Page 72 of Hacking His Code

Cassius cocks a brow. “Is she your girlfriend?”

“She’s an employee,” I reply, figuring my personal life is none of his business.

Cassius snickers. “I’m sure you’ve read how that turned out for me.”

“The pleasure pill stunt?”

“Oh, that was no stunt. Come to think of it, we ended up in the exact same situation you did.”

“How so?”

“Sadie’s mother was having chest pains and saw a bottle of the O Go pills sitting on a counter and thought they were heart pills.”

My jaw drops in disbelief. “It was your girlfriend’s mother that took the female orgasm pills?”

“Yeah. It was a terrible ordeal, but now that it’s behind us, I can finally say that it’s fucking hilarious.”

“Can I ask you a favor?”

“Another one? The first favor you asked of me put my clinical trial in danger.”

“I need you to put me in touch with Gabriel Icor.”

Cassius’s eyebrows draw inward. “Icor? Why do you care to talk to him?”

“I have my reasons.”

Arinessa

Seeing my mother asleep in her hospital bed really puts what’s about to happen into perspective.

She’s going to die, and I’m never going to get to say goodbye. Not really.

I should have been with her the last few days. The moment I found out that she had stopped treatment, I should have gone to her, demanding she get back on, no matter the cost.

“This is because of me,” I whisper.

Nurse Agnes puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “I’ve been treating your mother the last few days. She talked about you all the time.”

“I told her to get on that stupid treatment.”

“If she hadn’t gone on at all, she wasn’t long for this world. I know that must be horrible to hear, but your mother knew it to be true, and she had made peace with it.”

“I can’t believe I wasn’t here with her. That I was…”

Off having sex with Hunter Davies.

“Sweetheart, she would never blame you, so don’t blame yourself. I talked to her a lot the last few days. She was so proud of you, so excited to see you achieve what she could only dream of. She would not want you beating yourself up because you didn’t have a crystal ball. None of us do, or else we’d all be filthy rich.”

Hot tears run down my cheeks. I know if there were any way to fix this, Hunter would without question. He’d do anything for me, reasonable or not.

But sometimes all the money in the world can’t buy what you need the most.

“You can hold her hand if you’d like,” a doctor says.

I rush to my mother’s side, placing my hand on hers. “What’s the plan?”

The doctor jots down some numbers from the machines my mother is hooked up to, then turns to me. “First, we need to figure out what’s wrong. It’s still unclear, and I have a feeling that it has nothing to do with the new treatment.”