I Married My Ruthless Boss in a Video Game novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Form 11-B

In his office Lorne learns the divorce rules and sets terms for a thirty-day marriage to save the player numbers, and the board chair sets a vote.

Lorne Roark's office was the old supply room, and he had added a desk.

There was one chair on his side and one chair on mine.

On the desk sat a laptop, a stack of paper, and a box of cheese crackers from the vending machine.

I put my taped headset on my knees and sat.

"Miss Kettering," he said. He had read my badge on the way in. "Do you know what HR Form 11-B is?"

"No."

"It's an incident report. I have never had to file one." He slid a sheet across the desk. "I am going to file it now."

The form had boxes.

Nature of incident, check one: Harassment. Injury. Other.

I looked at him.

He checked Other.

On the line beside it, in small square capitals, he wrote: LOOT.

"That's fair," I said.

"It is accurate," he said. "It is not fair."

The door opened, and Gus Lindqvist came in with a tablet and no knock.

He put the tablet on the desk, and a video was playing on it.

It was me, from the back, with my arm out, and Lorne's whole face in the corner of the frame.

The counter under it said 412,000 views.

"Jessamine posted it at ten past nine," Gus said. "She's very sorry. She says it posted by itself."

"Does Jessamine's phone post by itself?" Lorne asked.

"Her phone has opinions," Gus said.

I put my face in my hands.

"Here is the part I need you both to hear," Gus said, and sat on the edge of the desk. "Emberfall's sign-ups tonight went from two thousand to ninety thousand. Everyone wants to see the couple."

Lorne looked at the crackers, then at me.

"I want it reversed," he said. "I want it undone, in writing, by noon."

"Can't," Gus said. "I built Handfast in 2022 as a joke. It cannot be undone."

"Everything can be undone."

"Divorce happens in the Chapel. Both of you, in person, thirty days after the bond. I thought it would be funny."

"Was it funny?"

"I thought so in 2022," said Gus.

I raised my hand, which felt like the wrong thing to do in a supply room.

"Can I just say something? I held on because if you let go mid-bind, it despawns for everyone."

"For everyone," Lorne said.

"Yes."

"Who was everyone? It was my belt."

"It was a Legendary," I said. "I don't let go of a Legendary. I have never let go of a drop in my life."

He studied me with grey eyes that did not blink very often.

"That is not a quality," he said. "That is a condition."

"It's both."

Gus coughed into his fist, and I'm fairly sure it was a laugh.

Lorne picked up a pen and looked at the form again.

"Fine," he said. "Mr. Lindqvist. Is there a way to hold the marriage off the leaderboards?"

"Not in a day."

"Then thirty days," Lorne said, and his jaw did something I would later learn meant he'd lost a bet with himself.

"Thirty days of what?" I asked.

"Of us being married. In the game. On camera, where the players can see it, because those ninety thousand people are the only good number this company has."

He looked at me properly for the first time.

"You will not ruin it. You will not touch me again."

"I didn't touch you the first time. The scroll did."

"Miss Kettering."

"Fine."

He wrote terms on the back of Form 11-B, in the same square capitals.

One: No touching off-stream.

Two: No kissing.

Three: Separate rooms.

Four: Thirty days, then the Chapel, then we never discuss it.

Five: No talk of money.

"Why money?" I asked.

"Because I don't like it," he said, and capped the pen.

I took the form and signed it with his pen.

"I'll need a copy," I said. "For my records."

"You will get a copy," he said.

"Does this mean I'm one of the four?"

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Payroll goes out Friday," he said. "That's all I can say about QA."

That was not an answer, and I knew it.

I stood up with my headset in my hand.

Gus went with me to the door, and under his breath he said, "I have fifty dollars on you holding out the whole thirty."

"Is there a pool?"

"Roxie, there has always been a pool."

My phone buzzed in my pocket as we reached the hall.

It was an email, sent to the whole company, from an address I'd never seen.

Margaret VanHoesen, Chair of the Board.

Subject: The vote.

I opened it in front of Gus.

Thirty days from today, the board would vote on whether Emberfall lived or died.

If the game didn't reach five hundred thousand active players by then, it would be shut down and the studio sold.

I looked back down the hall at the supply room door.

Behind it, a man who'd written LOOT on an incident form was eating a cheese cracker over a legal pad.

Five hundred thousand was a lot of people to marry.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend