Rack

rack
verb, transitive. To cause extreme physical or mental pain to. To subject to extreme stress. To place something in or on a rack: “The shoes were racked neatly beneath the dresses.”

“What did I do to you to make you hate me?” Anna’s boss demanded.

Of all the things he could have said to her, nothing could have surprised her more. “I--I don’t!” she stammered. Whatever could have given him that idea?

“Then why are you trying to sabotage a million-dollar account?” he persisted.

“I’m not.” Even to her, her protest sounded weak and unconvincing.

“I can’t think of any other explanation for the way you’ve mishandled things....” He went on and she began to have trouble concentrating on what he was saying as she tried to review what she might have done with the Troy Pharmaceuticals account that was so objectionable. Only yesterday afternoon, she had talked with their marketing manager on the phone and brought him up to date on the production schedule. He had been cheerful when she rang off. Who had complained about her actions? And why?

“I’m dumbfounded that you would take this over and screw it up like this,” her boss was saying.

Racked with confusion and fear, she broke down.

“You told me to!” she cried, sobbing now. “You assigned me to take over that account.”

His only response was silence.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.