Chapter 4

"Clara Vance? I have a patent ownership dispute notice from the legal department of Sterling Group. Please sign here."

At the door of my lab, a courier handed me a manila envelope.

Inside was a stack of cease-and-desist letters. The wording was polite, but the intent was vicious. Sterling Group claimed that all thirty-seven core patents under my name were developed using company resources and platforms. They wanted them classified as "work-for-hire" and transferred to the company.

Attached was a court notice. They had already filed for a temporary injunction to freeze my rights to transfer or sell these patents.

My lab was on the top floor of an old office building on the west side of the city. After Sterling Group moved to the flashy downtown tech district, no one came here anymore. But today, the security logs showed that someone had bypassed the smart lock physically at 2:00 AM.

They had tried to be careful, but they weren't careful enough.

The server rack had been opened, and there were scratches on the drive bays from hard drives being pulled out. Too bad for them, my encryption protocol wasn't some commercial package. I wrote it myself. Without my biometric key, even if they stole the physical drives, all they would see was gibberish.

They got absolutely nothing.

But this was no longer just about stealing patents. This was war.

My phone rang. Seraphina.

"Clara, it's me."

Her voice was still soft, slow, and overly sweet.

"Julian wanted me to reach out. He doesn't want to make this ugly."

"You received the legal notice, right? Julian says it’s just standard procedure. If you cooperate and voluntarily transfer the patent ownership to the company, he’s willing to offer you a settlement. Five million dollars."

A technology foundation worth thirteen billion dollars, and she was offering five million.

"Those chip architectures and base algorithms were projects I started back during my PhD. I had the first working prototype running five years before Sterling Group was even founded."

Seraphina paused for a moment.

"But Clara, Julian said that back when you held those technologies, no one would invest a single dime. He was the one who brought his team to take them out of the lab and into the market. Without his business genius, your code would just be a pile of useless trash."

"Did he actually say that?"

"He said you're just a coder."

Seraphina probably didn't realize the weight of those words.

Or maybe she did, which is why she said them.

"Tell him he can take his five million dollars and shove it."

"Then what do you want?"

"What I want isn't money."

Seraphina was quiet for a few seconds. When she spoke again, her voice had a sharp edge I hadn't heard before.

"Clara, let me be real with you. The court is going to award those patents to the company sooner or later. Take the five million and walk away with your dignity. If you get kicked out by the court, you won't even get a dime."

"You know Julian. When he wants something, he always gets it."

She hung up.

I sat in my lab’s swivel chair, the monitor glowing in front of me.

I compiled the logs of the break-in into a security file. It included the physical lock-tampering data, the fingerprint dust left on the server rack, and the login timestamps from Sterling Group's IT VPN—which matched the break-in down to the second.

He had sent his own tech team to rob me.

But what truly sealed his fate was another document Arthur sent over.

Julian’s car accident. The police report showed he rear-ended another car while driving at only twenty-five miles per hour. The airbags deployed normally, and he only suffered minor scrapes and a mild concussion.

Yet, the insurance claim had been submitted two days before the accident.

The policyholder was Seraphina.

The beneficiary was Julian.

The crash was a setup from the very beginning.

He needed a hospital stay to act out his amnesia, and he needed medical records to back up his story. Meanwhile, Seraphina had bought the insurance policy beforehand, making sure not to lose a single penny.

Arthur had added a note at the bottom of the file:

"The patent registration company under your name is 'Vance Technologies,' which was incorporated before Sterling Group. Section 11 of the Technology Licensing Agreement states: If the marriage or cohabitation relationship between Party A and the legal representative of Party B is dissolved, all licensing authorizations terminate automatically, and licensed technologies cannot be reverse-engineered or retained."

He added: "Ms. Vance, you wrote this clause yourself seven years ago."

Yes, I did. Seven years ago, when I licensed my technology to Julian, I prepared for the worst-case scenario.

I just never expected that the worst-case scenario would actually happen.

A new message popped up on my screen. It was from Carter on WhatsApp.

"Ms. Vance, there is an emergency board meeting tomorrow at 10:00 AM. Julian demands your presence."

I stared at the word "demands" and shut off the screen.

"Arthur, I need you at the board meeting tomorrow."

"What files should I bring?"

"Bring video recording equipment."