Chapter 4 - What My Name Still Owned
I read the forged document until the words blurred.
Helix Crown would receive NexusCore’s artificial intelligence platform, patents, client contracts, and proprietary data systems.
NexusCore would keep its debt.
Its employees would keep worthless stock.
Matthew and Lauren would receive private ownership through a network of hidden companies.
“They were going to hollow it out.”
I said.
My father nodded.
“And leave thousands of people inside the shell.”
“Why did they need my signature?”
“Because the original predictive engine was yours.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“I built early models.”
“I wrote notes.”
“Matthew turned them into a company.”
“You wrote the architecture.”
My father opened another file.
“Your work was registered under a Sterling family trust before your marriage.”
“I never registered anything.”
“I did.”
Anger flickered through me despite the pain.
“You had no right.”
“I know.”
His answer stopped me.
Richard looked older than he had a few hours earlier.
“When you told me you were leaving, I knew you would refuse money.”
“I knew you would refuse protection.”
“So I protected the work instead.”
“The trust licensed the technology to NexusCore for twenty years.”
“The license could be terminated if your consent was forged, if the company committed material fraud, or if control changed through an undisclosed transaction.”
“Matthew triggered every clause.”
I looked at the hospital window.
Dawn had begun turning the sky gray.
“So you froze the license.”
“I suspended it.”
“That’s why the banks panicked.”
“They financed a company that may no longer control its core technology.”
My father leaned closer.
“But I haven’t terminated anything permanently.”
“You decide what happens next.”
I thought of the engineers who had worked through holidays.
The assistants who stayed late.
The families whose savings were invested in employee stock.
Matthew had used all of us.
“I don’t want NexusCore destroyed.”
“Neither do I.”
“I want him removed.”
My father’s eyes hardened.
“That can be arranged.”
“No.”
I forced myself upright despite the pain.
“It has to be done legally.”
“Publicly.”
“And permanently.”
A faint, almost painful pride crossed his face.
“You sound like your mother.”
The mention of her opened a wound no doctor had examined.
“Did she know?”
“That I protected the patents?”
“Yes.”
“That I was waiting for you to call?”
My father’s voice became quieter.
“She waited too.”
My mother had died three years earlier.
Matthew had refused to attend the funeral.
He told me that returning to Greenwich would make me look weak.
I had stood alone at the edge of the cemetery, watching from behind a line of trees after everyone else had left.
My father did not know I had been there.
Or perhaps he did.
A nurse entered and handed him an envelope delivered by hospital security.
There was no return address.
Inside was a photograph of a toddler standing beside a swimming pool.
The boy had Matthew’s dark eyes.
He was wearing one blue sock.
May you like
On the back, someone had written three words.
Ask about Owen.
