Chapter 7 - Victoria’s Desperate Gambit
Victoria’s face twisted into a mask of pure desperation. The reality of the situation was settling in: if Rebecca proved the foundational code of Brookfield Technologies was stolen via a forged copyright transfer, the Sterling family would face the largest corporate fraud lawsuit in modern tech history. Brookfield’s stock would be halted, their licensing agreements across the globe would be voided, and criminal fraud charges would inevitably follow.
""Listen to me, Rebecca,"" Victoria said, her voice dropping into a frantic, hurried pitch as she abandoned her haughty facade. ""Let's be practical. If you go public with this, Brookfield will collapse into bankruptcy. You'll spend the next ten years in federal court fighting appeals against my father's legal empire. You'll get nothing but legal fees and exhausted daughters. We can settle this tonight. Twenty million dollars. Cash, wired to an offshore trust tomorrow morning. You and your daughters will be set for ten lifetimes.""
""You still don't get it, do you?"" Rebecca replied, looking at Victoria with genuine amusement. ""You think I came here to negotiate a payoff? I don't want twenty million dollars of your father's dirty inheritance.""
Victoria’s eyes darted toward the door, then down toward the folder on the table. A chilling look crossed her face. ""Nathaniel, take that folder.""
I stared at her, stunned. ""What?""
""Take it!"" Victoria screamed, her poise completely shattering into manic terror. ""Grab those papers and burn them in the fireplace! Now! Without the original signed agreements, it's just her word against a billion-dollar enterprise! Take them!""
Victoria lunged across the marble table, her sharp acrylic nails clawing toward the blue cardboard folder. But before she could touch it, Rebecca casually picked up her smartphone from beside the folder and turned the screen toward us.
On the screen was an active, high-definition recording session, live-streaming directly to a secure cloud server.
""Every single word spoken in this room for the last twenty minutes has been transmitted live to my legal counsel, former Federal Judge Marcus Thorne,"" Rebecca said evenly. ""And every single page in this folder was digitally scanned, authenticated by blockchain timestamping, and deposited into a secure legal escrow account three days before we arrived in Philadelphia.""
Victoria stumbled back against the wet bar, her legs losing their strength. The reality crashed down on her like a tidal wave. There was no escape. No backroom deal. No high-priced legal maneuvering could erase what was already etched into stone.
""Furthermore,"" Rebecca added, her voice dropping to a quiet, devastating decree, ""Judge Thorne is filing an emergency federal injunction at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. He is requesting the immediate freezing of all Brookfield intellectual property licensing revenues pending our forensic audit.""
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Rebecca picked up her folder, tied the blue ribbon with slow, deliberate precision, and walked toward the suite’s double doors.
""Nathaniel,"" she paused, her hand on the brass handle, looking back over her shoulder at the man who had traded his soul for a lie. ""You have twelve hours to decide whether you want to go to federal prison as Victoria’s scapegoat, or whether you want to finally tell the truth.""
