That was the letter crushed in Gerald’s fist on my porch.
“How could you?!” he shouted again, in my living room now, pacing.
“You’re trying to destroy everything I built!”
“Everything you built,” I repeated.
“Gerald. Sit down.”
He didn’t sit down. He never could take direction from me — that was always part of the problem.
“I built Meridian from nothing—”
“You built Meridian from Lakeside,” I said.
“And I built Lakeside. In our kitchen. Over one winter. While you were losing sleep over a different startup that failed.
You know this. You were there.”
“That code has been rewritten a hundred times—”
“The engine hasn’t,” I said quietly. “Ruth had an expert look. The core is still mine. Line for line, in places.”
He went pale then, because some part of him had always known.
“What do you want,” he said finally. Not a question. A defeat.
And here is where I surprised him.
