mirror as I backed out of the driveway. “We’ll get you fixed up.”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he whispered. He looked so young, huddled over. “I was just trying to make it throw farther. Dad would have thought it was cool.”
“Your dad would’ve loved it,” I admitted, my voice catching as Marco’s face flashed through my mind. “Remember when he built a rocket in our garage? Nearly burned the house down.”
A ghost of a smile appeared on Rome’s pale face. “It blew up the trash can.”
“And singed his eyebrows clean off.” The image of Marco, shocked and laughing, eyebrows completely gone, stood vivid in my mind.
The traffic light ahead turned red. I stopped, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. I needed help. I needed... him.
I grabbed the car phone and punched in Patrick’s number, not letting myself think about whether it was appropriate or if I was interrupting him.
He answered on the second ring. “Theresa?”
“I need you.” My voice cracked, the calm facade finally slipping. “Rome’s hurt. We’re heading to San Jose Regional. His arm—I think it’s broken.”
There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation. No questions about how or why. Just four simple words.
“I’m on my way.”
I hung up, oddly steadied. As the light turned green, I glanced back at Rome, who was staring out the window, tears silently tracking down his cheeks.
“Patrick’s going to meet us there,” I said.
Rome sniffled, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “He tells funny jokes. Maybe he’ll make the doctor laugh, so they won’t stick me with the needle.”
The hospital emergency room was mercifully quiet for a Thursday afternoon. The triage nurse took one look at Rome’s arm and his pale, clammy face and moved us straight to an examination room.
I filled out paperwork—insurance, medical history, emergency contacts—while a young doctor with kind eyes examined Rome. He talked to Rome, not just about him, asking about school and favorite colors while he manipulated the arm.
“Fractured radius,” the doctor confirmed after the X-rays came back. He pointed to the ghostly white line on the black film. “And I’m concerned about a possible concussion. The good news is it’s a clean break. We’ll set it, cast it, and he’ll be good as new in six to eight weeks.”
“But I need both arms for my catapult,” Rome protested weakly.
The doctor smiled. “Well, we’ll have to design you a special cast for siege engineering, won’t we? I’m more concerned about that bump on your head. We’d like to keep you overnight for observation.”
Rome’s eyes widened, panic flaring. “Stay here? By myself?”
“I’ll stay with you,” I promised, squeezing his good hand. “The whole time. I’m not going anywhere.”
As they prepared to set Rome’s arm, a nurse administered pain medication that made his eyelids droop. I stepped into the hallway to call Michael while Rome dozed, waiting for the orthopedist.
The hospital corridor felt too cold, too bright. I leaned against the wall, closing my eyes. The weight of everything—the board meeting, Arthur, the catapult, Rome’s pain—crashed down on me at once.
Rome was hurt. My seven-year-old son was hurt while I was buried in paperwork, fighting a battle that suddenly seemed abstract and distant compared to the immediate reality of my child in pain.
What kind of mother was I? What kind of CEO was I, for that matter, if six days before the most important board meeting of my life, I still had no solid plan to counter Arthur?
I was failing at everything.
The elevator doors at the end of the corridor slid open. Michael stepped out with Austin beside him.
My oldest son looked like he was about to shatter. His eyes darted frantically around the nurses’ station until they locked on me.
“Where’s Rome?” Austin demanded, his voice high. “Is he okay? Is he going to die?”
“No, sweetheart.” I knelt to his level, gripping his shoulders to steady him. “Rome has a broken arm and a bump on his head. They’re going to keep him overnight just to make sure he’s okay, but he’s going to be fine.”
Austin nodded stiffly, absorbing the information. He took a shallow breath, then looked at me with eyes that were far too old for his face.
“Are we going to lose Dad’s company too?”
I couldn’t answer. The words stuck in my throat, choking me. Because the truth was, I didn’t know. In six days—no, five now, since tomorrow would be spent at the hospital with Rome—I might lose everything. I might fail in the last task he’d entrusted to me.
Michael must have seen the way I flinched, because he quickly took Austin’s hand. “Hey, buddy, why don’t you go sit with Rome for a bit? The nurse said it’s okay. I need to talk to your mom for a minute.”
Once Austin disappeared into Rome’s room, Michael took my arm. “You need a minute,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
He guided me to a small chapel at the end of the hall—a quiet, windowless room with a few wooden pews and stained-glass panels lit from behind. It was empty.
The moment the door closed behind us, I broke.
It wasn’t a dignified cry. It was raw and ugly, the kind of sobbing that comes from some place primal, some place that had been holding on for too long. Michael held me while I fell apart, his arms solid and welcomed around my shoulders.
“I can’t do this,” I gasped between sobs, my face buried in his shirt. “I can’t be what everyone needs. Rome got hurt because I wasn’t there looking after him. The company’s going to fail because I can’t be in two places at once. Marco could do both. Why can’t I?”
Michael waited until my breathing steadied, just rubbing my back like he used to when we were kids. Then he pulled back to look me in the eye.
“Marco had you,” he said simply. “You were his partner in everything—the business, the kids, life. You’re trying to do this alone, and that’s not fair to you or to anyone else.”
“What choice do I have?” The question came out bitter with exhaustion.
“We’re all here for you. Shelly and I are here. Patrick’s here. You have people, Theresa. Use them.”
I wiped at my face with the back of my hand, embarrassed by the breakdown but feeling strangely lighter. “I should get back to Rome.”
“In a minute.” Michael’s voice was gentle but firm. “First, you need to decide what you’re fighting for. Is it the company? Or is it what the company represents?”
“What do you mean?”
“Marco built CarideoTech because he wanted to help people. But he also built it to create something lasting for your family. For the kids.” Michael’s eyes were kind but unflinching.
“If saving the company means losing yourself, or losing your connection to the children, what would Marco want you to choose?”