Chapter 1

The air in the boardroom was tight, filled with the smell of new leather and old money. This was it. The final pitch for my startup, Legacy AI. Five years of my life, squeezed into a thirty-minute presentation. Five years since my father, David Miller, died and left me his last box of research notes.

Across the table, Mr. Hayes, the lead investor, gave me an encouraging nod. He was old-school tech, a man who had known my father.

"We' re all very excited to see what you' ve built, Sarah," he said, his voice a low rumble. "If it' s anything like what your father was working on, it' s going to change the world."

I smiled, my heart pounding against my ribs. "I think he' d be proud."

I was about to click to the first slide when my phone buzzed. And then it buzzed again, and again. A flood of notifications. Emily Chen, my best friend and lawyer, was looking at her own phone, her face pale.

"Sarah," she whispered, her voice strained. "You need to see this."

She slid her phone across the polished table. It was a press release from Johnson Dynamics, Mark Johnson' s company. The headline hit me like a physical blow.

'Johnson Dynamics Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Tech Newcomer Legacy AI.'

The article was a blur of legal threats and false claims. It quoted Mark directly. He claimed my technology, the core of my life' s work, was a direct violation of new patents his company had just secured. Patents he' d filed after acquiring my father' s old, struggling firm.

The same firm where he and I had started out. The same firm where he had been my father' s star mentee. My mentor. My fiancé.

Mr. Hayes cleared his throat, the warmth gone from his eyes. "Sarah, is this true?"

My own phone was still buzzing. A call from a number I knew too well. Mark. I stared at the screen, a cold dread washing over me. This wasn't a business move. This was a public execution.

The memory of our last real fight played out in my mind, sharp and ugly. We were in our old apartment, the one we' d picked out together. I had just spent a week deciphering one of my father' s more complex algorithms.

"It' s not just a new type of data compression, Mark," I had told him, my voice full of excitement. "He was building a predictive AI. Something that learns on its own. It' s revolutionary."

Mark had barely looked up from his laptop. He was already a junior executive at a rival firm then, his ambition a tangible thing between us.

"Your dad was a genius, Sarah, but he was all over the place," he said, his tone dismissive. "That research is a dead end. It' s not commercially viable. The real money is in scalable cloud architecture. Practical applications."

"Practical? Mark, this is the foundation for a true artificial intelligence! This is what we always talked about, what you and Dad dreamed of."

"Your dad dreamed," he corrected me, finally closing his laptop. "I dream of building an empire. I can' t do that chasing his ghosts."

That was the moment I felt the shift. It wasn' t just a disagreement. He was looking at my father' s legacy-our legacy-as a distraction. His ambition, his new corporate world, had become the most important thing. It was a presence in our home, quiet and demanding, pulling him away from me.

He saw the hurt in my face and softened his tone, the way he always did. The manipulative charm that had first won me over.

"Hey," he said, walking over and wrapping his arms around me. "It' s just business. I have to be realistic. For us."

He said it was for us, but then he got a call from his boss and he was gone, leaving me standing alone with my father' s notebooks. It was a pattern. His ambition always called, and he always answered.

I had tried to argue, to make him see the potential, the beauty in what my father had created.

"You' re too emotional about this, Sarah," he' d said, his voice turning cold. "You can' t let sentiment cloud your judgment. That' s not how you succeed."

He accused me of living in the past. He said I was clinging to a fantasy while he was building a real future. He walked out that night, and a week later, he broke our engagement. Two months after that, he announced Johnson Dynamics was acquiring my father' s old company.

Now, sitting in this boardroom, his final betrayal was on a screen for everyone to see. Mr. Hayes was looking at me, waiting for an answer. The other investors were whispering, their faces closed off. The opportunity was gone. In one calculated move, Mark had destroyed it all.