Chapter 3 — The Romantic Document

The worst part wasn't the theft. The worst part was the anniversary.

I found it at 2 a.m., in the drawer of his nightstand I'd never once opened because, in five years, I'd never had a reason.

It was a folder. A red folder. On the front, in Dylan's handwriting: For our future.

Inside were three documents. The first was a card—Five years, and every one of them was a bet I'd win. Marry me when the Series B closes? The second was a draft of the engagement announcement he'd never shown me, because the Series B was supposed to be our "yes."

The third was the IP assignment agreement. Dated. Signed. Notarized.

Dated on our anniversary.

I remember that night so clearly it physically hurts: the sushi place we couldn't afford, the champagne in paper cups on the roof of our first apartment, the way he'd said "I want to lock in our future, Sloane. Sign this, it's just a formality—a partnership agreement. Everything we build, we build together."

I'd signed it without reading it. Because it was Dylan. Because we were a team. Because love is supposed to be the one contract you don't read the fine print of.

By 3 a.m., I'd reconstructed the full picture, and it was worse than theft. It was architecture.

The "partnership agreement" I'd signed on our anniversary had quietly assigned "all intellectual property created during the relationship, past, present, and future" to Dylan Kane, personally. Not to AURIA—to him. The company's IP assignment, which Vanessa had drafted, then took the patent from him to the company, which he controlled. Two layers of theft, laundered through two legal entities, each one looking legitimate from the outside.

And the kicker? The date. The anniversary date wasn't an accident. Dylan had chosen it. He'd proposed a future with me and, at the exact same moment, signed a document that stole it.

I sat on the floor of the apartment I'd been kicked out of—no, wait, I still lived there; he'd moved out three months ago, "to focus on the launch"—and I did something I hadn't done since the stairwell.

I laughed.

It was a horrible sound, half-sob, half-bark, and it echoed off the walls.

"Give me the numbers," I said to the empty room, because it was my second rule and I needed to hear it out loud. "Show me the math. What do I actually have?"

I made a spreadsheet. It was the healthiest thing I'd done in years.

Assets:

- 2.4% of AURIA, post-dilution, if I could prove the dilution was fraudulent (I couldn't yet).

- The original source code of Kestrel, my open-source algorithm, which I'd released under a license that Dylan couldn't touch. The one good thing I'd ever given away for free.

- A car that was mostly paid off.

- A lease on an apartment that smelled like his cologne and was three weeks from due.

- A brain that had built a billion-dollar valuation from scratch, once.

Liabilities:

- Forty-one pages of "structure."

- Zero legal representation.

- A reputation about to be destroyed by a coordinated media campaign I could already see forming in my DMs.

- Approximately sixty thousand dollars in savings, which in Silicon Valley is approximately two months of legal fees.

The spreadsheet told me the truth: I couldn't fight this with what I had. I couldn't even afford the discovery phase, let alone the trial. The maze was built so that running through it bankrupted you, and stopping in it destroyed you.

So the only move was to change the maze.

I closed the spreadsheet. Opened a new document. Typed the header of the most important pitch deck of my life.

To: Adrian Vale, Obsidian Capital.

Subject: The worst ROI you'll ever be offered, and the best one you'll ever make.

I didn't send it. Not yet. I had a feeling—call it engineer's intuition, call it the ghost of my father, who'd died believing in a business plan that ate him alive—that Adrian Vale didn't open cold emails.

He opened doors that were already opening for him.

I'd have to build the door.