Free Web NovelChapter 110: Chapter 110 The threat
_Kaelen’s POV_
I spent the first twenty minutes trying to convince myself it was a mistake.
A clerical error. Someone had filed the wrong documents somewhere and it had produced an overlap that looked like infringement but wasn’t. These things happened. The legal system was full of paperwork that crossed paths incorrectly and produced problems that dissolved the moment someone looked at them properly.
I called my beta to contact my lawyer immediately.
He picked up on the fourth ring with the voice of someone who had been awake for a while and had already seen the email before I called, which told me something I didn’t want to know about how serious this was.
“I was going to call you,” he said.
“Tell me it’s nothing,” I said.
He was quiet for a second too long.
“The trademark was registered fourteen months ago,” he said. “Clean filing. No disputes. It predates your registration by over a year.” He paused. “Alpha, when you submitted your registration, the database should have flagged this.”
“It didn’t flag anything!” I crashed out. “We checked!”
“I know you checked,” he said. “I’m looking at the records right now and I don’t have a clean explanation for why it didn’t come up in the search you ran.” He paused again. “I need a few hours to go through everything properly. Don’t respond to the email yet. Don’t make any statements. Just give me until noon.”
I told him noon was fine and hung up.
I sat at my desk and looked at the wall.
“You seriously opened a club without proper approval?” Shade asked uselessly. I hated my wolf.
“The approval came through,” I groaned, pulling my hair. “We went through the full process.”
“Did we?” Shade asked. “The Alpha hasn’t even signed your registry. Or did someone tell you the process was done and you trusted them because you were in a hurry to open?”
I thought about the timeline. The weeks leading up to the opening. My operations manager handling most of the administrative filings while I focused on the physical setup and the staff and the promotion. I had reviewed the final documents. I had signed things. But I had not personally verified every search result from every database because that was what I paid people to do.
I pressed my fingers against my forehead.
My operations manager’s name was Cole. He had come recommended through a contact whose name I was now struggling to recall exactly. He had been efficient and organized and had handled the paperwork side of the opening almost entirely independently.
Without thinking, I called the bastard Cole.
The phone rang twelve times and went to voicemail.
I called again.
Voicemail again.
I put the phone down and looked at the email again and then I pulled up Cole’s contact information on my laptop and looked at the address he had given when he started and the reference contact he had listed and something in my chest went cold in an instant.
The reference contact’s number was.......disconnected.
I had never called it before. There had been no reason to. Cole had performed well from day one and I had never needed to verify his references after the first week.
I called Cole a third time but he didn’t answer.
“Fuck!” I cursed, unable to hold it back.
By ten in the morning I had three more emails from the same legal team, each one progressively more detailed and less patient in its tone. I had a voicemail from a regional business registry official asking me to call back regarding my operating license. I had a message from the bank that handled the club’s accounts saying there was a hold on the business account pending review of a complaint filed by a third party.
A hold?!
I stared at that one for a long time.
The hold meant I couldn’t access the club’s operating funds. Which meant I couldn’t pay staff this week. Which meant the club that had opened four days ago was already functionally paralyzed before it had found its footing.
Shade was very quiet too.
I almost wished he would say something because the silence was worse.
I went through everything I could find on Cole. The email address he had used for correspondence. The phone number. The physical address he had listed on his contract. I pulled up his contract from my files and read through it and found nothing that helped me and several things that I should have looked at more carefully a week ago when I hired him.
The address was a mail forwarding service. I found that out in four minutes of searching.
I sat back.
“Someone set you up,” Shade said finally. “This wasn’t an accident or a filing error. Someone planted Cole, someone managed the paperwork to look clean while pointing at a trademark that would surface later, and someone timed the legal notice for the day after your opening.”
“You think so too?” I asked, fear crawling into my heart.
“The question is who,” Shade said. “And why now.”
Was it Rowena? frёewebnoѵēl.com
I thought about last night. About Rowena’s face when she said one more word and the club would be gone by Monday. About the calmness in her voice that I had dismissed as a bluff because Rowena always sounded certain.
Had she known?
Had she known last night what was already in motion?
I thought about it carefully and I couldn’t decide. The timing was almost too precise. The legal notice arrived the morning after the confrontation. But setting something like this up took months, not hours, and the trademark registration was fourteen months old.
Someone had been planning this for a long time.
My phone buzzed.
A text from a number I didn’t recognize.
“I heard you had a difficult morning. I’m sorry to hear it. If you need someone to talk to, I’m available.”
I stared at the text.
Who the hell was this? Instantly, I called the number but the person declined the call. I growled, finally losing it.
Without thinking, I typed back “You’d better not fucking play with me or I’ll hunt and ruin you completely!”
