Chapter 4

A cease-and-desist wasn't going to stop me. It only forced me to make a cleaner break from the past.

I spread the documents sent by Carlisle’s legal team across the dining table, reading through every single clause.

They claimed that Juniper owned every menu, process, and piece of commercial data developed during my tenure, and warned that if Saturday’s private dinner featured "similar dishes," it would be treated as infringement.

They wanted to trap me in a pitfall that was all too easy to fall into.

The moment I rushed to prove myself by serving any of Juniper’s old dishes,…