Chapter 3

Julian, who had braced himself to take a hit, stared at the plastic badge in his hands with a dazed expression.

Every employee in the room froze.

Only Chloe showed a flicker of shock, quickly replaced by outrage.

I smiled calmly at both of them. "Why would I hit anyone?"

I patted Julian lightly on the shoulder. "With a frail build like his, I’d probably kill him with one punch and end up behind bars."

Julian shuddered.

Did they really think I was stupid? I knew his cronies were waiting for me to swing.

They wanted video evidence to hand to the cops, putting a permanent criminal record on my name.

I wasn’t about to hand them that satisfaction.

Chloe snatched the badge from Julian and glared at me.

"Chase Miller, what is your problem?"

"You flew all the way to the States just to throw a childish tantrum? Take it back!"

Looking at her furious glare, I couldn't help but chuckle.

"Isn’t this exactly what you wanted?"

"To hand everything over to your golden boy? To put him on a pedestal? That was your plan all along, wasn't it?"

"Now I’m giving him the stage, and I’m handing him my title. Why aren't you happy?"

"Tell me, Chloe... who’s the one throwing a childish tantrum here?"

Chloe stood there speechless, her mouth opening and closing as she stammered.

Julian, playing the classic manipulative snake, stepped forward to shield Chloe, looking at me with feigned sincerity.

"Chase, Chloe only has the studio's best interests at heart. Don’t do something rash out of spite."

"Our upcoming games still need your pitches, you know!"

I immediately stepped back, putting distance between us.

Ignoring his bait, I kept my eyes fixed on Chloe.

Chloe seemed to snap back to her arrogant self, shoving the badge back into Julian’s hands.

"Fine! If he wants to hand you his job, take it."

"You always had to fix his sloppy pitches anyway. Starting from scratch on your own will only make the next game better!"

A smug grin spread across Julian’s face as he accepted the badge.

He actually believed he knew how to design a game.

Game design wasn’t just spitting out a cool premise. It required meticulous balancing of level layouts, branching narratives, progression math, core mechanics, and art direction.

Every design document I wrote took months of blood, sweat, and tears to craft the exact experience I envisioned.

Julian never cared about any of that. Whenever he got my pitches, he made a few arbitrary tweaks and dumped the work on the devs.

When technical or design questions came up, he was entirely lost. Strip away his glossy title, and he was an empty shell.

Yet he genuinely believed game design was easy. In his eyes, as long as the artists made it pretty and the coders made it run, his job was done.

He thought squeezing me out was the ultimate victory, completely blind to the disaster heading his way.

Without a real lead designer, the development team was a ship without a rudder. He wouldn't be able to ship a single playable game.

Chloe turned back to me with contempt. "Listen, since you’ve been with the company for so long, I won't fire you completely."

"The office needs a janitor. I’ll bump the pay by two grand a month. Consider it a break."

A janitor?

I was the lead writer behind the Game of the Year nominee, and she wanted me cleaning toilets?

Any premier studio in the industry would fight tooth and nail to hire me.

Claiming she’d pay me extra was nothing more than a pathetic attempt to humiliate me.

No matter the pay, a janitor was still a janitor.

As long as I stayed at that studio, the two of them would conspire to make my life hell.

"I already told you, I quit. Save your insults for someone else."