Chapter 7 - Stolen Foundations
The room was in absolute pandemonium.
Smartphones were held high in the air by hundreds of tech journalists, venture capitalists, and university students, recording every millisecond. The live stream of the National Applied Sciences Invitational—normally watched by a niche audience of ten thousand academics—had suddenly spiked to over three hundred thousand live viewers as clips began hitting Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn with wildfire speed.
*#VanceGlobalExposed* was already trending.
Richard Vance finally found his feet. He lunged up from his velvet seat, knocking his crystal glass onto the floor, where it shattered into a hundred jagged pieces.
“Turn it off!” Richard bellowed, his composure completely shattered, his manicured facade peeling away to reveal the rabid beast underneath. “This is a coordinated smear campaign! These are fabricated lies! That woman is an unstable former employee! I don't know these boys! I demand a paternity test! I demand an immediate injunction!”
“We already took the test, Richard,” Julian replied calmly from the stage.
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a folded white document bearing the blue embossed seal of the Texas Department of Public Safety and a court-certified genetic laboratory.
“Three days ago, anticipating your predictable defense, our legal counsel submitted genetic samples obtained through state-certified chain of custody,” Julian announced, holding the paper up toward the broadcast cameras. “Probability of paternity: 99.98%. We are your biological sons, Mr. Vance. You are legally, genetically, and biologically our father.”
The audience erupted again. Several venture capitalists in the second row exchanged horrified glances and immediately pulled out their phones, frantically texting their brokers to dump their holdings in Vance Global Systems before the opening bell on Monday morning.
Leo stepped up to the podium, his eyes blazing. “And as for your claim of intellectual property... we invite every member of the SEC, every shareholder of Vance Global, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office to examine Exhibit B.”
With a single tap on the laptop connected to the auditorium's central projection grid, Leo overrode the ceremonial display.
The massive LED screens behind the stage flickered.
Suddenly, side-by-side technical diagrams appeared in glowing, forty-foot clarity. On the left was the core foundational patent of Vance Global Systems—the 2008 filing that had launched Richard Vance’s multi-billion dollar tech empire. On the right was an older, faded document: a Johns Hopkins Master’s thesis dated twelve months *before* the patent filing.
The mathematical algorithms were identical. The chemical synthesis pathways were identical.
Even the typographical errors were identical.
At the bottom of the older, original thesis, signed and verified by the Johns Hopkins department review board in 2007, was the name of the sole author:
**ELENA MORALES-VANCE.**
The entire auditorium descended into an uproar. High-ranking professors were standing on their chairs, gasping at the screen. Dr. Hayes walked over to the monitors, inspecting the code with a look of profound, sickening realization.
“Good God,” Hayes whispered into his lapel mic, his voice carrying through the speakers. “It’s Elena’s thesis. Vance... you built your entire neural architecture on Elena’s Hopkins thesis.”
Richard stumbled back against the front row railing, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. The walls of his world, built meticulously over sixteen years on a foundation of lies, theft, and intimidation, were collapsing around his head in real time.
Victoria turned on him, her eyes wide with unbridled horror and disgust. “You told my father you invented that algorithm!” she screamed at him, completely oblivious to the cameras pointing directly at her face. “My father gave you twenty million dollars because you swore to him that you were the sole patent holder! You lied to him! You lied to ME!”
“Victoria, shut up!” Richard hissed desperately, grabbing her shoulder. “Listen to me, it's not what it looks like—”
“DON’T TOUCH ME!” Victoria shrieked, violently slapping his hand away. “Do you have any idea what this does to the Sterling name?! You are finished, Richard! My father will pull every dime of institutional credit before the market opens!”
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She turned on her designer heels and sprinted down the aisle toward the emergency exits, her lavender silk dress fluttering behind her like a battle flag of retreat.
***
