Chapter 4 - THE MIDNIGHT RAID
By midnight, the corporate war room at Aerotch Solutions looked less like a tech startup and more like a bunker under siege.
Julian hadn't gone home. He sat at the head of the conference room table, surrounded by empty coffee cups, crumpled papers, and three panicked corporate attorneys flown in on emergency retainer from San Francisco.
“Explain it to me again,” Julian growled, his voice hoarse from hours of shouting, “in English that doesn't make me want to throw myself through this nineteenth-floor window.”
Sarah Sterling, the lead litigator hired by Aerotch’s board, pushed her glasses up her nose with a weary sigh. She had spent the last six hours scouring every corporate archive, tax return, and patent filing from day one.
“Mr. Thorne, there is no easy way to say this,” Sarah began, her tone clinical and uncompromising. “Your wife—Mrs. Vance—was never classified as an employee, nor did she ever execute a standard proprietary information and inventions agreement (PIIA). When she filed the foundational computer vision and path-planning patents between 2018 and 2021, she filed them in her individual name, self-funding the filing fees.”
“I paid her salary!” Julian slammed his fist onto the mahogany table.
“With money she personally loaned back to the company,” Sarah countered evenly. “According to the ledger, Eleanor Vance injected over six million dollars of her own capital into Aerotch during your pre-seed and seed rounds. Legally speaking, the company owes her six point five million dollars in secured debt, and she holds exclusive title to the intellectual property powering ninety percent of your revenue-generating fleet.”
Serena, who had been sitting quietly in the corner of the conference room—far away from Julian’s usual orbit—finally spoke up, her voice trembling.
“Can’t we just... invalidate the patents? Claim she stole company time?”
Sarah turned her gaze toward Serena with undisguised contempt. “On what grounds, Miss Blake? There are no employment contracts restricting her work. Furthermore, your own internal engineering logs show that every major breakthrough since day one bears Eleanor Vance’s cryptographic digital signature. If we try to challenge her in federal court for patent misappropriation, not only will we lose instantly, but the ensuing discovery process will reveal that Aerotch has been operating commercial autonomous vehicles on public roads using unlicensed third-party IP without a valid commercial agreement.”
The conference room fell into a tomb-like silence.
“That’s illegal,” one of the junior associate lawyers muttered.
“It’s worse than illegal,” Sarah said flatly. “It’s corporate suicide. Federal regulators will pull your operating permits before the stock market opens tomorrow.”
Julian buried his face in his hands, his fingers clawing into his hair. The billionaire prodigy, the golden boy of Silicon Valley tech blogs, was moments away from insolvency.
“Call her,” Julian whispered into his palms.
“We tried, Mr. Thorne,” Sarah replied. “Her attorney has placed a strict communication blockade. All correspondence must go through Vance Legal Group. And I can assure you, Harrison Vance does not take kindly to phone calls from desperate men.”
Serena stood up, her face tight with panic. “Julian, this is insane. We can’t just let her destroy everything we built! You’re Julian Thorne! You can just... write a patch! Rewrite the code!”
Julian slowly lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot, dark circles carved deep beneath them. He looked at Serena—the woman he had chosen over his wife, the woman who had nearly killed me with a bow and arrow—and for the first time, raw, unadulterated hatred flickered in his gaze.
“Rewrite the code?” Julian repeated, his voice dangerously low. “Serena, you needed help setting up a GitHub repository last Tuesday. You couldn't debug a Python script if your life depended on it. My wife wrote three million lines of architecture while you were busy redecorating the executive lounge!”
Serena stepped back, shrinking under his fury. “You said she was just a background player—”
“I lied to myself!” Julian roared, slamming his chair backward so hard it crashed against the glass wall. “I wanted to believe I built this empire all by myself because my ego couldn't handle the truth! And now we’re paying for it.”
He grabbed his car keys off the table, his hands shaking violently.
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“Where are you going?” Sarah called out.
“To Atherton,” Julian said through clenched teeth. “If I have to beg on my knees at her father’s front gates until dawn, I’m getting my company back.”
