It was about two months after that first weekend with Sofia when my contract with FG came to an end. The game, now in its final stages of completion, did not need any more of my contributions to it, and so I announced my departure on a Friday.

Eric and Joey, and especially the latter, had seen it coming for a while, and had been nagging at me for weeks to stay. They had it all worked out and even tried to get Ross into offering me a job.
Ross, however, knew I wasn’t interested in it. I like the way I work; like a butterfly, hopping from job to job, meeting new people, new experiences; it’s what I live for. He knew that, since we had discussed it a few times. He had already offered me a job, months ago, during one of our conversations, and I had declined.
But he humored these two anyway, a playful side I hadn’t seen before I might add, and made some sort of theatrical gesture; falling on one knee in our office, a huge bouquet of flowers in one hand and a contract in the other, begging me to stay. I had a hard time, as he did, to keep a straight face throughout that performance, and we had a great laugh about it afterwards, especially when I coolly answered ‘no’ and that I was going over to FG’s biggest competitor in town. You should’ve seen Eric and Joey’s faces when they heard that!

In reality, that competitor had asked me to score a fantasy-project, much in the style of a Lord of the Rings™ game released a year before. Their game was now developed far enough that they were ready for me to come in and work on the sequences that had been completed.
Ross admitted he wasn’t happy with my choice of company but he respected my argument that I could care less about the business itself and that the contract was signed anyway. I couldn’t get out of it, even if I wanted to.
Well, argument… I pretty much told him to butt out of it and he let the subject rest.

So one Friday in late November, it was close to 5pm, I started to empty my workspace for the last time, under the watchful eyes of my two colleagues, one of whom had become a very good friend. But Eric was angry with me, I could tell. Joey not so much, since he knew we’d be seeing each other from time to time, socially but also privately. Twice now, he and Janice had gone on a double date with Ross and me, and that experience would be repeated many times over, if it were up to him and me. I knew Ross had had his reservations about it, but was quickly coming around to it; he enjoyed being in that small group, where no one was interested in him for anything other than himself.

“So you’re actually going then?” Eric asked.
I nodded, throwing a few pencils in the box.
“Well, this sucks the big one,” he said.

“Oh come on, Eric,” I said, smiling. “I just can’t stay forever and ever. Even you won’t stay here that long. At some point, you’ll move on to another company. You know it, I know it… I just do it more often. I’m a company-slut.”

“You’re breaking up the Three Musketeers. And Ross is Lady deWinter.”
I started to laugh and Joey also snorted. I immediately got this picture in my mind of Ross in a lovely dress…. And quickly shut that picture off because it was quite unsettling.

‘God Eric,” I hiccupped, “you’re such a drama queen. I’m just an email away, and we already agreed to go out, soon; all of us. No boyfriends or girlfriends, just us. We don’t need to work together for that.”

“But…”
I sighed and threw Joey a look. He got the hint and hooked an arm through Eric’s, dragging him from the doorframe.

“Let’s go. We’ll let him clear out his stuff and then see him downstairs for the... ‘thing’.”
It was supposed to be a surprise, my going away party, but pillow-talk happened so I found out. It was a nice gesture of them, to organize something like that, and I had promised Ross to act like I was completely surprised.
I mouthed a ‘thank you’ to Joey and continued my packing. There wasn’t all that much left, since I had brought most of the big stuff home yesterday. All I had to take now were a few bits and pieces I collected over the months, including a polystyrene cast of a game figure. It’d been a gift from the design department, after I wrote a theme for that specific character, the only character that actually had its own theme.
I turned it around in my hands for the last time (it would end up on a display, prominently in my loft, anyway) and grinned in silence. Then I heard a cough behind me and I looked up.

“You all set?” Ross asked, casually strolling in, his hands buried deep in his pockets.
I nodded, carefully placing the statue on the bottom of the box.

“Yeah. You just missed the drama.”
He smirked.

“Eric giving you a hard time again?”

“Ahuh… and just so you know; you’re now known as Lady deWinter.”

“Do I even want to know?” he asked, smiling and picking up the statue from the bottom. “Pretty.”
He set the toy back down into the box and seated himself on the desk.
“They’re all waiting downstairs. Please act surprised, okay? Promise?”
I grinned at him, nodding and moved between his spread legs, sneaking my arm underneath his jacket and stealing a kiss.

“Yes, yes, I already promised you this morning. Twice, if I remember correctly.”

“Mmm… I remember,” Ross said, smiling slowly, sexily.
He pressed his lips onto mine for a slightly longer kiss, pulling me closer. Then he let go, a hint of regret in his eyes.
“I’d love to continue this but this party just can’t wait. I was sent up to chase you down there.”

“Ooh, chase me baby, chase me,” I quipped, causing him to expand the sexy grin.
He slapped my behind and rose up.

“Tonight. Now get going. Leave that stuff; I’ll make sure you get it.”
He left and turned one more time at the door, insisting on me playing surprised.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there in a minute,” I said.
I just wanted to be alone for a few moments, just to take in the place.

I put the lid on the box and slapped a sticker on it with my name. Then I got my coat and bag, and looked around the room one final time.
I’d had a lot of fun here and I sure would miss the place. I switched the lights off and closed the door; I had a surprise party to attend.

CHAPTER *26*

Ross was a lying bastard, uch! He had assured me it would just be a few people, twenty at the most, twenty of the closest colleagues I had been working with. But when the elevator arrived at the foyer of the FG building, and the doors opened (and me carefully plastering a surprised look on my face), I didn’t have to fake a second of it; the whole company was downstairs, waiting for me.
The second the yelled ‘surprise’, I almost jumped a foot in the air, sheez. In the grand foyer, sound carries; the sound of a few hundred voices was enough to almost blow me right back into the elevator.

I’m going to kill him. Slowly, very slowly I thought as I was pulled into the crowd and pushed toward a raised dais, which had been set up near the doors. I eyed those doors, opting for a run but Ross, who was standing on the dais waiting for me, slowly shook his head, knowingly grinning. In his left hand a set of keys dangled and I knew he had anticipated that.
Definitely killing him now.

There was a short speech from Ross and another from Joey, the latter regularly interrupted by applause and as I looked into the crowd, I saw many faces smiling up to me. Eric was there, still sulking, and Janice and, to my surprise, Sofia and my mom!
I glared at mom for a moment, who simply replied with a stuck out tongue and a wink. Then the moment came for me to say a few words and, since I’m not very good at speaking at crowds, I kept it as short as possible. I thanked them all in general but Eric and Joey I singled out, recalling a few anecdotes which got a few laughs. Then I turned to Ross, thanking him for the opportunity and that was about it. The crowd started to applaud again, and cheer and then there was champagne, music, the sound of laughter and the murmur of a few hundred voices.
I managed to work my way through the crowd, to the place my mom and Sofia were standing, receiving a kiss and hug from the both of them.

“That was a nice speech, Mark,” Sofia said, sipping from the champagne. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say all you did here was play around with those two scoundrels, Eric and Joey.”
I sent her a grin and accepted another glass of champagne from a passing waiter who offered his tray.

“Thanks. I’m not good at giving speeches.”

“Obviously,” she winked, “but you did fine. So… what’s next for you?”
I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Wait… Sofia Forrester doesn’t know my next assignment? Somebody call the newspaper, now!” I replied dryly.

If there was one thing I had found out in the past few weeks, it was that Sofia Forester knew pretty much anything and everything that was going on around her. Keeping a secret from her was virtually impossible, Ross had told me, especially if it concerned family. She hadn’t made it a secret that, now that he and I were together (and she approved), I fell into that category, and the effects of it were pretty much instant. These days, I received invitations to functions of hers, parties where she felt both Ross and I should attend and what not more. At first I’d been annoyed by it, especially because it seemed I had no control over my own social life anymore (those invitations pretty much demanded us to come), but Ross had advised me to keep my mouth shut (after receiving the first two, I’d been all set to pick up the phone and give her a suggestions as to what to do with those invites) and just go with it; it made life a lot easier, he claimed.
He would select those he felt we should indeed attend, which in the end was about two or three. But we were invited to dozens of those and in the beginning I certainly balked at it.
It wasn’t until after the first few functions we went to, and I had actual fun at each of them, that I relaxed and started to enjoy myself. Surprisingly, Sofia wasn’t even there at some of them.

“Yes, quite annoying, actually,” Sofia replied, equally dry. “But Ross refuses to tell me, Andrew claims he doesn’t know, your mother told me to ask you myself and my connections simply don’t know you that well yet. Is it a secret?”
I grinned and shook my head.

“No, not at all. My next job is at Warner Gaming.”
Wow… it’s difficult to write the exact expression she made; her lips pursed together into a thin line and her eyes spit fire.

“You can’t. Absolutely not, I won’t allow it.”
She almost spat out those words to me and I was just too flabbergasted to respond. Just then, Ross stepped up beside me and took her glass before she would shatter it in her hand; her fingers were almost white.

“I see you told mother your next place of work,” he said, a sardonic grin on his face. “Breath mother, breath. In and out.”
She angrily hissed at him, keeping her voice down because of the crowd around us.

“You knew about this and you’re letting him?” She said. “You can’t possibly…”

“Yes, I knew. And I can and I will, mother. It is not my choice and I’m also not happy with it but Mark can do whatever he wants.”

“But…”

“Not now mother, and not here.”
That seemed to shake her out of her state; people were starting to notice that something was going on in our corner.
Sofia sighed and then took her glass from her son.

“Fine. Tonight, at the house.”

“We can’t, we have other…,” I started, but then I quickly backtracked on it when Ross’s fingers squeezed the blood flow in my elbow to a sudden halt. I yelped softly, sending him a pained glance which he answered with a ‘yes, we have to’ look.
“Right, I hear we can.”
At that, Ross pulled me with him and away from the two women and toward the elevator.

“We need to talk. Now,” he said softly, sending a forced smile left and right to employees glancing at us.
We got into the elevator and he pressed the button for the top floor repeatedly, impatiently, until the doors closed.
As soon as they were, he leaned back against the wall and raked his finger through his hair.

“I handled this completely wrong. I should’ve told you not to tell mother.”

“Ross, what the hell is going on?” I asked, “she was practically forbidding me to…”

“Yes, I know. I’m sorry; I should have told you this sooner.”
We arrived at the top floor and I followed him to his office, where he gestured to a chair for me to sit down.
“Okay, Mark… there’s something I need to tell you.”

“You bet you do,” I answered.

“The company you’re going to, Warner Gaming…”

“Ross, gimme a break, okay?” I sighed. “We’ve had this discussion. You wanna bring all of that up again?”
He held up his hands.

“No, you’ve made it pretty clear and it’s not about that. What I should have told you a long time ago, when I found out you were going there after this job, is that Walter Warner, the CEO… okay, there’s no easy way to say this; Walter is the guy I caught Kyle with, that night in the apartment.”
Ross walked toward the window, keeping his back turned to me as I digested this information.
“At the time, he was a client of mine, one of the biggest,” he continued. “He had owned the company that built the engine for our first games and it was rapidly growing, the same as mine really, and we were talking about becoming partners, or perhaps a merger.”

I could tell that it pained him to talk about it and I stood up from my chair and got behind him, wrapping my arms around him. He put his hands over mine and leaned back against me.

“I’m sorry, had I known…” I began.

“There’s something else,” he said softly.
I waited for him to continue and when he didn’t, I pulled away and walked around him so I could look at his face.

“Ross, come on, what is it? I can’t get any worse than this, I guess. Me working for that man…”
A corner of his mouth lifted up for a second in an ironic grin.

“Oh, you have no idea but it can. You see, the supervisor of Warner gaming… the man you’ll be working closely with…”
I thought for a moment. I hadn’t directly spoken to him yet, instead preparing stuff with the engineers, Warner’s Eric and Joey, basically, who I would work with directly.

“Ehm… what’s his name…. Garcia… Mr. Garcia you mean? What about him?”
Ross nodded and sighed deeply before he locked his eyes with mine and held the stare.
“His first name is Kyle. Kyle Garcia.”