Everett read the top page twice. Then he did the thing that told me everything about the family I had married into. He did not look at his son. He looked at me, and he asked, in the same voice he used to close deals, what it would take. Not an apology. A number. To him the betrayal at the table was a line item, and I had just become a vendor with leverage. I told him the software was not for sale, that it was licensed to Campbell Realty on a month-to-month basis effective immediately, and that the license would terminate the day my divorce was finalised unless renegotiated with my attorney present.

The platform ran everything. Tenant screening, maintenance, vendor payments, the analytics Everett quoted on panels. Without it the company reverted to spreadsheets and phone calls inside a week, and they all knew it, because Marcus had spent two years telling magazines exactly how essential it was, never once mentioning who built it.