Wait — it's the day I pitch my idea to the investor who 'loves' it. I already know how this plays out: the investor pushes me out of my own company within a year

The arrest wasn't quiet.

By the time the state marshals led Julian Cross and Victoria Vance through the brass-and-marble lobby of the LaSalle Street building, six news crews from local and national financial networks were already waiting on the sidewalk, tipped off by an anonymous broadcast release sent from an encrypted server thirty minutes earlier.

Camera flashes exploded in a blinding, rhythmic strobe against the gray afternoon rain.

Julian had tried to cover his face with the lapel of his tailored blazer, but the silver handcuffs around his wrists made the gesture awkward, humiliating, and grotesque. Victoria was sobbing openly, her designer tortoiseshell glasses dangling from one ear, her ivory pantsuit stained with street slush as the marshals guided her into the back of an unmarked transport van.

I stood on the high granite steps beneath the neoclassical portico, watching the emergency lights paint the wet pavement in sweeping streaks of red and blue.

Dr. Sterling stood beside me, leaning heavily on his ivory-handled cane. The old man didn't look triumphant; he looked old, tired, but remarkably peaceful—as if a heavy iron stone that had rested on his chest for five years had finally been lifted into the light.

"He'll try to post bail before sunset," Sterling murmured, watching the van pull away into the Chicago traffic. "His lawyers will file fifty emergency motions before midnight. They will claim jurisdictional overreach, digital evidence tampering, procedural bias."

"Let them file," I said, watching the exhaust plumes vanish around the corner of Jackson Boulevard. "The Department of Justice has already mirrored the Cayman server logs. By morning, the SEC will freeze every personal account Julian has in New York, London, and Zurich. He won't have enough liquid cash to pay a paralegal's subway fare."

Sterling turned his head slowly, his pale blue eyes studying my profile with an intensity that went far beyond business.

"You're an unusual boy, Nathan," the old man said, his gravelly voice dropping into a warm, contemplative cadence. "Most young men who build something magnificent are drunk on their own brilliance. They think the world owes them applause. But you... you walk like a soldier who has already seen the casualty lists."

I looked down at my hands. In the cool afternoon air, they were perfectly still. The phantom ache of the steering wheel on an icy expressway ramp three years from now had finally, completely vanished.

"I just know what happens when you don't read the fine print, Dr. Sterling," I replied softly.

The old man chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound that seemed to warm the damp air between us. He reached out and clapped a heavy, calloused hand on my shoulder.

"Come along, Nathan," Sterling said, gesturing toward his idling town car at the curb. "The lawyers will spend the next twelve months picking the meat off Julian's bones. Our work is just beginning. The University of Chicago Medical Center has forty pediatric oncology wards that have been waiting three years for an accurate neural diagnostics platform. Let's go show them what honest engineering looks like."