Chapter 2 - The Wife He Had Asked to Be Patient
Sebastian took Clara to Northwestern Medicine’s emergency department that night.
The baby was fine.
Clara had bruising around her wrist and scalp tenderness where Eleanor had pulled her hair, but no signs of immediate obstetric complications.
The doctor recommended rest and told her to return if she developed contractions, bleeding, or decreased fetal movement.
Sebastian sat beside the examination bed.
He had asked the same question three times.
“How long has this been happening?”
Clara stared at the fetal monitor.
“Which part?”
“My mother putting her hands on you.”
“Tonight was the worst.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
She turned toward him.
“Do you really want one?”
He did.
Then he wished he had asked months earlier.
Eleanor had been humiliating Clara since the pregnancy became visible.
She commented on Clara’s weight at family dinners.
She told household staff not to make “special meals” when Clara became nauseated.
At a foundation luncheon, she introduced Clara as “the woman producing our next generation.”
When Clara objected, Eleanor laughed and told everyone pregnancy had made her sensitive.
Sebastian had heard about some of it.
He had answered the way he always did.
Mom is old-fashioned.
Ignore her.
Don’t let her get under your skin.
“She never treated you like that in front of me.”
“That was the point.”
Sebastian looked away.
He had spent most of the past six months traveling between Chicago, Boston, and New York preparing Bellamy Medical Group’s largest acquisition.
The company distributed specialized diagnostic and surgical equipment to hospital systems across the Midwest. His grandfather started it from a warehouse in Cicero. His father turned it into a regional company.
Under Sebastian, annual revenue had crossed $1.6 billion.
Julian served as chief strategy officer.
Eleanor chaired the Bellamy Family Foundation and still held significant voting shares.
The missing corporate-folder page belonged to the acquisition of Hartwell Clinical Logistics, a privately held Ohio distributor.
The proposed price was $420 million.
The transaction was supposed to close in nineteen days.
“Why would Mom want a page from the Hartwell agreement?” Clara asked.
“I don’t know.”
She looked at him.
“You always say that when the answer involves your family.”
He flinched.
She continued.
“Three weeks ago, Julian brought me papers at home. He said they were routine spousal acknowledgments related to your family trust.”
“Did you sign them?”
“One.”
Sebastian stood.
“What?”
“The first page said I acknowledged that some of your Bellamy shares were separate property. That’s true. Then I noticed the next document had my old job title.”
Before marrying Sebastian, Clara had worked as a compliance analyst for a Chicago hospital network.
She had never worked for Bellamy Medical.
“What title?”
“Independent compliance reviewer.”
Sebastian’s stomach tightened.
“I refused to sign.”
“What happened?”
“Julian told your mother.”
“And?”
Clara gave him a look he would remember for years.
“You left for Boston the next morning.”
He had.
Clara had called that evening and said Eleanor was “being impossible.”
Sebastian had been preparing for a lender presentation.
He told her they would deal with it when he got home.
He never asked what impossible meant.
Now his wife sat in a hospital bed with bruises on her wrist.
Sebastian took out his phone and called Bellamy Medical’s general counsel.
“Freeze Julian’s access to the Hartwell transaction room.”
Clara’s eyes moved toward him.
“Sebastian.”
May you like
“What?”
“You may already be too late.”
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