A/N As always, the credit goes to S. Meyer.

Please review and give helpful comments. I want to improve as a writer and I need your help with it! The chapters will get longer as time goes on but I am glad that I could post within the week.

Mondays always seem to creep up out of nowhere. I got up early, like I do every weekday. I showered quickly, and dressed in my favorite blue pinstripe cigarette pants and an ivory sleeveless blouse. I strapped my gold watch onto my right wrist and made sure my mother's pendant was straight on my neck.

On my way down, I grabbed my beige heels and Louis Vuitton purse. Dumping them on the dining table, I made myself breakfast. I ate quickly, standing near my window, watching boats come and go from the harbor. I called for my car to be pulled up to the front and threw on my long beige coat. I wore my shoes in the elevator and slipped on my Chanel glasses as the doors slid open.

The doorman greet me and opened the front doors to my custom Mercedes S550 coupe. As soon as I was seated, I pulled away from the curb and drove through the slick streets; the ride so smooth, it was like being on a cloud. The quiet hum of the engine soothed my nerves that started up every morning. I had to change my entire mindset and put a lock on my emotions every time I had to go to the office. Every day was a make or break. I composed myself, like usual, and relaxed back into the black leather seats.

The radio blasted some mindless song before it changed into something bearable; thankfully the AMP 103.3 station seemed to mix all genres instead with sticking with just one. Some romantic song began to play just as I was pulling onto the main street to drive into the financial district. Thoughts from the other night began to trickle into my mind. Everything that has happened to me up to this day didn't come without a price. In fact, it came with an unbearably high cost.

I didn't win some lottery or had a struck of luck that gave me this. But when your parents are killed in some freak accident just when you are about to graduate college, many things change. And being the only child with no other alive relatives, my parents' company, their legacy, fell entirely to me. This was now my company to lead; unless I wanted vultures to destroy my parents' blood, sweat, and tears of hard work.

My greatest secret may be the thing I wanted more than anything, but I probably would never get it. This world held too many secrets and people with bad intentions. There are good people around, but none enough to break down my walls. To have something so great and pure isn't earned easily. I think everyone knows that it comes with a cost. Love isn't anything easy and maybe it's not even worth it. I think to fall in love is to feel pain a thousand times more.

Ahead of me the traffic lights changed from green to red, and I slowed towards a stop. I shook away my stupid musings. I never had an answer to any of my thoughts before, so I wasn't expecting anything now, meaning there was no point of over analyzing them in the first place.

I glanced out of my window and watched people rushing all around, trying to get to work on time. But out of all these people, some always stood out to me. It was these couples. Couples that were taking their sweet time walking to work or class, stretching each minute to spend as much time as possible with each other.

With the world I live in, I don't know if any of this was true; if love was real or a figment of imagination that people fretted over for centuries. Still, that intimacy… that intimacy was something I dearly craved, yearned for.

My eyes focused followed them; my heart longing but mind trying to bury the feeling. Sometimes I think my mind always overpowered my heart; burying the yearning so deep, I doubt anyone could see it.

But this wasn't the time to let it get to me. This world may be blind to love but they were predators, skilled to look for any weaknesses. And even one small weakness could guarantee ultimate death.

I had Swan blood running through my veins. I spent my life in the best schools, went to a good university, surrounded by friends and family. Then it was just stripped from me out of nowhere. Friends dropped like flies. My only family is buried six feet underground, and I was left on my own.

I pushed myself into my parents' legacy to get away from the pain; but if I was honest to myself, I was still drowning in it. I needed new leadership after it was stripped of it so tragically. I did my best to take it on with courage and determination; refusing to let it be driven to the ground by greedy hands surrounding me.

I would rather jump off a bridge than turn my parents' blood, sweat, and hard work to people who wouldn't care if it went bankrupt or caught fire. Within three long years, I put my own blood, sweat, and tears into building an empire up to a place that it had never reached before. At the tender age of twenty one, I hid myself into this empire and now, at twenty four, I was on the verge of expanding my parent's legacy to a power they never saw before.

And today was just another one of those days where I had to work just as hard as I have been. The sky was dreary in the early light, like it usually is in the dead of the winter. The roads were slick with dirty slush and salt. Regardless of the frigid weather, life went on. The city started to bustle. People sped walked across streets with heavy traffic. They made sure to wrap themselves in heavy coats, fashionable but warm. With a scarf wrapped around their necks and glove covered hands shoved down their pockets, they rushed to their jobs. The streets of the financial district were lined with tall skyscrapers. Each one housed some of the biggest corporations of the country. Each one was intimidating in its own right.

My car revved forward, purring as I pressed the gas pedal. I drove straight for a few blocks, turned right, and then pulled into a parking garage under one of the tall skyscrapers. I opened the door, putting my Louboutin clad feet on the garage floor and stood out of the car. Stepping out of the garage doors, I walked swiftly towards the Harbor. My favorite part was the boardwalk next to the harbor.

Though it was below zero degrees, I loved the salty breeze that came my way. It helped me calm my mind. I thought about what this deal could mean. If this deal went through, I had the financing to execute my parents' dreams; I could execute all the plans my parents had made for me and my future.

Every step that I took, led me closer to it. Every step meant that I was going to be in the biggest deal of my life so far. My mind calm and my determination set, I turned back around.

The lobby was designed to be modern but I wanted traditional décor incorporated. Straight lines and sharp edges mixed with crystal chandeliers and framed pictures. But it was still an office and the need for coldness conquered the warmth. My company owned on top five floors but the rest of the thirty floors building was leased out to multiple offices and retailers.

This building was the first biggest project and though it was nothing compared to the skyscrapers painting the sky in Boston, it was my biggest achievement; so far. The monochromatic colors seemed to have bled from the walls and furniture into the clothing of the people around me. Corporate climbers wearing gray and black suits with starched white shirts. They barely had any color.

I glanced down at my blue dress. If I didn't have on my favorite gold Movado and necklace, maybe I would have fit in. But I always wore them; they were gifts from my parents. A piece of them that I could keep on me at all times. Warmth was something I didn't want to part with. Even if I didn't show it often myself.

I took the elevator on the other side of the normal elevators that reached almost every floor. This elevator was the only one that reached the executive floor. As the doors opened, I found my PA waiting for me. Rosalie Hale was the closest 'friend' I had now. She worked hard and was always there for me in the business sense. She was just a bit older than me, maybe by a year or two. She was a bit taller than me too. But we were complete opposites in any other appearance.

She was blonde with pale skin. Sweet to who's nice to her and cold to those who aren't. She always had a smile on her face. I knew for a fact that she was caring; she was always checking in on me to make sure I slept and ate like a normal person. She was new when the accident happened. And she's helped me since. We may not talk about boys, or dates but it was nice to know someone was there.

"Good Morning Isabella", Rosalie greeted me. She passed over a cup of passion tea, knowing very well that I hated coffee.

"Good Morning Rosalie," I replied, sipping on the hot tea. I walked towards the back of the floor, where my large corner office waited. Rosalie filled me in on what my day was going to be like.

"You're busy today. You have a meeting with McCarty Construction as well as Whitlock Designs. McCarty at 10 a.m. Whitlock is a video chat in the conference room at 2 p.m., just in time for you to each lunch" she smiled sweetly, sarcasm seeping through the front.

I rolled my eyes mentally, knowing that losing any form of decorum is risky. "I'm assuming they want to discuss the new site in Cambridge."

"You assumed correct." She said just as we reached my office door. I stopped just outside of it, placing my hand on the handle. An understated green light came on, scanning my hand. My body blocked anyone trying to see my hand on the door. A subtle click came about and the door opened itself; all within a second.

I walked around my desk and sat in my high back leather chair. I clicked the space bar on the keyboard in front of me. Every single shade in the room drew up, revealing entire walls of glass windows. Rosalie sat across the desk in the low leather chair, tapping away at her tablet.

I logged into my computer and checked the emails that I ignored all weekend. They were the usual business regards and from managers checking from each level of the company. I made sure to keep a tight leash around everyone. Glancing quickly at Rosalie, I made sure she was busy before opening the drawer to my right. I grabbed the notebook that lay under all of the standard books about real estate.

I quickly read through it again, like I did every morning in the office. It was my father's journal. He wrote it the last year he was alive by the dates. For a while it didn't seem like there was anything unusual about it. I found it in the drawer, under the same books on my first day here.

But then as I read through it over and over, I found something off about it. It hid something in its inked words. A week after I figured something was different about it, I began to study it every morning. I made small notes trying to find any code.

But my father was clever. He didn't hide them in letters or in the ink itself. He hid them in the words and sentences, itself. I just had to figure out a meaning. Three years and I still wasn't any step closer besides figuring out that the journal was coded itself. Charlie Swan was a strange but cunning man. I hoped I inherited come of that.

I didn't know for sure but I had a gut feeling that whatever caused the 'accident' that killed my parents, was something to do with the company. I didn't know what or how. Everything since the accident and I came on board seemed squeaky clean. No missing money, no major lawsuits, or losses.

It's been driving me mad for the last 3 years. But I needed to figure this out.

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