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Roman

“Is there anything else we need to discuss?” I ask. When no one answers, I stand. “Alright, everyone. Thanks for coming. I’ll see you all next month.”

“I’m ready to just go home and rest,” I sigh as I gather my stuff.

“Mmmm. Yeah. Me too,” Corbin laughs. Corbin owns Kingston Cybersecurity. I invested in his company last week after seeing his business plan. He has a great head on his shoulders, and his plan has a lot of potential.

“Thanks for letting me join,” Jim says.

“You were a drunk, Dad. Not an idiot. You are just as qualified to do this job as I am,” Corbin says.

Jim and Corbin both have a master’s in computer engineering.

Jim never stopped working and learning; he was just drunk while he did it.

Now that he is sober, he is having to relearn some things, but he is doing great.

We walk out of the conference room and run into Ben. “We have a big problem,” Ben says worriedly.

“What? What happened? Is she okay?” I ask.

“She’s fine, but she’s drinking… A lot,” Ben says.

He turns the tablet around, and we see that Zoriah is on the bathroom floor with a bottle of whiskey.

“She woke up from a nightmare and ended up in the kitchen. She sat at the island for a while crying. I tried texting, but she left her phone upstairs. She just hopped up and grabbed a bottle. She was in the kitchen for a while but ended up wandering around the house for a bit. Now she is in the bathroom. She’s tried to get up a few times, but that bottle is basically empty now. ”

“Fuck,” Corbin sighs.

“We knew she’d break eventually,” I say. “I didn’t think she’d fall this hard, though. I hope I…”

“Nope. Don’t do that,” Ben says. “Don’t take on blame that you don’t deserve.”

“I’m confused,” Jim says.

“Zoriah is getting more comfortable with Roman regarding sex, and they had a pretty rough but very consensual interaction this morning,” Ben says. “He’s about to try and say that he triggered her.”

“I doubt it,” Jim says. “We’ve tried to talk to her about her mom for weeks now, but she shuts it down. She’s admitted her nightmares are of both attacks when she was six and recently. She is connecting everything, and unfortunately, she’s a bit too much like me.”

“She’s trying to drown out the memories,” Ben says.

“You need to be the one to talk to her,” Corbin tells him. “You understand that night and what happened to her, even if you didn’t see it. It drove you to drink, and now it’s doing the same to her.”

“Yeah,” Jim says. “She might be pissed with what I’ll say, but I think a little tough love might open her eyes a bit.”

“I agree,” I say. “Sometimes we have to speak louder than her memories for her to hear us.”