You Can Let It Go [ZARRY]

Fifteen

Harry:

Holy fucking shit,” I murmured to my empty office at Styles Pharma, my coffee untouched and growing cold on my desk.

My assistant was superb at her job. The best. Her research into the devastation our company had wrought lay spewed from a file folder in front of me like a bloated corpse, leaking blood and secrets all over my immaculate mahogany desk.

Not one corpse. Hundreds.

OxyPro had swept like a wildfire across Appalachia and down the Eastern Seaboard, from Baltimore to Jacksonville,
leaving devastation in its wake.

In the last ten years, overdose deaths were up by astronomical numbers, and a wave of petty and not so petty crime had swelled as addicts struggled to pay for their pills.

When the pills ran out, they turned to heroin.

I rubbed my eyes; a headache was starting to form behind them.

On top of the human toll—soul-sickening enough—there were legal ramifications to consider. Everything Sylvia had found was available online. My having it wasn’t illegal, but me asking her specifically to dig it up was probably a really stupid thing to do. My brain conjured a mental image of me on the stand in a courtroom, a lawyer pacing in front of me.

“Harry Styles, what did you know and when did you know it?”

I glanced around my office with its wall to wall windows. I felt like a fish in a bowl, and that bowl was sinking fathoms’ deep into a black ocean, the pressure squeezing in on all sides.

So get out.

It would be so easy. Tender my resignation to Dad as COO and throw away any chance of becoming CEO.

Dad’s entire legacy rested on keeping the empire he’d built in the family.

He’d ruthlessly dictated every minute of my life including my detour to Alaska to ensure it happened. Taking a wife would complete the pretty picture.

I wasn’t a human, I was Frankenstein’s monster, built on a slab and molded to fit
Dad’s idea of the perfect son.

And I’d gone along with all of it. To make him proud of me just for one fucking second in his life. An elusive high I’d been chasing for years, like the addict I was.

And I stayed for the memory of Mom who’d want me to take care of Dad.

And for Marcel, whom I wanted to give the entire fucking world.

If I walked away. . .

If I walked away, I’d have nothing. Dad had threatened that a hundred times. He’d disown me completely and cut me off from

my brother who deserved to have a real life. My fingers toyed with the edge of the manila folder. If I quit, the damage our drug was doing would continue unchecked. If I stayed to help—kept playing the part—I
could try to put some of this right.

A harsh laugh erupted out of me. It was like trying to clean up a flood with a single mop.

I need someone I can trust to talk about this shit.

Zayn.

Something in my chest, in my heart, shifted just to think his name. A soft ache that had no business being there. He had no business being there.

He was trespassing.

Again.

I couldn’t keep him out.

If he knew what was happening here, he’d probably hate me. He’d quit working for Dad and I’d never see him again. Because he had principles. Integrity. He was true to himself, while I could hardly look in a mirror.