Prologue

BPOV

It was never supposed to happen this way. I was never supposed to be on the front every tabloid in America and across the world.

Yes, I wasn't as bad as Monica Lewinsky. I didn't have an affair with the President.

But I did sleep with his son. His married Senator son who was billed to be a future President. I just ruined a political dynasty that rivalled that of the Kennedys.

I was only meant to help with President Cullen's second campaign. His second Presidential term, where he would be able to carry on the work I believed in. The work which made me believe in politics. I ruined that too.

I don't know how it all happened really.

Edward was the most attractive, most charismatic man I had ever met. He won over the hearts of so many people by kissing babies, smiling while he held his perfect wife next to him. His wife who was a real bitch in the background, someone who forced Edward into the limelight when all he wanted was a normal life, or as normal as a Cullen could get.

No wonder I fell I guess. Charisma, charm plus a sop story really holds someone attention. All that time spent on the trail, long bus rides playing cards and trying to keep each other company while spent away from home. He missed his home, I missed mine, we both loved reading, had the same books as our favourites. Small touches and stolen glances started to become more frequent and then one night, while his wife was drinking in the bar, he found himself outside my room.

And I couldn't resist him that night.

Or the nights of the three months that followed.

I couldn't say no to him, I couldn't think when he was around. So the times without protection, in bathroom stalls, damn it, the time in the fucking Oval Office happened.

And the times without protect lead to me finding myself pregnant.

And then a tape leaked. The cameras in the Oval Office caught us, and someone got a hold of it. A political rival probably, someone who wanted to take out the Cullen dynasty. They weren't only political movers and shakers, they were heads of corporations, heads of charities, people who could be seriously hurt by the fact that Edward Cullen fucked a recently graduated Political aid on the Presidential desk. On his father's desk.

Whore. That was the favourite word about me at the moment. Gold Digger. Slut. Home wrecker. British tabloids liked using the word Slag.

My blurred naked body was all over the internet. Pornography websites were showing the video, and the comments were getting worse by the minute. People who knew my parents were saying things on Facebook, people I went to high school and college with were saying that I was easy and it wasn't hard to get me into bed which was in no way true.

I was the evil, and his wife was a saint. His wife who was awful to him, who slapped him when she thought no one was watching.

I sound like a jealous mistress but I wasn't.

Well I was. She got to be his wife, no his dirty little secret who he met in dark corners and rooms to feel up. She got to be wrapped up next to him at night, got to kiss him in public while he left me after he had his way.

And I should want to hate him. I was pregnant with his child and he knew it but he stood in front of cameras denying our affair. He said the one moment in the Oval Office was one of weakness. He had a fight with his wife but it was no excuse, he shouldn't have taken advantage of a girl who had a crush on him. His wife agreed I pined after him, that I was inappropriate around him, tried to find any moment with him I could. And he just nodded with her, agreeing that I was the one who forced the matter.

And that was easier to believe. Edward Cullen was a family man, he loved his nieces and nephews and he made it public that he wished to have children of his own. He stood beside his father and his siblings on that day of President Cullen's inauguration, dressed in a crisp suit with his new wife on his arm.

This all despite the fact that he threw me on the table. The cameras couldn't pick up when he said that he loved me, that there was no one else in the world he would rather be with or that he would leave his wife.

I wasn't stupid enough to believe he would leave his wife for me, he needed to look like a family man in order to get elected and to do that he had to have a successful marriage. But the little romantic in me believed it for the moments we were together. I never felt like there was another person in the world except me and him in those moments when we were together.

Even in the brief moments where we stole glances across the office or as I stood at the edge of stages, in those moments I felt like I was the only person in the world to him.

He told me he loved me. And I was stupid enough to believe him, I was stupid enough to fall for him to.

And even though I should want to hate him for denying me. For not acknowledging the foetus in me that shared half of his DNA. This foetus that I was going to abort before this landed on the news and now I couldn't leave my apartment without being harassed and followed to the store. They scrutinised what I bought. I didn't want to be the whore and the baby killer in the newspapers, my dreams of being in politics were ruined already, and the American people were to split on Pro-Choice and Pro-Life to accept me. I was already a whore. I hadn't told Edward I wanted an abortion either. I was going to talk with him this weekend about it, but now that was ruined.

I flicked through the news channels, trying to find something other than this on the news. Hoping that maybe for once they would want to acknowledge genocides across the world or look at the refugee crisis. Some white girl who had sex with the world's most powerful mans married son was more important than those issues.

Presidents Cullen's campaign was ruined now that he had to cover for his son and me. He was kind to me before, showed me the ropes, told me I had promise in politics and I could be a real player. In front of or behind the scenes. That's what he said to me, the President of the United States, the most powerful man in all the world said I had promise in politics.

And now everything is ruined.

Now I have a baby I have to have. I could give it up for adoption, but my mother told me that she was going to give me up and she told me she couldn't when she first held me. And I don't think I could whatever baby I was having because the father I loved so dearly. That baby was the last thing I had left of the best months of my life except the headlines and the magazines.

My hand fell on my stomach and I could feel the tears leaking out of my eyes as I caught the same speech of him denying me again.

It had been three days since the tape surfaced. It took him those three days to issue a statement and in those three days I had heard nothing from him. Nothing at all from him, not even a text to ask how I was doing. I was trying not to think about the fact he would have been told not to contact me because his phone would be monitored. Well, I hoped that was the reason but it was probably because I'd become too much trouble to justify fucking anymore.

That's all we had according to him. One fuck that meant nothing, a moment of weakness that I allowed. The bathroom stalls, the hotel rooms, my bed which I couldn't look at anymore were nothing and they never even happened according to him. I felt like I was going insane because I wanted to scream that it was more, that the one time in the Oval Office wasn't nothing, it was one stolen moment amongst many. That he told me he loved me every time.

That the first time he came to my hotel room, he pushed me up against the wall and told me he couldn't stay away a moment longer, he then kissed me with so much force and passion that I could feel tears streaming down my face as I returned that kiss. I wanted to scream at the press that that first time we has sex, he murmured into my neck that he loved me and that I was the only one to understand him and see the real him.

I fell on my side and let the tears stream out of my eyes watching him deny everything while his wife called me a whore and portrayed herself as the injured party. She was the bitch. She hated Edward and only stayed with him for his money and she was known for having sex with the clerks who worked for Edward. Edward looked the other way even though it hurt him until he didn't love her anymore and it couldn't hurt him.

I clutched my stomach and pulled my quilt over my head, to try and block out all the sounds because as soon as I turned off my TV I knew I could hear the press outside the building talking to the news cameras and telling the sordid story of my affair. It was better to listen to the news because at least I could be pathetic enough to see Edwards face.

The sounds were muffled enough for me to eventually cry myself to sleep. I knew that I couldn't do or say anything because I was nobody. I was nothing compared to the mass appeal and strength of the Cullen family. They owned the press so anything I said would be warped.

Edward was only a victim of a temptress, at fault but not the evil in this because I was. That why I was all over the screen and the magazines and only a small amount of focus on him.

My phone woke me up in the middle of the night, it was lit up and buzzing and without a thought I answered it.

"Bella?"

My heart stopped. That voice that had denied me was strained. I looked up to the 24 hour news reel, it was four in the morning.

"I know you don't want to talk to me at the moment…" he sighed and I could imagine him ruffling his hand through his hair, a tell of him being stressed. "Bella, I need to talk to you, please can you meet me somewhere?"

"No," I whispered, my voice hoarse from lacking of talking for three days and constant crying. I hoped these hormones wouldn't take over more than they had.

"Bella, I know you've been watching the news… I know that what I said would hurt… I need to see you Bella, please meet me somewhere." He begged.

I felt my chest twist. "No." I repeated. "I can't leave my home Edward. I can't open my windows. I'm in a prison, I can't even go and get groceries without being followed." I felt my eyes tear up, "Even if I could look at you right now, I can't come and see you. Even if I could face you after you told the entire world that I was a desperate little girl with a crush, I can't even go and get my mail, so how could I get to you."

There was silence for a few minutes and I could just hear him breathing on the other end. "How… how are you… you know, with the…" He timidly asked without asking. Which was out of character when he was so strong and bold and confident.

"Nothing's happened. No one knows. Don't worry. No one will ever know this baby is yours," I wiped the tears from my cheeks. "I won't bother you anymore, I'll go back home and remain under the radar. Everyone thinks I'm a whore so."

Edward interrupted me: "You're not a whore Bella."

"But everyone thinks it. I had an affair with a married man. I'm now pregnant with that man's child. I'd rather live my life with everyone thinking I slept around with dozens of men than be that girl who had a married man's baby." I sniffled, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. "You shouldn't call me anymore. You shouldn't even think about me, just let me disappear and you can have your life back."

"Bella, I don't want that." He pleaded, "Just come and talk to me, I'll send a car and we can go somewhere private. We'll sort this out, I can get a discrete doctor and get rid of the baby. I can put you up somewhere, and we'll wait a while, lie low and it can all go back to normal."

My heart smashed into pieces. Back to normal meant he stayed married and I became his mistress, put up in some apartment so I couldn't do anything but be there when he needed someone to stroke his ego and fuck him.

"I'll sort the baby out. You can go back to normal but I'm leaving D.C. Don't look for me because I don't want to be found. I'm changing my number. I'm running from this and you can't stop me. Soon things will die down if they can't find anything or me. And then you can go back to being senator and go on to being President while I feel stupid for my mistakes and get a little job somewhere. We can forget this ever happened and you can go back to Tanya, knock her up and make pretty baby campaign winners. Please leave me alone."

I ended the call before he could reply and threw my phone against the wall. He wouldn't dare come here because that would give him the rope to hang his career. I could leave in the next few hours. I never told him where my mom lived because she moved so often with Phil, she also had a different last name so she would be harder to find.

I would become a ghost in D.C.

I had to become one.

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