Chronicles of Chuck Bass
"Prologue"
Charles Bass was man enough to admit he had made a few mistakes in life, if not a few many mistakes in his lifetime. But he had absolutely no intentions what so ever of making the same mistakes twice. With a sly, determined smile he snapped his hand crafted seat belt in place and settled into the flight that would take him to Paris.
Not ever in his life had he been so determined to achieve a goal - usually they were handed to him on a sliver platter handcrafted with his name in gold outlining. A goal some would think was impossible, with all the obstacles he was about to face. But he was a man with a plan, with a destiny.
As his private Bass jet cleared the New York runway and tilted its wings towards Europe, he had settled back into his seat and remembered the first time he had seen Blair Waldorf on the campus of the very fine kindergarten they were both attending so many years ago; the mere sight of her had taken his breath away - although it gained it right back when she ran into the arms of her best friend Nathanial Archibald . It hadn't been like him to fall hard and fast, but against her he hadn't stood a mere chance at all. No other woman - besides the slight in counter with Elle a bit into his teens - had taken such a hold of his mind and body like she had. She has completely - despite his pleas - captured his heart and left her signature Chanel scent.
During his teenage years, Chuck had been determined to one day have even more wealth and power at his fingertips, determined that nothing and no one would get in his way of achieving that, especially a woman who at that time were just his little play toys. He had pretty much kept that resolve until his junior year, when he had finally met the 'real' Blair Waldorf in the back of his limo. She had been so wrapped in this love of Nate that he wasn't even sure she would change, though he had been lost the first time they had ever made love. That day she'd become as basic to him as breathing.
For the longest while he'd thought he could simply just add her to the list of things he wanted in life, which was why he had married her right after she finished her final year at NYU. He soon realized that marriage to Blair was more of a challenge than he'd anticipated. He could not get her to understand the driving force of his need to make it to the top at all cost of everything to make sure he was nothing like his father. The driving force to make sure it didn't include having a baby that she so desperately wanted. Their marriage hadn't worked out and after four years it had ended. That was a huge mistake, he should have never let it get that bad.
He had been such as fool, an idiot , a basstard as his class mates would call him from time to time to let her walk out of his life, an even bigger fool to have placed more emphasis and importance on making it to the top than holding their marriage together. And the main reason he'd walked away so easily was that the amount of love he'd felt for her had disturbed him. He had never counted on loving any woman so intensely that it made him lose his focus.
It had taken him two lonely years after their divorce to accept just hose much he had loved her and that success was nothing without the love of his life. He wanted and needed her back in his life. For him the tragedy of Lilly Van der Woodsen's sudden and quick death, served as a blunt reminder that you could be here one day and gone the next something Blair had tried so hard to get into his head when his father passed away. That when you left this world you couldn't take anything with you, especially not the material things you worked hard to accumulate.
He had been in Tokyo that day for a meeting with some of the head of Bass Industries. But a phone call that morning from his office in New York where his long time best friend Nate was quite frankly something that hit home for him. That had been his first wake-up call to reexamine who he was and what he was. When he had seen her show up at Lilly's funeral, she was breathtaking with his skinny strapped black dress, heels and Audrey Hepburn style hat. He smiled for the first real time in years, and when she looked his way the imagines of everything they've been through ran through his head. Later that night when he went to go look for her, she had already caught a plane back to Paris. In the end he'd decided he didn't like himself very much. At twenty-seven he'd realized that his priorities were screwed up and knew he had to take whatever measures necessary to get them back in order if possible.
He was no longer the workaholic he had used to be; no longer endlessly driven by success. The one and only thing that drove him now was the tremendous task he faces of convincing Blair to give him another chance, after the countless chances she had given him all these years. And if given that chance, he would give her every damn thing she had ever asked for. The honeymoon they'd never gotten around to taking, the baby she'd always wanted and more time for them to spend together since he'd always been constantly on the go. A part of him refused to believe it was too late, that things were completely over between them.
So he was headed to Paris with a plan because Bass men always had plans. And it was a plan he intended to make work, by any means necessary.