The Home She Built With Someone Else novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Nigel's Last Stand
On Monday the atrium was full of cameras.
Gus stood on the wooden stool under the brass plates, in a tie, with a microphone he kept holding upside down.
"Tornquist Group has acquired Hearthline," he said. "The app is ours, the debts are ours, and the person who drew the plans inside it now leads the team that will build on them."
He pointed at me.
I stood beside the stool in my one suit, and two hundred people applauded.
Margot stood at the back with her arms folded, in a plain gray dress and no title.
She caught my eye over the whole crowd.
Tonight, she mouthed. Lights on.
I looked at my shoes very hard.
"Mr. Boyle will say a word," Gus said.
I took the microphone.
"Thank you," I said. "I'd rather draw than talk. Hearthline lays out rooms for people who are about to buy a home. It works better when the person who draws the room has stood in it."
Somebody laughed.
"And that's all I have," I said.
That was when the revolving door spun hard, and Nigel walked in with a lawyer and a stack of paper.
The crowd parted for him because it did not know what else to do.
He had shaved.
He had a clean shirt and a new tie, and under the shave his eyes were red.
"Excuse me," he said, walking straight to the stool. "I'd like to read a statement."
"You're not on the program," Gus said.
"I'm on the cover page of this." Nigel held up the paper. "A complaint. I'm suing Tornquist Group, Nathan Boyle and Margot Tornquist, for theft of intellectual property and for coercing me into signing away my interest. I signed under duress."
The cameras swung round.
His lawyer looked at the ceiling.
"The intellectual property," Nigel said, "is the Hearthline unit plan, which is mine, and which this man took from me and sold to this firm."
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