I felt a cold surge of adrenaline.
"You're a liar," I said. "David called me two weeks before he died. He told me you locked him out of the workshop. He told me you stole the prototype."
Julian sighed, a perfect, practiced sound of pity.
He opened a desk drawer, pulled out a manila folder, and tossed it across the desk toward me.
"Grief makes people look for someone to blame, Arthur," Julian said gently. "David was struggling financially. He came to me in February. He signed away the intellectual rights to the Celestial complication in exchange for an upfront payment. I have the contract right here."
I stepped forward and opened the folder.
Tyler handed me a cup of coffee, but I ignored it, keeping my eyes fixed on the document.
It looked incredibly official.
It had Vanguard's corporate letterhead, paragraphs of dense legal jargon, and at the bottom of the page, a signature.
David Pendelton.
I stared at the ink.
My heart pounded fiercely against my ribs.
"You see?" Julian asked, his confidence returning. "It's ironclad. I understand you're hurting, but you have no claim here. Now, take your check and leave, before I decide to press charges for harassment."
I kept my eyes on the paper.
"Tyler," I said quietly, without looking up.
"Yes?" Tyler asked, his voice tight.
"You're a smart kid," I said. "You work in a luxury store. You notice details. That's your job, right?"
Tyler hesitated. "Yes."
"Come look at this signature."
Julian stood up sharply. "Tyler, get back to the showroom."
"No, let the boy look," I said, my voice cutting through the room like a whip.
Tyler didn't leave.
Drawn by a morbid curiosity, he stepped closer and looked down at the document.
"Look at the slant of the letters," I told Tyler. "Look at how the ink pools on the right side of the loops."
"It slants to the right," Tyler observed nervously.
"Exactly," I said. "It was signed by a right-handed man dragging his pen across the paper."
I looked up at Julian, letting the fury I had carried for a year finally show in my eyes.
"My son was in a car accident when he was nine years old," I said, my voice trembling with cold rage. "It shattered his right shoulder. He couldn't lift his right arm above his chest for the rest of his life. David was fiercely, exclusively left-handed."
Julian's smug expression faltered.
"Furthermore," I continued, pointing a calloused finger at the top corner of the document. "Look at the date. February 14th."
Tyler looked at the date, then at me.
"My son contracted severe pneumonia in early February," I said, staring unblinkingly at Julian. "On February 14th, he was in a medically induced coma at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. I sat next to his bed for three days."
The room went dead silent.
The only sound was the ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner.
Tyler stared at his boss, the realization crashing over him.
He knew, right then and there, that Julian Vance was a fraud, a thief, and a liar.
Julian’s face tightened.
The polite, corporate mask finally cracked, revealing the desperate, cornered animal underneath.
He snatched the folder out of my hands and threw it into a trash can behind his desk.
"Fine," Julian spat. "You want to play hardball, old man? Let's play."
He reached into his jacket, pulled out a sleek silver pen, and grabbed a blank Vanguard checkbook from his desk drawer.
He quickly wrote out a check and slammed it onto the desk next to my cashier's check.
"One million dollars," Julian said, his breathing heavy. "Take it. You can retire to Florida. You can buy a boat. You can forget you ever heard the name Vanguard. Just take the money, leave the watch, and walk out that door."
I looked down at the million-dollar check.
It was more money than I could ever spend in my lifetime.
It was freedom.
But it was also blood money.
"No," I said softly.
Julian's eyes widened in disbelief.
"Are you insane?" he demanded. "It's a million dollars! Your son was a nobody. He was a mechanic making cheap trinkets in a garage. I made this watch famous! I gave it the Vanguard name!"
"He was a genius," I fired back, stepping closer to the desk. "And you drove him into the ground because you couldn't design a proper timepiece if your life depended on it."
Tyler took a step backward, terrified by the sheer venom in the room.
Julian stared at me, his chest heaving.
He realized I couldn't be bought.
He reached out, grabbed the Celestial watch from its velvet pad, and clutched it tightly in his fist.
Then, he walked over to the heavy mahogany door.