I am having you arrested for cyber terrorism. I will see you in a jail cell before dinner.
I rested my head against the back of the thrifted sofa. I let him vent his fury. I knew my father relied on intimidation to solve his problems. He had a long history of crushing small vendors and bullying service workers. Whenever a supplier demanded a late payment or a dishwasher asked for overtime, Richard would threaten them with legal action.
He knew workingclass people could not afford expensive attorneys, so he wielded his wealth like a weapon. He assumed his 18-year-old daughter would fold the moment he . You cannot arrest the legal owner of a software license for logging out of her own account, Richard,” I replied. My tone was entirely devoid of emotion. I kept my voice flat, maintaining the clinical detachment of a bank teller, explaining an overdraft fee. “What are you talking about?” he snapped. “You hacked my restaurant.” “I did not hack anything,” I stated clearly.
“Let us review the facts. You refused to pay the corporate licensing fees for the point-of-sale software 5 years ago. You ordered me to build a cheap alternative. I leased the cloud server space using my personal student checking account. I registered the domain names under my own social security number.
The end-user license agreements are legally binding contracts between the software developers and me. You do not own the digital infrastructure of the Sterling catch. I do. You are simply a tenant who operates a physical kitchen inside my virtual building. And as of last night, your lease expired.
Richard let out a string of vicious curses. He slammed his fist against the wooden desk in his office. A loud thud resonated through the phone speaker. “You are a child,” he screamed.
“You live under my roof. Everything you own belongs to me.” “I left your roof last night,” I reminded him. I left my keys on your dining table just as you requested. The cost to transfer the administrative rights and hand over the software ownership is exactly $85,000. That number covers my unpaid wages over the last decade.
Once the wire transfer clears my newly opened checking account, the screens will turn back on and your waiters can send their drink orders to the bar. You are out of your mind if you think I am giving you a single dime. Richard growled. His pride was wounded and his ego refused to accept defeat. I am hanging up right now.
I am calling Mr. Vance. We will have an emergency court injunction filed by noon. A judge will force you to hand over those passwords and you will walk away with nothing. He ended the call before I could respond.
The line went dead. I set the phone down on the coffee table. I was not afraid of Mr. Vance. Gregory Vance was a high-priced corporate attorney who charged $600 an hour to protect affluent business owners from the consequences of their own greed.
He wore custom-tailored suits and drove an imported sports car. He was ruthless in a courtroom. Richard treated him like an attack dog, unleashing him whenever a former employee tried to file a grievance or a contractor sued for unpaid labor. Richard truly believed that bringing Mr. Vance into the battle would guarantee a swift victory.
He thought a legal threat written on heavy card stock with a prestigious law firm logo would terrify me into submission. What my father did not know was that I had already initiated contact with the attorney before the sun even came up.
I opened my laptop and refreshed my email inbox. At 8:00 that morning, I had sent a certified digital message directly to Mr. Vance. The subject line was a formal notification of a labor dispute. Attached to that email was a locked readonly copy of the $85,000 spreadsheet.
I spent the next 2 hours watching the clock. The lunch rush at the Sterling Catch would be a devastating failure. Without the digital seating charts, the hostesses would be seating walk-in guests at reserved tables. The kitchen would be losing track of handwritten orders, resulting in cold food and furious customers. The mayor and his re-election committee would be wondering why a premier seafood establishment was suddenly operating like a disorganized diner. The financial hemorrhage was bleeding Richard dry by the minute.
