Chapter 5
At 8 AM the next morning, my phone rang.
It was Emily.
This time, I picked up.
"Alex, did you really send a termination letter?" Emily demanded.
Her voice was totally different from yesterday—yesterday, she was ice cold; today, she was heated, practically blazing.
"Yeah," I said.
"Are you out of your mind? Do you even realize what's going on at the company right now? The whole tech department is freaking out, and the security module threw over a hundred warnings this morning—" Emily said, her voice rising.
"That's not my problem anymore," I said.
"Not your problem? You wrote that code!" Emily fired back.
"Yeah, I wrote the code. The patents are mine. I gave the license, and now I'm taking it back. Got a problem with that?" I fired back.
"Alex!" Emily snapped.
"Emily," I cut her off, "yesterday you said the company needed a new direction. Well, here it is. Isn't Michael supposed to be some genius? Let him deal with it."
"You—" Emily started.
"And by the way, I've already had my lawyer draft the divorce papers. You'll have them in your email in a day or two," I said.
There was a three-second silence on the other end.
"What did you just say?" Emily asked.
"Divorce," I said.
"Alex, just calm down—" Emily said.
"I've never been calmer than I am right now," I replied.
I hung up.
Ten minutes later, Richard called.
"Alex, if you want, the CTO job is yours again," he said.
"Not interested," Alex replied.
"What will it take?" Richard pressed.
"I don't want anything. The patents are mine, and I'm done licensing them. That's it," Alex said.
"Alex!" Richard finally lost his cool. "Are you really going to drag us both down with you?"
"It's not about taking us both down. We're just going our separate ways. Uncle Richard, when you let your daughter and Michael throw me under the bus in front of everyone, you should've known this day would come," I said.
"I—" Richard started.
"Goodbye," I said.
I hung up.
I turned off my phone.
I headed out.
Three things to do today: get my patents officially recorded at the Intellectual Property Office, set up my own company, and meet someone important.