Mortal Siege

by N. Isabelle Blanco

  “How many fucking times?” I roar.

  “Once! It was only once!”

  I wish I could feel relief at that.

  “Andrew, I swear, if you don’t stop this, I’ll never forgive you!” Lexi snaps, tears glistening in her eyes.

  For him?

  Dear Lord, she must want him dead deep down.

  “You’re loyal to her and we need as many loyal people on our side as we can get for what comes next. However”—I get even closer, until we’re practically nose-to-nose—“if you can’t control your feelings for her, this is your last chance to leave my fucking company now. Because I will not abide by you hanging around, pinning after her, fucking believing there’s another chance for you. Do you understand me?”

  His struggles go into full force. He’s tall, I’ll give him that, but I have at least three inches on him and at least fifty extra pounds of muscle.

  Lexi hasn’t stopped trying to separate us though and if it weren’t for the infusion of strength my fury lends me, I probably wouldn’t be able to sustain this pose.

  “You’re a lunatic! A real maniac!” Paul pushes against me.

  My girl’s head snaps on his direction, even as she attempts to shove her thin arms between us. “Paul, he’s not crazy! There’s things you don’t understand.”

  Her defense of me soothes me.

  Not enough to spare him, though. I bring him to me one last time. “Do. You. Understand?”

  Past the point of common sense, in that place where pure instinct takes over, he pushes at my shoulder’s, clearly uncaring if I end up stomping his face in for it. “There was never any real chance with her because of you! She was dead inside and it wasn’t until we got here that I understood why!”

  The new crack that spreads down my heart leaves me weak and I drop my hands away from him, breaths racing. She was dead inside. The image that line brings forth sucks every ounce of anger out of me.

  “I told you! I freaking told you!” Eyes watery, Lexi shoves at my shoulder. “Ughh, I hate you right now you fucking hypocrite!” She begins storming back to the elevator.

  “She’s mine,” I remind Paul, voice broken. “Understand that . . . and the fact that if you care about her, if you care about what Menahan did to her—” I pause, waiting for a sign of astonishment. When there is none, it’s confirmed that Lexi trusted him with the truth. Something that’s going to irk me in my soul, proof of how close they are, but I push it to the back of my mind. “If you care about all of it, we’re going to need your help moving forward. And your discretion.”

  His pale cheeks red, he straightens his lapels, glaring at me. “You are truly insane . . . but you love her and so I know you’ll get the vengeance she deserves.”

  “Fucking count on it,” I growl.

  “Then count me in,” he sneers, turning away from me.

  I leave it at that, chasing after Lexi. I catch her just as the elevator is closing and it’s my turn to shove my way inside.

  “Don’t fucking talk to me,” she demands, turning away from me with her arms crossed.

  I want her in my arms.

  More than that, I want in her, owning her, reminding us both no one was ever supposed to have her but me.

  Instead, I cross my own arms, trying to rein in my instability.

  We arrive at the top floor, my office, and she rushes out ahead of me.

  No doubt planning on leaving early and punishing me for Paul.

  Fuck if I’m letting her.

  I follow after her and see Ms. Rhines once again getting to her feet. “Mr. Drevlow, sir, you have an unscheduled visitor,” she says, as I make the left turn and slam to a halt at who I see on the other side of the glass wall.

  Lexi’s already in there, also at a standstill, clearly confused who the man is.

  Rushing past the reception area, I clench my jaw, one chaos scenario after another ringing in my mind. Why is he here? Does it have to do with Asad’s death? Murder, my mind whispers, reminding me of my guilt.

  Of Lexi’s.

  The bronze-haired man turns away from the floor-to-length windows, aqua eyes catching a stray ray of sunlight. “Ah, Mr. Drevlow. There you are. Sorry for dropping in unannounced, but there’s a few things we really need to discuss.”

  chapter 18

  “a re you sure the security cameras are disabled enough to completely hide us?” I whisper, even though the entire floor is empty.

  “Bro, you smell like an entire liquor store and weed farm in one. How the fuck are you driving around like that? Never mind. Just know you’re not doing it again. Ever. Again!” Finn scolds me, face twisted in a way I’ve never seen before.

  I slap the back of his head, bringing his attention back to the screen before him.

  The screen on the thirtieth-floor of Drevlow Systems, Inc.

  The floor my father had the team searching for Lexi set up in.

  The floor we just broke into after Finn managed to disable the security.

  “Stop fucking worrying about that and show me what you found on the servers.” Swear to God, as soon as he told me there might be a hint of Lexi, I think my body burned through all the chemicals. I’ve never sobered up so quick in my fucking life. Now every cell I consist of is fixated on that screen.

  On the fact that Finn is sitting there, highlighted by nothing but the glow of said screen, glaring at me like my mother disapproving of my behavior.

  “Why the fuck aren’t your fingers moving across that keyboard?” I demand harshly, ready to shake him for it, if necessary.

  Grumbling under his breath, he finally goes to work. Within minutes he’s inside the database and bringing up a list of transactions. “See here? This is the original payment sent to Eliana Berkman’s account. The one that helped them move. Shortly after the transfer, as you can see, exactly $170,000.00 were withdrawn out of the account. All of it.”

  That’s how much my father shelled out to rip the most important thing in my life away from me.

  Feeling my face burning red-hot, I wave him on. “Okay, and after that? You said you found a hint of where they might’ve ended up.”

  “Okay, so here’s the thing . . .” Finn begins nervously, typing away at the keyboard and glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.

  “Finn,” I warn, clenching my fist along the back of his chair. This better not be some kind of “maybe” situation. He promised me a lead. I don’t think I can handle this being nothing more than false hope.

  “Wait. Just wait.” Focused on the screen, he types in a few more commands. I’m too fucked in the head to follow what he’s doing, although my hacking skills aren’t that far behind his. “There! Okay, so I think your father did find this, he just didn’t inform you of it.”

  Killing him one day. Can’t help it. Clenching my teeth, I pray to whatever is out there to stop me from ending the man’s life tonight. “So what the fuck did he find? Come on, Finn!”

  He hisses something else below his breath, then points at the screen. “There! The serial numbers on the bills. It’s all I’ve got, but whoever now has that money paid out $62,254.00, in cash, to the University of Illinois about eight months ago.”

  Around the time Lexi was supposed to be starting school.

  I almost throw up as a rush so powerful hits my head, my entire body going numb with the possibility. “Name, Finn. Get me a fuck name of who that tuition was paid for.” I sound possessed, like a man praying—no, chanting—and Finn throws me another sidelong glance before facing the computer again.

  “Hold on, trying to get into the school’s servers now. That information wasn’t stored on this company’s servers.”

  I watch like the hollow wraith I’ve become, reckless with the need to have her again.

  A fucking year without the most important thing in your miserable existence will do that to a guy.

  It takes Finn another ten minutes to break into the server’s for U of I and I do my best not to devolve in a hit of impatience. He hacked
into my father’s company server from home, that’s why he had such an easy time getting back in once we were here.

  “Okay . . . okay . . .” he mumbles, reading more lines of information.

  I break out into a cold sweat, so far gone I can’t even focus on what’s displayed on the screen. “Speak, damn you.”

  “The money was for the first semester tuition for one Lily Bennett.”

  My stomach flips with acidic disappointment.

  That is, until an idea occurs to me. “Could it be her? Can you find anything to point to that being an alias?” I rush to ask.

  “Drew.” He re-reads something on the screen before leaning back, expression undecipherable. “That tuition is for Lily Bennett who entered last semester to pursue a bachelor’s in Computer Science.”

  In the stillness that follows, we stare at each other.

  He, with the apprehension of what’s coming.

  Me, with the realization that my entire world is about to be changed.

  No, repaired.

  “It’s her,” I whisper, veins pounding with the knowledge.

  “We don’t know that for sure, Drew,” Finn whispers back imploringly.

  As if asking me to slow down.

  Never.

  “Erase all traces of us being here.” I turn to run out of the department.

  “Wait! Where the fuck are you going?” he yells back and I hear him furiously typing away once more.

  “Need to catch the first flight to Illinois!” I answer, already out in the hallway.

  Haven’t really slept for a week and spent most of it drunk.

  Spent most of today high.

  Probably haven’t eaten well, now that I think about it.

  Irrelevant. All of it. Feeling Lexi on the other end of this news, knowing I have a connection to her again, that I can finally find her, explain, beg her to take me back, is the only thing I need to get me back on track.

  My father locked my out of my accounts, only providing a measly allowance that he keeps bemoaning I’m only using to “waste my life away”—i.e; my constant drinking—but there’s one person I can turn to for the help.

  Finn catches up with me in the stairwell as I’m rushing down to the loading dock at the back of the building. We took that route inside the building instead of the elevators, in case his shutdown of the security system was overrun by a backup. “Wait! You can’t just fly out tonight! Your dad froze all your accounts.” He’s wheezing as he struggles to keep up with my pace.

  I jump the last three steps onto a landing and spin to the next set of stairs two at a time. “I’m asking my mother.”

  “What? Wait! Slow the fuck down, you lunatic! Your mom will never agree to this. I think she hates Lexi because of what you’ve become.”

  My heart breaks at the fact. My mother should never hate the woman I love. She should hate the man she raised me besides, the one she chose to stay with despite his sick mentality, since he’s the one that truly broke me. Maybe if I had been raised in a normal household, I could’ve had the inner strength to survive losing my girl.

  Then again, I doubt it. No one seems to understand how integral Lexi is to my life. “I’ll convince her!” I throw over my shoulder, running down the stairs faster. I’m sure my mother will jump at any chance to help me get my head on straight, even if it means assisting me in getting the girl she dislikes back.

  And if she doesn’t, I’ll just remind her how much she owes me for letting that man sire me. For letting him have a say in my upbringing.

  “Hope you’re right!” Finn pants.

  I am. Won’t settle for anything less. Tonight, I’ll be on the first flight to Illinois.

  By tomorrow morning, I’ll have my girl back in my arms.

  Refuse to accept any other outcome.

  chapter 19

  i don’t have a clue who the tall, muscular man with the reddish-brown hair standing at the window is, but judging by the way Drew’s shrunken pupils, he knows him very well.

  The man turns away from the windows with an easy smile that doesn’t quite reach his deadened, pale green eyes. “Ah, Mr. Drevlow. There you are. Sorry for dropping in unannounced, but there’s a few things we really need to discuss.”

  Andrew studiously avoids my gaze, which is my first hint that something big is going on here. “What are you doing here?”

  Walking to the board table that now sits in the middle of Andrew’s behemoth office, the stranger—at least to me—sits in one of the seats, the black dress shirt he’s wearing stretching for dear life along his shoulders.

  Dear God, he might actually be bigger than Drew.

  “I told you, we need to discuss a few things, Mr. Drevlow.” Glowing green eyes move in my direction.

  “Lexi. Can you give us some time alone?”

  My lips part with a big ol’ “hell no”, but before I can deliver it to him, the man’s lips curl on one end.

  “Actually, she should be here.”

  Drew’s already shaking his head. “That’s not—”

  “He’s right,” I speak over him. “I should.” And I’m glaring at him, daring him to deny me this after what just happened with Paul downstairs.

  After he swore there would be trust between us.

  “After your . . . activities last night, trust me. She needs to be a part of this,” the man replies evenly.

  The world spins and I lose sensation in my limbs.

  He knows.

  This man knows we killed Asad last night.

  Extremities trembling, I stumble towards the chair Andrew’s uncle sat in earlier and I collapse into it.

  Drew’s next to me in an instant, hand wrapping around mine. “Baby.”

  “Who are you?” I ask the man, ignoring Andrew.

  He jerks his chin towards Andrew’s desk. “Might want to fog up those walls.”

  The scowl Drew aims at him is almost as fierce as the way he glared at Paul. “How do you—”

  “I knew everything there ever was to know about you before we met in person. Now, fog the glass. Your other assistant keeps cutting glances this way.”

  How could he know that? I never even saw him look Ms. Rhines way.

  Drew cups my chin and pulls me towards him, leaving only an inch between our faces. “Are you alright?”

  “Andrew, who—”

  “I’ll explain everything in a bit.” Features softening, he caresses me, and like the lost fool I am, I melt into him. “Just tell me you’re okay right now.”

  “Just hurry so I can know what’s going on.”

  Throwing another exasperated glance at the man, he rises to press the button on his desk, and just like that we’re enclosed. “Speak,” he demands of the man.

  “Wait. You speak,” I interrupt.

  “Ms. Lexi Berkman. Top of your class at U of I, until you mysteriously dropped out first year when you were alerted by Stephen Matthew Menahan that the Drevlow System’s servers had pinged on your location. Fell off the grid for six years after that. Your mother is Eliana Berkman, currently hospitalized six floors beneath us. According to her medical records, she was infected by a virus strain labeled as Z-H21 by the Menahan Industries pharmaceuticals division, however we both know it’s really a super-aggressive version of HIV, which has caused an almost untreatable version of AIDs in your mother. Your father’s name was Lucian Berkman and he invented generative adversarial network, or GAN, that Ronald Drevlow stole, driving your father to suicide, and then he used to give this company the AI advantage it now holds.” The man recites all these facts calmly, studying me the whole time, and I can’t shake the feeling that he knows he just shattered my world.

  That’s what my father invented? The loss of which caused him to lose his life?

  Drew drops back into the seat next to me, appearing as flabbergasted as I feel. Clearly, he wasn’t lying when he claimed he wasn’t able to pinpoint what my father’s invention was.

  “Who is this guy, Drew?”

  The m
an leans back in his seat, cold expression twitching with another smirk. “My real name is unfortunately, for you guys, classified information. But you can call me Shell.”

  What the fuck? “Shell?”

  “He’s an agent within the government, although Lord knows what cell exactly,” Drew finally chimes in. “He’s also deep undercover within the Russian Mafia.” Golden eyes move in my direction. “And he’s . . . also the one that helped me kill Barnard.”

  “Yes. That. Well, considering you took something from Menahan that he clearly valued . . .” The man tilts his head in my direction. “Well, two things actually”—Andrew growls under his breath at the reminder—“And you murdered one of his closest business partners last night, he not only suspects you two are involved, but he’s also decided to play with forces he can never hope to control.”

  Cursing, Drew grabs onto my hand, as if needing to anchor me to him. “What the fuck is he doing?”

  “My . . . associates in the Bratva have been contacted and offered inside help.”

  I’m reeling, incapable of fully understanding just how insane this is all becoming, when Andrew speaks. “You want our help, don’t you?”

  The man known as Shell smirks one last time. “Actually, Mr. Drevlow, considering how deep you’re both getting, I think it’s time we discuss a mutual arrangement that’ll help us both achieve our ends.”

  “Not us. I’ll give you whatever you want, but you leave Lexi out of—”

  “Go ahead,” I mumble. “Try to lock me out of this again. I dare you.”

  “Lexi!” Frustrated, he reaches for my face again and a breath hisses out of him when I jerk away. “You don’t understand.”

  “You don’t. This man is saying I need to be a part of this. You said it. So either you accept we’re a team, all the way, or you can forget about ever fucking me again because you’ll be fucking yourself from now on.” And nope. Don’t care that Shell is sitting right there.

  Throwing his head back, Shell laughs towards the ceiling, that coldness in his expression breaking for the first time. “You know,” he says, lowering his head, and if I wasn’t so far gone for Andrew I’d suck in a breath at how gloriously handsome he is when he smiles. “You remind me of a girl I once knew.” Something akin to warmth and misery flashes in his light eyes. “And she’s right, Mr. Drevlow. I’m sorry, but for this, we’re going to need you both.”