Page 48 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

“It won’t.”

She gives me a sidelong glance. “That’s not technically true.”

“It will be once I’ve seen the legal notes.”

“That kind of optimism is new for you.”

“It’s not optimism. It’s efficiency.”

She hands me the tablet. “Zurich is on line one. Legal has already prepared the most irritating version of the briefing. Finance is pretending to be helpful.”

I skim the first page while walking. “And the actual problem?”

Sara’s tone flattens. “The actual problem is that no one here is willing to make a decision if the number attached to it has too many zeroes.”

That, at least, is familiar.

The boardroom doors open as we approach. A dozen people are already seated inside, along with a wall screen displaying three remote participants whose combined expressions suggest varying degrees of concern.

I enter, and the room adjusts. There's a specific silence that accompanies authority when it's expected rather than requested. It has nothing to do with volume. It’s attention reorganizing itself around the person most likely to decide how the next hour proceeds.

I take my place at the head of the table.

“Let’s begin.”

The next forty minutes proceed as most of these meetings do. Numbers, risk projections, and legal caveats presented in language designed to obscure their own solvability. Two men from Zurich ask functionally identical questions with slightly different accents. Finance is overcomplicating a timeline that should have been simplified three revisions ago.

I listen.

Then I resolve it.

The product itself requires no defense. The new AI safety system is years ahead of anything else currently in deploymentacross private aviation. Predictive stabilization, fault isolation, and response time correction before most pilots even recognize a system failure. It's not just software. It's architecture designed to anticipate failure and intervene before catastrophe becomes momentum.

That matters to the market.

It matters more to me.

By the end of the meeting, the guarantees are restructured, the legal concerns contained within a manageable framework, and Zurich has what it needs to continue without the theatrical hesitations that delayed this meeting in the first place.

The room empties in stages after that.

Sara remains.

Jeffrey appears a minute later, coffee in hand, tie loosened in the way he only permits on days when he intends to annoy me. As my business partner, he’s the only one I allow to get away with that.

“You look busy,” he says.

“I am busy.”

“Shame.” He sits without invitation. “I wanted to hear how the new domestic arrangement's going.”

Sara looks up from her tablet. “Domestic arrangement? You mean the nanny?”

I don’t answer quickly enough.

That’s unfortunate.

Jeffrey notices at once. “Oh, excellent. You don’t know the best part.”