Get Out. You’re Useless To My Company The Ceo Fired Me After 7 Yrs Of Grinding, Sneered, “Be Grate

I forwarded the email to my lawyer, the one who’d helped me set up the original LLC and licensing agreements.

She called me back within 20 minutes.

“They’re desperate. They know they don’t own Atlas, so they’re trying to scare you into giving it up.”

“And Atlas?”

“Atlas stays where it is. Your intellectual property, they have no legal claim.”

She drafted our response that afternoon, short, clinical, devastating.

Attached to it the original blueprints, timestamped documentation, hosting invoices, W9, the MSA draft from 2018 they never signed, registration records.

Everything proving I’d built it, owned it, and they’d never formalized terms.

The response went out the next morning.

My lawyer called me that afternoon.

“Alex, Meridian just sent their TTRO motion with supporting exhibits. And Exhibit B is an email from someone named Claire at a law firm, dated the day you were fired. Says you made threats about shutting down their systems and recommends immediate credential termination.”

Silence.

“Alex, did your ex-girlfriend tip them off?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, congratulations. She just made herself a witness and possibly opened herself up to tortious interference claims if we want to go that route.”

I could hear the grim satisfaction in her voice.

“What does that mean?”

“It means Clare put herself in the middle of this in writing on corporate letterhead. If they try to use her email as evidence of your threats, we’ll tear it apart in discovery.”

“She had a personal relationship with you, broke up with you the same day, then immediately contacted your employer with inflammatory claims. That’s not a neutral security assessment; that’s retaliation.”

She paused.

“And Alex, if they actually file this, we can counter with defamation and interference. She made false statements that damaged you professionally. That’s actionable.”

Radioactive Associates

By early the following week, I heard through a mutual acquaintance that Meridian had brought in outside counsel for the litigation threat.

Big firm, expensive, same firm where Clare’s mentor had just made partner, same firm where Clare had been networking for a lateral move.

I mentioned it to my lawyer.

She laughed, actually laughed.

“Oh, this keeps getting better. Let me make a call.”

She called back an hour later.

“Conflict check hit hard. Claire’s relationship with you, her email being used as evidence, and her connection to the external firm… they’ve pulled her off any Meridian-adjacent matters and flagged her for the ethics committee. She’s been walled off.”

“What does that mean for her?”

“Partner review paused, probably dead. Any chance of moving to the big firm? Gone. She’s toxic now. Firms don’t want associates who create conflicts and liability.”

A week later, another mutual contact mentioned they’d seen Clare in a coffee shop looking rough.

Heard she got pulled from a major deal last minute, something about conflicts, and she’s not on the partner track email list anymore.

I didn’t ask for details, didn’t need to.

Clare had tried to protect her image by throwing me under the bus; instead, she’d created a paper trail that made her a liability.

Her firm was doing what firms do, quietly pushing her toward the exit while covering their own behind.

No dramatic firing, just the slow death of “explore other opportunities and we’ll be in touch.”

The kind of professional exile that doesn’t wash off.

The Black Screen and Panic Mode

The following Friday at 3:00 a.m., Atlas went into full shutdown mode.

Jason tried again at 2:47 a.m. Same move, same arrogance.

Atlas detected the unauthorized credential injection and immediately escalated containment protocols.

The system had been in restricted mode since the first Wednesday, degraded but functional.

Jason’s stunt pushed it over the edge.

Full lockdown. No license. No execution.

By 9:00 a.m., Meridian’s trading desk couldn’t execute orders properly.

Positions queued and never cleared; portfolio analytics loaded as blank screens.

The desk went manual at 9:47 a.m.

Risk calculations went stale. 7-figure exposure sitting unprotected while the market moved against them.

By 10:30, clients were calling and the trading floor was in full panic mode.

I watched it unfold through Atlas’s audit dashboard, everything recorded for counsel.

Evelyn called an emergency meeting, required attendance for all technical staff.

I didn’t go, didn’t respond to emails, didn’t answer my phone.

Sat in my apartment with cold coffee and Atlas’s logs.

Around 11:15, they brought Craig back in, emergency rate $1,200 an hour, maybe higher.

Full access.

Craig was good, better than Jason, better than most engineers I’d worked with.

He spent an hour tracing the failure cascade, mapped dependencies, got within three steps of Atlas’s control layer.

Then Atlas moved.

“Access violation detected. External authority rejected. Revoking temporary credentials.”

Craig’s screen went black.

Full system logout, account disabled, session terminated, token invalid.

Complete security lockout.

I actually laughed, first time in weeks.

Meridian stopped paying him 15 minutes later.

By 2:00 p.m., the cumulative damage was hitting seven figures.

Failed trades, blown risk limits, client complaints piling up.

Evelyn must have been losing her mind.

My phone buzzed around 3:30, text message from a number I didn’t recognize.

“We need to talk in person. Name your terms. E.”

Evelyn got my number from HR records.

I didn’t respond.

Another text came through 20 minutes later.

“We’re losing clients, bleeding money. Please just call me back.”

I turned my phone off.

Let her sweat.

Subpoenas and Oath

Monday morning, my lawyer called.

“Alex, we’re issuing subpoenas for discovery: Meridian’s internal communications, HR records, and any third-party correspondence related to your termination.”

“Okay.”

“That includes Clare. She’s compelled to testify since she inserted herself into this. Her email is Exhibit B in their filing, which means she’s a material witness now.”

“She’s going to love that.”

“She made her choice when she put it in writing. Now she gets to explain it under oath.”

That night, Clare showed up at my apartment.

Didn’t text first, just knocked on the door.

I opened it, stood in the doorway, didn’t invite her in.

“Alex, we need to talk,”

she said.

“We really don’t.”

“I got a subpoena from your lawyer. And Alex, I can’t testify. It’ll destroy my career. The partners are already watching me. If I’m deposed about the email—”

“You should have thought of that before you wrote it.”

“I was protecting myself.”

“You were covering your behind. There’s a difference.”

Her face hardened.

“What do you want?”

“I’ll retract the email. I’ll say I was wrong.”

“Too late. It’s evidence now. You made yourself part of this.”

“Alex, please.”

“You called my mother, or you told Meridian enough that they did. You put my career, my reputation, my mother’s health at risk because you were worried about optics.”

“I didn’t think—”

“No, you didn’t.”

I stepped back and closed the door.

Stood there listening to her footsteps fade down the hallway.

Then I went back to my laptop and checked Atlas’s logs.

Still running, still secure, still mine.

Who Owns Atlas?

The following Monday, Meridian’s legal team sent me a formal demand letter.

Pages of threats wrapped in lawyer speak: claims of breach of contract, allegations of service disruption, demands for cessation of all license termination and service unavailability.

They wanted me to hand over Atlas’s code, full admin access, documentation, everything.

And if I didn’t comply, they’d pursue maximum legal remedies including injunction, TTRO, and emergency motion.

I forwarded it to my attorney.

She called back within an hour.

“They’re desperate. This letter is practically begging. They know they don’t own Atlas, so they’re trying to scare you into giving it up.”

“What do I do?”

“Nothing. Let them make threats. When they realize they have no leverage, they’ll come back with a negotiation offer, and that’s when we negotiate damages and fees.”

I hung up and poured myself a coffee, first one I’d had in weeks.

Stood by the window watching the city lights, traffic moving below, people living their normal lives.

By Wednesday, the damage at Meridian had crossed seven figures according to a compliance contact who still talked to me.

Trading halts, blown positions, client withdrawals—the kind of losses that make board members update their resumes.

Evelyn tried calling me directly four times, left voicemails that started professional and ended desperate.