Systematic Siege Box Set: Parts 1-3
Page 1
Systematic Siege Parts 1-3
Siege Serial
Copyright © N. Isabelle Blanco
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This work is copyrighted. All rights are reserved. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the author.
Cover image licensed by 123rf.com/ © George Mayer
Cover design by Coquette Graphics
Publication Date: September 28th 2016
Genre: FICTION/Romance/Erotica
Copyright © 2016 N. Isabelle Blanco
All rights reserved
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Systematic Siege Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Systematic Siege Part 2
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Systematic Siege Part 3
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Life separated us.
Destiny tied me to her.
Obsession drove me mad.
I knew they all hurt her. What I didn’t understand is how deep . . .
Seven years ago, they ripped her from me—my father. The friends I made at school. Jealousy drove all of those bastards into conspiring against us.
And they won.
I almost killed myself after losing her.
Now I live for only three things:
I will destroy everyone who hurt her.
I will find her.
I’ll become the biggest monster ever known to accomplish those things.
I’m at the head of my father’s empire now. A corporate king. I’m ready to finally put in place the plan I’ve been working on for years.
I’m ready to find my Lexi.
What I didn’t realize is that she had already found me.
1
The wealthy don’t have time to grieve.
It’s a lesson my father drilled into my head over and over throughout my life. When my dog died. Again when my grandma died—both of them.
Yeah, he didn’t let me grieve the death of his own mother.
If he mourned her, I have no clue. No one does. We never saw any sign. He just went about his business as usual.
He’d been a strict authoritarian, that one. Among other things.
I wonder if all those years he was busy drilling the lesson into my head, he’d known it would one day apply to his own death.
Food for thought, huh?
Well, in case there is such a thing as an afterlife, I want you to know old man, that I learned the lesson very well.
I’m sitting here, at the top floor of the skyscraper you built, in what was once your office—an office that recently got remodeled to better fit my tastes.
And I’m calm. Cool. Collected. So unperturbed by your passing, Father—despite the fact that I caused it—that I’m starting to think something’s wrong with me.
Then again, considering the type of man my father was, maybe all of this is perfectly normal. I’m not the only one that isn’t aching over his passing. No one seems too broken up about it.
My mother isn’t. I don’t blame her. She put up with enough crap from that man.
His own brother isn’t too sad, either.
So, like I said, maybe I’m normal after all.
“Drew. Are you ready?”
Speak of the Devil.
My uncle Robert stands at the entrance to my office, hand braced on the glass door.
He’s been asking me that question ever since we agreed that I would be taking over my father’s place as CEO.
My uncle refused the position and I’d had no choice. There are many on the board that would love to drive the whole Drevlow family right out of the company now that my father is gone.
I can’t allow that to happen. Can’t do that to my mother. She deserves all the comfort and privileges this company affords her. She went through enough being married to my father. I’m not letting her suffer anymore unnecessary bullshit.
And it had been the perfect revenge against my father. The best way to get back at him for what he once did to Lexi’s family.
“I’m going to take your place as CEO.”
“It’s about damn time you smartened up and decided to do the right thing.”
So much contempt. Even as he lays in a hospital bed, machines struggling to keep him alive, his feeble heart replaced with a new heart that his body is rejecting. Smiling coldly at the man before me, I lean toward him and whisper, “I’m only taking the position so that one day, when I find Lexi, I can give it to her.”
My father’s eyes bulge out of his head and his face turns bright red.
“That’s right.” I nod. “Once I find her, I’m going to make sure a Berkman ends up in charge of your company.”
I killed my father with that promise. Didn’t lay a single finger on him. The last word left my mouth and the rage he felt exploded inside him, his blood pressure skyrocketing and sending him into yet another cardiac arrest.
I killed my father because he believed the conviction in my voice. He knew I’d been serious. That I meant every word.
It’s that conviction that brought me to this point—the head of a company I didn’t want to run, my feet on a black marble floor, surrounded by glass, steel, and gold accents.
Sitting behind a brand new desk, in a way too-big office, and metaphorically in the shoes of a man I’d come to loathe throughout my life.
For my mother.
And Lexi.
Wherever she is.
The power this company gives me will be enough to help me find her.
I will find her.
I can’t even think her name without that old, crippling rage squirming inside me.
As I’ve been forced to do for seven years, I push the memory of her back. Remembering that I’d lost her, how it’d all come to pass, is toxic in ways my relationship with my father never was.
Until I can find her, I can’t afford to wallow in her.
God I want to. Get lost in the vision. Let the ache consume me. It would be so much easier than this constant battle, alw
ays having to fight my own psyche and the way it yearns for her.
I tried that once. Almost lost my fucking mind. The pit I ended up falling into was too deep, darker than anything my human mind could’ve ever imagined. My self-destruction came close to spilling over into the lives of the few people I loved.
Because I loved her more than I’d ever loved anyone.
More than I loved my own mother.
I still feel that way. Time has done nothing but make the emotions more powerful.
Pulling myself out of rock-bottom took a year of rehab. I live with the guilt of that every day. As well as the guilt of everything else.
There’s too much at stake for me to even consider drowning my misery out like I did before. I’ve just inherited immeasurable power. It’s time to start using it to get the woman I love back.
Then I can begin making up for everything I allowed to happen to her.
So I stand, button up my dark-gray blazer, and face my uncle. “I’m ready.”
2
I was nineteen years old when I graduated from alcohol to drugs. On the exact day that marked the one year anniversary of Lexi’s disappearance from my life. My binge only lasted six months; enough time to leave a lasting mark.
It took one car crash and the subsequent realizations that hit me to get my stupid ass to wake up.
I was causing my mother pain. Her teary eyes were the first thing I saw upon awakening in the hospital.
The all-body cast encasing my body was the second.
That’s when my next realization slid into place: I would never find Lexi if I ended up killing myself.
Her and my mother’s faces got me through the next year of therapy, when I had to wait for my body to heal, and had to relearn how to use my legs properly.
All while battling to break free from a heroin addiction and being forced to face the demons that caused them in therapy.
That’s how much that girl came to mean to my pathetic, egocentric, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen . . . and nineteen year old self.
I’m lying. She meant that much to me way before.
Since the beginning.
You’re not supposed to know what romantic love feels like as a child.
I’m pretty sure I knew.
And that’s how much she still means to the twenty-five year old man I’ve become. The man that’s about to use all his resources and break at least five federal laws, if not more, to locate her.
Step one: befriend the new head of the IT department so that she’ll make sure all the employees overlook what I plan to do with the systems.
Why am I thinking about this, even when I know I shouldn’t allow myself to, at least not until I’m closer to actually implementing the first step of my plan?
The elevator doors I’m standing in front of are a bluish-gray steel that’s messing with my head.
Reminding me of blue-gray eyes staring up at me, hazy with pleasure.
A bolt of heat slashes right through my nervous system, igniting my heart.
Ah, fuck. My dick is hard and I’m in an elevator, next to my uncle.
“The new head of our IT department is one of the best, Drew.”
Beautiful. My uncle decides to start speaking to my while I struggle to get my body back under control.
Trust me, the last thing you want to hear when your cock is pounding is a relative’s voice. Much less your uncle’s voice.
“Mmhm,” I mumble, staring down at the marble floor. I can’t keep staring at the steel in front of me.
Not if I want to meet this new super-nerd my uncle hired without my dick standing straight and tall before her face.
Mother of Shit. Even thinking the word “nerd” is too much for me to handle right now.
“We managed to steal her from Menahan Industries,” my uncle continues, voice brimming with pride.
Deservedly so. Menahan—that little bastard—is our direct competition. Luring one of his employees away had to have been expensive as hell, not to mention legally complicated.
An impressive feat.
I can’t formulate any type of response though.
Big blue-gray eyes, framed by those thick black glasses I’d loved, had locked on mine that night, showing me every emotion I’d caused in her.
Every emotion I’d owned.
Her brow had scrunched from the pleasure I gave her, her lips parted, begging me to take them.
To take everything.
“Andrew! Oh . . . you’re . . . I’m coming . . . uh!”
Fuck, her cries. As long as I live, I’ll never forget them. Those sweet little moans still have the power to make me come harder than any woman ever has, even though they only exist within my memories now.
Lexi came all over my thigh that night.
Then my fingers.
It hadn’t been enough. I’d attacked her again later that night, eating her out on the hood of my car, under the stars, and the experience fucked with me on a molecular level. Forcing her thighs open, I’d made her drench my tongue, her walls sucking me in deeper and deeper with each orgasm I gave her.
I still remember every freaking facet of her taste. What it felt like to have her swollen little clit in my mouth.
But she hadn’t come all over my dick. There hadn’t been a chance.
I lost her the very next morning.
“Andrew? Are you listening to me? Are you alright?”
No, I’m not. Haven’t been for so long now that I’m starting to wonder if I ever really was.
Do I even have a clue what “normal” feels like?
“I’m fine. Just a lot on my mind.”
My uncle nods as we exit the elevator on the lowest floor of the building, where the IT department is located. “It’s a lot to take in at once. I know. These introductions are necessary though.”
I don’t dispute that, because he’s right. At this point we’ve visited every department, made sure everyone has seen the face of their new boss. My uncle has been around much longer than me, obviously, so he’s well known.
Feared in his own right.
Respected.
Oddly enough, also well-liked despite all that.
His introducing me to everyone is a strategic business move. I’m the son of a man that wasn’t known for having been the best type of human being. If I’m going to keep the board under control, I have to make myself invaluable to the company.
I have to become everything my uncle is, and more. Employee fealty goes a long way to helping a CEO retain their position of power.
But as I follow my uncle down the marble and steel hallway, I’m having a moment of utter weakness. One of many throughout my adult life.
The latch in my mind is busted wide open, the door barely hanging on by its hinges. There is no barrier between my mind and the memories.
One in particular comes on strong. It’s the one that kills me the most. The full, amazing, bitter recollection of what happened the first night I tasted her.
The night that would lead to my losing her.
The night she’d been mine in every sense but the one that mattered most.
3
I think Stephen is starting to suspect what I’m really coming to his step-dad’s gym for.
Sure, it seems like he’s brought into my lie of just wanting to come here and practice on my own. It’s not like I haven’t done it before. For years, I’ve found random places—anywhere I can hang my punching bag from—and spent hours going at it by myself.
Practicing my uppercuts, jabs, haymakers, round house kicks. Tearing my body down physically so I won’t have to deal with any of the mental shit I’ve got going on.
Everyone at school sees me as some type of warrior. A prized fighter even though I don’t professionally fight.
I never will. My father would kill me if I even mentioned stepping into the ring.
At school, the “official” sport I play is football. After school, Stephen, Barnard, and I practice mixed martial arts. It’s our thi
ng. Stephen’s uncle owns an MMA studio, and that’s where we all hang a lot of the time.
If I’m not practicing on my own, as I said.
My friends know I’ve got some kind of issues. They don’t have the details, but obviously something has to be wrong with me if I insist on spending large periods of time by myself.
Yeah, I’m aware. The irony isn’t lost on me. I hear the whispers. One of the most popular guys in school is actually a closet loner.
Bite me.
Father pisses me the fuck off on a daily basis. Sometimes two or three times a day.
I rather be by myself when I work through the anger. Pushing my body to the max, exhausting myself, is the only true outlet I have.
Breaking Father’s face would be lovely, but mother has already instilled in me how wrong that would look to everyone we know.
Always keep up appearances and all that.
So when I’d told Stephen I wanted late night access—as in: “Get me the fucking keys”—to his step-dad’s gym, he’d seemed to have no problem saying yes.
That was three weeks ago and everything had seemed cool.
Until today. Earlier, when Stephen asked me if I was going to use the gym tonight, I could’ve sworn I’d seen an odd glint in his eyes.
Maybe it’s just my guilt superimposing shit, though. Because I am lying to him about why I come to the gym.
I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that it has nothing to do with working out.
Every night, after ten, I sneak out of my house, drive two miles to the gym, and meet up with a girl.
Not just any girl either.
A girl that used to be my best friend, back when we were kids.
A girl who lost her father and family stability because my father is sometimes the legend of Mephistopheles made manifest.
A girl that lights me up so hard, like nothing else in the world can.
A girl that isn’t my girlfriend.
This is all so fucked up.