So one was pissed she didn’t get what she wanted, ended up with a kid, and was intent on making him pay. The other one was bitter, and bitter was way worse.
Enzo was f**ked.
Though, he’d texted pictures and the babies were adorable.
The elevator doors opened. I headed out and nearly stopped dead when I felt the vibe—a vibe that was buzzing in an unhappy way across the entire floor. I slowly walked into the space, seeing people in huddles, a few directors behind closed doors in an office, nearly all faces shocked.
Something was wrong.
I hit my assistant, Tandy’s desk. When I stopped there, she jumped and looked up at me.
“Frankie,” she greeted.
“What’s up?” I asked quietly.
“Paul Gartner was murdered.”
I stared at her, stunned, even though I had no clue who Paul Gartner was.
So I asked, “Paul Gartner?”
“Dr. Gartner. Scientist. Research and development. He was lead on Tenrix,” she told me.
Tenrix was a new product to treat high blood pressure we were gearing up to launch. Just the week before, Randy had chaired a team meeting, telling us all about it.
Randy had been excited in a way that, for a guy who was not often in a good mood and all other times was a dick, made the meeting weird.
It was weirder because it didn’t seem genuine. After ages of testing, the different phases of trials, the millions and millions of dollars sunk into that, all of which could be flushed down the toilet at any stage if a product didn’t work, excitement that something new, cutting edge, and reportedly very successful in combating high blood pressure didn’t need to be faked.
I had to admit, I didn’t get a good feeling about the meeting, but I hadn’t been at the company during any other product launch so I figured maybe that was always Randy’s way when he had to be in a good mood about something.
That said, all the other directors and managers at the team meeting were giving each other looks after it, which didn’t make me feel better. At the time, I put it down to the fact that, with the way people avoided him, the consensus of the team matched my opinion that Randy was a dick.
But the death of the man behind that new product after that weird prelaunch meeting didn’t sit real great with me.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The police are investigating. They came in and talked with Mr. Barrow and Mr. Berger. Mr. Berger kinda scares me, but he came out of the meeting with the police and did the rounds with the vice presidents and directors, looking like someone told him his dog just got run over.”
As he would.
This was not only because I suspected Travis Berger was a decent guy. It also was because, when he got to where he was right now on the company food chain, he’d gone all out, talking our president and CEO, Clancy Barrow, into aggressively headhunting and claiming the top biomedical scientists in the industry. Wyler had paid a fortune in signing bonuses, stock options, and salaries in order to ascertain products currently in testing and new products to be developed would be the best they could be.
One of those scientists biting it meant we’d lost a huge investment.
What also didn’t surprise me was that Berger went out and shared the news. I’d only seen Clancy Barrow in passing on a handful of occasions. He was not hands-on. He let Berger do day-to-day and pretty much everything else. Whereas Berger was visible, aggressive, driven, and hardworking, Barrow, surprisingly for someone in his position, was practically invisible, letting his executive vice president be the face of Wyler on a variety of fronts.
There was, of course, another way to look at this. That being, if something went wrong, it would be Berger who would likely take the fall, even if it wasn’t on him what went wrong.
“Do they know how it happened?” I asked Tandy.
She looked uncomfortable for a second before she said, “Details aren’t making the rounds, but I do know he was shot.”
She also knew I was shot and I remembered what I remembered every day about fifty times a day. This being that I liked Tandy. She was funny. She wore kickass clothes. She was a hard worker and totally on the ball. But also, she was sweet.
“That’s terrible,” I pointed out the obvious.
“Yeah. I didn’t know him, but still, it’s terrible,” she said, her eyes drifting across the office floor. They came back to me and she went on, “Anyway. The Tenrix stuff is on your desk. Chelsea brought the files around while you were working out.”
Something about this coincidence sent a chill sliding up my spine, but I nodded, murmured, “Thanks,” gave her a smile, and went to my office.
I had a million things to do, but after I dumped my workout bag, I reached right for the file on Tenrix. A lot of it I didn’t get because it was about chemistry and biology and we’d been told we’d have someone (though, not Dr. Gartner, obviously) explain it to us in detail.
What I focused on were the mock-ups of the glossy brochures and pamphlets that had Proof stamped on them in big red letters. I read them and, in doing so, read what Tenrix promised to do.
And from knowing Randy Bierman promised the same in the team meeting, weirdly, I didn’t believe a word.
My phone ringing took me out of the Tenrix file.
I stayed out of it, doing half a million of those million things I had to do, when close to five, my phone beeped.
I looked at it, picked it up, and smiled.
It was a text from Benny that said, Thinking about you, baby. Call me when you get home from work. I’ll take a break.
It had been just over a month since the scene with Dad.
Unfortunately, that month included a lot of me traveling.
Fortunately, one of my trips was to Chicago, a territory rich in prospects and a trip whose primary purpose was to bring my rep to heel. He might have had more pharmaceutical experience than me, but he was my only rep not only not exceeding his numbers, but not making them.
I’d extended that trip, working from Benny’s for three days and then having the weekend with him.
I liked this. I liked being at Benny’s and playing house, falling into a pattern that included him having nights off to be with me and him also working. I didn’t mind him working. I went to the pizzeria with friends and saw him, or I stayed at his house and vegged.
But it was more.
What we had was not normal. Any relationship was work, but being separated, that work was harder. I never liked leaving him or him leaving me, but each time it was getting harder.
When I was working at Benny’s, it felt normal. His house felt like home. Our schedule felt natural. Like the life and times of any average couple. I liked that. I wanted that.