Chapter 39
Lara
Discover secret village events in Novel Haven to learn more about the town’s inhabitants and its backstory.
I pummel the door with both of my fists, hard enough that I wouldn’t have been surprised had it started splintering under my blows.
“Open the door! We need to talk.” I hit the wood one more time as the blood thunders in my veins and my heart races. Anger, exhaustion, and a thousand questions are fighting for attention inside me, but it looks like the anger is winning. I’m winding up for another blow when the door opens.
“Hey.” Sophia’s voice is a whisper, and her eyeliner is smudged. “Come on in.”
The belligerent feeling inside me dies down a little.
It’s weird, seeing my boss like this. Sophia, who’s overcome countless obstacles in the industry as a queer woman, who runs her own coding camp, passing on her strength and assertiveness to the kids there.
But now, she’s a picture of pure misery, not a drop of energy left in her.
She plonks down on the bed, where her laptop sits next to a pile of wet, scrunched-up tissues.
The heavy champagne-colored curtains are closed, and the floor lamp next to the desk is the only gentle source of light in the room.
“Have a seat,” Sophia says, patting the space next to her on the king-sized bed. “Did you ask security to keep an eye on the booth?”
“Nat’s here.”
Sophia looks up and gives me a crooked smile. Her eyes are bloodshot and damp with tears. “I can always count on you lot.” She looks straight ahead again, shaking her head. “Not like me. I’m sorry I left you hanging. Again.”
My anger collapses in on itself. Sophia’s already at rock bottom.
And I’m not one for punching someone when they’re down.
Not when I know what it’s like to be down there, catching blows.
But I still want an explanation. So I just sit there next to her on the soft bed, watching a tear trickle down her left cheek, and wait for her to start speaking.
“I’ll be back downstairs in a minute, I just .
. .” She swallows. “I had to talk to the others in London first, and then a solicitor.” She looks at me with red eyes, and her voice sounds rough.
“I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now, but I didn’t have food poisoning during the prelims. Two studios signed up late, do you remember?
” She waits for my nod before she continues.
“One of them was Bytes I was just too stupid to use my private PC. ”
I believe her. But it doesn’t matter. “Is it true what he said about the contract? Is the game legally his?”
She nods, and more tears come pouring down her cheeks.
“Yes, there’s an IP clause in there.” She clears her throat, lowering her voice before continuing flatly.
“‘The employee consents to transfer all rights, titles, and interests in any and all inventions, developments and designs, computer programs, processes, methods, and other intellectual property arising or created during the duration of employment free of charge and exclusively.’” She gives me a dark smile.
“I’ve read that shit so often over the last few days that I know it by heart now.
Do you want to hear the bit about the use of company-owned equipment too? ”
I shake my head, and suddenly I feel like crying along with her.
“I didn’t do any of that knowingly. Do you know your current employment contract by heart?
Are you aware of the exact meaning and consequences of every single clause?
Of course, you’re supposed to read it and ideally always know what’s in there, but .
. . It was my first real job. I didn’t realize that using the company PC for a bit of planning and coding might ever be a problem.
” She sniffles. “I didn’t even know that fucking clause was in the contract.
Hank didn’t give a damn, not once in all these years. He only brought it up again recently.”
I frown. “What do you mean by recently?”
“He called me.” She swallows. “Right after word got out that we were through to the second round. I’ve only known about the clause and all that tosh since then. I should’ve told you straightaway. I realize that now.”
“And you didn’t know anything about it before that?” I ask, and the tightness in my chest eases a little. It still hurts, but at least Sophia hasn’t been lying to us for the last two years.
“No, I swear I didn’t. Until Hank called me out of the blue, reading out that part of the contract to me.
” Sophia rubs her face, smudging her eyeliner some more.
“He sounded so cheerful while he did it too. Like the whole thing was giving him some kind of sick satisfaction.” She barks out a laugh.
“And I’m sure it did. Just like his move today.
Maeve and I confronted him at the networking do.
I hoped we’d be able to come to some sort of agreement, but .
. .” She shakes her head. “God, you should have seen him. Ever since then, I’ve been calling one solicitor after another, hoping to find some sort of loophole.
” Her downtrodden tone tells me enough about how well that has been going. We’re cooked.
“So that means . . . it’s all his? It was all for nothing? All our work of the last two years?”
I picture Aria, Nat, and myself at the studio, arranging bookshelves. Ramon and myself squabbling over the coffeepot. Kamal showing Bahar our game for the first time. Myself, rebuilding my past bit by bit from the ashes. Novel Haven is my life.
“I’m so incredibly sorry.” Sophia’s voice breaks as she looks at me.
“I only talked to Hank about it for two minutes. He didn’t even know any of the details about the game; he immediately turned a deaf ear—I never would have thought that he’d be able to use it against me.
I mean, none of what is in the game today existed back then.
It was all just drafts, loose thoughts. Nothing more.
But he has those first drafts on his company computers, and apparently, that’s enough. ”
“Why is he doing this?” I frown. “He has it all: success, awards, hugely popular games . . .”
“Hank is a man who can’t take no for an answer.
And the fact that I turned him down . . .
” Sophia laughs grimly. “God, I was so naive. I should never have gotten involved with him. The age gap, the fact that he was my boss, the power imbalance . . . He threatened me, saying I’d come to regret dumping him at some point, and now he’s made good on his word.
That’s exactly why I didn’t want to go to the prelims. I realized that something was going to happen eventually.
I just didn’t think the fallout would be this bad. ”
“He’s still holding a grudge about the breakup? That must have been years ago.”