Zed
“Can you print these up for me?” Zed asked, as he gestured to the computer screen with a curt nod. “So I can read through them?”
“Print them up for you?” Abby asked, shaking her head. “No, Zed, I can't let you have them. That's a huge breach of protocol. These are all industry secrets.”
Zed barked a short, harsh burst of laughter as he straightened to his full height. “You're telling me that the evidence that they lied and manipulated the truth is an industry secret?”
“Besides,” she continued, swinging around in the chair to face him, “this would destroy the company. I'd lose my job, Zed. My assistant would lose her job. I mean, those people have families, just like your brother did. This is like Enron level of corruption, maybe. The fines from the government, the lawsuits we'd open ourselves to, are off the charts. I already took Dimalrax off the market provisionally, Zed. What more do you want from me?”
“I want you people to admit that you ruined lives, that's what!” Zed shouted. “Here,” he said, pushing past her to the computer. He pulled up YouTube on her web browser and searched for a video he wanted to show. “Look at this.”
“What is it?” she asked, a note of distrust in her voice.
“Just watch,” he said, as he pressed play.
It was an advertisement that had just been quietly released at the beginning of the month. He eyed her face, monitoring for any changes as she watched it.
“The jobs of our first responders put them into tough situations,” the commercial began. “Dimalerax is here to help them be as tough as they need to be to keep us safe.”
A montage of policemen, firemen, first responders, soldiers, and doctors, all talking about how rough their jobs could get and how the stress and emotional demands of what they lived through made them vulnerable to anxiety and the symptoms of PTSD, filled the screen. At, the end of it, all the first responders shown in the video were standing in a line, holding prescription pill bottles with the Dimalerax brand name on the side. They held them up together. “I keep working, because it keeps working,” they said, in unison.
Abby sat back in her chair, a look of shock mixed with utter disgust on her face. “I . . . I just . . .”
He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Thousands have been destroyed by this drug, Abby,” he said. “And maybe thousands more will be. They deserve answers and relief from Pharma-Vitae. They were targets in all this—just innocent marks your company went after. But you have a chance to make things right, now. Print up the files, and we'll go to my reporter contact. I promise.”
# # #
Abby
Abby was furious. Blood-curdling, fire-breathing, mad-woman furious.
Mark had done this. She just knew it had to have been him. How he had gotten it greenlighted without her knowledge, though, she had no idea. The worst part of it all was that she hadn't been part of any of this. She'd done her due diligence and had thought she'd known what she was getting herself into.
Now she was blindsided by this video, this goddamned pill, all the lies, and the cover-ups that must be involved. She wanted to kick her computer monitor over and flip her desk, then go find Mark and kick his teeth in, just for getting her wrapped up in this whole mess. Letterman was to blame for everything. She just knew it.
Zed's plan wouldn't work, though. She knew it wouldn't work. The media would just focus on her, as CEO, just like they had in every other big scandal. Then the board would end up serving her up on a silver platter. Hell, they might even leave Mark completely alone when the allegations and investigations began. And, boy howdy, were there going to be investigations if this all got out.
No, what she needed to do was bringing this all to the board of directors on her own. The only way she'd manage to keep the success she'd already worked so hard to attain would be do this quietly and internally, without any outside interference whatsoever. When things were handled and Mark was out of the way, she could help Zed with Kai. But not before then.
She leaned forward, switched back to the files on her screen, and typed out a series of commands, acting like she was going to print it.
“What are you…?” Zed asked, confused, trailing off.
“I'm . . . wait . . . there!” she said, deleting her copies of the files from her computer.
“What the fuck?” Zed yelled. “What did you just do? Bring them back!”
“I'm trying!” Abby lied, as she fervently looked through where the files had just been on her computer. “There's nothing there, Zed!”
“No!” he groaned loudly, one hand running back through his hair, the other rubbing down the front of his face. “They can't be! I was so close fucking close! Why did you do this to me?”
As she looked at the hurt on his face and saw the obvious failure he must have felt, she wanted to tell him how close he still was. The files were still on the servers at Pharma-Vitae. They just weren't here anymore, accessible from her home office.
Abby followed her first impulse and reached out to him, but quickly withdrew her hand. She had nothing to say and no way to comfort him. He was right. This had been his only chance. But she needed those files, regardless of what he wanted them for. She had a responsibility to her employees, and to her own ambitions. She'd come this far in life, and she still had to prove she had what it took to stay on top.
“No,” Zed growled, shaking his head. “This was it. This was my chance. And it's gone now.” He turned to her, his eyes hard, firm, and red-rimmed around the edges. His knuckles cracked as his fists balled at his sides. “It's all fucked. And it's your fault!”