Celeste Brought My Borrowed Signature Into A Wilmington Courtroom

My name appeared at the bottom in blue.

Above it, the revised Schedule A gave North Quay the right to transfer the protocol without asking me again. It also claimed my firm had approved all pending customer allocations.

"I never signed this," I said.

Dev did not tell me to calm down.

"Then say exactly that in your statement. Don't guess how it got there."

We sat in his office until the cleaning crew reached our floor. I wrote what I knew. The original license. My dismissal. The unsigned release. The open holds. The duplicate promises.

I attached records for each point.

"They'll say I kept company documents," I said.

"You maintained the archive your contract required. We can show the terms, access logs, and dates."

He had me stop whenever I wrote something I could not prove.

By eleven, my statement was shorter and stronger.

Dev filed Stillpoint's response and claims of its own. We asked the court to protect the protocol from an unapproved transfer and preserve the records behind the disputed schedule.

I paid a $4,500 retainer from Stillpoint's checking account.

That left $9,120.

Seeing the balance made the fight real in a way Celeste's threats had not.

I drove home with the radio off. In my kitchen, I set the brass punch beside a bowl of cold rice and checked my statement once more.

I had spent years making sure other people could trust a number.

Now I had to trust the dates beside my own name.

The next morning, Dev met me outside the courthouse on North King Street. Rain had left dark spots on the stone.

"Remember," he said, "today concerns their request for immediate relief. It won't settle every claim."

"I know."

"And don't answer a question nobody asked."

"That advice would have saved several staff meetings."

He laughed so suddenly that a man by the entrance turned around.

Celeste waited inside with North Quay's lawyer. She wore navy now. She looked at my plain black shoes, then at my folder.

"We could still fix this," she said.

"Withdraw the false schedule."

"You're making a career out of a clerical issue."

Dev opened the courtroom door for me.

The room was smaller than I expected. No jury. No grand speech from either side. The vice chancellor had read the filings and wanted answers.

North Quay's lawyer described a former employee obstructing a sale. He pointed to my blue signature.

"The necessary consent was obtained," he said.

The vice chancellor looked down at the paper.

"Then why was a new assignment included in her termination package?"

The lawyer said it had been meant to confirm existing rights.

Dev stood.

"The original rights are in the agreement attached to our response. They belong to Stillpoint. The later signature is disputed. There is no reliable signing record before the court."

He did not call Celeste a thief. He did not mention her flowers.

He pointed to dates and pages.

The vice chancellor asked who had preserved the electronic file. North Quay's lawyer said the company would do so.

"It will preserve the underlying records as well," she said.

She denied the request to compel immediate cooperation with the transfer. She made clear that her decision was temporary and did not decide whether the disputed schedule was valid.

Both sides agreed to an order keeping relevant files intact. An independent examiner would collect the file and signing records. Customer prices would remain under the case's confidentiality terms.

A fuller hearing was set for the following week.

Outside, my knees felt loose.

"Did we win?"

"We kept them from treating a disputed signature as a finished fact. That's today's result."

Celeste came out behind us.

"You think this makes you important?" she asked.

For once, I didn't feel a need to answer.

Mara called before we left the building. The board had hired a separate lawyer and told Celeste she could no longer contact employees about the disputed files.

"We need to understand who issued those customer covers," she said.

"So do I."

"The customers are asking for their gas."

I pictured Joel's two truck bookings.

"Tell them the truth before Thursday," I said.

That afternoon, we delivered the required copies from Stillpoint's archive to the examiner. I signed the handover sheet and punched three holes in my copy.

At 5:17, Leah called.

"Hearthline received a price proposal from Celeste," she said. "She offered us a $3 million reduction if we closed tonight."

"With my consent still disputed?"

"Yes. And there was a condition."

Leah sent the page.

Celeste wanted the original customer records removed from the closing folder.