Chapter 7 - The Inheritance of Debt
By eight o'clock the next morning, the financial news networks had picked up the scent of blood.
The headline flashing across the Bloomberg terminal in Vance & Sterling’s private conference room read: Prescott Technologies Implodes as Core Intellectual Property Rights Revoked by Family Trust. Below it, stock analysts were frantically trying to figure out how a multi-billion-dollar unicorn had managed to brick its own software architecture overnight.
I sat at the head of the mahogany table, a cup of black coffee cooling untouched beside my laptop. Julian was pacing the length of the room, scrolling through a live feed of social media reactions and corporate filings.
"The board held an emergency session at dawn," Julian announced, stopping to lean against the back of a chair. "Aaron tried to stall them by claiming the server outage was a temporary technical glitch, but Gable walked in and dropped his whistleblower affidavit on the table. The moment they saw your mother-in-law's name tied to the patent shell company, the institutional investors didn't just walk out—they threatened criminal referral for corporate malfeasance."
"Where are Aaron and his mother now?" I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on the financial audit logs scrolling down my screen.
"Holed up in a private suite at the Palmer House," Marcus replied, looking up from a thick legal brief. "Their personal accounts have been frozen under preliminary asset-preservation orders tied to the fraud suit. They can't access their liquidity, their credit lines have been cut off by the banks, and the PR firm they hired yesterday just fired them."
He slid a folded document across the table toward me.
"Which brings us to your mother-in-law's next move," Marcus continued. "She’s been calling my office every ten minutes for the last hour. She doesn't want to talk to Julian, and she certainly doesn't want to talk to me. She wants to talk to you."
I picked up the document, scanning the official letterhead. It was a formal request for an in-person mediation meeting, signed by Helen Prescott herself.
For four years, Helen had treated me like an intruder in her son's life. She had spent every holiday dinner dropping subtle, venomous hints about my lack of a corporate title, my "spoiled socialite" background, and my supposed failure to contribute anything meaningful to Aaron's meteoric rise. She had watched me swallow my pride, smile politely, and pour her tea while secretly funding the very empire she now believed she had a right to loot.
"She wants to negotiate," I said, a bitter smile touching the corners of my lips.
"She wants to beg," Julian corrected, crossing his arms. "Or worse, she wants to try and guilt-trip you using whatever pathetic family history she thinks still gives her leverage over you. You don't have to take the meeting, Alyssa. We can let the courts grind them down until there's nothing left."
I stood up slowly, smoothing down the lapel of my blazer. The girl who used to sit quietly across from Helen, taking her barbed insults with a polite nod, was completely gone.
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"No," I said, my voice quiet but unyielding. "I want to see her face when she realizes the girl she tried to bleed dry is the one holding the eviction notice."
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