Chapter 10

We signed the contract with Horizon Group. Three million dollars a year. That's forty percent less than what StellarTech was charging, but for me, it's pure profit—my own patents, no licensing fees.

Word got out way faster than I expected.

Three days after we signed, two more companies reached out to us.

One was a logistics company with seven million dollars in annual revenue, and their IT system was also running on StellarTech's framework.

The other was a local bank.

"Mr. Carter, we've been wanting to switch suppliers for a while, but StellarTech had us locked in tight. Now that they're having issues—"

The calls kept coming in.

Susan was running around nonstop. Contracts, NDAs, service agreements—she cranked out twelve documents in just three days.

Henry took it to another level. He hadn't been home in four days, sleeping on the office's fold-out bed. He'd already got the first version of the security gateway's core module up and running.

"Alex, come check this out," he called me at two in the morning.

I walked over.

The screen was running a stress test—handling a hundred thousand simultaneous requests per second, with a block rate of 99.97%.

"How much better is this than StellarTech's system?" I asked.

"Their best was 99.2%. And that was back when you were still there," Henry said.

I watched the numbers update on the screen.

"Let's optimize it more. Hit 99.99%," I said.

"That'll take two more days," Henry said.

"Do it," I said.

He nodded and turned back to his keyboard.

I went back to my desk and opened my email.

The top message was from Emily.

Subject: We need to talk.

I didn't even bother opening it.

I deleted it without a second thought.