The Man Who Has No Soul (Soulless 1)

He continued to type on the computer, in the middle of an email, and he didn’t greet me.

I put one pile on the desk but held the manila envelope.

When he was done, he looked at me, a beer on the coaster beside him. There was an expectant look on his face, as if he’d asked me a question that never left his lips.

“This came for you. It looked important, so I didn’t want to wait.” I handed it to him.

He took the envelope, read the sender’s address, and then sighed as he set it aside.

When I glanced at his paperwork, I realized it was, in fact, research. There were graphs of data, patient reports, and nothing to do with profits or payroll. “I had no idea you were a doctor.”

His eyes flicked up to mine, his t-shirt stretched over his muscular shoulders and strong chest. He always wore black or gray. So far, he’d never left the residence in anything else. Whenever I was in his closet, I only saw a few splashes of color. “You don’t Google your clients?”

“I try not to.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why?” He was talking to me again, having an open dialogue. It’d been almost two weeks since we’d had that deep conversation about his son. He’d turned cold immediately afterward. He was still cold now, but at least not an ice cube.

“I like to get to know my clients as people—not their titles.”

All he did was blink.

“The media never portrays them accurately anyway. So, the way I would treat them would be based on public images, gossip, and most of the time, lies. I prefer to give them a clean slate.”

He could stare for long periods of time, hold eye contact like social decorum didn’t exist. Minutes could pass and he would hardly blink, like that level of intimacy with another person didn’t register as inappropriate in his mind.

“What are you working on?” I broke eye contact because I couldn’t take it anymore. I glanced at his paperwork on the table.

“Research and clinical trials.”

“So, you’re a pharmaceutical company that makes drugs and sells them to people?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes narrowing slightly as if I hadn’t guessed accurately at all. “No.”

I waited for an elaboration.

There was none.

Now I wondered if his shortness wasn’t rudeness. He just didn’t know how to talk to people. “I’d like to know more about what you do, if you’d care to share it with me.”

His expression didn’t change, so it was unclear if he was annoyed or not. “Most pharmaceutical companies are just spitting out pills that treat one problem, but cause a multitude of others. My research is focused on the eradication of diseases, or at least the delay of delivery. Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diseases of that nature. I work with patients with advanced cases and attempt to cure them or, at least, buy them more time. I don’t make pills so men can get hard. I don’t make antidepressants. I want to save lives—not alter them.”

This man really was an enigma. Cold as ice, but with a beating heart. “Wow. That’s amazing.”

He broke eye contact and rejected my compliment. “My father passed away from lung cancer a few years ago. It was ironic, because shortly afterward, I found a way to slow the progression of the disease significantly. If it had happened at a later time, I could have given him another two years.” He shifted his gaze out the window, not showing a drop of emotion, but that story must have cracked his bones.

“I’m sorry…”

He didn’t look back at me. “I invented a drug right out of college that revolutionized the treatment of neurological problems, and I invested the profit from that into my company. That was how Hamilton Pharmaceuticals was founded. I have a location in Los Angeles as well as here.”

“You must be a really brilliant man.”

He slowly turned his gaze back to the computer. “So, no, I’m not like other pharmaceutical conglomerates, the ones that raise prices on the sick so they can’t afford their insulin and die on the street. I’m not interested in hooking people on drugs they don’t need and making them sicker than they already were. I’m interested in what actually works, what actually helps people.” He turned his ironclad gaze back to me like a king who had just slammed the tip of his sword into the ground.

I was good at reading people, but I’d totally misread him. “That’s something to be really proud of, Deacon.”

That compliment didn’t seem to mean anything to him either. He dropped his arms and closed the lid of his laptop, the very one I’d brought to him a few days ago.

“When did you know you wanted to be a doctor?”

“Always.” He grabbed his beer and took a drink. “I need to get back to work, Cleo.”