My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 122

+25 BONUS

Victor Hale’s History

~Julian-

Reid put the full file on my desk at seven AM on Saturday.

“You’re not going to like it,” he said.

“Tell me anyway.”

He sat down. “Five years ago Victor Hale was shortlisted for a government Al logistics contract. UK Ministry of Defence, infrastructure management across three divisions. Significant money. Significant profile. The kind of contract that legitimises a company for the next decade.” He paused. “He didn’t get it.”

“Who did?”

“A startup called Meridian Systems. Eight employees, eighteen months old, operating out of a converted warehouse in Shoreditch. Nobody had heard of them. Nobody understood how they beat Halo’s bid.” Reid set a page on my desk. “The official review cited Meridian’s proprietary algorithm for predictive logistics mapping. Victor’s team filed a formal objection. It was dismissed. He appealed. The appeal was dismissed.”

I looked at the page. At the name Meridian Systems.

上

“Three years ago,” Reid continued, “Meridian Systems was acquired. The founders sold. They were paid well – significantly above market value for a company that size. The buyer was a shell entity that took approximately six months to fully dissolve back into its parent company.”

I already knew what he was going to say.

“The parent company was I* Technologies,” he said. “The shell entity was Katia Kensington’s.”

I sat back.

“She bought it three years ago,” Reid said. “Meridian had been operating for two years at that point. She integrated their algorithm into what became the Invisible Shield architecture and launched I* Technologies publicly two years ago.”

So the timeline was this: Victor Hale lost a contract to Meridian Systems five years ago two years before Katia had anything to do with Meridian at all. His vendetta began against a company she didn’t own, built by people she didn’t know, producing technology she hadn’t yet acquired. By the time Katia entered the picture Meridian was already his enemy.

She had walked into a war that was already running without knowing it existed.

“He didn’t know it was her,” I said. “When she acquired Meridian.”

“No. The acquisition was clean – multiple shell layers, no public record of Katia’s involvement until I* Technologies launched. By the time her name was on anything publicly, she had already built the company around Meridian’s core technology.” Reid paused. “Victor figured it out eighteen months ago. That’s when Halo started intercepting I*‘s contract pipeline.”

Eighteen months. The same timeline Sam had traced on the intelligence leaks. Victor had identified Katia as the new owner of his old enemy and had immediately started making her life difficult.

“Does he know the full picture?” I said. “Who she is? Everything?”

“I don’t think so. He knows she owns I*. He knows I was built on Meridian. He has a grudge that predates her involvement, and she became the face of it.” Reid closed the file. “But there’s something else. The government contract that Meridian won five years ago

the one that sent Victor into a five–year obsession my contact in the ministry tells me that contract is up for renewal next year.”

I looked at him.

“Same contract. Same scope. Bigger budget.” Reid paused. “Halo Systems is expected to bid. And so is 1* Technologies.”

+25 BONUS

There it was.

Victor Hale had spent five years watching the company that beat him the first tirse get acquired, rebuilt, and turned into a billion -dollar operation. He had spent eighteen months trying to quietly dismantle it. And in twelve months both companies would be standing in the same room bidding for the same contract that had started the whole thing.

This was not a business rivalry. This was five years of accumulated damage looking for somewhere to land.

And Katia was standing directly in its path.

I closed the file.

I picked up my phone and scrolled to a contact I had not called in two years. Sir Edmund Carr. A former Cabinet Office, now private sector, a man who had worked alongside my father thirty years ago and had never forgotten it. A man who owed me a favour of the size that did not get repaid in one conversation.

He answered on the third ring.

“Julian Windsor,” he said. “I wondered when you’d call.”

“I need information about a Ministry of Defence contract,” I said. “Five years ago. Meridian Systems.”

He didn’t answer right away, and then he spoke. “That’s a specific request.”

“I have a specific problem.”

“How specific?”

“Victor Hale,” I said.

He paused for a longer time this time.

“That,” Sir Edmund said carefully, “is a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

“I suspect you’re going to hear it more,” I said. “The renewal is in twelve months.”

Silence on the line. The specific silence of someone who had just understood the shape of a situation and was deciding how

much of what they knew to share.

“There were questions,” Sir Edmund said finally. “At the time. About the original contract decision. Questions about

Meridian’s algorithm was evaluated. Questions that were raised internally and did not go anywhere.” He paused an

Victor filed those questions. He was not wrong to file them. But he was wrong about why the decision went the way it did.”

“Why did it?”

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