Chapter 2: The Name on the Legal Notice
Nick called eleven times before 7 AM.
I let every one go to voicemail.
The twelfth time, I picked up.
"Teresa." His voice was different.
The triumph from the night before was completely gone.
"What is this envelope?
What is Valley Horizon?"
"You tell me, Nick."
Silence.
"This is some kind of mistake," he said.
"You're trying to scare me."
"I'm at the office," I said.
"I have a meeting in four minutes."
"Teresa, listen to me—" His voice dropped low and tight.
"Claudia has people.
Serious people.
If you filed something last night, you need to un-file it.
You don't understand what you're walking into."
I wrote down the exact time he said it: 7:09 AM.
"Is that a warning, Nick?"
He didn't answer.
I hung up.
Twenty minutes later, my supervisor called me into his office and closed the door.
He set a single printed page on the desk in front of me.
It was a legal notice.
Filed that morning.
The name at the top was Claudia Sterling's attorney.
And the name they were filing against wasn't Nick's.
It was mine.
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What Teresa found inside that legal notice — and what Claudia Sterling was really trying to protect — is in the full story.
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