How to Get Girls, Get Rich, and Rule the World (Even If You're Ugly)-Chapter 85: How to Get a Forced Promotion (6)

He didn’t call for me right away.

That was the first sign of how broken he was.

Normally Marlow’s voice carried through the entire press like a church bell—sharp, commanding, cracked around the edges but refusing to admit it. Orders barked, questions demanded, insults delivered with such casual cruelty that the apprentices had learned to take them like blessings, as if they were coins tossed by a stingy god.

But not now.

Now the room had fallen into a hush that wasn’t respectful so much as anticipatory, like the silence in a wake before the priest starts mumbling lies about the departed.

I was still holding Thalia. Her sobs had quieted, not because she was any less devastated but because she had used up all the noise she had to give. Her breathing was ragged, raw, wet. My shirt was damp with her tears, clinging cold against my skin.

Neither of us spoke.

Through the cracked door I could see Marlow staring at the opposite wall as if there were a hole in it only he could see—a doorway to somewhere he used to be important. His hands lay palm-up on the desk, fingers twitching occasionally, uselessly, like they were trying to remember how to grip anything.

When he finally spoke, it wasn’t loud. It wasn’t even clear at first.

"Dante."

Just the one word. But it was enough.

Thalia shuddered at the sound of it. She lifted her head, eyes swollen, rimmed red, her hair plastered to her cheeks in wet strands. She wiped at her face with the heel of her hand and didn’t say a word, but the look she gave me was an accusation even she was too heartbroken to articulate.

I patted her arm gently. Then I left her in the hall. I stepped into Marlow’s office, closing the door softly behind me.

The silence there was a different thing entirely. It was heavy. It was oppressive. It was the kind of silence you found in graveyards where the wind never blew, where even the worms moved slow out of respect.

Marlow didn’t look at me at first.

He continued to stare at the wall, his breathing slow and deliberate, as if the simple act of drawing air into his ruined lungs was something he needed to plan in advance.

The only sound was the tick of the old clock on his shelf, a relic that had survived the fire that gutted the first press years ago. It clicked on stubbornly, like it was mocking us both for still pretending to count the minutes.

I waited. I wasn’t going to break that silence for him. He’d called me in. Let him speak first. Eventually he did. His voice cracked like a log splitting in the hearth.

"You hear it all?"

I cleared my throat deliberately, made sure my voice sounded softer than I felt.

"Enough."

Marlow let out a laugh that was closer to a cough.

"’Enough.’ Good word. Enough for who, I wonder."

I didn’t answer. He finally turned his head to look at me.

Gods.

He looked like hell.

The flush had drained from his face, leaving it waxy and yellowed, the bags under his eyes purple and sunken. His moustache was damp at the corners of his mouth from where he’d tried and failed to swallow the tears before I’d come in.

He was broken. And I felt nothing. No, that wasn’t true. I felt triumphant. But I made sure he didn’t see it.

I let my face fall into practiced lines of worry, sympathy, shared pain. He watched me for a long time. When he spoke again, it was a rasp.

"You happy now?"

I blinked. Tilted my head slightly, letting my brow furrow.

"Happy?"

He let out another of those wet, broken laughs.

"Don’t play dumb with me, boy. You think I don’t see it? You think I don’t know what you wanted?"

I didn’t rise to the bait. Instead I let my shoulders slump.

"Marlow," I said, careful to let the syllables drop like stones in a quiet pond, slow and deliberate, "I didn’t want this."

He sneered, or tried to. It didn’t have the usual venom.

"No? You sure? Because from where I’m sitting, this is everything you wanted. I’m out. You’re in. Neat little solution."

I exhaled slowly. He was right, of course. He just didn’t know how right.

But I couldn’t let him see that. So I shifted, lowering myself into the chair across from his desk, elbows on my knees, voice low and grave.

"I didn’t want you humiliated like that. Not in front of her. Not in front of me."

He barked a laugh that devolved into coughing. He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at the smear of spit like he didn’t know what it was.

"She’s ruined now," he rasped. "They’ll never let her work. She’s marked."

I nodded slowly, like I was sharing the burden.

"Yeah. I know."

His eyes lifted to mine. And for a moment there was something almost like hope there.

"Then you’ll tell them no."

I let the silence answer him. Because I couldn’t. And we both knew it. He slumped further.

His fingers picked at the scarred wood of the desk, the nails blackened from years of ink, stained so deeply it was like the pigment had become part of him.

"You know what they’ll do if you refuse," he muttered.

I nodded again.

"They’ll kill you."

He didn’t deny it. Didn’t flinch. Just let out another exhausted exhale.

"Always figured it’d be something like this. Not the knife in the back. Not poison. Not even prison. Just... stripped down to nothing. Left with nothing. Dying while I’m still breathing."

I swallowed, because he deserved that much.

"Marlow," I said gently, "I’m sorry."

He snorted. It wasn’t even a laugh.

"Don’t lie to me now, Dante. You’re better at lying to them. Not to me."

I didn’t answer. Because that would have been a lie too.

Instead I leaned back, ran a hand over my face like I was weary. It wasn’t hard to fake. I was tired. But not from regret. From the sheer goddamn effort of keeping up the act.

He watched me. And I let him see what I wanted him to see. The haunted, conflicted journalist. The man who was forced into betrayal. Not the man who had orchestrated it. Finally he let out a long, ragged sigh.

"Fuck."

I waited. He gathered himself, visibly forcing his spine to straighten. His voice came back to him, fractionally.

"You’re going to take it, aren’t you?"

I met his eyes. Didn’t look away.

"Yes."

He didn’t blink. Didn’t shout. Didn’t even curse me. He just nodded. Once. Slow. Like it hurt. He swallowed.

"You’ll print what they want."

I let my eyes drop to the desk. The ink stains. The ghost of every word ever printed here.

"I’ll do what I have to."

He let out a breath that rattled in his chest.

"Better you than her," he whispered.

And that, more than anything, almost cracked me. Almost. But I couldn’t let it.

I had to stay in control. Because this was the final act. The final con.

He had to believe I hated this as much as he did. So I reached across the desk.

Let my hand rest on his for a moment. The old skin papery under mine. The ink ground in so deep it might as well have been blood.

"I’m sorry," I whispered.

He didn’t answer. Didn’t look at me. But he didn’t pull his hand away either. And that was as close to forgiveness as I was ever going to get. Finally, I stood. He didn’t move. Just kept staring at the wall. I paused at the door. Looked back one last time.

"Marlow," I said.

His eyes didn’t move.

"Thank you."

He let out a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob or both.

And I left him there. Broken. Alone. Ruined. Exactly the way I needed him to be.

I closed the door softly behind me and leaned against it for a second, exhaling slow, letting the weight of it settle on my shoulders.

I felt the corners of my mouth twitch. Not a smile. Not quite. But close enough. Because I had won. And I’d make sure no one ever forgot it.

I pushed off the door and walked back into the main room, the floor creaking beneath my boots like it was protesting my presence.

The press smelled of ink and old sweat and defeat. Thalia was there, wiping her face with her sleeve, eyes red and shining with raw grief. I didn’t say anything at first. I just stood there, watching her breathe, watching her try to swallow it all down.

Then I stepped closer, slow and careful, and put a hand on her shoulder.

She flinched, but didn’t pull away. I squeezed gently and whispered, "It’s going to be me now."