The Perfect Stranger

Ch-5-The psychopath

Ch-5-The psychopath


A week into her new Job, Harry is woman enough to say all her prior freak-outs were completely unnecessary, she loved her new job and not to brag, but she was pretty damn good at it.

She knows saying things like that she is pretty much asking fate to jinx her but for the first time in her life she was getting paid for something she was good at which did not involve screaming children or stinky food. She was too damn thankful and still incredulously happy to actually worry about fate screwing over her again.

She used to work 15 to 17 hours nonstop a day from one job to another to keep life moving, and sticky food on cloths and screaming children to babysit were actually the positives of her jobs when equated to the steadily increasing and life threatening cons of being a 21 year old girl working late hours in the not so highlighted parts of LA. So compared to what she is used to her new 9 to 5 job seemed a lot like heaven.

Hell, she had her own office for god’s sake, well more of a cubicle but it was spacious and equipped enough to be her own office no matter what others liked to call it. It was attached right next to her Boss’s larger office. All she had to do was get her a constant line of freshly brewed coffee (which was easy as breathing for Harry who was more or less raised in a tiny coffee shop her mom used to work at), pick up the calls and relay the important ones to her boss while politely tell the others to fuck off without using swear words or actually hurting their ‘very fragile’ feelings (three years of being a waitress who had to put up with shitty costumers on a daily basis was all the skill she needed there) scheduling meetings, doing whatever tiny research her Boss asked of her and in the rare few times transporting a few files into other departments for their signature or their seal or something, in all honesty it’s pretty easy work and something that did not depend on her nonexistent graduate degrees at all.

All she had to do was relearn her way through MS Doc and Excel to type out documents, print and mail the said documents and make schedules, which thank to the computer addicted sloth of a roommate she had was pretty damn easy.


The fake engagement thing itself was more of a background thing, background thing as in Elliot had started saying that he was engaged to his sister’s PA and people have seen them hanging out here and there, and Harry herself caught a few whispered conversation in the coffee room once but other than that it was almost as if she could completely forget that whole mess was even happening.

That was mainly because she didn’t really know anyone in the building other than her Boss herself and her fake fiancé , and the other rare people she did have contact with while working was Miss Zedler’s Driver Anthony who always called her to ask her the timing to picking Miss Leo up, Her head of security Ralph who even though didn’t talk much always smiled at her in passing and Marry Lee  at the front desk who she made a point of exchanging a few words with every day just to start of her day with a smile, and all of these people were above the age of 40 and clearly not invested in gossiping about their boss’s brother’s love life, and even if they did they never treated her any differently. 

It was good, things were great and she was still waiting for the other shoe to drop even though she desperately hoped it didn’t.

“Here is your coffee and I just transferred all the upcoming meeting for the noon to your device, and the meet ball sub will arrive in just a few minutes unless you actually want me to get it for you” Harry said, replacing the steaming cup with previous one she had gotten Miss. Zedler earlier.

“Nah, you spoil me too much Haz, I think I can get my own food-You go take your break, oh my god this is fucking fantastic-“ the rest of whatever her Boss was trying to say is cut of as she is too busy drinking the coffee  while moaning sensually between every gulp.

“Ah, that’s kind of hot, and also your 4th cup of the day, If I may suggest something, I think we should really cut off on your coffee intake, I am seriously starting to worry for your health” Harry finds it in herself to say, as she worriedly watches her boss basically make out with a coffee cup.

“No, you can’t take this away from me, this is the closest thing I had to sex in the past 2 months, and don’t you dare speak such nonsense-and Oh my god, seriously you are a god given gift to mankind, not to mankind to me, mankind can find their own Harry, you are officially mine, no one takes my PA- you know what,  fuck my brother and his fake shenanigans , just marry me and make me coffee all day” she moans again, sounding scarily serious in her words.

“Yeah, No thank you- I think I am engaged enough for one lifetime and I don’t think your actual not at all fake fiancé would appreciate that very much, and please stop comparing my coffee to sex, it’s starting to creep me out” Harry is finally at ease to reply back to her Boss as she heads towards the door.

“I am serious though, well not about the marriage part because sex is still sex and you can’t quite give me that, but about everything else, I’ll go as far as to say you are the best PA I ever had. Thank you Harry” she tells her all too fondly and all Harry can do is laugh awkwardly because she admitting to herself that she was good at job was one thing, but it did not mean she had an easy time accepting that fact from others.

“Well you are the best Boss I ever had, I’ll see you in an hour Miss Zed” she shrugs it off feeling scrutinized under all that pride, which is something she hadn’t felt since her mom died, and that is something she is not quite ready to think about.

“It’s Leo-For the millionth time” is all the answer she gets as she gets out of the office and closes the door behind her.

The stupid happy smile on her face is seen by Elliot, who, as always is standing right there in front of her like he has been doing for the whole of the previous week to meet her for lunch, in the beginning it was to discuss things about their fake engagement and share the basic information about each other that was necessary to keep this pretense going, but eventually the fake engagement thing had faded as they were mostly just winging it anyway until his mom actually flew from New York, but yet there he was every day at the exact time grabbing lunch with her, most days their conversation drifting off to completely pointless things that had nothing to do with one another at all.

“You know I can actually buy my own lunch” she informs him as she cleans up her own cubicle before taking her bag and stepping out.

“Well it is good press” he says with a pointed look towards the rare few employs there who were already starring at the two of them under the guise of looking at their phone.

Harry suppose it was good that people saw them eating lunch together as they were yet to get to the PDA part other than random awkward hugs here and there. It gave them some kind of integrity as a couple.

“Besides as much as I love the team of people I work with, they are exhaustingly boring and I really want to know the rest of the story of what happened when Violet tried to sell that tourist toilet paper. I mean can you blame me? I hate to admit this but you are the only interesting person in my life” he says as if it is some great tragedy as he offers up one of his hands for her to take, depositing his jacket into her cubicle like he owned the place, which he definitely did.

Harry sees the way others are still staring wide eyed, some not even trying to pretend otherwise and takes the offered hand as he leads them to the elevator. They go to a Chinese place quite farther away that day and despite Elliot’s whining and constant protest he actually seems to enjoy what he is eating.

It’s surprising how well they get along, especially when they don’t have to pretend to be engaged or unnecessarily touch one another, despite all the crazy that seems to follow the guy, Harry will admit the guy is good friend and day by day she is starting to look forward to these stupid lunch dates just to listen to him blabber.

“-And then I threatened to transfer him to Finn’s department, I think the guy almost shit his pants at that, and let me tell you 4 months later he is the best employ I ever saw in my life, I tell you they prefer to be fired more than being transferred to Finn, I sometimes wonder how his own employs suffer him” Elliot concludes his story around a mouth full of chicken, clearly table manners were not something you obtained just by being rich, he has seen both the Zedler siblings eat away like there was a war at stake.

“Hey, if you don’t mind me asking, why exactly does everyone hate this Finn guy? I mean you and Leo seems pretty damn close and your other brother is like an arch nemesis to both of you” she wonders out loud once she actually swallows her food, thank you very much.

“Well in case of Leo, he just tried to kill her fiancé. That tends to dampen her mood” he says and Harry is really glad she actually swallowed because her jaw hinges open at the words.

“Excuse me?” she finds herself chocking nevertheless.
“He was a giant anti-social asshole growing up, he lived to terrorize and embarrass the two of us, so I guess he was always a giant dick. But it happened years ago back when both of them were still in college, my sister a junior and Finn a new freshman. Eddie, that’s Leo’s geeky fiancé by the way- Eddie has a bit of a problem with his liver and long story short he can’t drink alcohol if he wants to live, yeah pretty shit, but he is a pretty decent guy. Anyway, my beloved brother decided to prank him by pouring him a really fine glass of scotch and gave it to him telling it was tea; the poor guy was intensely studying for some big exam so he didn’t really find out until he took a big gulp. He was at the hospital for 2 months after that, I think he almost died- and well, trying to kill the love of your life kind of pisses people off a lot” he explains and laughs at Harry’s pure scared expression.

“My god, that’s intense- What about you, you said in Leo’s case” Harry finds herself pushing the issue.

“Mine is not that serious, we always hated each other growing up because he was only 2 years older than me-so we never really had a good relationship period, but remember the incident that happened, well he is the reason her whole family has a restraining order against me and the sole reason me and Alissa actually broke up” He sums up as he swallows another chopstick full of noodles.

“What he got them restraining orders against you?”

“I wish, he beat up Alissa’s brother pretty bad, he was hospitalized for 2 weeks, and he even got a few punches against James Ashburn himself. And you know, most girls don’t appreciate their father and brother getting beat around, so she- despite all my calculations, and plans that have begun from the first time I knew what was going to happen- called it off because of what Finn did. He would have gone to jail but the Ashburn’s didn’t want the whole news getting out to the media so they couldn’t actually get him locked up, but they did send a few hitmen though-that was fun, I actually enjoyed that- my mom shipped him off here to keep him safe-slash-stop him from fucking up the whole family. He is going to say that he was defending me and the family but he was the sole reason the whole thing blew up in the first place” he says with so much hate than Harry had never seen on him before.

He continues on before Harry can even think of something to say.

“Nobody in the family likes him, nobody likes him period. I have heard my own mom say that she went wrong with him, sometime I think she hates him more than all of combined and that’s a lot, they do not get along at all. He is really smart and also was a damn good lawyer, but god, I have never seen him do a good damn thing in his life. He is violent and cruel and-a psychopath really, He’ll figure out the truth in seconds if he did see us together and he loves to ruin other people’s life.  In all 2 years of moving here I have seen him total of 2 times, both completely accidental and inevitable so I can assure you as long as you stay away he won’t be getting anywhere near you, or me, I promise“ He tells her with intense concentration in her words.

“Yeah, if the first time you warned me about him isn’t enough I think the murder charges is enough to make me want to stay away, Elliot” she assures him, earning a light smile before the conversation dissipates again.


It’s still a hard concept to wrap her head around, not because she doesn’t trust Elliot’s judgment in his own brother, but simply because both the Zedler’s she met had been exceptionally nice and she couldn’t see how exactly all the bad genes could go to one person, especially someone who had the capability of murder.

Nevertheless she heeds her fake fiancé’s warnings and makes a point of staying away from the very name whenever she hears it, so of course not even two weeks later she finds herself heading right towards the psychopath in question.

In her defense she hadn’t noticed, which is a weird thing to say as she was deliberately at the 53rd floor, by walking with her own two legs as commanded by her own brain and nerves and currently staring down at the office of one Mr. Finnegan Zedler, but in all honesty though it’s only once she was at the proclaimed floor and saw the name on the front she realized whom exactly she was being sent to.

It had been one of those hectic days at the office, the whole building seemed to be busting with something big coming up and Leo was so busy that she didn’t even have the time to ask for a second cup of coffee, her lunch was canceled because Leo had asked for her to stay and help her sort through some files, but Elliot staying to his fake fiancé roots had dropped her lunch at her desk and braved an awkward kiss to her cheek which had made the others coo.


She knows the rational thing to do would be to turn back and go back to Leo, she knows for a fact Leo has other errand boys she sends into seeing people she doesn’t feel like talking to and retrieving documents and other files in paper form, and Harry’s job didn’t exactly state that but Harry was the fastest though, years of working in diners and running from one job to another had made her a ninja in the art of delivering stuff from one floor to the others without spilling or losing anything, and Leo had looked pretty desperate for a signature in that particular file Harry was currently holding.

She didn’t want to turn back and take up her Boss’s even more precious time just because there was a chance that their fake engagement would go down, besides it’s just a signature how hard could it be. If she was lucky the guy wouldn’t even notice her.


The woman at the front door of the floor barely looks at her when she approaches her and instead just points to the door of the office she already saw, which made her final hope of not having to face the demon brother dwindle.

Harry had faced screaming men threating bodily harm from getting their orders wrong, and screaming children actually trying to kill her, and she had made it out alive with almost all of her pieces in the right place, it is with that thought she knock and later swing the door open when there comes an acknowledging kind of noise.


From all the gory tales Elliot had told her or from just the way the Zedler siblings have been behaving at his very mentioning Harry had expected someone tall and buff and well demon like, someone who would most definitely scare the crap out of her considering he actually tried to murder his sister’s boyfriend, but instead of the fear, the resentment or the panic she expected at the man’s sight the first emotion she senses is familiarity, as if she knew the guy from somewhere but couldn’t for the life of her remember when or where.


The guy is not even looking at her when she enters and only meets her eyes for one short second as she awkwardly stumbles through her reason for arrival and hands him the file Leo had given her.

He was different from his siblings somehow, not in the sense of beauty or their seemingly natural state of authority and power, she knew all of the Zedler’s were unbelievable kind of gorgeous and Juni and Violet actually had a very well developed theory of their great-great grandfather selling their soul to the actual devil for prospering wealth and good looks, but Finn looks much different from his siblings, while the other two had been all open arms and friendly vibes without even having to say a single word  this guy makes Harry want to run away as soon as possible.


He hands the file back with a swift move and Harry struggles to get it from him for a second.

“You are my sister’s new PA? Winfred?” he questions all of a sudden, cold blue eyes glancing between her face and the ID card dangling from her neck, his eyes were the same shade as Elliot’s, but when he did look at her though she felt like she was reading every single secret she had.

“Yeah, Harry” she introduced herself hesistantly.

She expected some kind of quip about her name, there was rarely a person who did not point out the very masculinity of her preferred name, it was a bit of a headache growing up and from what she knows Finn seems just the kind of dick who is all for that kind of bullshit.

“Then you are marrying my brother then?” He says, eyes still lingering on her if not to glance at the brand new ring on her finger that Elliot had insisted she wears because Violet, the great craftsman she is didn’t make anything everlasting or that cost more than a dollar, and just because Paris was convinced by the piece of plastic on her finger did not mean her crappy ring would pass in front of others. This one wasn’t anything quite like Violet’s creations, but it was blue and fit the most well with the description Paris could give to someone about her engagement ring, personally she didn’t like it and it itched kind of badly sometimes, she was more wedding bands that wedding rings kind of person.


He is not exactly smiling at her, but he isn’t downright glaring either but something in his features says that he is thoroughly bemused by her presence in his office, and that exact look is what brings out that strange sense of familiarity that makes her stare back at him.

“Yes, Yes I am” She finds it in herself to answer him without her voice wavering, it has taken practice but she realizes she has to do her part for this to work out in Elliot’s favors, and shying away from it was not helping.

She expects something terrible out of his mouth, nobody has actually said downright terrible things to her face yet, but she had heard enough variation of the fact she is gold digger from various mediums and Finn looks like he is just about to ready to join the list of morons.

“Congratulations” he says taking her completely off guard.

“Uh, thanks” she says before deciding not to stick around for longer and abruptly leaves the room, feeling as though a giant storm has passed.

Despite all that she knows about him though, he had been surprisingly polite for a psychopath, and the sense of familiarity bugs her for the rest of her day.