Mortal Siege

by N. Isabelle Blanco

  Screeching to a halt, I’m confronted with him again.

  My true demon.

  My tormentor.

  The true sociopath willing to end any human life as long as he gets what he wants.

  “Lexi.” Stephen smiles, holding out his arms, like he’s fucking expecting me to run into them or something. “There you are. If you’re here, I can only assume they just finished the task I paid them for.”

  The door slams open behind me once more, the sound of a gun cocking following. “Think again, motherfucker. You’ll never take her away from me again.”

  chapter 62

  d rew pulls the trigger, not giving anyone time to even think.

  Stephen lunges to the side, yelling out in frustration. “Why the fuck won’t you die?”

  Andrew’s response? Another shot.

  Stephen shoots through a doorway, but not before addressing me one more time. “You’re coming back with me, Lexi!”

  Wrong. Thing. To. Say.

  Teeth bared in a maddened fury, Drew runs past me.

  I’m after him in a split second. “Drew! He might have his own weapon! Be careful!” We rush through the doorway into a giant factory-like area.

  Shit. Shit. This is where the nanobots are being produced. I’ve only been here once, but I remember it now.

  A shot rings out. Drew barely ducks in time and it embeds itself into the steel tank next to his head.

  “ANDREW!” I scream in sheer terror.

  “How many times have I told you to stop screaming his name like that, Lexi?” Comes Stephen’s yell from somewhere in the lab.

  “What the fuck did you just say?” Drew, clearly too consumed with his possessive need and desire to end the man that wants to own me at all costs, whirls his head left and right, trying to search him out.

  It’s a collision waiting to happen.

  Two maddened powerhouses determined to end each other, here and now.

  Determined to take me as the prize.

  This is only ending one way.

  “Baby, focus on him. If you love me at all, focus on him,” I whisper.

  Drew’s head flies in my direction. “What are you—”

  I’m already gone, ducking below any piece of equipment I can find to keep myself out of Stephen’s sight.

  There’s another shot, followed by a retaliatory one. No way to tell which one came from who, but one thing’s for sure: Drew’s gun must almost be out of bullets.

  If I don’t find a way to help, some kind of weapon, he’ll be defenseless soon.

  On my last visit, I was given a tour of the production line. The only place Stephen can be hiding is close to Drew, near the tanks. The rest of the lab is open, made up of the assembly line and the 3D printers used to create the bots on a molecular scale.

  Dropping to my knees, I crawl as fast as I can, my mind racing.

  “You’re fucking insane if you’re thinking you’re getting away with this one! I have the nanobots feeding the visuals of you to an outside server!” Drew calls out.

  Stephen’s laugh is sardonic. Chilling. Another sound I’m intimately familiar with. “You think I don’t know that? I already have a team on there way to destroy the servers in your other locations. And once you’re dead, I’m taking Lexi with me before bringing down this entire building.”

  He’ll do it, too. Obviously he will. His track record lately proves it.

  “Your nanonukes aren’t going to be able to overcome my own bots! You’ve always been nothing but a poor imitation, Stephen. Even your tech is proof.”

  I understand why Drew’s goading him. Stephen’s ego has always made him sloppy, his quick-trigger temper his ultimate weakness.

  Yet I don’t have a means to help him and I’m convinced Menahan came with more than one weapon. He can be sloppy, but he’s not that careless.

  My limbs shake with fear for Drew as I look around for something, anything I can use—

  “A poor imitation? You think that’s what Lexi thought every time I was inside her?”

  My eyes slam closed.

  That bastard.

  That God damned, sick bastard.

  Nausea overwhelms me, mixing with the fear, nearly robbing me of strength.

  Don’t need to hear Drew’s maddened snarl to know that comment hit home for him just as brutally as it has for me.

  “You keep acting like it wasn’t fucking forced, you waste of skin!” Drew sounds farther this time, as if he’s moving around trying to locate Stephen as well.

  No. No. Please. I start crawling again, eyeing the countertop ten feet or so away.

  The one with an entire row of needles, filled with finished nanobots ready for testing.

  It’s all I’ve got. All I can bet on.

  “It was only forced because she wouldn’t stop thinking about you!”

  The urge to gag leaves my throat convulsing.

  People believe that men like Menahan don’t really exist. That it’s pure fiction. That this level of delusion isn’t real.

  But it is. Whatever illness—or illnesses—are responsible for the snap in his psyche, they keep him in alternate reality. One where he only believes what he wants to believe.

  “It was fucking forced because she didn’t want you! She. Never. Did!”

  That results in yet another shot and my gut screams its Menahan, close to his edge, about to snap and become that creature that only cares about getting his way.

  Consequences be damned.

  I crawl faster, praying to anyone that’ll listen to protect Drew. To give me the time . . .

  Please. Please. I love him. Don’t let that monster take him from me.

  Reaching the cabinet, I rise on my knees, hand outstretched for one of the needles.

  Above my head, a bullet slams into the glass cabinet door, making it explode outward, shards falling in my direction.

  Squealing, I fall back to the ground, arms above my head.

  Eons of evolution, of survival instincts honed into our species, barrel through my nervous system. Without even having to look, I feel the moment Menahan steps next to me, the right side of my body going cold from his presence alone.

  His gun cocks. “There you are, baby. Finally. Now you can tell him. Tell him how your pussy would get so wet for me,” he says loud enough to make sure Drew hears.

  Dropping my arms, I whirl on him, far gone in my own anger, too focused on my desire to see him die to even care that the barrel of a fucking gun is staring me dead center in the eye. “I never came for you, you piece of shit. Never. And that’s a natural reaction for victims, isn’t it? Yet you were always so repulsive to me—nowhere near the man Andrew is—that you couldn’t even force that from me!”

  The craziest part isn’t the rage I expect. No.

  It’s the hurt I see flash across his expression.

  “See? I told you it was always because of him!” Finger on the trigger, he waves the gun in my direction, and for the first time I must admit that these might be my last moments.

  That I won’t get to see Drew again . . .

  Just as the thought sinks in, a giant blur comes rushing at Menahan, catching him midwave of that gun—

  It goes off just as Drew slams him into the cabinets next to him and I feel the fiery agony of the bullet piercing through.

  chapter 63

  h e finally confessed.

  He told me what’s wrong with Mom.

  And every day, as the word bangs around my head, my soul withers away a bit more.

  I’ve known he’s a heinous fiend for years now, but this . . . this . . .

  It’s beyond any form of cruelty I could ever imagine, even after years of being his victim. Of his abusing me to his dark heart’s content.

  Menahan used my mother a test subject of one of the worst illnesses known to man. Not only that, but he used a super-version of the virus, one engineered to be nearly untreatable.

  Fucking AIDS.

  There’s profit in medicine, but
the company had only just achieved the creation of this new strain, without a test subject to use as a guinea pig to engineer a cure.

  Menahan’s solution? That age-old “kill two birds with one stone” bit. Volunteer my mother to be that subject, without my consent or, more importantly, her own, as well as use this new illness to make sure I’ll never betray him.

  Fucking fool.

  I might not be able to stab him in the back today, but one day I will.

  It’s all I breathe for.

  He could’ve done whatever he wanted to me and possibly never incur this level of my hatred.

  But to hurt my mother like this?

  She’s hospitalized in his company’s medical division, ten floors above the loft he once kept us prisoner in. The doors to that prison are now open. Why shouldn’t they be? I’m not going anywhere. Not only am I constantly watched, but I refuse to leave my mother here.

  Refuse.

  This isn’t simply a matter of getting to the authorities anymore. Before I leave here with my mother, I need to ensure a transfer to a location where she’ll receive the care she needs.

  Where that place is, I have no idea yet.

  But I will one day.

  One day.

  It’s my mantra. The thing I constantly repeat to keep myself sane. Every day I’m forced to get up and work on behalf of Stephen.

  On behalf of Kaylee, who I haven’t seen since highschool but I know for a fact she’s around. How? Menahan makes it his business to have conversations with her right outside my “office”—the small space he’s designated, hidden behind his own office, and easily accessible through a tiny elevator that only leads to the loft he kept me in.

  Drives me crazier. Makes me sick. Just why did his father design the building like this? Have others been kept prisoner in that loft before me? Clearly the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in these families.

  Just like Andrew Drevlow turned out almost as twisted as his father . . . well, Menahan is a straight copy of his. Menahan senior approved Stephen’s use of the virus on my mother before he died. Why shouldn’t he have? Like I mentioned, a free guinea pig for them both.

  It’s enough to forever alter the unrecognizable landscape of my psyche. I must focus on getting me and Mom out, if not I’ll snap and be no good to either of us, but I’m not stupid.

  I know I’ll never be the same again once I escape.

  Who could ever be?

  The door to this tiny space opens.

  “I told you I’d be done later today.” I don’t even bother to turn to him. For what? I can now sense his vile presence each time he’s within twenty feet of him. It’s uncanny, disturbing.

  And at the same time useful.

  I continue typing away—

  His hand snaps around the back of my neck, lifting me to my feet.

  “Stephen!”

  “I’m not in the mood for your fucking attitude, Lexi.” I’m slammed onto the only empty spot on the desk, my face smashed to the surface.

  And I freeze up.

  As always lately.

  It’s not just that I’ve decided to stop fighting him, it’s that my body no longer can.

  The pants I’m wearing are pulled down, along with my sensible underwear. No matter what clothes he provides me, I never wear the sexier things. Never even try tempting him. Yet I can’t keep his hands off me no matter what I do.

  Blood curdling in my veins, I stare off into space blankly, feeling him behind me, rubbing his bare cock into my cleft.

  Mentally, I brace myself for the penetration, the tearing of my pussy.

  Then, he slides higher, pressing against there—

  Just like that, I’m reanimated, terror funneling pure electric pain into my skin.

  “Stephen! Please! What are you doing?”

  “It’s mine, Lexi. It’s always been mine. Just like that pussy.”

  Pain tears my insides, radiating out from my ass, like a knife stabbing deep.

  It hurts. Oh God, save me. It hurts.

  “STOP!” I wail for the first time in years, clawing at the desk, frantic to get away. “P-please! Stoppppppp!”

  Grunting—that disgusting sound I loathe more than my miserable life—he slaps me across the face, following by a harsh slap across my burning ass. “Stay. Take it. Fuck you’re so tight.”

  I’m screaming like a wounded animal, the sound inhuman. The pain is more than anything I’ve ever felt, pulsating up my back, down my legs . . .

  Deep into the fibers of my damaged soul.

  “Oh God, baby. That’s so sexy. Your ass taking me.”

  I lose it.

  Pushing against the desk, I fight to straighten, ignoring the renewed waves of misery. “I FUCKING HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I SHOULD’VE STAYED WITH ANDREW!”

  I know it’s the wrong thing to say before I say it.

  I know.

  Instinctively, I think I’ve done it on purpose, desperate for a way out.

  Any way out.

  He gives it to me.

  Letting loose a soul-shrinking growl, he fists my hair and slams my face onto the desk.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  Each impact is harder than the last, my teeth cutting into my inner cheek, my head vibrating with the blows.

  “You. Do. Not. Fucking. Say. His. Name.” Each word is followed by another slam.

  I feel the skin of my temple tearing.

  Blood gushing.

  Darkness—beautiful, merciful darkness—calling.

  “You. Don’t. Fucking. Think. About. Him . . . WHEN I’M FUCKING INSIDE YOU!”

  Last blow.

  Final thought? Is he killing me? Adore my mother, but a part of me fervently hopes so.

  A part of me wants it more than anything.

  Which is why, before I’m fully pulled under, I manage a last verbal hit of my own around a mouthful of blood. “No matter what he is, he’s better than you. So . . . much . . . better . . .”

  chapter 64

  l ove is the greatest force in the entire universe.

  At times, the most destructive.

  Others? The most galvanizing.

  The bullet went clean through my right bicep, unleashing a dizzying wave of torment. Blood rushes in a hot torrent down my arm; the only thing that matters to me is the two large masses of male fury and conviction.

  Drew slams Menahan into the counter again, fist flying at his face.

  Menahan’s gun flew out of his hand, something he’s quick to pick up on. Just as Drew’s fist makes contact, his own tunnels into Drew’s side.

  Air bursts from them both.

  One doubles over for a moment.

  The other stumbles from the blow to his face.

  Then they’re rushing each other once more, eyes black with their mutual hatred.

  Drew throws his shoulder into Menahan’s midsection.

  Menahan, face red, clearly out of breath, wraps his hands around the back of Drew’s head, holding him in position, and brings his knee flying up to retaliate.

  The skinning sound as it makes contact with Drew’s abs rips a cry from me.

  A sound that sends another infusion of madness barreling through Menahan like some sick, derailed train skidding off its tracks. Roaring like a beast, he throws all his weight into Drew, sending him flying backwards onto one of the assembly tables. “You don’t cry out for him!”

  I push to my feet, shaky from what must be the blood loss. “He was all I ever cried out for! Even when I thought I hated him! Even every time you forced your way inside me!”

  A second roar rips through the air, one ten times more powerful than Menahan’s.

  Ungodly.

  Barbarous.

  As is the strength with which Drew comes back at him. Menahan sees him coming in time and they collide in one more astonishing outburst of power.

  There’s no doubt that, normally, Drew can take Menahan on and win with one arm behind his back.
>
  This Menahan, though, is possessed. As if another entirety, one even crueler than his usual self, has slipped within him, merging with his corrupt intents.

  The sound of fists meeting skin fills the air.

  Andrew flings him around, slamming him onto the assembly line next. One hand around his neck, he accepts the blows Menahan delivers to his face, while pummeling him at warpspeed with his own. “You’ll never have her again! Ever! I’ll fucking end you before you take her! Do you fucking hear me?!”

  Scrambling blindly, Menahan reaches for a laser welder someone left on the surface.

  “Drew!” I scream, already predicting what he plans.

  He doesn’t hear me. The next hit he delivers lands right on Menahan’s nose and the sickening crunch that follows can only mean one thing.

  Menahan must be as numbed by adrenaline as I’m feeling, because he doesn’t miss a beat. Teeth bared, he brings his arm flying in Drew’s direction.

  I can’t even stay still to watch. I’m already flying to the counter, where I was heading prior to Menahan locating me, and my shaking hand reaches for one of the syringes.

  There’s a sharp thud followed by Drew’s growl and I know Menahan succeeded in clocking him with that welder.

  Turning, I see Drew tripping backwards, clutching his head. From this angle, I can see the blood squirting through his fingers, red in the LED glow of the lights.

  Menahan rears off the assembly table like a demon rising from a crypt, his nose all but caved in, the lower half of his face drenched in red as well. When his lips peel back to expose his teeth, that red stain covers them, adding to the ghastly image.

  He throws himself onto Drew with all his weight, sending them both flying onto the floor.

  The land hard enough to cause several of the equipment on the assembly line to shake. Within seconds, as they grapple on the ground for supremacy, I spot what Menahan is truly aiming for.

  His gun, inches from his reach.

  I snap.

  Running towards them in my short heels, I’m bombarded with every gruesome memory of my time with him. With each moment I was forced to allow him access to the deepest parts of me and how he brutally made me pay because I could never forget the one man my soul truly belonged to.