But it was the financial records that made my blood run cold.
Richard hadn’t just been blocking SEAS from reaching its potential. He’d been systematically positioning the entire company as underperforming—suppressing revenue projections, delaying client commitments, letting key partnerships lapse. All of it designed to drive down HydroCore’s valuation.
He’d been making himself a bargain sale.
Except Asher Pierce had paid full price anyway.
I sat back in my chair, staring at the screen. That didn’t make sense. If Pierce had access to the same financials I was looking at, he’d have known the company was worth less than what he paid. Which meant either he was a fool—and nothing about Asher Pierce suggested that—or he’d seen through Richard’s manipulation and valued what was actually here.
The technology. The team.
Me.
I shoved that thought away. It didn’t matter why he’d paid what he’d paid. What mattered was that Richard had been sabotaging my life’s work from the inside while smiling to my face, and Asher Pierce had known enough to take the company anyway but not enough to tell me the truth at the bar.
I printed every memo. Every email. Every financial filing that showed the discrepancy between what Richard had told me and what he’d actually done.
Then I gathered the stack, stood up, and walked out of my lab.
Asher’s temporary office was on the third floor—Richard’s old corner suite, already being reorganized by Pierce Construction staff. The door was open. Mike was inside, sitting across from Asher, both of them reviewing documents.
I didn’t knock.
“Ms. Winters,” Asher said, looking up. His expression was carefully neutral, but I caught the flicker of something—surprise, maybe—when he saw the stack of papers in my hand.
“Did you know about this?” I dropped the printouts on his desk. The pages fanned out across his documents, Richard’s memos landing face-up like accusations.
Mike leaned forward, scanning the top sheet. His eyebrows rose.
Asher picked up the first memo, read it, set it down. Picked up the next. His jaw tightened with each page. By the fourth document, a muscle was ticking near his temple.
“No,” he said finally. “I did not know about this.”
“Three months.” My voice was steady, which surprised me given how hard my heart was pounding. “For three months, Richard has been sabotaging SEAS from the inside. Blocking contracts I didn’t know he was blocking. Suppressing valuations. Positioning the company as a bargain acquisition.”
“He told us the procurement delays were standard bureaucratic issues,” Mike said, his expression darkening. “Son of a bitch.”
Asher was still reading, his focus absolute. I watched him absorb the scope of Richard’s deception, and despite everything—despite the bar, despite this morning, despite the fact that I currently wanted to set his expensive suit on fire—I could see that his anger was genuine. He hadn’t known.
“This changes the transition timeline,” Asher said, looking at Mike. “Get legal on these. I want to know if Sterling violated any terms of the acquisition agreement.”
“On it.” Mike was already on his phone.
Asher turned to me. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”
“I didn’t bring it to your attention as a favor.” I crossed my arms. “I brought it because you need to understand something. Richard spent ten years letting me believe I was building something that mattered while he was using it as leverage. And now you’ve walked in and taken over, and I’m supposed to—what? Trust that you’ll be different?”
“I’m not asking you to trust me.”
“Good. Because I don’t.”
We stared at each other. The office was quiet except for Mike’s low voice on the phone in the corner.
“SEAS is the reason I bought this company,” Asher said. “Not the only reason, but the primary one. The technology is revolutionary. I have no intention of shelving it.”
“Then what are your intentions?”
“Civilian implementation. Full scale. I want SEAS deployed on active construction projects within eighteen months.”
