Chapter 3 - Forty-Three Stolen Ideas
Marcus read his signature four times.
Then he locked the conference-room door.
“I didn’t draft this.”
Grant stared at him.
“Your name is on it.”
“I can see that.”
“You notarized it.”
“No.”
Evelyn leaned toward the screen.
“Could it be forged?”
Marcus did not answer immediately.
“Possibly.”
Grant laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“So Serena forged a contract?”
Marcus looked at him sharply.
“Do not make that accusation.”
“Why?”
“Because you currently have forty-three models derived from her notebooks and an agreement apparently protecting her ownership. Accusing her of fraud without evidence would be spectacularly stupid.”
Grant looked away.
Marcus called his firm.
“Pull every archived file connected to Grant Holloway’s 2016 marriage agreements. Physical and digital.”
He listened.
Then his face tightened.
“What do you mean missing?”
Grant stepped closer.
Marcus ended the call.
“The physical file was checked out six years ago.”
“By whom?”
“They’re finding out.”
Meanwhile, Serena stood inside a private office overlooking the Moretti family’s Hudson estate.
Her old notebooks filled one wall.
Dominic had preserved them.
“You kept everything?” she asked.
“You told me to.”
“I was twenty-four.”
“You were still my daughter.”
Serena touched the spine of the first notebook.
She remembered the night she left.
Dominic had wanted her protected.
Serena wanted anonymity.
The Moretti name opened doors, but it also made every friendship questionable.
Every romance suspect.
Every success inherited.
She wanted to know whether she could build something without it.
Grant had seemed like the answer.
Her father entered.
“We have a problem.”
“The agreement?”
Dominic nodded.
“Marcus says he doesn’t remember signing it.”
“He did.”
“You’re sure?”
“I watched him.”
Dominic frowned.
Serena opened a drawer.
Inside was a photograph from her wedding morning.
Marcus stood beside Dominic’s longtime attorney, Nathan Cole.
On the table was the agreement.
“Marcus came because Grant asked him to review the prenup amendments,” Serena said. “Nathan added the IP clause. Marcus read it.”
“Then why doesn’t he remember?”
“I don’t know.”
Dominic looked at the photograph.
“Where is Nathan?”
Serena went still.
Nathan Cole had disappeared five years earlier.
His car was found at JFK.
No body.
No confirmed flight.
No financial activity afterward.
Dominic had spent years trying to locate him.
Serena stared at Marcus in the photograph.
Then at Nathan.
Something uncomfortable moved through her.
“Dad.”
“Yes?”
“The original agreement.”
“What about it?”
“Nathan kept it.”
Dominic understood immediately.
If Nathan vanished, the original might have vanished with him.
Serena’s phone rang.
Rachel Bennett.
“Serena, Holloway Financial’s board wants an emergency meeting.”
“No.”
“They’re not asking you to return. They want clarification regarding the models.”
“Tell them my attorneys will respond.”
“There’s something else.”
Rachel hesitated.
“Someone leaked photographs of your notebooks.”
Serena’s face hardened.
“Which photographs?”
“The early models.”
Dominic crossed the room.
“Where did they publish?”
“Financial press received them anonymously. They haven’t published yet because they’re authenticating.”
Serena looked toward the shelves.
Only a few people could access those notebooks.
Dominic.
Serena.
Their archivist.
Security.
And one other person.
Her younger cousin Adrian Moretti.
Dominic saw the realization.
“No.”
“You gave Adrian archive access.”
“He manages family investments.”
“He also wanted me to return.”
Dominic’s expression became dangerous.
“I’ll handle Adrian.”
“No.”
“Serena.”
“I spent eight years letting men handle things for me.”
Dominic stopped.
She picked up her coat.
“I’m handling this.”
That afternoon, Grant faced his board.
Nobody called him a genius.
The word “exposure” appeared seventeen times.
The board chair, Margaret Sloan, removed her glasses.
“Did Serena Holloway create these models?”
“She contributed ideas.”
Evelyn spoke from the other end of the table.
“The evidence indicates substantially more than contribution.”
Grant turned.
“You work for me.”
Evelyn’s expression did not change.
“I work for the company.”
Margaret leaned forward.
“Grant, did you know?”
“No.”
“You emailed photographs of her work to employees.”
“I thought—”
He stopped.
What had he thought?
That anything Serena said in their kitchen belonged to him?
That marriage turned her mind into community property?
That because she never demanded credit, credit did not matter?
“I didn’t understand what I was taking,” Grant said.
The room went silent.
It was the first truthful sentence he had spoken all day.
Margaret closed her folder.
“Until ownership is resolved, you are temporarily suspended from executive decision-making.”
Grant stared.
“This is my company.”
“Then you should have protected it.”
Grant left through a side elevator.
Camille waited in his penthouse when he arrived.
She wore one of Serena’s old silk robes.
He stared at it.
“Take that off.”
Camille blinked.
“What?”
“That belonged to Serena.”
“You said she left everything.”
“I said take it off.”
Camille disappeared upstairs.
Grant poured a drink but did not touch it.
He walked into the home office he had converted into a gym.
For the first time, he remembered what had been there before.
Serena’s desk.
Her books.
A small brass lamp.
Stacks of notebooks.
He had complained they made the room look cluttered.
One weekend while Serena visited a friend, Grant had hired contractors.
The desk disappeared.
The shelves disappeared.
The notebooks were boxed.
When Serena returned, she had stood in the doorway for almost a minute.
“You could have asked,” she said.
Grant had laughed.
“You barely use this room.”
Now he understood.
She had not argued because by then she had stopped expecting him to see her.
Grant moved the treadmill.
Something scraped beneath it.
A thin black notebook.
Dust covered the leather.
His pulse accelerated.
He opened it.
Serena’s handwriting filled the first pages.
Not equations.
A diary.
Grant should have closed it.
He did not.
March 14.
Grant presented my freight-risk equation today. Everyone applauded him. He looked so happy that I couldn’t bring myself to correct them.
April 2.
He called me “his good-luck charm” at dinner. I wanted to tell him luck has nothing to do with the work.
May 19.
Dad says silence becomes permission if you leave it long enough.
Grant swallowed.
He turned pages faster.
Then he reached the final entry.
The handwriting changed.
Unsteady.
September 8.
I found out who has been copying my private research before Grant sees it.
Grant stopped breathing.
The next sentence contained a name.
Not Grant’s.
Not Dominic’s.
Not Marcus’s.
May you like
Camille Foster.
And from upstairs, Camille suddenly screamed...
