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Alle Kapitel von After They Buried Me: Kapitel 1 – Kapitel 9

9 Kapitel

Chapter 1

"Enough. Connor's coming home tomorrow."And stop the compound. He's our own son, and he's suffered long enough."Once Connor's settled, we'll make it up to him."My father sighed.He never noticed that I was awake in the hospital bed.The cold went through me all at once.They'd been poisoning me. For Connor.Three years.One "treatment compound" they'd paid a fortune for.It had taken a six-foot-two man and ground him down to barely 100 pounds.Every time I crashed and they brought me back, I'd bring up close to half the blood in my body.And every time, white as a sheet, I'd tell them not to worry.Looking back now, they must have thought that was hilarious.The rust taste in my mouth got stronger."It's all right, Dad."My fiancee, Vivienne Whitfield, spoke up."The compound does a lot of damage, I know."But I got Gabriel a protective antidote a long time ago. As long as he keeps taking it, nothing permanent is going to happen to him."Besides, we'd never have go

Chapter 2

"Gabriel, how could you just stop your medication? Do you want to die?"When I came around again, Vivienne was standing over me, furious.My parents were at the foot of the bed, just as unhappy. "We had to hear it from a nurse. How can you care so little about your own life? What are we supposed to do if something happens to you?"They looked frightened.Something warm moved through the frozen place in my chest.Maybe some part of them did care.Then a nurse came in with a syringe.I read the label.It wasn't the antidote keeping me alive.It was the compound."Do we have to?"I looked up at them and asked it quietly.Once that went in, I wouldn't have much time left.A month, maybe.A week.Or a day."The doctor says one more course and you'll stabilize."Then we can take you home."My mother sat down on the edge of the bed, all tenderness."Hurry up and get better, Gabriel."I'm still waiting on a real wedding."Vivienne smiled too.I didn't say anything.I jus

Chapter 3

Noise woke me the next morning.I got dressed and went down.Vivienne had workmen pulling out every raised threshold in Moreland House.So my chair could get through."You're up."She turned around and smiled at me."Once you're all the way better we'll put them back. Deal?"The smile was so bright it left me off balance.She and Connor had grown up together.But she was the one who confessed to me.It happened by accident. I came by right after she'd put her car into something.The engine wouldn't turn over and she was standing there crying.I'd apprenticed at a garage once, back when I was scraping by.I rolled up my sleeves and had her running again in a few minutes.She said it was the first time anyone had put themselves in front of a problem for her without being asked.We dated. We fell in love.I thought it would just keep going like that."What? Why are you looking at me like that?"Vivienne smiled sweetly and pulled my hand into hers."My husband-to-be is d

Chapter 4

I turned my head.Even the inside of my nose tasted like rust."Your brother's been home a few days and you already can't stand to have him here!"For fifteen years he was the one taking care of us in your place. Even if you won't do it for your mother and me, you don't get to destroy him!"My father stood there pointing at me, shouting.My mother's face was nothing but disappointment."Gabe, you're both my children, but you were wrong to do this."Apologize to Connor. Say you won't do it again, and we'll let it go."Connor came and stood right in front of me.Where they couldn't see, he raised an eyebrow at me, enjoying himself.He was waiting for me to confess to something I'd never done."And if I don't?"Will you drug me again and put me back in the hospital?"I laughed, softly.Every face in front of me went white."What are you talking about..."My father said it with the guilt all over him."So you're wrong and you still won't admit it. Stay in your room and thi

Chapter 5

"What does that mean?"What do you mean, there was no money for his medication?"My parents had turned to look at her too.Vivienne couldn't produce a word.When they understood I'd died on that table because nobody bought the medicine, their world caved in."Why didn't anyone tell us?"I'd have sold blood. I'd have found the money!"My mother went down on the floor, wailing.My father's eyes were bloodshot. "Viv, you're the one who told us nothing would happen to him."Why is Gabriel dead? He was our son."It broke him.He'd never once imagined actually losing me. When they found me, the guilt and the joy had both been real.But being glad didn't undo fifteen years of raising Connor.Connor always knew the right thing to say. He fussed over them, asked after them, made them feel good.Not me. I worked, quietly, and carried the family, quietly.They hadn't set out to throw me away.They just wanted both sons in the house.What they forgot was that Connor being in it wa

Chapter 6

Every Moreland asset in my name went to the foundation.Moreland House with it.All of them had to move out."Is there something wrong with Gabriel? Fine, he died. What right did he have to give it all away? Who did he think he was?"Connor stood outside with a couple of bags of his own clothes, stunned.He'd thought coming back to the Morelands meant taking his life back.And it had gone exactly the way he expected.The real heir dies, and everything is his.He just never counted on me getting there first."Connor, how can you talk like that? What do you mean, fine, he died?"My parents, out on the curb with him, couldn't believe what they were hearing.The Connor they knew was gentle and well behaved. He'd never said anything that ugly in front of them.He was done pretending."Mom, Dad, am I wrong?"What gave Gabriel the right to liquidate the whole Moreland estate? Forget everything else, did he ever think about how the two of you are supposed to live?"His voice had

Chapter 7

Three years later, Lindencrest.A private jet came down at Lindencrest International.I moved fast through the terminal while my assistant ran the day's schedule in my ear.In a few short years the companies I ran abroad had gotten very big, very quickly.I'd come home for one piece out of a collection.A gift for one of my larger overseas clients.Dana told me I'd been unconscious in Lydora for the better part of a year.Dozens of emergency surgeries dragged me back off the line.That email I'd sent overseas without any real hope was what saved my life.Treatment like that comes with a bill.Almost everything from the first half of my life was wiped.I remembered, faintly, that I'd had a family.If I pushed at it, something went through my skull like a needle.The biggest auction in Lindencrest, and everyone in the room was somebody's heir.I'd barely walked in before I felt several stares burning into me."Doesn't he look exactly like the Moreland boy who died?"Someb

Chapter 8

The surgeries in Lydora had genuinely taken part of my memory.But I keep a journal.It didn't take much to work out how far gone I must have been to put my life on an email from strangers overseas.Vivienne, whose people had just turned up my current address, didn't get to enjoy it long.A news story landed on her phone.It was the truth about that grotesque pile-on three years ago.Connor had staged the whole thing.He'd even paid off Roz to go into my room and upload the post from the IP there.So that I'd take the blame.So the whole family would believe I was going after him.Vivienne remembered coming at me, righteous, demanding an answer.She remembered using the worst things that had ever happened to me to pull the mob off Connor.And she'd done it anyway.She'd promised she was going to stay with me.Remembering the look on my face, Vivienne wanted to put a knife in herself.And there was more.The file also had the truth about Moreland Industrial.The company

Chapter 9

It was footage of me being beaten. Of everything that had been done to me.The man I used to be was afraid of hurting them, so he never went into how bad it had actually been.They thought I'd eaten badly and dressed badly.It never crossed their minds that I'd been living in hell.Connor spent his first twenty years wrapped in money.My first twenty went by in beatings, in work nobody should do, in fear.It was only after the Vances died that I was found and brought back to the Morelands.I thought I finally had a mom and dad who'd love me.Instead, I'd found a deeper hole.Watching the skin-and-bone kid on the screen, both of them were shaking.They finally understood how much I hated them.And what kind of parents they'd been.They couldn't bring themselves to come near me again.But every year on my birthday, something they'd made by hand arrived.Sometimes expensive, sometimes not.Always everything they had to give.I never took one.I told Dana to do whatever sh

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