Chapter 4 - The Secret Plot To Steal Everything
I called Mia immediately, my hands shaking as I held the phone to my ear. She didn’t waste time with small talk.
“After we sold the company, we kept the rights to the core learning algorithm, remember?” she said. “We said we’d license it to nonprofits, keep it accessible. Ryan reached out to LearnWell back in January. Told them he could get them full ownership of the algorithm for $200k, plus a 10% cut of future profits.”
LearnWell was our biggest competitor. They’d tried to buy us out twice before, and we’d turned them down both times because their business model focused on overcharging schools, something Mia and I had never believed in.
“How do you know this?” I asked, my throat tight.
“One of their VPs is an old college friend of mine,” she said. “He thought Ryan was acting on your behalf. When he saw the news about your divorce, he reached out to me to ask if you were okay. He sent me all the emails, the meeting notes, everything. Ryan even signed a preliminary agreement in your name. Forged your signature.”
I felt like I was going to throw up. That algorithm was my life’s work. I’d coded the first version when I was 22, staying up until 3 a.m. in a tiny apartment, eating ramen and dreaming of making education more accessible for kids like me, who’d grown up poor and couldn’t afford tutoring. Ryan had never cared about any of that. He’d only ever seen it as a cash cow.
“Can you send me everything?” I asked.
“Already sent it to Clara,” Mia said. “Emily, I’m so sorry. I should have told you sooner. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I saw the news.”
I hung up and called Clara, who told me we’d add the forgery and IP theft to our growing list of charges against Ryan. This wasn’t just a divorce or a property dispute anymore. This was a federal crime.
While I was dealing with that, Ryan and his family were falling apart. Someone had posted the address of their motel to a local Facebook group, and guests had started complaining about the constant yelling coming from their room. The motel manager kicked them out that afternoon, saying they’d “disrupted the peace and damaged a TV.”
A video posted to TikTok showed them standing in the motel parking lot, fighting with each other. Linda was screaming at Ryan, hitting his chest with her purse. “You said we’d be living in a mansion! You said Emily would never find out! Now we’re homeless, and you got fired from your stupid golf job!”
Heather was standing off to the side, filming the fight for her own Instagram story, yelling, “This is all your fault! I could be in a nice house right now if you hadn’t messed everything up!”
Frank was leaning against the BMW, smoking a cigarette, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else.
The video went viral, and the comments were brutal: “Family goals, am I right?” “Karma is a beautiful thing.” “Emily dodged a bullet.”
That night, Ryan showed up at my house again, this time alone. He was drunk, leaning against the front gate, slurring my name. I didn’t open the door. I called the police, and they arrested him for violating the trespassing warning he’d gotten earlier that day.
He was released on bail a few hours later, but not before Clara filed for a temporary restraining order. The judge granted it, ordering Ryan to stay at least 500 feet away from me, the house, and my car.
A week later, I got a call from Linda. She was crying, her voice small and broken, nothing like the loud, entitled woman who’d screamed at me on my lawn.
“Emily, please,” she said. “We have nowhere to go. Frank’s cousin said we can stay with him in San Antonio, but we need gas money. Ryan won’t answer his phone. He took the last of our cash. Please, just send us $500. I’ll never ask you for anything again.”
I thought about all the times she’d called me “ungrateful,” all the times she’d complained that I “didn’t do enough” for her family, all the times she’d sided with Ryan even when he was clearly wrong.
“I’m sorry, Linda,” I said, my voice steady. “I don’t owe you anything. And if you contact me again, I’ll have you served with a restraining order too. Goodbye.”
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I hung up and blocked her number. For a second, I felt a twinge of guilt. Then I remembered the way Ryan had looked at me when he said he’d throw me out of my own house. The guilt faded.
I was done being their ATM. I was done being their doormat. And I was just getting started.
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