Chapter 2 - THE FILES JASON STOLE
My father recovered quickly.
Men like him usually do.
Shock lasted ten seconds.
Control returned in eleven.
“This is obviously a misunderstanding,” Dad said.
Evelyn did not sound convinced.
“Our cybersecurity team disagrees.”
Jason stepped forward.
“I used Dad’s login once because mine wasn’t working.”
“You accessed Mia’s private company materials using firm credentials?” Evelyn asked.
“No. I mean—I didn’t know they were private.”
I laughed.
Everyone looked at me.
“Jason, the folder was called CONFIDENTIAL ACQUISITION DATA ROOM.”
He glared.
Dad immediately turned on me.
“Why were company files accessible from our network?”
“They weren’t.”
That was the point.
Three weeks earlier, I had briefly used the family desktop to print an acquisition document when my laptop battery died.
Apparently, Jason had seen enough to begin searching.
What he didn’t know was that the buyer monitored every login.
By the time I reached my friend Lena’s apartment that afternoon, my acquisition attorney had sent me the access report.
Jason had downloaded seventeen files.
Product architecture.
Customer projections.
Source-code summaries.
Patent drafts.
And something more dangerous.
The preliminary purchase agreement.
The document clearly showed the value of my deal.
$11 million cash.
$5 million in equity.
Up to $3 million under my consulting and retention package.
Nineteen million in total potential value.
Jason had known exactly how successful I was while standing on the porch calling my work “little apps.”
That hurt more than I expected.
Lena read the report beside me.
“He knew.”
“Yeah.”
“And he still mocked you.”
“Yeah.”
“Your brother is awful.”
“Also yeah.”
My attorney, Rachel Kim, called twenty minutes later.
“We traced where the downloaded files went.”
My stomach tightened.
“Where?”
“Jason emailed several of them.”
“To whom?”
“A company called BriefForge Technologies.”
I knew the name.
They were a small legal-tech startup trying to compete in the same space I had just sold into.
I sat upright.
“Why would Jason send them my documents?”
Rachel hesitated.
“Mia, there’s something else.”
She forwarded the state corporate record.
BriefForge had three listed founders.
Two names meant nothing to me.
The third did.
May you like
Jason Bennett.
My brother had secretly started a competing company using my work.
