I Married My Ruthless Boss in a Video Game novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Fifty Thousand

Margaret VanHoesen did not sit down, because there was nowhere she'd want to.

She stood in the middle of the stream room and looked at the stools, the cables, and the tinsel Gus had left on the camera.

"Mr. Roark," she said. "The board hired you to bring this studio down to a size that can be sold."

"I'm aware," Lorne said.

"Yesterday you put a hundred thousand new players on a game I told you to close."

"I put ninety-one thousand."

"Because of a video of a girl assaulting you."

"It was an accident," I said.

She turned her head and looked at me for the first time.

Her eyes were pale and quick, and the gold key on her lapel caught the light.

"You're the tester," she said. "I've seen the clip from three angles. It is remarkable how patiently you held on."

"Thank you," I said, because I didn't know what else to say.

"It wasn't a compliment."

She took an envelope out of her coat and put it on the stool beside me.

"Fifty thousand dollars," Margaret VanHoesen said. "A letter of reference to any studio in this city. And a very short statement, which you read once on camera."

"What does it say?"

"That the marriage is a prank. That you and Mr. Roark planned it as a stunt, and that you are sorry to have misled the players."

Lorne didn't move.

He had gone very still, and he kept his hands in his pockets.

I looked at the envelope.

I won't pretend I didn't think about it.

I had thirty-one thousand dollars in student loans and a roommate who'd taped my headset because I couldn't afford the repair.

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