Chapter 8 - The Paperwork of Justice
Special Agent Miller from the Securities and Exchange Commission marched onto the smoke-filled stage, flanked by four federal agents wearing dark windbreakers.
"Gregory Ashford," Agent Miller declared, pulling a pair of steel handcuffs from his belt.
"You are under arrest for federal securities fraud, commercial patent theft, and reckless endangerment of critical public infrastructure."
Gregory scrambled backward across the smoke-stained carpet, his bespoke suit coated in gray chemical soot, his face contorted in frantic, unhinged denial.
"Get your hands off me! Do you know who my father is? Scarlet, tell them! Tell them this was an engineering anomaly! We’re partners!"
I walked across the stage, stopping two paces from where Gregory lay pinned against his ruined, smoking machine.
I looked down at the man who had spent his life stepping on the necks of honest men to build an empire of smoke.
"We were never partners, Gregory," I said with icy, razor-sharp calm.
"You stole this technology from Thomas Bennett eight years ago. You let an honest man die in a courthouse parking lot so you could play king."
Noah stepped up beside me, handing the aluminum hard drive directly to Agent Miller.
"That drive contains the original, uncorrupted cryptographic logs from Bennett Power Dynamics, dated six months before Ashford Capital filed its fraudulent patent application," Noah said.
"It includes email correspondence from Gregory Ashford directing his technicians to falsify safety compliance records to pass Department of Energy audits."
Gregory looked at Noah, his eyes bulging in pure, venomous horror as the realization of his total destruction set in.
"Bennett..." Gregory rasped, spitting soot onto the stage.
"You... you were just an electrician! You were fixing wires in a basement!"
"I am an engineer, Gregory," Noah replied, his voice ringing with quiet, absolute dignity.
"My father taught me how to build things that last. Your father only taught you how to steal."
The agents hauled Gregory to his feet, clicking the steel cuffs shut around his wrists with a sharp, decisive snap.
As they dragged him down the stage steps through the crowd of reporters and flashing cameras, the members of my board of directors stood frozen in the aisle, looking at me with wide, terrified eyes.
"Scarlet..." Arthur Vance, the senior board member, stammered, wiping sweat from his forehead.
"We had no idea. We were misled by the market valuations."
May you like
"You had thirty years of my father’s silence to figure it out, Arthur," I said, looking across the delegation of bankers and lawyers.
"Every member of the executive committee who pushed for this merger will submit their resignations by five o'clock today. If you don't, I will personally vote my eighty percent shares to dissolve the board."
