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Medicine.
When it came to illness, particularly the illnesses of women, the medical community had been complacent for too long in his opinion. He had set out to learn everything he could. About technology and about the human body. About how they could both help each other.
There had been so many breakthroughs over the years. But still not the one that he had been hoping for.
But now he was on the verge of finding exactly what he needed for early detection of ovarian cancer with simple, accurate technology that would provide much more information than a blood test followed by a scan. With this, it was possible that the disease could be detected at stage one, and be screened for as part of yearly physicals.
It was the kind of technology that would have kept his own mother alive.
And while all of these things would sell themselves, and backers and researchers would be drawn to the mere rumor of its existence, he knew that making new medical technology ubiquitous was more complicated than that.
Hence the summit.
But for the summit, he needed Polly.
Whatever happened after that, he could focus on it then.
But he would do everything in his power to keep her with him now.
That was all that mattered.
“That is an incredibly horrendous thing to say to someone who has worked for you faithfully for five years.”
“Quitting on the verge of something this important to someone you have worked for for five years is an incredibly irresponsible thing to do. And frankly, I thought you were better than that.”
“I’m past the point of being able to be guilted into doing your bidding, Luca. I have done nothing less than everything you have asked these past years.”
“And why was this the straw that broke the camel’s back?”
“Because the camel had somewhere else to go. You have been unreasonable, inflexible, ogreish, some might say, every day these past five years. But I knew that it was the best place for me to be in order to gain experience for what I wanted to do later.”
“And I will be an invaluable reference for the rest of your working life if you simply do what I ask now.”
Yes. He was inflexible. He was in his very nature, down to his core. A person could not do the level of research that he did and also be the kind of person who bent with the breeze.
His work required focus. It required single-mindedness. It required a certain amount of selfishness around each and every endeavor.
Lucky for him, he had always been accomplished at those things.
His own father had found him confounding. Frustrating. He could admit that he had been a difficult child. Never content. Always obsessed, and there was a point where his father had been forced to contend with him on his own, and it had not gone well.
Luca could be philosophical about that.
Even if he did enjoy that his success was something his father benefited from, and therefore could not ignore. Especially as his father had told him once that he would never amount to anything, because no one as truly strange as his son was could ever make his way in the world.
So Luca had made his way in the world. And then some. Not only that, he was working to change the world. And it was precisely the characteristics his father had told him would preclude him from success that had brought him success.
Luca had found that he could pay people to handle what did not serve him or his work, and that was sufficient.
He didn’t need to change. He simply needed to be powerful enough to change the world around him.
He had done so.
He did not accept critiques regarding his personality. Because his personality was irrelevant.
“Have I asked you to do anything that was not explicitly outlined as a possibility in your contract?”
“Your contract did not say that I might be called to your home to consult with you when you were bare-chested, no.”