I looked him straight in the eyes.

"A recommendation engine. Better than yours. Faster and more accurate than anything you've built."


My words seemed to detonate in his brain. His expression contorted as if he'd lost his mind.

"You can't," he finally managed. "We have a non-compete. You signed it."

"My lawyers carefully reviewed that contract. The non-compete prohibits me from taking your clients or poaching your employees. It doesn't stop me from building better products in the same market. That's called competition. Welcome to capitalism."


He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again—like a goldfish gasping in a bowl.

"Emma, listen. I know you've had trouble fitting in this past year, but starting a business out of...out of spite isn't a good reason—"


"It's not about fitting in," I cut him off. "It's about building something better. You taught me this—the company owns the results, the company gets the patents, the company makes the money, right?"

"That's not what I meant—"

"I'm just applying your logic—my results, my patents, my company, my money."

I turned toward the door.

At the threshold, I pulled another document from my bag and placed it on his desk.

"What's this?" David picked it up.

"A list. Three pages detailing all the code modules I personally wrote that are crucial to your core product."

I watched him flip through the pages, his face draining of color.

"According to Section 4.2 of my employment contract, any code written outside standard working hours, using personal equipment, without triple overtime pay, belongs to the employee."

"All these modules were committed between 11 PM and 4 AM from my home IP address. Check the logs if you don't believe me."

"You can't take these," he whispered, almost pleading. "It will cripple our entire system."

"You have two weeks until my resignation is complete to rewrite them. I suggest you start now."

His hands trembled as he clutched the document.

"Perhaps," I said, "you should have included my name on that paper."

I walked out, closing the door behind me, feeling better than I had in the entire past year.