Chapter 7 No.7

The conference room table was long enough to land a plane on.

Roman sat at one end, flanked by three lawyers in grey suits. They looked at Nova like she was a stain on the upholstery.

The lead lawyer slid a document across the polished wood. It was thick.

"Standard pre-nup," Roman said, spinning a pen. "You can get a lawyer to read it, if you can afford one."

Nova pulled the document toward her. She flipped past the assets section. She flipped past the alimony section. She stopped at the back.

"Clause 45," she said. "Intellectual Property."

"What IP do you have?" Roman sneered. "Recipes?"

Nova picked up a pen. She slashed through the paragraph. "Any invention, code, or patent created by me during the cohabitation period remains my sole property. Knight Industries gets zero percent."

The lawyer chuckled. "Miss Sterling, surely-"

"Clause 82," Nova interrupted, writing in the margins. "I need a dedicated fiber optic line. Unmonitored, with direct access to the exchange. No corporate firewalls."

"What for?" Roman asked, eyes narrowing. "Running a scam?"

"Algorithmic trading," Nova said without looking up. "High-frequency. It's latency-sensitive."

Roman rolled his eyes. "Unbelievable."

Nova scanned the rest of the pages. Her eyes moved vertically, taking in whole paragraphs in seconds. She flipped to the signature page.

She signed her name. It wasn't a cursive loops-and-swirls signature. It was sharp, jagged. A complex glyph.

Roman watched her sign. He frowned. He had seen that style of handwriting before. On a classified briefing document he wasn't supposed to see. A chill traced its way down his spine, a flicker of instinct he had learned not to ignore. He pushed it down. It had to be a coincidence.

He shook his head. Coincidence.

"The contract is active," Roman said, standing up. "Move into the penthouse tonight."

"Put me in the room furthest from yours," Nova said.

"Don't play hard to get," Roman said. "I know you'll be trying to crawl into my bed by Tuesday."

Nova looked him dead in the eye. "Your mattress is memory foam. It's bad for lumbar support. I prefer the floor."

The lawyers choked back laughs. Roman's face turned a dark shade of red.

Nova grabbed her copy of the contract and walked out. At the door, she paused. "I don't cook. I don't clean. I'm here for the trial, not to be your maid."

She closed the door.

Roman stared at her signature. He pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of it.

He texted it to Silas. Cross-reference this signature. Knight Industries internal security database and all federal watchlists. Priority Alpha.