Chapter 10: First Supper

"Play the rest of it," I said.

The buyer frowned. "That's all he sent."

"Then I'll tell you the rest."

"Ten minutes after that recording, Bentley signed fifteen percent of the company away."

"Not to an investor. Not to an engineer. To the assistant who leaked your price sheet."

He didn't say anything. He was listening now.

"Give me an hour and I'll send you the page he signed."

"I made that bet because I wrote a clause six years ago that made his signature worthless."

"His gift was void. Mine was void. The board fired him two hours later."

"That's what that recording proves. Not that I gamble. That he does, and I'm the one who built the guardrails."

I put my laptop on his desk and opened it.

"Now ask yourself who built the software you just signed for."

I pulled up our routing engine on one side and Bentley's green demo on the other.

Same screens. Same map tiles. The same typo in the loading-dock menu that our junior dev made in March.

The buyer rubbed his face with both hands.

"Hell."

"I'm not asking you to tear up his contract today. I'm asking for thirty days."

"Run us side by side. Your Louisville center on Ridgeline. Your Ohio centers on his. Whoever moves more freight for less, keeps you."

"Thirty days," he said. "And Torrie? If that recording's on the internet, I wasn't the one who put it there."

"I know."

When I came down to the lobby, Jeb stood up out of his plastic chair.

"Well?"

"Thirty-day trial."

He nodded slowly.

"Note four," he said. "When she wins, you buy her lunch."

***

The first supper was on Thursday.

The elder's table was twenty feet long, built by Jeb's great-granddaddy from one walnut tree.

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