Read Chapter 24: The Unraveling

The email had arrived at 7:14 AM, subject line: *Request for comment — Flatmates & Founders.* Jazz read it twice before the words settled. A journalist named Eleanor Vance from a tech publication she vaguely recognized wanted to discuss "certain discrepancies in the company's public filings regarding patent ownership."

Tom stood in the kitchen doorway, hair still wet from the shower, coffee halfway to his lips. "What is it?"

Jazz turned the laptop toward him. "We've been made."

He read in silence. The coffee lowered. His jaw tightened. "This is Miles. He must have—"

"Does it matter who leaked it?" Jazz heard her voice rise and pulled it back down. The boiler hadn't been fixed yet, and the flat smelled faintly of gas and stale regret. "She knows, Tom. She's asking about the patent. Our patent. The one that doesn't exist."

"QuickSpec exists. The engine works. We built it."

"That's not what the filing says." Jazz closed the laptop. "We filed a patent application for the voice-to-specification technology, credited to both of us. We've been telling investors it was granted. But it was never approved, was it? It was never even submitted."

Tom set his coffee down. "I was going to—"

"When?" The word came out sharper than she'd intended. "When were you going to tell me? After the investor call? After the review? After we lost everything?"

"I was protecting us." His voice was low, careful. "If Miles had seen the real status of the application, he would have pulled the deal before it even started. I needed time to actually file it. To make it real."

"To make it real." Jazz laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You lied to our investors. You lied to me. And when Marcus found the pricing issues, I defended you. When Miles started digging, I stood beside you. But this—" She pressed her palm against her chest. "I knew, Tom. I've known for weeks."

The silence between them was sudden and complete. A car passed outside. The radiator clicked.

"You knew?" Tom's voice was barely a whisper.

"I found the draft application in your drawer while looking for a stapler. It was still in editing. Timestamped three days before we told the incubator we'd been granted." Jazz's throat tightened. "I covered for you. I told Marcus I'd seen the confirmation myself. I lied to the people I respect most in this industry—for you. And I'm so tired of covering."

"You should have said something."

"Yes." Jazz nodded, meeting his eyes. "I should have. But I thought—I kept thinking you'd tell me. That you'd trust me enough to explain. Instead, you let me believe you'd done the one thing I asked you never to do. You made me complicit in a lie I didn't even choose."

Tom moved toward her, stopped two feet away. His hands hung at his sides, unsure. "I didn't tell you because I knew you'd stop me. You'd want to do the honest thing. Call the investors, confess, risk everything. And I couldn't let that happen because—" He broke off.

"Because what?"

"Because you're better than me at this." The words came out raw, unpolished. "You're better at product, better at people, better at knowing what the right thing is. I knew you'd see the lie and want to tear it down, and I couldn't afford that. I couldn't afford to lose QuickSpec. To lose the company. To lose—"

He stopped again. The words hovered.

"To lose what?" Jazz's voice was quiet now.

Tom ran a hand through his hair. "You know what I said at your aunt's house. That I wasn't pretending. And you never answered me. So I kept my mouth shut about the patent, because I thought if I told you and you walked away, I'd have nothing left. Not even the lie we built together."

The confession sat between them like a third person. Jazz wanted to be angry. She was angry. But beneath it, deeper than she could reach, something else stirred.

"Your father," she said. "He handled the original incorporation, didn't he? He filed Priya as an advisor because he thought it would help. And you found out and couldn't unravel it, so you let it stand."

"Until Miles used it against us."

"And the patent?"

Tom's face twisted. "My father handled that filing too. When he saw we'd developed the engine, he submitted an application on our behalf—but he filed it under my name only. Singular. And he let it lapse. I found out three weeks ago and tried to reinstate it, but the fees—"

"Three weeks." Jazz pressed her fingers to her temples. "You've known for three weeks. We've been working sixty-hour days together. Eating meals together. You put your jacket around my shoulders. You let me believe we were a team." Her voice cracked. "And you've been carrying this alone."

Tom's hand moved toward hers. She pulled back.

"I didn't tell you because I'm ashamed," he said. "Because every time my father touches something, he breaks it. Because I moved to London to get away from his influence, and he's still here, inside our company, inside everything I've built. And I didn't want you to see me as him."

Jazz looked at him. The morning light caught the exhaustion around his eyes. He looked smaller than the confident founder in the networking rooms, smaller than the man who'd walked her through the pitch deck a hundred times.

"I don't see you as your father." Her voice softened. "But I see you as someone who chose to lie rather than trust me. And I don't know how to work with that."

"Then let me fix it." Tom stepped forward. "I'll call Eleanor. I'll give her the full story. The pricing issues, the patent, the incorporation mess with Priya. Everything. We do the one honest thing I should have done from the start."

"You can't." Jazz's phone buzzed. She glanced at it, then went still. "It's the incubator. The managing director."

Tom's face went pale. "Now?"

Jazz answered. She listened for a long moment, then turned the phone toward Tom so he could hear the voice on the other end: *"—an attorney representing a third party has filed an ownership claim on the voice-specification technology. They're alleging the underlying engine was developed while you were still under contract with a prior employer. You have forty-eight hours to respond, or the claim becomes default."*

The call ended. The dial tone filled the flat.

"Prior employer," Tom said slowly. "That's not Miles. That's not Marcus."

Jazz scrolled to the email that had come with the call notification. Her hands were shaking. At the bottom of the legal notice, she saw the name of the firm representing the claimant.

Daniel Reeve had studied law for a year before dropping out to found his startup. But his father had been a partner at that firm for thirty years.

Tom met her eyes. "Your ex is coming after us directly."

Jazz closed her eyes. The boiler coughed once, twice, then fell silent. Outside, London started its day, oblivious to the fact that everything they'd built now hinged on a single forty-eight-hour window—and the only person who could help them prove the past was the man who'd broken her trust twice over.

But the thought that surfaced was worse and stranger and far more frightening: she wasn't sure if the betrayal that hurt more was Daniel's, Tom's father's, or Tom's. And she was running out of time to figure it out before someone else decided the matter for them.