Chapter 7 - Messages From The Cell
By the end of the week, the financial media was in a frenzy. Cable news anchors debated whether my company would survive the patent dispute, while Valhalla Capital quietly bought up millions of our panicked public shares at a heavy discount. Gabriel Thorne was building a massive voting block to challenge my leadership at the upcoming proxy vote.
To stop him, I needed to know how Thorne had obtained Arthur's fraudulent collateral documents. My legal team traced the origin of the leak to a surprisingly familiar location: the state penitentiary where Julian Sterling was serving his ten year sentence.
I drove to the prison on a cold afternoon. Sitting behind the thick bulletproof glass in the visitation room, Julian looked hollowed out and gray. He wore a coarse orange jumpsuit, his hands restrained by heavy steel cuffs. Yet when he saw me sit down across from him, a cruel, familiar smirk touched his lips.
"Hello, Elena," Julian said through the metal speaker. "You do not look like a triumphant chief executive today. You look tired."
"Gabriel Thorne is using your father's forged patent deeds to launch a short attack on my company," I replied smoothly, ignoring his taunt. "I know you smuggled those files out of the building before the police arrived."
Julian leaned forward, his eyes glinting with desperate malice. "My father built relationships with men who make you look like a amateur, Elena. You thought putting us behind bars was the end of the story? Thorne promised that when he takes over your company, he will fund our appeals and buy our freedom. You took everything from my family. Now you are going to lose everything you built."
"You really believe Thorne cares about you?" I asked, leaning closer to the glass. "Thorne is a predator, Julian. He is using your father's forged papers to enrich himself. Once he owns the company, he will leave you and your parents to rot in this prison."
Julian's smirk flickered for a fraction of a second, a shadow of doubt crossing his face. I pressed the advantage immediately.
"Thorne is missing the master encryption keys to the original patent repository," I said quietly, watching his eyes closely. "He only has the preliminary drafts your father forged. He needs the final verification hash to survive an SEC audit, doesn't he?"
Julian took a sharp breath, his jaw tightening. "He has enough to destroy your stock."
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"He has nothing," I countered. "And you just confirmed that he is running his operation off the unverified drafts your lawyer smuggled out during your trial."
I stood up, adjusting my coat. Julian realized too late that he had validated my core suspicion. He slammed his cuffed hands against the glass, screaming obscenities as the prison guards wrestled him back into his seat. I walked out of the facility with the exact piece of intelligence I needed to crush Gabriel Thorne.
