Wait — it's the morning I decide to skip the legal review to close faster.

The sound of eighty pages of heavy, eighty-pound linen paper tearing down the spine was not a rustle. It was a concussive, ripping crack that sounded like a dry pine timber snapping in an arctic frost.

Julian jumped out of his chair as if he had been physically struck with an open palm.

The two torn halves of the Series A definitive agreement slipped from my fingers, fluttering downward through the stale air of the office, scattering across the wet, coffee-stained floorboards. White paper drifted like dirty snow around the polished leather of his Italian loafers.

"You're out of your mind," Julian choked out, his chest heaving under his tailored vest, his face mottled with dark, dangerous patches of purple. "You're clinically insane, Mercer! You just destroyed eight million dollars of institutional capital! Do you have any idea what my firm does to founders who pull stunts like this?!"

"Your firm doesn't do anything to me, Julian," I said, leaning forward until my palms rested on the walnut desk. "Because you don't own a single share of AetherNet. You don't own an option. You don't own an advisory warrant. And as of 8:57 AM, you are trespassing on private commercial property leased exclusively by Mercer Mesh Technologies LLC."

The frosted door clicked open behind him.

Marcus stood there, all six-foot-three of him, his broad shoulders filling the frame. He had an industrial torque wrench in his right hand from the server rack maintenance kit, his knuckles scarred from high school football, his jaw set in a hard, dangerous line. Behind him, Maya stood with her arms crossed, her dark eyes flashing with cold, unmistakable hostility.

They didn't know about Citadel yet. But they knew me. And they had seen Julian lunging across the desk through the blinds.

"Everything alright in here, Leo?" Marcus asked, his deep Chicago accent rumbling through the small office like an idling diesel truck.

"Everything is fine, Marcus," I replied, never taking my eyes off Julian’s face. "Mr. Cross was just explaining the fine print of his exit strategy."

Julian turned around, taking in the physical bulk of Marcus blocking the doorway, the heavy steel wrench hanging at his side, and Maya’s cold, unwavering stare.

The venture capitalist took a slow, deep, shuddering breath. He reached down, snatched his gold-plated phone from the table, and shoved it into his pocket with trembling fingers. He didn't pick up his Loro Piana coat from the chair; he grabbed it by the collar, dragging it behind him like a dead animal.

He turned back to look at me, his hazel eyes completely devoid of humanity now—flat, cold, and venomous as an eastern diamondback coiled on a sunlit rock.

"You think you're clever, Leo," Julian whispered, the words coming out in a sharp, acidic hiss. "You think you can run a technology company in this city without the blessing of the men who write the checks? I built this tech corridor. I own the judges on the Cook County chancery bench. I own the regional banking directors. By noon today, I will make one phone call to Amazon Web Services, and your enterprise cluster will be permanently decommissioned for suspected fraudulent billing activity."

He stepped toward the doorway, his chin lifted in a desperate attempt to salvage his aristocratic dominance.

"You will be begging for this eight million by Friday afternoon, Mercer," Julian snarled. "And when you crawl to my office on South Wacker, the valuation won't be twenty-four million. It will be five hundred thousand dollars, and your equity will be zero point zero one percent."

"Don't trip on the stairs, Julian," I said softly.

Marcus didn't move out of the doorway. He made Julian physically squeeze past him, his tailored shoulder brushing against the rough, grease-stained denim of Marcus’s sleeve. Julian didn't look back as he marched down the hallway toward the elevator bank, his leather soles clicking furiously against the concrete.

The heavy steel elevator chime echoed from the lobby. Ding.

The doors slid shut. He was gone.

Marcus stepped into the office, looking down at the eighty pages of shredded, coffee-drenched paper littering the floor. He let out a long, low whistle, shaking his head.

"Well, boss," Marcus said, scratching his beard with the handle of the torque wrench. "That was definitely the most expensive piece of performance art I’ve ever seen in my life. Mind telling me how we’re paying the electricity bill at five o'clock, or should I start packing my tools into the trunk of my Honda?"

Maya walked in right behind him, her tablet clutched tightly against her chest, her face pale. "Leo, AWS sent their third automated suspension warning four minutes ago. If forty-two thousand dollars doesn't hit their automated clearinghouse by 12:00 PM, the DNS records for our European nodes propagate to dead links."

I looked at my two co-founders. The two people who, in my previous life, had lost their careers, their savings, and their self-respect because I had been too arrogant to read the fine print.

I walked around the desk, picked up my personal laptop, spun it around, and placed it in front of them.

The screen was open to our Silicon Valley Bank portal.

AVAILABLE BALANCE: $2,501,742.18.

ORIGINATING SENDER: CITADEL ENTERPRISE PARTNERS LP.

TRANSACTION STATUS: CLEARED / SETTLED.

Marcus stopped breathing. His jaw dropped so far I thought his beard would touch his collar.

Maya let out a sharp, ragged gasp, her hands flying to her mouth, tears instantly welling in her dark eyes. "Leo... how... where did this come from?"

"It came from reading the fine print, Maya," I said, putting my arms around both of their shoulders, pulling them into a tight, fierce embrace that smelled of machine oil, rain, and survival. "Pay the server bills. Clear the credit lines. Give every engineer on the floor a twenty-thousand-dollar retention bonus effective noon today."