DISCLAIMER: I do not own Twilight or any of the characters associated with the Twilight Universe. I'm just playing around. The only thing that belongs to me are my original characters and the plot. No copyright infringement is intended with the writing of this story.

CHAPTER 01
Worst Present Ever

Darkness surrounded me, yet I heard a very familiar beeping sound. The high pitched noise resonated through my skull and caused my brain to feel like mash. I groaned and tried to lift my lids, but their heaviness caught me off guard until the memories of this evening came crashing back.

I had accepted a contract from the Volturi. They were the top of the top of organized crime families here in Chicago and we had been taking contracts from them for years. Three brothers ran the family after their father passed, but everyone knew Aro, the eldest, was the one actually in charge. And he was the one to approach me with this job. I accepted it, seeing no harm in me and my cousins taking out a low level councilman. I was wrong.

So very wrong.

Aro apparently left out some very important details because, even after all our scouting, I was still blind sided with the amount of security this pudgy little man had. All I remembered was being tasered to the tenth degree and blacking out. Next thing I knew, I was here, with a raging headache and that insistent fucking beeping that would not stop annoying me!

I finally pulled my eyes fully open. "Fuck…" The word fell from my lips in one long, groggy syllable. I kind of wished I kept my eyes closed. Apparently Congressman Pudgy's bodyguards thought it would be funny to taser me and then tie me to a metal chair in the center of a deserted room. Well, deserted except for the nice clock that was situated directly in front of me. And was that explosives attached to the numbers that were slowly decreasing? Yes, you say? Fan-fucking-tastic!

I let out another loud, guttural groan and threw my head back; which was a big mistake because the pounding of my headache started up again in full force. Well, the clock read nine minutes and counting, so I decided I had better start trying to get out of my bindings, which were extremely tight and seemed a tad bit of an over kill.

I shimmied left and then right, back and forth until I felt the rope slightly give way around my legs and arms. After my right leg had a bit more room, I knocked the heel of my boot against the chair's metal leg and watched in relief as the small blade I kept concealed automatically extended. Another knock and the handle extended just pass my knee. I twisted my wrist, which was currently strapped to the arm of the chair, back and forth, and reached my fingers towards the handle. With no distance to spare, I pinched the tip and pulled the blade from my boot.

I made quick work of my wrist restraints, spinning the blade to slide it between my skin and the ropes and made quick slashing movements. The rope gave way quickly and I momentarily wondered if my elusive captors were on a budget and couldn't afford the good quality rope you found in your local Home Depot.

I shrugged at my observation and continued to remove myself of the restraints. With a quick glance up, I noticed I was down to six minutes and eighteen seconds. I was making good time. Just as I reached down to cut at the restraints holding my ankles to the legs of the chair, I heard the thunderous sound of helicopter blades slashing through the air and it was approaching quickly.

I began to hum the fated song as I slowly heard the beat to My Maria by Brooks & Dunn competing with the sound of the helicopter. Just as I freed myself and stood up, a beautiful piece of machinery made itself known through the window and my modelesque cousin was standing inside of it, looking annoyed beyond all hell.

Rosalie Cullen, younger twin of Jasper Cullen, was a force to be reckoned with. She was our computer and gadgets girl who loved to get down and dirty under the hood of any vehicle.

I gave Rosalie a cheeky grin and watched as she shot the glass out of the large wall to wall window before literally stepping off of the helicopter and into the degrading building with a nonchalance attitude that rivaled my own. She slid her favorite Glock 17 into the holster on her hip and marched towards me like a woman on a mission.

"What the fuck, Junior?!" Ah, so that's how it was. She only called me Junior, or anything other than Boss while we were on a mission, when she was either extremely pissed or extremely worried. "You went off coms for four hours and I couldn't get your tracker to register until twenty minutes ago!" Worried it is.

I nodded solemnly and wiped the grin off my face at Rose's explanation. "Sorry, Thorn. I was tasered and just woke up here a couple of minutes ago. Speaking of minutes…" The beeping from the wonderful present those bastard bodyguards had left me was starting to make itself known again. "We have about," I glanced to the mocking red numbers on the clock, "five minutes and forty-eight seconds before this entire floor blows."

Her face twisted into an unusual expression that made her look like she just took a huge whiff of sour milk as we approached the contraption. Jasper had pulled Maria, his helicopter, back up to the window and was now yelling instructions through it. "Hurry up, you two. I'm in restricted air space!"

I held up my finger, telling him silently to hold the fuck on for a second and went back to mine and Rose's task at hand. There was a multitude of colored wires, but two stuck out at me the most. "Which do you think? Red or green? Red… or green?"

She looked down once before nodding nearly instantly. "Red."

Her decision was made so quickly it actually startled me and I just had to know the reasoning for it; life and death situation or not. "Okay, Rose, enlighten me. Why are you so sure we should cut the red one?"

Rose glanced up at me with a look that screamed 'duh'. "Because roses are red. I'm Rose, the wire is red, and so we cut the fucker."

I baulked for a moment before shaking my head slightly to clear it of the confusion she caused. "If that's the logic we're going with, my eyes are green so why don't we cut the green one."

She growled under her breath and gave a more pronounced huff before shrugging. "Do whatever you want, Boss. Just hurry. Jay needs us out of here fast; as in yesterday."

The indicator showed we were at five minutes and thirty-three seconds. With a groan, I nodded. "If we die, I'm going to kill you." Rose let out a light chuckle as I slid my knife under the red wire. With a quick flick of my wrist, the wire split in half and the timer died out at exactly five minutes and thirty seconds. An 'I told you so' smile was spreading across her face and I was just about to wipe it off for her when the red numbers flashed back on, minus five minutes. We now had less than thirty seconds to do one of two things.

We could try the green wire and hope to all hell that it didn't subtract another five minutes we didn't have or make a mad dash for the window and Jasper's beloved Maria. "Fuck it!" I grabbed Rose's arm and spun on my heel, feeling that door number two was our better option.

Our thunderous foot falls competed with the blades of the helicopter that was hovering just outside of the window and with each step we took I heard another annoying beep letting me know that one more second had passed. We reached the window and I allowed Rose ahead of me so she could jump first, my family's safety always at the forefront of my mind, before quickly vaulting across the gap and following her into the safety of the back of the air craft.

Jasper pulled the lever and I felt us dip down slightly before being jerked to the side, away from the offending building and the world's worst present a bodyguard could leave a guy. I continued to count along with the beeps I could no longer hear the further we pulled away. "Five, four, three… Brace yourselves, one!"

Maria lurched forward with the force of the explosion as Rose and I stuck our heads out of the open door just in time to see the abandoned apartment building's top floor be engulfed in flames. The windows shattered in a miniature blast and the entire building began to shake and crumble.

I pulled us back inside and watched as Jasper wrestled his machine back under control, weaving between tree tops and pulling us up to avoid the roofs of the surrounding abandoned buildings. Rose and I slid headsets on and watched in silence as the homeless and runaways emerged from the bowls of the run down area to see what the commotion was about before diving back into their hiding spots as fire trucks and emergency service vehicles made their way through the cramped streets.

"So," Jasper's calm voice came through the speakers in my headset. "Nan expects us to be at Sunday lunch in about four hours."

My hand slid down my face in slight frustration as I groaned. "Really? It'll take us that long just to get home and land Maria."

He chuckled lightly and I could see his wavy hair bob as he nodded his head. "Yup," he drawled out.

"Fine. Take us back to Nan's. The last thing I need is Ruthie Cullen calling me and demanding why the three of us weren't on time for Sunday lunch."

That earned me a solid laugh from both my cousins as Jasper put us on course back to the Cullen Estate. Surely our parents would already be there, which meant they would want to know what we were up to last night and why we probably looked a bit crazed. I wasn't sure about my cousins, but I was still riding the high of the adrenaline from the building that just disintegrated mere moments ago. Without an outlet for all of this energy I was either going to go crazy or completely crash. Just thinking about it pushed my body to produce more of the chemical enhancer I thrived on during our contracts.

Spike of the adrenaline.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter was born from a story generator. I had to have a character tied to a chair, a helicopter in the distance, and an inevitable explosion. After I started writing, an entire story formed in my head. Hopefully it falls together as I see it. Read, review, let me know what you think.