Flynn had signed those papers in that corridor to accomplish two cold, simple things: to cut off my medical coverage before the bills came due, and to lock down his corporate assets before our twins were out of surgery.

Instead, with his own hand, with his own arrogant signature, he had pulled the pin on a grenade my grandfather had built and buried a decade earlier, and set it ticking under everything he owned.

I pushed myself up against the pillows.

The incision across my abdomen screamed in protest and I ignored it, because some pains stop mattering the moment you understand what you have to do.

I looked at the administrator standing at the foot of my bed with his tablet full of my erasure.