by Naomi West
“He had all the symptoms of PTSD, though,” Zed continued, after the elevator door closed behind them, sealing them in. “I could see it, his wife could see it, and even he could see it. He couldn't get to sleep and had night terrors when he could. He was removing himself from life, and he had anxiety in crowds and around loud noises. He still couldn't get the proper treatment through the VA system. Everyone was trying to get appointments back then, and he had to wait nearly a year. So, he went into a private care practitioner, under his wife's insurance, and managed to see someone in order to get a diagnosis.”
The elevator stopped again, just a few floors down, and Zed stumbled to a stop. When the doors opened, Abby shook her head at her employees and hit the “close doors” button again. “Continue, Mr. Hesse. Please,” she said, as the elevator hummed along on its downward trajectory.
Zed searched for the words that would affect her the most. He needed her, after all, to publicly admit the harm her company had caused.
In the end, though, he decided to just tell the whole story. Everything.
“Around that time, he had severe suicidal ideation. Are you familiar with that term?”
Abby nodded. “It's when someone is not just thinking about suicide, but is also planning it out. They consider the best way to do it, how to leave the least mess, and how to avoid putting anyone through torment due to finding the body. I'm familiar.”
Zed nodded, licking his dry lips. “Right. Exactly. You understand, then, why we were happy for him to be seeing the private care physician. Finally, we weren't as worried about Kai just becoming a statistic. But the doctor prescribed your medication, Dimalerax, and things got worse.”
The elevator for the parking garage dinged open, and Abby gave him a glancing look, as if to say, Not much time left, Zed. Hurry things the fuck up. They left the elevator, and Abby unlocked her SUV.
Zed rushed along, his words spilling from his mouth even faster as they walked along through the parking garage to her car. “They told him Pharma-Vitae had said he needed to take it for fourteen days, to see if it would work, before they'd switch him to a different medicine.” He paused and pulled out the pictures of his niece and nephew, brother, and sister-in-law as they got to Abby Winter's big SUV. “On the tenth day, he killed his wife and two children,” he said, as he shoved the photos at her.
She glanced down at the photos, but didn't take them.
“He called 911 after it happened, Ms. Winters, and waited for the cops to get there. He had the gun to his head, but they talked him down, convincing him that the courts would work out everything in the end.”
Abby took a moment to respond. Her face was neutral, as frigid as her last name. “Mr. Hesse …Zed,” Abby said very carefully, her voice cold and unfeeling, “I understand you and your family have undergone a traumatic event, and that it's very common in these situations to attribute the ultimate responsibility to an outside actor. But, the fact of the matter is, these claims are completely unfounded. I can't just take your word on all this, can I?”
Zed's shoulders slumped. She'd seemed so caring and understanding on the TV and when she was dealing with her assistant, before. But this reaction right in front of him—this was just too cold. Could this even be the same woman?
“He's on death row now, Abby. Do you know what it's like to know your identical twin is about to be executed? That a man who walked almost the same path as you through life took a medication that fucked his brain up so badly that he shot his family? That he shot his kids?”
“I can't imagine your turmoil,” she said. “But I just don't feel that Pharma-Vitae was responsible.”
He knew it. Her media persona was a lie.
Zed hadn't wanted to use Plan B, but if she was going to refuse to help him, Plan B was what it was going to have to be.
# # #
Abby
The look on Zed's face, as she had to tell him the truth, was just heart-breaking. She'd never had a bond with anyone in her life, like he’d clearly had with his brother, Kai. It was sad to think that he had been on the outside this whole time, struggling to make sense of what his brother did and to somehow exonerate him. It took all she had to hold that emotion in check, and to keep her cold bitch of a mask in place.
But, as much as it tore at her, she had a responsibility to her shareholders and employees. There was a reason why she'd been selected as CEO, and that was to return value on their investment. It was her job to make sure her employees stayed employed.
The two ideas warred in her mind and in her gut. She knew that, if she didn't get out of there soon, her facade might crack.
“But, even if Pharma-Vitae was partially responsible for your brother's actions,” Abby explained, as politely as she could, without letting her emotions come through, “We'd have to go through proper channels before we could attest to that. While I can appreciate why you would bring this to me, Zed, it won't solve anything. We have policies and procedures in place for this kind of complaint.”
Zed's face went from saddened to neutral. “I just need you to admit there's a problem with the medication when used by PTSD victims—that there's something going on there.”
Abby sighed internally. Externally, she just shook her head. “I'm sorry, Zed, but I can't do that without more proof, and without some sort of instruction from my internal legal team and our researchers. And, if you continue to press the point, I'll have to call security-”
Her words were cut off mid-sentence, though, as the vet's hand shot out and grabbed her by the throat. Apparently, she'd given him the wrong answer.
Her mind screamed alarm bells as her breath was cut off. She desperately tried to suck in a breath, but nothing would come. She reached out, grabbed his wrist and tried to pull his hand from her, but he was too strong.
“I'm sorry,” Zed said. “But I need you to get in the car now.”
She swung the keys in her hand, trying to strike at his face, but he just snatched her wrist in mid-air and twisted it off to the side as he pushed her back and around to the passenger side, her feet nearly lifting off the ground.
He reached around behind her and opened the driver side door before releasing her. Before Abby realized what was happening, he had reached inside his suit coat and pulled a pistol—a big, matte-black handgun. “Get in the car,” he said, as he put the gun to her forehead.
Her heart thudded in her chest like a bass drum, and her palms were clammy and covered in cold sweat. “I-I-I-”
“Get in the fucking car!” Zed yelled.
Meekly, Abby got into the driver’s seat and, on reflex, buckled up.
As she looked up at him, she realized how shitty and sad her life had been. Sure, she'd gone to college and gotten her master's degree. She was one of the few female pharma CEO's in the world. But what else did she have? No love life to speak of, no one to share her bed, besides the vibrator she kept in her nightstand. She'd never traveled, unless it was on business. All she did was work talk to people she thought might be able to help her with her career or in her business.
What kind of fucking life was that, anyway?
She'd wanted to be loved by someone—to be held, to be told things were going to be all right, to have someone support her, even if they weren't going to get something out of it at the end of the day, and to be loved by a man who wasn't threatened by her position, or by her strength.
Instead, she didn't even have a dog or a cat. Shit, she could barely even manage to keep her pathetic excuse for a garden alive.
Zed Hesse could murder her, or cut her body into a hundred parts, and the only people who'd notice she was missing were colleagues from work. Could he do that? Could he cut her up into a hundred parts?
Of course he could. Look at what his identical brother had already done. And to his own family!
Still, even as the despair began to take over, she didn't cry. Her nose sniffled a little, and she felt the tears of panic and fear begin to well up in her eyes, but she didn't let them loose. Her mother ne
ver would have forgiven her if she had. No. Instead, she looked straight ahead, out the windshield, and awaited whatever fate faced her.
It was because of her staring straight ahead, that she didn't even see the pistol butt coming down on her temple.
Pain just exploded behind her eyes, and the whole world faded to black.
Chapter Four
Abby
She awoke sometime later, disoriented, her head throbbing like her brain was trying to crawl out and go for a manic run around the block. She looked around, her brain trying to comprehend what had just happened , and where she was.
She was in her garage, she realized. It was her garage, at her house. She glanced over at the GPS in the center console and realized Zed just used the HOME button to send him back here.
“Zed?” she asked, her mouth dry and her throat scratchy. “What are you doing?”
“We're at your house,” he said, his voice as devoid of emotion as hers had been earlier.
“I've given it some thought,” Abby said, as she realized how far gone he was, “And I think I could take your complaints directly to the board of directors, Zed.”
She knew she was grasping at straws, but maybe he'd believe her.
He just shook his head and barked out a short burst of hard laughter. “Yeah, lady, don't try to bullshit me. Besides, we're way past that point.” He got out of the car before she could reply, slamming the door shut behind him.
She looked around, knowing that she had to move. She had to react. She tried to get out of the car, but realized the seat belt was still across her, locking her in place. She reached down, unsnapped the belt, and went to get out of the car. She had to get away from this man.
Zed came around to her side, a frightening glower painted on his face, and threw open the passenger side door the rest of the way, ripping it from her hands.
Frightened, she tried to backpedal to get away from him.
He grabbed her arm, though, and turned, pulling her along to the house.
She tried to fight him, but her reaction time was so slow that she couldn't even figure out what was going on. Distantly, she knew she had to get away, but she couldn't decide what her first plan of action should be. Besides that, his hands and his pull were so strong that there was nothing she could do.
As her vision blurred and her eyes unfocused, she stumbled a little. That's when she realized she was drugged. He must have found the injectable sedative she carried in her purse.
“People like you,” Zed said, as he dragged her around the car and up to the door leading into the house, “you're all the same. You think you can just brush aside the little people when they become inconvenient. Think your suits and your money protect you, up in your high castles. I saw how afraid your employees were of you, but I'm not, Abby. I'm not at all.”
“What—”
“Don't,” he spat, as he dragged her into the house and locked the door behind them. “Just don't. You have to listen now. I get to speak now for all the lives you've ruined. Not just my brother's, but every other person who ever had a complication from a medication, then was just swept under the rug by your legal department—by every fucking legal department out.”
She walked in a daze. She could feel how tightly his hand gripped her forearm and knew that she was going to have bruises from how hard he was squeezing her. But she was numb to it, like she was looking at someone on TV, in a dramatic movie of the week.
He pulled her through the mud room and out into the kitchen. “I'm going to show you what your medication causes and make you realize what it did to Kai. You're going to feel every ounce of the burning in his brain that he described to me and his wife, and you'll be begging for me to make it stop by the end.”
“Zed, I—”
“Shut up!” he shouted, as he dragged her out of the kitchen and into the den. Her house had suddenly become a prison.
She flinched back from his voice, terrified she'd anger him into doing something more violent.
He spun on her as they reached the middle of the room. “Now, strip,” he growled. “All your clothes. Now. Take them off.”
She'd never had a man speak to her this way or try to command her in this manner. Abby's lower lip trembled as she looked into his blazing eyes, seeing how terrifyingly alive they were. She knew with one look into those burning orbs that he was capable of anything.
Abby knew she needed to run and take her chances on an escape.
But even though she was still drugged and woozy from hitting her head, something inside her told her she needed to stay. In business, and in life, men had been trying to break her one way or another for her whole life. Zed Hesse wasn't any different. He just happened to have a gun.
She looked at him, her mother's spirit of defiance and willingness to buck tradition boiling inside her as she willed her quivering lower lip to stop its betrayal. She lifted her chin, looked him in the eye, took a deep breath, and began to strip.
Who did this man think he was, anyway?
# # #
Zed
He'd break her. He knew how it was done from his time overseas. He'd heard the not-so-muffled whispers. He'd strip her of her humanity and fill her with monsters and dread she'd never be able to leave behind.
She just looked at him with that stiff upper lip, though, and those big blue eyes of hers, daring him as she reached behind her and unzipped the top of her dress. She shrugged out of her white dress, baring first one creamy, smooth shoulder, then the other, revealing black bra straps as she went. Soon, she shimmied the dress down her body, showing him her lacy black bra and her toned stomach.
It had been a long time since Zed had been with a woman. Too long. Certainly longer than he liked to admit, even to himself. Zed swallowed hard, his eyes ravishing her body as she revealed more skin to him. He could feel himself getting hard, and he had to readjust his length, tucking it down inside his pant leg.
The dress reached her hips and, with her eyes still on his face, she pushed it down over their swell. Her dress dropped to her feet in a pool of fabric, leaving her just standing there in high heels, black thigh highs, her black bra, and matching panties. She lifted her chin higher, sticking it out at him, to show him she'd be hard to break.
It was cute that she was fooling herself this way. “The rest of it,” he barked. “Now. All of it.”
She lowered her gaze and glowered at him from beneath her brow as she reached up behind her back and unsnapped her bra. She pulled down the straps and removed her bra. She went to cover herself, but he batted her hand away.
“No,” he spat. “You're nothing. You don't get to cover up. Now, the rest of it.” He took in her full breasts, and the way they rode high on her chest. They were small, but they fit her frame perfectly.
She gritted her teeth and clenched her jaw, but she complied. She hooked her thumbs in her panties and pulled them down, revealing a little patch of near-gold between her legs.
“Curtains match the carpet, huh?” he asked.
She didn't answer, she just stepped out of her panties, her eyes locked on his.
He just sniffed at her and stepped closer.
She sucked in a breath and backtracked one step.
“This'll be worse if you try to run,” Zed breathed as his hands came up. “Remember, I don't care about hurting you. If you upset me, I'll make my displeasure known.”
She stayed still after his words. Her chin remained out, daring him to try and tear her down, but her whole body trembled in fear as she waited to see what he'd do.
Zed brought a big, callused hand up. He cupped her breast, weighed it beneath his hand, and brushed a thumb over the nipple.
She sucked in a breath, and Zed watched, feeling her nipples stiffen beneath the pad of his thumb.
He ran a hand over her arms, her smooth skin, then over her stomach as he kept watch on her eyes. He took her length and measure with his hands and eyes, walking around behind her.
Her breath was coming faster, prob
ably from fear. He ran a hand over her lower back, down to her ass, which was pushed out from the heels she still wore. He squeezed her cheek hard, eliciting a surprised grunt of pain from her. He squeezed harder, appreciating how firm but how soft and yielding she was.
“Stay,” he said into her ear, his voice barely above a whisper. “If you move one inch, I will hurt you. Do you understand?”
She nodded slightly.
“I said, do you understand me?”
She nodded more fervently. “Yes sir,” she said.
“Good.”
He turned and went back into the kitchen, headed for the mud room. He'd seen a dog collar and a chromed chain leash hanging there, but hadn't seen or heard the dog it belonged to since arriving. Also, on a shelf full of odds and ends, he'd seen some floral printed duct tape. He pulled both items down and headed back to the living room. On the way back, he took his suit jacket off and tossed it on a coat hook.
