Part 2

The letter used the kind of paper that wanted to be framed. Eastbridge’s outside counsel alleged trade-secret misuse and customer interference and named a figure at the bottom as if it were a sum already owed: six million dollars. Dana had read it to him over the phone while a pan cooled on his stove. He turned the burner off without looking and listened to the oil tick.

“They moved fast,” Dana said.

“They had the letter ready before they had a theory,” he said.

In the morning Forge Point’s counsel spread his reviews across a table that faced the river. Exceeds Expectations, three cycles. A client-quoted paragraph from an Eastbridge case study still live on the company’s own site, his name in the second sentence. A pH๏τograph from a ribbon-cutting in which Elaine stood at his shoulder and the caption called the warehouse project a margin event. Heartland’s letter of intent lay in a separate folder, dated nine business days after his start, scoped to a line of work Eastbridge had bid and lost on price six months before he resigned.

“They told customers you left for performance,” the lawyer said. She did not sound angry. She sounded interested. “Public praise is an inconvenient witness.”

Michael did not go to the hearing. He went to Heartland’s floor, where the conveyors were still taped in their delivery plastic, and walked the line with the plant manager until the questions were about sensors and not about lawsuits. The six-million demand sat in his bag like a stone. He did not take it out.

Eastbridge’s counsel asked for expedited discovery. Forge Point answered with the reviews, the case study, the handoff log signed by Elaine’s own analyst, and a timeline that showed the Heartland contact originating from a request for proposal issued while Michael was still badging into a windowless room at Eastbridge, declining recruiters. The interference claim required a customer he had solicited. The log showed a customer who had called Forge Point’s main number and asked whether the man from the warehouse job still did this kind of work.

On a Thursday the demand dropped, then dropped again, then became a mutual release with no payment and a sentence both sides would not discuss. Elaine did not call. A junior from her office wrote to confirm the return of a power adapter Michael had already left in the security tray.

That evening Dana found him on the Forge Point roof deck with the city going sodium at the edges. She set a single sheet on the parapet, weighted with her phone.

“Director comp, year one, with the Heartland close and the two that followed,” she said. “You can read it when you’re ready.”

He read it. Base, draw, equity that had vested on the first close, a performance grant tied to margin he had already delivered. The total crossed six million and kept a little ground beyond it.

Wind lifted the corner of the page. He flattened it with two fingers.

“Eastbridge offered me double next year,” he said. “Not in writing.”

Dana’s mouth moved, not quite a smile. “We don’t do conversations.”

Below them the river took the last of the light and gave back none of it. Michael folded the sheet once, put it in his coat, and stayed until the deck lights came on, one by one, as if someone on a lower floor had remembered the switch.