Near the demo table, Mara spoke to an engineer she recognized from the early team. She kept her questions casual. “Did the core system change much?” she asked. His answers confirmed what she already felt in her gut. The core architecture was still hers. They had renamed it, but they had not rebuilt it.
Mara stepped aside and messaged her lawyer, Dana. She explained the new threat clearly: this was not an outside investor stealing ideas now. This was internal pressure using legal words to rewrite history. Dana replied fast: “You need one written admission tied to the merger documents verifying they’re stealing your work.”