Systematic Siege by N. Isabelle Blanco

Author:N. Isabelle Blanco [Blanco, N. Isabelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

chapter 46

i didn’t sleep for shit last night. It’s 6:45am and I’m walking around my kitchen like a fucking zombie, lost in the chaos and mind-numbing need for respite.

I can’t stop stressing about my mom.

Sadly—and much to my shame—that isn’t the real reason I haven’t slept.

Richard hates me. I know that now. His tone made it clear.

And why he hates me is eating at me. The questions. The unexpected pain.

I destroyed Drew once. Richard “won’t let me do it again”.

Stephen’s drunken taunts echo in my head, telling me that I helped him more than anyone and didn’t even know it. That his revenge against Drew was almost complete and it was all because of me.

My hands are shaking so hard I almost drop my mug full of coffee.

Drew let Kaylee record that video. He planned the whole thing to help his girl embarrass me, right? They had a twisted relationship. She would cheat on him and he had cheated on her. It’s not so far-fetched that she agreed to let him do it.

All of them went down for it. Drew, Kaylee, Barnard, and Stephen. Barnard once told me the only reason he and Stephen went down is because Kaylee and Drew teamed up to blame them for it. That they were truly innocent.

All of them kicked out of school days before graduation. Family money allowed them to still get their certificates and whatnot, but they couldn’t attend the ceremony.

And all because of Drew.

Fuck. I’m back to calling him Drew?

Of course I am.

Because I’m starting to realize what an idiot I might be. There’s more to what happened back then and I never dug deeper. I just let myself believe the worst about Andrew Drevlow because of who his father was.

But how could he be innocent? He confessed. Told the cops and the school board he was in on it.

He gave out names. Including his girlfriend’s name.

Yet, Stephen’s drunk, goading voice reaches out from the past, giving me nothing but doubt. “Destroyed. Because of you. He was never going to survive not having you and now that’s obvious.”

The newspaper articles join in, adding to the mindfuck. Drew almost died a year-in-a-half after losing me. No one knows what caused the car wreck, but a few articles speculated that it was intentional.

Bile rises up my throat. Dear Lord, did he try to kill himself?

My phone starts vibrating against the counter with an incoming call. When I see the name across the screen, I snatch it up. “Hello?”

“Good morning Ms. Berkman. I wanted to take the time to call you personally.”

“What’s wrong Dr. Aaberg? What’s happened to my mom?” One would think that, after years of this constant vigilance, of the brutal anxiety of waiting for the end, I would be used to this by now.

I’m not. My mom dying isn’t an option for me. I’m nowhere near coming to terms with it.

“She did take a turn for the worse but we’ve stabilized her.”

I exhale in relief.

“Her right lung collapsed last night—”

“What?” I almost screech.

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