Chapter 3 - The Vanguard Threat
At 8:00 PM, the office was entirely empty except for me. The glow of my dual monitors illuminated the dark corner of my office as I dug deeper into the financial archives Natalie had left behind.
That was when I found it.
Tucked away in a hidden subdirectory of the corporate cloud was a draft contract. Not just any contract—an acquisition agreement between *Pierce & Cross Holdings* and *Vanguard Tech*, dated for next week.
They weren't just embezzling. They were planning to sell LatticePoint’s entire core codebase to our biggest enemy for pennies on the dollar, leaving me with an empty shell of a company while they skipped the country with the cash.
My phone rang, breaking the silence of the empty office.
An unknown number.
I swiped to answer. “LatticePoint Solutions, Claire Lawson speaking.”
“You really should have just taken the money and walked away, Claire,” a deep, smooth voice purred on the other end.
Jonathan Vance. CEO of Vanguard Tech. A man who wore tailored Italian suits, smiled like a shark, and had tried to buy my company three times—and three times, I had politely told him where to shove his offers.
“Jonathan,” I said, my voice dropping into a dangerous register. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a late-night chat from a predator?”
“Oh, come now, don't be hostile,” Vance chuckled softly. “Evan and Natalie told me you were difficult, but I didn't realize you were actively suicidal. You fired my two favorite procurement assets. Do you honestly think you can survive the fallout?”
“You’ve been conspiring with my former employees to steal my intellectual property,” I countered sharply. “That’s corporate espionage, Jonathan. I have the draft contract right here on my screen.”
There was a brief pause on the other end, but Vance didn't sound panicked. In fact, he sounded amused.
“Contract? What contract? That’s merely a preliminary letter of intent from an independent entity—*Pierce & Cross Holdings*. Vanguard Tech has never heard of such a thing,” Vance said smoothly. “Good luck proving in a court of law that we had anything to do with your disgruntled ex-fiancé’s rogue business ventures. By the way… congratulations on the wedding cancellation. I hear white isn’t your color anyway.”
The line went dead.
I slowly lowered the phone, my jaw clenching so hard my teeth ached. He was right. Legally, tying Vanguard directly to the embezzlement scheme would take months of costly litigation—months that LatticePoint, facing a sudden executive vacuum, might not survive.
They thought they had me cornered. They thought a heartbroken woman would curl up and weep while they picked her bones clean.
Instead, I opened a new browser tab.
If Jonathan Vance wanted a war, I was going to give him a slaughter.
I drafted an emergency email to David Thorne—the most aggressive, ruthless corporate litigator in the state of Texas, a man whose retainer fee alone could buy a luxury car. I attached the audit logs, the shell company documents, and the draft acquisition contract.
Subject: *Retainer confirmed. Let's destroy Vanguard Tech.*
May you like
By midnight, David had replied with a single word: *Game.*
***
