3. His Rival
Chapter Three
HIS RIVAL
Max Hammond’s wellness club occupies the top six floors of a hotel on Fifth Avenue.
Members pay more per year than Rick and I once earned combined. The lobby smells of cedar and citrus. A waterfall slides silently down a wall of black stone, and every employee knows my name even though I’ve never been here.
Max is waiting in a private dining room that overlooks Central Park, and he stands when I enter.
Rick describes him as a corporate predator with good tailoring, and that isn’t entirely unfair. Max is tall, broad-shouldered, and fit, and composed in a way that makes the room seem arranged around him. His dark suit is simple, his watch discreet, and his attention immediate.
He doesn’t offer false sympathy. He offers coffee, and when I accept, he pours it himself.
I sit across from him at a table designed for twelve.
“What did Rick do?” he asks.
“Why assume he did something?”
“Because you’ve had my number for three years.”
I wrap both hands around the cup. “He’s having an affair with Shelby Williams.”
Max’s expression remains neutral.
“He’s also removing me before the IPO and preparing to blame me for a product problem he approved.”
That earns a reaction. It’s small, but visible. “What problem?”
“I can’t give you proprietary details.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I need resources I can trust.”
“And you called your husband’s largest competitor.”
“You’re the only person he’s afraid of.”
Max leans back. “Rick isn’t afraid of me. He hates that I don’t believe him.”
“That’s close enough.”
His gaze holds mine. There’s no pity in it, which is a relief. “What do you want?” he asks.
“An independent product expert. A forensic accountant. Securities counsel who has no relationship with VidaRing’s underwriters.”
“In exchange for what?”
“The opportunity to invest in what I build next.”
His eyebrow lifts. “You’re already planning the next company?”
“I’m planning not to let Rick decide whether I have a future.”
“Why would I invest without knowing what information you can give me now?”
“You shouldn’t. Not yet.”
Max studies me for several seconds.
I take a notebook from my bag and draw a circle.
“VidaRing collects signals,” I say. “Sleep cycles, temperature shifts, resting heart patterns, activity, recovery. The original system doesn’t diagnose anything.
It looks for changes from a person’s own baseline and tells them when something deserves attention. ”
“I know how the product works.”
“You know the marketing.”
That almost makes him smile.
I draw a line through the circle. “The newest update smooths data the system can’t interpret confidently.
Imagine your body sends five signals. Four are familiar.
One is strange. The old system says, ‘Something unusual is happening. Pay attention.’ The new one says, ‘We understand four out of five, so you’re probably fine. ’”
“And the wellness score remains high.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“High scores increase engagement. People open the app more when it tells them they’re succeeding.”
“That’s grotesquely simple,” he says.
“Most dangerous ideas are.”
“Did Rick design the update?”
“He demanded the outcome. Other people made it function.”
“Do you have proof?”
“Not yet.”
Max reaches for the notebook. “Show me the original system.”
I hesitate for a second, then I turn to a clean page and sketch the architecture from memory.
I don’t include source code or confidential specifics, but the reasoning underneath it.
The weighting. The uncertainty thresholds.
The safeguards designed to prevent reassuring conclusions when the data is incomplete.
Max doesn’t interrupt once.
“Who wrote this?” he asks.
“I did.”
“Who holds the underlying rights?”
“The core model predates incorporation. VidaRing has used it under our original founder agreement. Rick kept postponing a complete assignment because our attorneys disagreed about valuation and he didn’t want to complicate early funding.”
“You retain an interest.”
“Yes.”
“Does the board know?”
“They know the agreement exists. I doubt most of them have read it.”
Max looks down at my diagram again. “Rick told the market he invented VidaRing after tracking his own burnout.”
“Rick thought being tired meant he was working harder than everyone else.”
Max laughs, and it makes him look less severe. When he looks at me again, something in his expression makes my skin warm. It’s not attraction, but maybe recognition.
“VidaRing is yours,” he says.
“The company belongs to its shareholders.”
“The idea is yours.”
“I made the system. Rick built the story.”
“No. You built that too. He performed it.”
My throat tightens unexpectedly, and I look toward the park. People move along the paths far below, reduced by distance to tiny figures heading somewhere with purpose.
“Rick has spent years trying to crush Span360,” Max says. “You understand that helping you could benefit me.”
“I’m counting on it.”
“And you won’t give me VidaRing’s confidential information.”
“No.”
“You won’t help me sabotage the IPO.”
“No.”
“What will you give me?”
“A fair chance to invest in my next company. No controlling stake. No automatic integration into Span360. No ownership of my work.”
“You negotiate aggressively for someone asking a rival for help.”
“I spent fifteen years negotiating for Rick. I learned something.”
Max folds his hands on the table. “What happens if the evidence clears him?”
“Then you walk away.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I protect the customers and myself, then I take back whatever the law says is mine.”
“What happens to Rick?”
“That will depend on how much he lied.”
Max’s eyes remain on mine. “His greatest mistake isn’t the update,” he says.
“What is it?”
“He believed the woman who understood the product well enough to expose him would be too frightened to try.”
Rick has spent years explaining my weaknesses to me. Max has known me for less than an hour, and he’s already identified the precise reason I’m dangerous.
He reaches for his phone. “I have a product-risk specialist who can be here tomorrow. My securities counsel will need conflict clearance. The accountant will take longer.”
“How long?”
“Probably two days.”
I nod.
“I’ll provide office space under an unrelated holding company,” he continues. “No one on the general staff will know you’re there.”
“What do you want signed?”
“A confidentiality agreement protecting both companies. A letter confirming that I haven’t requested proprietary information. A preliminary right to review any future investment proposal.”
“Review, not match.”
“Review.”
“No noncompete.”
His mouth curves. “You think I’d ask?”
“I think powerful men ask for whatever they believe a woman is too desperate to refuse.”
The smile disappears. “Don’t confuse me with your husband.”
“I don’t know you well enough not to.”
Max nods once. “Fair.”
I should leave then. Instead, I ask, “Why did you give me your private number all those years ago?”
“Because every time Rick explained VidaRing, he watched your face to see whether he was getting it right.”
I stare at him.
“No one else noticed,” he says. “I did.”
For years, I believed invisibility was something that happened gradually, too slowly for witnesses. Max saw it while it was happening.