Chapter 3 Seeds Of Discord

Maurice's POV

The elevator ride to our office felt longer than usual that morning. I kept checking my phone, hoping to see a response from Kelvin to my text about Peterson's increased offer, but the screen remained stubbornly blank. By the time the doors opened on the forty-second floor, my jaw was clenched tight enough to crack teeth.

"Good morning, Mr. James," our receptionist, Linda, chirped as I strode past her desk. "Mr. Carlos is already in the conference room. He asked me to tell you he's ready whenever you are."

Ready. The word carried weight I didn't like. Ready for what, exactly?

I found Kelvin standing at the conference room windows, his back to me, hands clasped behind him in that way he always stood when he was thinking through a problem. He didn't turn around when I entered.

"You got my text," I said, setting my briefcase on the polished table.

"I got it." His voice was quiet, controlled. Still not turning around.

"Forty percent increase, Kelvin. That brings the total contract value to fourteen million dollars. Fourteen million." I walked around the table, trying to get him to face me. "Do you understand what that means for us? For our families?"

Finally, he turned. His face was composed, but I could see the exhaustion around his eyes. "It means forty percent more money for doing something we both know is wrong."

"Wrong?" I laughed, but it came out harsher than I intended. "Wrong is letting this opportunity slip through our fingers. Wrong is staying small when we could be industry leaders."

"Industry leaders in what, Maurice? Corporate espionage? Privacy violation?"

"Data analytics. Customer intelligence. The same thing every major corporation in America is doing."

"And that makes it right?"

I slammed my hand on the table, the sound echoing in the room. "It makes it business! It makes it reality! When did you become so naive about how the world actually works?"

"When did you become so comfortable with compromising everything we built this company on?"

We stared at each other across the conference table, two men who'd been closer than brothers suddenly feeling like strangers. The silence stretched between us, heavy with five years of shared dreams and the weight of a decision that would define everything that came after.

"I talked to Elena last night," Kelvin said finally, his voice calm in a way that made my stomach clench. "She asked me a question I couldn't answer. She asked me if I could look our future children in the eye and tell them I was proud of the work I was doing."

"Your future children will thank you for the trust fund this contract will provide."

"Will they? Or will they ask why their father sold his integrity for money?"

"OMG!, Kelvin, listen to yourself. You're talking like we're drug dealers or arms smugglers. This is data management. This is information people willingly provide."

"Information they provide under false pretenses, for purposes they don't understand, to be sold to companies they've never heard of." He moved to the table, pulling out a chair but not sitting. "I spent half the night reading the fine print of what Peterson wants us to build. They want to create psychological profiles of their customers, to identify vulnerabilities that can be exploited for marketing purposes. They want to know who's going through a divorce, who's struggling with addiction, who's in financial trouble."

"So they can provide targeted services."

"So they can manipulate people when they're at their most vulnerable." His voice rose slightly, the first crack in his composure. "They want to sell that information to insurance companies who will use it to deny claims, to employers who will use it to avoid hiring people, to political organizations who will use it to influence elections."

"You're being paranoid."

"Am I? Because I've seen their client list, Maurice. I've seen who they're planning to share this data with. And if you've seen it too, then you know exactly what we're really talking about here."

The truth was, I had seen it. I'd seen the list of third-party partners Peterson worked with, the maze of subsidiaries and data brokers and marketing firms that would ultimately have access to everything we collected. And yes, some of those relationships had made me uncomfortable. But fourteen million dollars had a way of making discomfort seem like a luxury I couldn't afford.

"Look, Kelvin, maybe we can negotiate better terms. Maybe we can put in safeguards, restrictions on how the data is used-"

"No." The word was final, absolute. "There are no safeguards that make this right. There are no restrictions that make this ethical. This is not who we are, Maurice. This is not who we agreed to be."

"Then maybe we need to agree to be something else. Maybe we need to grow up and accept that business at this level requires difficult choices."

"Difficult choices, or soul-crushing compromises?"

I was getting tired of his moral superiority, tired of being made to feel like the villain for wanting to succeed. "Fine. You want to know what I really think? I think you're scared. I think you're scared of success, scared of what it means to play in the big leagues. I think you'd rather stay small and safe and righteous than take the risks that real success requires."

His face went very still. "And I think you're scared of being ordinary. I think you're so afraid of not being rich and powerful that you're willing to become someone you don't recognize."

"At least I'm willing to become something."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means I'm not content to spend the rest of my life running a boutique software company that makes enough money to get by. It means I want more. I want to build something that lasts, something that matters in the world."

"What if the way you build it destroys everything that made it worth building in the first place?"

The question hung in the air between us, and for a moment, I almost heard him. Almost let myself consider that maybe, just maybe, he was right. But then I thought about the Peterson contract, about the opportunities it would open, about the future it could secure. Not just for me, but for Sarah, for the family we were planning to start.

"I can't walk away from this, Kelvin. I won't."

"Then you'll walk away from it alone."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I'm formally invoking my veto power as an equal partner in this company. The Peterson contract is rejected. We're not doing business with them."

"Like hell we're not."

"Check the partnership agreement, Maurice. Any contract that both partners don't approve is automatically rejected. That's the deal we made when we started this company."

"A deal we made when we were desperate kids working out of a garage. Things change, Kelvin. We change."

"Some things don't change. Some things shouldn't change." He moved toward the door, then paused. "I'm calling Peterson in an hour to inform them that TechVision is declining their offer. If you want to pursue this kind of business, you'll have to do it without me."

"And if I'm not willing to do it without you?"

"Then we'll find another way forward. Together. The way we always have."

The door closed behind him with a soft click, leaving me alone with the weight of the decision I had to make. Outside the windows, Manhattan stretched endlessly, a city built on ambition and compromise, on the dreams of people who'd been willing to do whatever it took to succeed.

I picked up my phone and scrolled to Peterson's contact information. One call. That's all it would take. One call to secure our future, to guarantee that everything we'd worked for wouldn't be lost.

But first, I had to decide what I was willing to lose to get it.

The phone rang once, twice, three times before a crisp voice answered. "Peterson Group, this is Jennifer."

"This is Maurice James from TechVision. I need to speak with Mr. Peterson immediately."

"Of course, Mr. James. Please hold."

As the hold music played, I stared at the empty conference room, at the chairs where Kelvin and I had planned our future, at the table where we'd shaken hands on deals that had built our company into something we could both be proud of.

In five minutes, one of us was going to make a call that would change everything.

The question was which one of us would make it first.