in. And meanwhile, no one has seen or heard from you in weeks! You’ve ignored my phone calls. We’ve had no idea where you are.”
“I’m in my apartment,” Lucas said. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little bit here?”
“Don’t you tell me I’m overreacting,” his father said. “I read online just yesterday that you had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from that company of yours. Is that true?”
“Of course it isn’t,” Lucas said. He stood and went to the kitchen. It looked like he was going to be up for a while, so he might as well start a pot of coffee. “You know me better than that, Father. Of course I didn’t steal money from Quadra-Well.”
“I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all!” his father said. “The son I know is a hard worker. The son I know is devoted to his company and would never do anything that would cause him to be placed on a leave of absence. Didn’t I raise you to be conscious of your image?”
“Yes,” Lucas said. “Hyperconscious of it.”
His father missed the barb. “Exactly,” he agreed. “And now I find out that you’ve been so unaware of the implications of your actions that you’ve caused yourself to be forced out of your own company. The company you helped to create! How could you have allowed that to happen, Lucas?”
“You’re so sure it was my fault?” Lucas asked.
“Companies don’t put their CEOs on forced leave for no reason,” his father snapped. “You did something. Out with it. I want to know.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“I don’t care what you want to talk about,” his father said. “Your actions have caused stress and humiliation for this entire family, and you owe it to your mother and me to explain yourself. The things we’ve been reading about you online are abhorrent.”
“You know those things aren’t the truth,” Lucas said. “It’s just reporters making things up.”
“If there was nothing to be ashamed of, you wouldn’t be so secretive,” his father retorted.
Lucas sighed. “Fine. If you must know, the board forced me out because of a woman.”
“A woman?”
Briefly, and with as little emotion as possible, Lucas explained that he had met a woman in Rome and that she was pregnant. He outlined the problem with Androcyl and the board’s response to his suggestion that it be sent back for more testing before it was released to the public.
“Well, that was a foolish idea,” his father said. “There have been public interviews about the product. Your competitors know it exists. You can hardly send it back to the research phase at this stage. You’re lucky your board knew that, even if you didn’t seem to.”
“But if we release the product as it is, we’ll be deceiving people,” Lucas said. “It’s not like Quadra-Well is planning to put the fact that Androcyl is only 85 percent effective on the packaging. They’re covering up the times it didn’t work. They’re going to let people believe it’s highly effective—and some of those people are going to end up with pregnancies.”
“That’s not your problem,” his father said coldly. “Your concern is making your company profitable, a fact you seem to have forgotten. Perhaps it’s for the best that you were placed on a leave of absence. It will give you the chance to get your mind right.”
“I’m never going to agree with the decision to push an ineffective drug to market,” Lucas said. “Quadra-Well should take the time to get the thing right.”
His father ignored that. “I want the name of the girl,” he said.
Lucas frowned. “What?”
“The girl,” his father said impatiently. “The one you were involved with. I want her name.”
“What do you want that for?”
“I’m going to contact the family attorney as soon as I hang up with you. I want to find out what we can do to make sure she doesn’t do anything to damage this family or your business.”
“She’s already signed an NDA,” Lucas said. “She’s not going to tell anyone that I’m the father of her baby.”
“And what are you going to do if she violates the terms of that agreement?” his father demanded.
“She won’t,” Lucas said.
“That’s what I thought,” his father said. He sounded disappointed. “You’re not prepared to take legal action against her. You’re too soft. And if she’s realized that about you, she might be preparing to violate the NDA even as we speak.”
“There’s no reason for her to do something like that,” Lucas said.
His father barked out