Chapter 5 - The Stolen Code
I stared at David in absolute shock.
I had not seen him since the day I left Ohio nine years ago.
I asked him why he was pointing a gun at my husband.
David sneered and said he was simply taking back what rightfully belonged to him.
He claimed there was no criminal syndicate in Cleveland.
My mother had lied about the debt to manipulate me.
David revealed that he was the one who originally wrote the core software code for Compliance Core.
He accused Marcus of stealing a hard drive from his garage a decade ago.
He said our entire billion-dollar company was built on his stolen intellectual property.
Marcus vehemently denied the wild accusation.
Marcus said he built the code from scratch during countless sleepless nights.
David pulled a thick stack of legal documents from his jacket.
He slammed them onto the kitchen island next to my mother's demand list.
He said he was filing a massive federal lawsuit tomorrow morning.
The lawsuit would completely destroy our upcoming IPO and bankrupt us.
My mother chimed in, saying she brought the list as a generous settlement offer.
She said paying them today would make the lawsuit disappear forever.
I looked at the numbers and realized something horrifying.
The sum on the paper was the exact amount remaining in a secret trust fund my grandmother left exclusively for me.
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I had never told anyone in my family about that account.
David smiled and revealed that my corporate lawyer was the one who told them about the money.
