Chapter 2

“Mr. Messina, please have a seat,” Linda said, gesturing to a chair on the other side of the small table upon which she had set her laptop, with neat stacks of paperwork set off to either side.

“Mr. Messina?” he repeated with a soft chuckle. “Okay, Ms. Bryson.”

Mike sat patiently while she arranged the various files and folders around her. A stout, gray haired woman in her mid-fifties, Linda had a round, careworn face that matched her equally round body, which she typically concealed behind loose-fitting, brightly patterned dresses. Normally easygoing with faculty members, he found her stiff, formal tone a bit odd, and when he noticed his name on one of the folders on the table, he felt a tinge of unease.

“Everything alright?” he asked, keeping his voice light and positive.

She looked at him with a humorless, almost disappointed expression that turned his unease to apprehension.

“I’m afraid not,” she said, clasping her hands together and leaning forward to rest them on the table. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it. I’ve been made aware of certain ... improprieties of a sexual nature. Activities that you may have participated in that are in direct violation of this institution’s code of conduct, as well as our social media guidelines.”

Mike felt a flush of warmth bloom across his face and neck, and his pulse rapidly accelerated. “What are you talking about? What activities?”

Linda held up her hand and said, “We’ll get to that in a second, but first there’s something more serious I need to discuss with you. I’ve also been informed of potential sexual misconduct between you and some of the other faculty members, ... and possibly some of the students as well.”

At the mention of the word students, the color drained from Mike’s face and he jerked backwards in his chair, his stomach twisting and his heart thumping in his chest.

“Are you trying to say that I...?”

His face sunk as his career, and freedom, flashed before his eyes. He shook his head wildly, then stood and took a step backward, knocking over the chair.

“No fucking way! I would never do that! I would never lay a hand on any of those girls! What the hell is this, Linda? Who’s saying these things about me?”

She flinched in response to his outburst, reflexively lifting her hands in a clear defensive motion. “Mr. Messina, please sit down,” she said, trying to sound authoritative, but unable to keep the nervousness and fear she felt from her voice. “I’m just trying to give you the facts as they were presented to me. I understand how upsetting this must be, but I promise that you’ll have ample opportunity to respond and speak out in your own defense. Now please, if you wouldn’t mind.”

She gestured to the upturned chair. Mike silently cursed himself for his outburst, and righted the chair to resume his seat, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. Even just a whiff of this kind of thing could torpedo his career for good. He had a right to be alarmed and upset, he told himself, but he certainly could have handled that with a little more grace. When he finally settled, Linda continued.

“You know I can’t tell you, but I can assure you my sources are credible.” She raised her hand to forestall his objection and hurried to continue, “I know what you’re going to say, but please don’t get wound up over this issue right now. If this ends up being turned over to the authorities, you’ll no doubt discover the source, but this isn’t the time for that, nor is it relevant to our discussion, so please just set that aside so we can continue. Alright?”

No, it wasn’t alright, but what other choice did he have? She wasn’t going to tell him what he wanted to know.

“I suppose they’re just baseless accusations, aren’t they?” he asked bitterly, studying her reaction. “Of course they are. They have to be, because I never did any of the things you’re accusing me of. Not a single one of them. Am I right? I’m right, aren’t I? Jesus, this is so fucked, Linda. Well? Can you at least tell me that?”

She waited until he quieted, regarding his anguished, self-righteous expression with a mix of pity and disgust.

“I’m afraid not,” she said, much to his surprise. She opened one of the folders and removed a document. “Do you recognize this?” she asked, handing it to him.

Although just a piece of paper, he hesitated to take it from her for fear of somehow incriminating himself simply by touching it, but curiosity eventually won out. It was a photocopy of a packing slip, full of telltale angular creases and shadows that indicated it had once been crumpled up and then smoothed out again. As he quickly scanned it, his eyebrows bunched closer and closer together.

TruNorth Medical Distributors

4231 Laurent Blvd,

Montreal, QC H2V 4A9

Canada

Invoice Number: INV-20231504

Customer ID: CUST-5524

| Item Name | SKU | UoM | Qty |

|-------------------------|-------------|-----------------|------|

| Papaverine | TN-PAV-1011 | Vial | 10 |

| Phentolamine | TN-PHN-2102 | Vial | 10 |

| Prostaglandin E1 | TN-PGE-2042 | Bottle | 5 |

| Alprostadil | TN-ALP-1004 | Vial | 10 |

| Etonogestrel Implant | TN-ETN-5005 | Box | 2 |

| Levonorgestrel | TN-LEV-5009 | Box | 2 |

| Flunitrazepam | TN-FLN-7200 | Vial | 2 |

| Flumazenil | TN-FLM-7502 | Vial | 2 |

| Disposable Syringes | TN-SYR-8606 | Box (100 units) | 1 |

| Alcohol Wipes | TN-AWP-8517 | Box (200 units) | 1 |

| Generic Prophylactics | TN-HYP-9010 | Case (500 units)| 1 |

|-------------------------|-------------|-----------------|------|

“No, of course not,” he said, handing it back to her. “Why would I? I’ve never seen it before in my life. I don’t even know what any of that stuff is.”

“This was discovered by one of our faculty members two weeks ago in a pile of recyclables behind the building, near the entrance to your workshop,” she said, placing it face up on the table beside her. “I didn’t know what they were either, so I looked them up.” She put her finger on the first line. “These first four are treatments for erectile dysfunction. This next one, etonogestrel, is a birth control implant, and the one below it is usually sold under the name Plan B. This one here is interesting ... you might know it by its other name. Rohypnol.”

Fear and panic gripped him as she made her way down the list, and he found it increasingly difficult to breathe. What the hell was happening?

“As you might imagine, none of these are items a girls boarding school would ever have any reason to purchase, so I called the company to find out how their packing slip ended up in our trash. They looked up the invoice number and confirmed that the order had been shipped to this address, but the customer name on the invoice was Bilkinton Family Planning Services.”

“W-why are you telling me this?” Mike asked in a shaky voice. “What does any of this have to do with me?”

“I’m telling you because I contacted the shipping company and they sent me this,” she said, removing another photocopied document and handing it to him, but this time he refused to take it, so she read the pertinent portion to him instead. “Shipping instructions: deliver to the office of Dr. Michaelangelo Messina, M.D.”

The bottom dropped out of Mike’s stomach and he nearly lost his lunch. His heart palpitated, pounding against his sternum like it wanted to escape his ribcage and make a break for the hills, spiking his blood pressure to alarming levels. He opened his mouth to deny it, to scream his innocence, but all he could manage was to shake his head.

“I’m going to show you something now,” she said cautiously, “but I have to warn you that it’s incredibly disturbing. I didn’t have a way to censor it beforehand, so please be warned.”

Still reeling from everything else she’d already dropped on him, Mike’s neck burned with apprehension as she turned the laptop to face him. A porn site was opened in her browser window and she had a video queued up.

“What the hell is this?” he asked in a dry, scratchy voice.

“Just watch,” she said, then leaned over to start the video.

The scene opened on a static shot of a nondescript basement or dungeon of some sort. In the center of the frame, a naked woman kneeled on a bench with her hands bound behind the backs of her thighs, crying and screaming as a machine roughly fucked her. A pair of long, steel rods, each tipped with a large, colorful dildo, oscillated back and forth in a steady, syncopated rhythm, alternatively plunging into her pussy and ass. Although the woman screamed horribly, it was impossible to tell if it was from pain and terror or overwhelming pleasure.

From offscreen, a man dressed only in a leather hooded mask approached her. His engorged cock bounced ominously with each step. The woman whimpered and cried, but he slapped her across the face and gripped her hair. The scene switched to a new angle. A close in shot of the woman’s head as the masked man shoved his huge cock into her open mouth and began to violently throat fuck and gag her.

Linda paused the video. When Mike looked up, he found that her eyes were scanning his face.

“W-what?” he asked. Why was she looking at him like that?

“Look at his forearm,” she said.

Mike looked at the screen and the man’s forearm, noticing a tattoo. “What about it?” he asked.

“You both have the same tattoo,” she said patiently, as if explaining a rudimentary subject to a small child.

He turned his arm over and compared it to the actor’s. They both had very similar looking Shiva Trishul tattoos, but they weren’t exactly the same. Then the implication of what she’d said hit him like a sledgehammer to the chest, and Mike looked at Linda with an expression of shocked disbelief.