“Yeah, don’t mind me. I’m going to catch up onLife Below Deckwhile I wait for el amor de mi vida to arrive with your prince charming.”
“Ha,” I huffed a laugh, trying to ignore the way my heart did a somersault. “Be good and I’ll be back around two if I’m lucky.”
I was at the office by 7:30. The only people in the lobby were Lennon and a team of FBI agents. I introduced Oliver, Tabitha, Kirsty, and Casey to Agents Riggs and Alden before Lennon and Casey took Agent Alden and the FBI team to the eighth floor. Casey would wait in a conference room up there in case they needed anything or until I let him know Jordan was gone. We’d given everyone Friday off to minimize gossip and to let the FBI work uninterrupted.
Oliver, Tabitha, Kirsty, and Agent Riggs filed into the conference room we used for client meetings while I waited in the reception area.
I tilted my head side to side, shaking out my shoulders and fingers. Lennon returned after a time, offering me an appraising look.
“You’ve got real apex predator energy today, boss,” they winked. “I can’t wait for that no-good asshole to find out he messed with the wrong company.”
“Thanks, Lennon. You’ve got the police on speed dial if we need them?” I watched the elevator doors open and Jordan step out. I checked my watch. Eight o’clock. For possibly the first timesince April, he was right on time. And so predictable, stopping on the main floor to grab his coffee before heading upstairs.
Showtime.
“Hey, Alex,” he hesitated as the door shut behind him, his eyes widening almost imperceptibly as I stood in front of him. He glanced around reception. “Hey Lennon. Does it seem a little dead around here today?”
“Jordan,” Lennon didn’t look up from their computer. He moved toward the office doors left of reception, trying to swipe his keycard. The light blinked red without letting him in.
“Jordan, why don’t you hand Lennon your keycard and join me in the conference room?” I gestured toward the door opposite the space, stepping between him and the exit to the hallway.
“I think I’ll hold onto it,” his eyes darted back and forth as he moved to the other side of the lobby.
“I insist,” I raised an eyebrow having no patience to let him argue with me in the slightest. Had he always been this way and I just missed it? His shoulders drooped as he set his keycard on the reception counter and entered the conference room. I followed him and shut the door.
Tabitha, Kirsty, and Oliver sat on the opposite side of the table while Agent Riggs stood in the far corner. Tabitha and Kirsty both had their laptops open, typing furiously. “Have a seat, please,” I pulled out a chair. Jordan swallowed and sat down across from them as I moved to the head of the table where Tabitha had placed the folder of damning evidence. I didn’t bother sitting down, moving the chair out of the way. I was too keyed up. Too angry at seeing his face. I took a deep breath, opening the folder.
“Jordan, we’ve documented seventeen separate instances of unauthorized access to Sherlock’s core algorithms,” I began. “Twenty-six downloads of Sherlock’s collaborative development protocols. Four external file transfers totaling eight hundred and thirty-seven megabytes of proprietary code to servers registered under shell companies that trace back to Titan Games.”
I slid the first piece of evidence across the table.
“Casey found your private repositories. Jason tracked your network traffic. We have timestamps, file hashes, and communication logs with Titan contacts dating back nearly eight weeks. The evidence is comprehensive and irrefutable.”
Jordan said nothing, staring at the paper, his mouth set in a hard line.
I continued, my tone even, explaining everything objectively more to keep my rage in check than to make sure I was communicating clearly. “So, let’s discuss what this means. For you, personally, it means immediate termination for gross misconduct, breach of your employment contract, violation of your non-disclosure agreement, and theft of trade secrets and intellectual property. It means we’re filing charges for corporate espionage under both state law and federal statutes. Patent infringement carries civil penalties up to three times the damages, which our lawyers estimate conservatively at twelve million dollars. Criminal penalties include up to ten years in federal prison.”
He flinched as I began to pace behind him. “For Catalyst, it means we now understand why Titan was so confident about their acquisition timeline. They weren’t buying our company, Jordan. They were buying stolen blueprints of our innovations, delivered by someone who had access to every system we’ve built. Someone we trusted with our life’s work.”
He cleared his throat, pushing those stupid wireframe glasses up his nose before speaking. “Alex, you’re making this sound much worse than it actually is. I helped build these systems from the ground up. Half of Sherlock’s core functionality came from algorithms I developed. I didn’t steal anything; I improved on my own contributions.”
I crossed my arms, letting him incriminate himself.
“And frankly, you’re not thinking strategically here. Catalyst is a small studio with limited resources. We were never going to scale Sherlock to its full potential. The foundational concepts we developed together needed optimization for real-worldimplementation. All that human input, all those creative consultations… it’s bottlenecking the AI’s true capabilities.”
“Titan understands scalability, and they have the infrastructure, the capital, and the global reach to actually make these technologies matter. They’re offering me a senior architect position where I can implement these technologies at enterprise level instead of playing around with artisanal animation projects.”
I slid more evidence toward him before pressing my palms to the table and leaning forward, my patience beginning to run out. “We also know what Moriarty is. Your reverse-engineered knockoff of Sherlock, stripped of everything that makes our AI ground-breakingly collaborative. You’ve taken years of R&D investment, five approved patents, and the creative input of our entire team, and you’ve reduced it to a pale imitation that you’ve sold to a company that will use it to eliminate jobs rather than our core AI mission to amplify human creativity.”
I straightened and began slowly pacing again, needing to move, as I counted on my fingers. “But here’s what I find most illuminating about your choices, Jordan. You could have asked for equity. You could have negotiated a partnership stake. You could have proposed that Catalyst license our technology to other companies under terms that preserved our values. Instead, you chose theft. You chose deception. You chose to steal from the people who welcomed you, who trusted you with our most sensitive projects, who treated you as family.”
I stopped at the head of the table and leveled my gaze at him. “You sat in our meetings while we discussed protecting our team from acquisition. You watched me worry about Oliver’s retirement. You saw Casey pour his creative vision into systems you were actively stealing. You smiled at Tabitha while you copied the work that pays her salary. You betrayed fifty-three people who believed in what we were building together.”
Jordan swallowed before answering, his voice condescending. “Look, I get that you’re emotionally attached to this whole ‘values-driven collaborative workspace’ thing, but that’s not howtechnology progresses. Innovation requires efficiency. It requires people who understand the bigger picture, not just creative types who want to feel good about every decision.”
He gestured dismissively. “Everyone does this in tech, Alex. Apple poached from Xerox. Facebook built on existing social network concepts. Google didn’t invent search algorithms; they just made them better. That’s how innovation works. That’s how progress happens.”
“And honestly? I thought you’d understand the business case here. When Titan completes their acquisition, and they will, with or without my involvement, at least this way Catalyst’s core innovations remain relevant. I was protecting our intellectual property by ensuring it survived in the market.”
