I answered and said nothing at first. “Miss Monroe,” he repeated, slower now, with silverware clinking behind him. “I am sitting at a table with your family. Your father has read the front page four times, and your mother has not said a word since. I owe you an apology.” I walked to the terrace railing, the sound glittering below me, and asked him what he wanted from me.“The truth,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Your article names every firm that signed with you this year. Reading it, I finally understood why my son pushed me to sign a two million dollar contract with your biggest competitor last week. He owns a hidden share of that company, Miss Monroe. He told me at Christmas that your work was a toy, and your sister is sitting beside him right now, learning it all at once.”
Spencer the fourth had quietly bought into Docket Labs, a rival startup, two years earlier. Every time his father’s firm talked about modernizing, he steered the conversation toward them and laughed off my company as a hobby. Then the Journal reported that eleven of the top fifty firms now used Clause AI, and Docket’s client list was shrinking fast. Spencer the third read the numbers aloud over the ham, and his son went completely white.My sister, Lindsay, had known about the investment but never about the lies. She slid off her engagement ring and set it beside her plate, and told him they would talk after he had told the truth to everyone. Then my mother took the phone. She cried so hard I could barely follow, and admitted she had written that text out of her own shame, not mine. She said she had been afraid to ask what I did because she knew she had never earned the answer.

Spencer the third canceled the Docket contract that same afternoon and paid the penalty himself. He asked for a meeting with my team, and I agreed on one condition: no favors. Three months later, his firm signed with Clause AI at our standard price, after a fair demonstration beside two other vendors. His son resigned from the firm, sold his stake to repay his father, and wrote me a short letter that did not make a single excuse.

In June, my parents flew to Seattle for the first time. I had finally bought a dining table, a long oak one, and I set it for five. My father asked questions about the company for three straight hours, and he wrote the answers down in a notebook. Lindsay came too, without a ring, and we talked like sisters for the first time in years. Nobody asked me to stay away from anything ever again.