"Joanna Varga?"
At 7:50 Monday morning, a man in a rain jacket stood on my porch holding a fat envelope.
"Yes."
"You've been served."
He put it in my hand and was back in his car before I read the first line.
Halvorsen Consumer Partners LP and Lantern Row LLC v. Joanna C. Varga
Case No. 25-1162
Hamilton County Chancery Court, Part II
It was 64 pages, held together with a binder clip.
I read the caption in the doorway, in my socks.
Royce's fund was listed first.
My own company was second.
I was the defendant.
They wanted the court to make me hand over the domain, the store and the payments account.
They called it an emergency.
Motion for Temporary Injunction · Hearing: Thursday, December 4, 9:00 AM
That gave me three days.
I made coffee and sat down with it.
Page one said I was "a former member who has abandoned the Company."
Page two said the accounts were "Company assets wrongfully seized."
Page nine asked for money.
not less than $1,150,000
I put the cup down.
At 11:20, Shopify emailed.
Payouts paused pending review of a third-party legal dispute.
The bank hadn't frozen anything.
••4417 was still mine, and still open.
Shopify had just stopped sending money to it.
Whatever I built next would need that money to come through.
Now it was on hold.
At 1:30, a reporter from the paper called.
"Royce Halvorsen calls you a disgruntled former employee."
"Any comment?"
"No comment."
I hung up.
Disgruntled was fair.
Former wasn't.
At 2:00, I was back in Vivian's office.
She'd already read all of it.
She had a pencil behind each ear.
"Paragraph seven," she said.
"Sworn by Royce Halvorsen."
She read it out loud.
"Lantern Row LLC has at all times owned and paid for the Platform Accounts."
"At all times," I said.
"Since before it existed?"
"That's what it says."
She turned to the signature page.
"Trevor signed for the LLC."
"No member vote."
"You never consented."
"The agreement needs both of us to sue," I said.
"Yes."
"Hard to get a vote from the person you're suing."
She flipped back to page two.
"They say you withdrew."
"I left a badge on a desk."
"Section 9.2 says thirty days, in writing, from you."
"You never sent that."
"So I'm still half of the plaintiff suing me," I said.
She clipped a copy of my Monday notice to the front of her file.
Then she clipped Trevor's "Cute" behind it.
Then Royce's "Proceed as planned."
"They had written notice," she said.
"They didn't attach it."
"I will."
I'd brought my own math on a sticky note.
"Three thousand boxes at sixty-eight dollars is $204,000," I said.
"That's if every box sells."
"He wants $400,000 in lost sales."
Vivian waited.
"That's the wire he sent Tuesday," I said.
"Counted twice."
She wrote it on her pad and underlined it.
"Under oath," she said.
At the bottom of the last page, under the lawyer's signature, was the firm's name.
Whitley Crane PLLC
Same gray type as the footer on my Thanksgiving release.
I'd seen that name before, on paper Trevor sent.
"Read the exhibits tonight," Vivian said.
"All of them."
"Lawyers attach things in a hurry."
At 11:40 that night, I was still at the kitchen table.
The ThinkPad was on, and the stove light was the only other light.
I'd gotten through the complaint, the affidavit and the proposed order.
Then the exhibits.
Exhibit A was the operating agreement, without Schedule A.
Exhibit B was a screenshot of the 404 page.
Exhibit C was a printout of comments from the livestream.
THE STORE'S DOWN
Exhibit D had a cover sheet.
Submitted to show irreparable harm to Plaintiffs.
Under it was a letter of intent.
Hearthline Home Brands · Acquisition of Lantern Row LLC · $6,200,000
It was dated November 3.
I got up and took the envelope off the fridge.
Hearthline. One-eighty.
Condition 4(b) was on page 2.
Black Friday gross sales of not less than $180,000.
One-eighty.
Royce had been on the dock talking about a number.
The number was the sale.
Condition 4(c) was on page 3.
I read it twice.
Departure of Co-Founder J. Varga and assignment to Buyer of all Platform Accounts held by Co-Founder J. Varga in her individual name and licensed to the Company.
Departure of Co-Founder J. Varga.
On November 3, they'd made me leaving a condition of the sale.
The Slack post came later.
So did the arrow.
So did "plumbing."
I turned to page 4.
Two signature blocks for Hearthline and Lantern Row.
Under them was a third.
Acknowledged and agreed: Halvorsen Consumer Partners LP, by Royce Halvorsen
His signature was big and slanted, the kind that's practiced.
On the livestream, he'd turned to the camera and said, "You told me the platform was ours."
He'd sounded shocked.
He'd already signed that it wasn't.
Now he had sworn that it was.
He'd attached both to the same complaint.
I went back to page 3.
Then I put my finger under the line, the way Vivian does.
held by Co-Founder J. Varga in her individual name