A/N: Thanks so much to everyone who is joining us in this story! I am very much enjoying writing it. Thanks especially to those who are reviewing! Y'all are making me smile a LOT. Thanks so much!

With additional gratitude (yes, I'm thanking you again!) to anndeveria for continuing to be my expert on things Italian!

4. Fourth Year: 2021

Carlisle POV

"I am so sorry to have had to ask you to do this." Bella embraced me briefly and whispered her apologies in my ear. The breath of them barely slipped past the Crest of Helix to enter the auditory canal. "But I need you to describe the layout of the Volturi's living space. Where I would find them, were I to look."

Appalled and frightened on her behalf, I moved abruptly away from her. A flash from her golden-amber eyes – pleading, warning, annoyed – reminded me to throw up blinding thoughts to block my concerns from Edward. Africa. Esme in the tree. Meeting Felix. That was fine for Edward, but behind those thoughts, I was borderline frantic. Oh, Isabella. What are you planning? Aro is ancient and powerful, my daughter. Edward glanced our way, his eyes narrow and seeking. I nodded at him with a tight smile. "Now is not the time for your studies," I said out loud. "But perhaps later, you might go hunting with me? Then," I went on with another, more natural smile for my son, "we won't bore everyone with details of dusty old books."

She flashed me a bright, relieved smile. "Thanks, Dad!" It was the title she gave me when especially happy – or especially eager to twist me around her littlest finger. It never failed to work. "We'll have to do that soon."

Edward and Esme had been having their own welcome here at the airport while we waited for our luggage to work its way down the carousel. "You'd think," I muttered to Edward as we came together and shook hands, "that in this advanced time there would be a more efficient method to return luggage from an aircraft."

"The more things change, the more they remain the same," he quipped, a small smile on his face that didn't reach his eyes. "Esme said she had gifts for everyone and that Bella was offering to have us take them around on Spring Break to deliver. Like some kind of ... Souvenir Santa, she called it."

My son didn't need to focus his gaze upon me; after more than a century, I knew how it felt when he was watching my reactions carefully. I pictured him and Bella in a Santa and Elf combination that made me smile, anyway. Edward snorted softly as the lights flashed to announce that the luggage was beginning its trip around the carousel.

After gathering the luggage and taking care of the various bits of miscellany necessary to gain freedom from an airport these days, we made our way with pretended luggage-awkwardness to the parking garage, loaded everything up in Edward's latest investment in European Automobile Manufacturing. He courteously opened the passenger door for Bella, but she forestalled him.

"No, let Esme sit with you, Edward. We haven't been together in so long. I'll sit back with Carlisle."

Edward didn't seem to bat an eyelash as he nodded coolly and complied. With trepidation, I joined my daughter in the plush seats. I did enjoy well-tanned leather. I always had.

I continued to keep a running commentary in the forefront of my brain. Again, time spent living with Edward had been instructive, but Bella's determination to do whatever it was she was planning to do had made this more important than mere misdirection.

Bella at one point sent me what I would deem a "significant look" but I managed – thankfully – to delay her code-like banter. Her freedom from Edward's accessibility to her mind would make her careless in such a situation, I could understand. But if she truly wanted her husband ignorant of this – and she and I had discussed this at some unusual length, through one means and another – she had to play by the rules the rest of us had to follow.

Edward didn't speak about anything more pressing than the weather until we pulled up in the familiar drive in Hanover. Not in the garage, which I didn't understand at first, until he pulled Bella into his side and the two of them tugged Esme and myself into a small, embracing huddle. Then he murmured, "Just reminding you that we know that our communications are compromised. Jasper called to tell us someone had been in their place in New York, leaving his scent all over the place, including the bedroom. Bella and I haven't detected a scent here, but if you, Carlisle, catch a whiff of someone you remember, we need to know, all right?"

Esme tensed under my arm and I saw her grip Bella's hand tightly. "Do we need to relocate, then? We were planning on that house in Montana for the next three years until we were going to –"

Edward interrupted with a shake of his head and moved a little. "No. And we have neighbors, so let's just take it easy with the luggage. So," he went on, "with the Volturi – had to be, we think, since it wasn't anyone Jasper has ever come across and the intruder didn't steal anything – prepared to be so invasive, Jasper and I think that we need to continue to maintain an evident distance."

"But you came to pick us up," I remarked, hefting a suitcase as if it weighed as much as my wife. As if I were a human and it weighed as much as my wife. "Won't this make them suspicious?"

Edward exchanged a look with Bella, but I couldn't interpret it. "I lost a bet," he murmured, his voice almost too intimate for me to hear without grinning. "And Bella missed you. She's missed all of our family a great deal." Layers were in his voice that I hadn't heard from him before our diaspora.

"She's not used to our isolated lifestyle the way the rest of us have had to be, over the decades," Esme said, shouldering her purse and wrapping an arm around Bella's shoulders. "I'm sure I'd be ready to brave the wrath of the Volturi too, if I were in her shoes."

Bella grimaced but sighed audibly. "Sorry. I'll try to do better. I swear I will."

Edward? Listening?

My son nodded infinitesimally as he moved aside to let us into the house we all used to share, years ago. Esme and I inhaled deeply as a matter of instinct, really. It was strange, re-entering a dwelling that had been home for years. "Still smells rather the same," I commented to Bella, who was at my side as we entered the foyer. To my son, I thought, I would like to know your plans, Edward. I know I have some time scheduled for Bella, but I miss hunting with you as well. Might we go together?

"Your room is the same, if you want to freshen up," Bella offered. "All stocked with your favorites."

Edward held my gaze with dark eyes. He nodded again before saying, "Bella love, I'm going to take Carlisle hunting while you and Esme catch up. You might want to show her what we've done with the garden." As he turned to lead the way up the stairs, he slanted a look to me as if to say, Well? I had to say something.

After hefting the luggage up and leaving it to the women to discuss clothes and hunting and, almost assuredly, to gossip about their husbands while we were out, Edward and I silently flashed outside and took off at a run without a word passing between us. About a mile into the forest, he stopped and we took a scent.

"Black bear," I noted with a grin as the scent of the animal touched my nose. "Hungry, I'm guessing."

"Well, it is spring," my son remarked with a crooked smile. Mischief flared in his eye for a moment. "Emmett will be so jealous."

I laughed. "Then by all means, we need to hunt them." We took off, the pair of us, dashing through the forest at our top speeds to catch the black bear. A pair of them, by the scent, and we hoped to find them both.

Been a while since I hunted bear, I mentioned in my mind.

Edward dropped back immediately. "Take it, then. I don't want to kill the female. Smell her?"

Pregnant. Yes. Of course.

Edward veered off. "I'll go find a moose or deer, Carlisle. Back here?"

Indeed. Soon.

Sated, we returned not long thereafter, the sun a faded memory as the dark enfolded Edward and me. "So tell me," I began without any pleasantries. Edward had been relaxed only as we ran since we had met again at the airport. I wondered at his tension. Was I the cause of it?

"Not exactly." I winced and immediately tried to remember the barriers Bella had insisted on me using in Edward's presence. Exhausting. My son and I stood perfectly still, having no need to hide our natures at present. My trust in his awareness of conscious minds nearby was absolute.

"Thanks for that," he said flatly. "All right then. Jasper and I had, as you know, considered moving closer together probably as soon as next year. Not too close, but closer in terms of convenience. We're about five hours drive time at this point but, we're being closely watched."

"Felix."

"And whoever it was that went to Alice's." He shifted his body a little then, orienting himself toward the house. "So we hadn't planned on relocating yet..."

When his voice dwindled off and he started pacing, I spoke. "But...?"

"I don't know!" Stopping abruptly, he punched the trunk of the spruce tree nearest to him. The birds high in the branches protested loudly, several twigs rained down on our heads and I saw the impression of Edward's fist in the trunk. Woodchips exploded from under his knuckles, hitting the ground with soft patterings, the evidence of his frustration. "I don't know what she's doing! What's wrong with me? Why is she turning to everyone – every single man in this family – but me?" He punched the tree with every phrase. The final one started it on a slow crash, with four-foot-high "stump" that would need to be obliterated before dawn.

I was at his side in less than a blink, my hand on his arm as the tree hit the ground. Edward! What is it? What is she doing?

"You know more than I do," he ground out, flinging my hand from his arm as he spun away from me and the tree. "It's you she goes to with her 'schoolwork,' Carlisle. You and Jasper. And I don't know what the hell Emmett is doing, sending her chains and discussing Lord only knows what."

Chains? Jasper? I was utterly confused and allowed that confusion to suffuse my thoughts. I was also very afraid for Isabella. And concerned certainly about the marriage relationship between Edward and his wife. "Son," I began, smoothing my tone to the best of my ability. "You've mentioned before that Bella misses us. Misses her family. Surely she has been in contact with Alice and Rose?"

"Alice, yes," he said, biting off the admission with a bitter cast to his lips. "Not Rosalie, no."

"They never had much in common," I reminded him. While he gathered more thoughts, I started burying the chips of wood and scattering the branches, keeping my mind focused on Bella's relationships with the women in our family and the family in its entirety. I remembered our time together in the rainforest. I brought forth images of all of us playing Twister and then the hunt for the piranha specimens. Everyone's complete acceptance of human Bella and – keen in my infallible memory – the love that suffused every look and word Bella directed toward Edward.

Just to remind him that she loved him utterly. She had been willing to die to her humanity for him. She had allowed her life to end on paper for him, too. Her love overrode all other considerations.

"You think I don't know that?" Edward rasped. "I know she loves me. I know it. But what is she doing this for? Experimenting? Wasn't Jacob Black enough of an experiment for anyone?" He began pacing again at vampire speed, becoming a blur on the immediate landscape.

I halted him with my arm. "Now that's not fair. You know she loved Jacob. They were married in good faith until he imprinted. Whatever you do, do not mention that to her, no matter what, Edward."

"As if I would."

"I don't know what you'll do, but I believe you need to trust her. She's not with your brothers without you, is she? And you read everyone's thoughts but hers when we are together, even in a limited way." My gut wrenched, saying this. I kept my secret knowledge to myself, behind those barriers I was strengthening at Bella's behest, but it made me ache to be part of any deception of this nature.

Edward groaned and folded in on himself on the rich, damp ground. "But she wants to be."

What? I thought, joining him. What is it? What did you hear? Surely Emmett hasn't –

"I heard her telling Jasper she wanted to study without me. To go abroad on her own. And she wanted to know if he would be there." The admission cost him something, something painful and the agony of it radiated from his eyes when they met mine. "I heard her, Carlisle. Oh, she told me later that it was a surprise and that she didn't want me to lose time studying but – but the fact remains she wanted to go on her own. And to meet Jasper there."

I didn't know what to say to him.

C&E C&E C&E

"This is killing Edward," I said to Bella as we ran. A tense stretch of daylight had been had by all. Every ounce of Esme's maternal nurturing had been required to get through the day. We did some research on possible future properties together. Bella had played chess with Edward and then all of us had gone to the theater to see a new film release. Now it was evening and Bella and I were going on our hunt. Well, she hunted. I had fed the night before. "He destroyed a tree last night, thinking there was something – untoward – going on between you and your brothers."

Bella halted with a suddenness that required my running back to meet her. Her lips were parted and her fingers were curling spasmodically. No breath moved her chest. "I thought he was just upset because I wasn't letting him in, you know?" She spun and started running on a straight line back to the house. Fortunately, she was not as fast as Edward. I caught her before she had gone a tenth of a mile.

"Bella!"

"Let me go, I have to fix this!"

"How?"

"I'll tell him. I can't have him thinking I'm unfaithful to him. I love him more than my own life, Carlisle. You know that." She gripped me by my shoulders, her gaze unflinching. "You do, don't you?"

"Of course I do. I have some inkling – enough to terrify me, Isabella – of what you might be trying to do." I removed her hands as her grip was becoming painful, choosing to hold them in my own. "You said you wanted the layout of Volterra? Of where the Volturi live? Bella," I went on, my own voice dropping into near inaudibility, "what are you doing, little one?"

"I can't tell you," she said, her tones equally soft. "If any of you come before Aro..."

I nodded, having foreseen this much. "Yes. You're playing with fire. Not just for your own pyre, but for all of us," I warned her sternly. She was so young to be setting herself up against such a strong power structure.

A shiver went through her body before she pulled away from me. "I can't live with that kind of threat, Carlisle. I have to fix it. It's my fault. I have to fix it. Starting with Edward."

"Good."

"But not," she snapped, crossing her arms in front of her, "until you tell me everything you know about Volterra. I'm serious, Carlisle. I need to know or I'll have to go in myself to find out."

"No! You're not playing fair, Bella Cullen." I was furious – but I admired her tenacity as well. She was such a fit wife for Edward. "You're putting all of us at risk and I don't even know why! Tell me why I need to hide my thoughts from him."

She turned from me, her back stiff and unyielding as she considered my demand. Then, in a voice harder than our skin, she stated, "I can't. Hell, Carlisle, I wish I could. I hate that I can't give Edward the whole story. I hate that I can't tell you. But the first time Aro touches any of you," she ground out, turning again, "we're toast."

"If he catches you in Volterra...?"

"He won't."

I blinked at her immediate assurance. "What?" I was hopelessly confused.

She paused and then smoothed some stray hair from her temples. "He won't catch me in Volterra. Let's hunt, Carlisle. And then you'll tell me what I need to know."

"Bella..."

"Please?"

Fear possessed every inch of my skin for a moment but I studied her eyes. In the dark, they were even darker with her thirst and distress. Dark, but the conviction they held was something even I, with all my time on Earth, could not deny. "After you've hunted."

I prayed, as we ran and as she brought down three deer, that I wasn't signing her death warrant.

Jasper POV

Alice stretched above me, her golden eyes half-lidded. "Oh, I love Italy," she purred.

"And I love you loving Italy," I assured her, sounding as breathless as any human at such a moment. "You are so beautiful."

She and I "loved Italy" in our Milan hotel suite all through the sunny September afternoon. We were staying at a place Alice found called Town House 12. "It's a boutique hotel," she had said, almost giddy. "Right in the middle of the nightlife. It'll be perfect." It pretty much was. I liked the fact that it wasn't a frilly kind of place. It felt like home, more or less. Home meaning our current place on Fifth Avenue in New York.

Alice had a meeting with Anna of the House of Deveria for dinner this evening in preparation for visiting the designers tomorrow. I think she was planning on practicing her Italian with someone other than me. "You're so...distracting," she said. Frequently. It wasn't that she was complaining.

I waited until she was safely on her way to her late night appointment before I picked up the hotel phone. In another Morse Code message (which Bella had contrived to use under the printed lines of a copy of her thesis proposal that she mailed to me) my newest sister had suggested – Aw, hell, who was I kidding? She had directed like any military operation leader – we use hotel phones to talk to one another, as they would be less likely to be tapped by the Volturi. After all, the hotels were in Rome and Milan. Bella had indicated they would stay in a hotel until her practice with me was completed, at which time she and Edward would rent a flat.

Once I was put through to the front desk, I asked for Isabella Cullen.

"La signora Cullen is actually in the lobby," the concierge told me in English. I never had managed to shake my accent, even in different languages. "Shall I, ah," the young man fumbled at that point, clearly not accustomed to calling a guest to the phone in the lobby.

I took pity on him. "Is there another phone up there somewhere or can she borrow yours? It will take less than two minutes, sir," I added to make him feel like less of an incompetent.

"Si, signore. Grazie, signore."

The next voice I heard was Bella's. "Grazie. Ci vorrà solo un momento." Thank you. I'll only be a minute.

She turned, and her words were soft and rapid, beyond the reach of human ears. "Hello. So you made it all right?" The words were oddly enclosed in sound and I guessed she was sheltering her lips with her hands. I wondered why, but then realized that if Edward was at all curious as to why his wife was in the lobby of their hotel, he might be poking around in someone's head to keep an eye on her without telling her. It'd be like him.

"We did, yes."

"Where's Alice?"

"Out with a designer. Are we on for tomorrow?"

Her words were clipped, even at the speed we were conversing. "Forecast is for heavy clouds and intermittent rainfall. I will be due west of the town and find you there."

"Where's Edward?"

"Taking a shower. We hunted."

"And tomorrow?"

The pause was brief. "I don't know. He won't tell me."

J&A J&A J&A

Alice thought I was going sightseeing. I was sightseeing. There were sights and I saw them. I hated lying to my wife. Hated it. But I understood (as Edward might not) that all is truly fair in love and war and this was a war so keeping Alice ignorant was fair. When the fecal matter hit the air propellant device, I wanted her to be clean of it all. I could only pray that if someone had to burn for this, it wouldn't be my Alice.

We weren't to see one another. Not in front of anyone, and since we couldn't tell who might be out there, we would stay away from each other. That was Bella's rule and I agreed wholeheartedly. After our place was invaded by who knew whom, I wasn't taking any chances. Alice had seen Bella with us in Italy, but the phone call yesterday might have changed that. I hoped to hell it had. I could see for miles, but it was hard to pick my sister out from the rocky hillside where tourists and residents of Volterra sometimes went out to picnic.

I waited outside the town walls for a bit. The stone was brown in the cloudy light of mid-morning. People came and went, but I didn't see too many automobiles. Bicycles and motor scooters were popular. I had a vague sense of what I was waiting for as I dawdled with a cigarette in my fingers. It was lit but I didn't draw the smoke into my lungs. I had learned years ago that standing around with a map was a sure way to get attention. People did not, though, like to be around cigarette smoke. I would draw the smoke into my mouth and blow it out again. In patterns, to amuse myself.

Uncertain of how this would work with Bella being at such a distance, I processed the emotions of everyone around me. The hope of a young man with the girl at his side. The sexual frustration of an older woman eyeing a younger man who was with another woman. Anger. Despair. Grief.

Nothing.

Bingo! It worked! I tossed my cigarette to the ground and rubbed its glowing tip off with the toe of my sneaker. Keeping my surveillance casual, I pulled a hat out of the small backpack I kept with me as a prop and pulled it over my head. It was broad-brimmed, as such things go, and I had it for two reasons. One, if the sun made an appearance, I wouldn't turn into a disco ball in the middle of Italy. Two, Bella would comprehend that I was shielded because I was covered. She and I were working on nonverbal communication.

I pushed my awareness out and my gift continued to come back blank. As had happened at that party a couple of years ago, I became a bit unnerved to feel nothing except my own emotions. The sexual frustration? Gone. Hope? Gone. Grief? Gone. Just me and my persistent worry about getting caught. I walked a bit around the exterior of the hilly town, feeling Bella's shield wax and wane. I moved my hat around as it did, pretending to wipe nonexistent sweat from my forehead and getting hair out of my eyes. She lost me entirely as I slid down a rocky spot outside the town walls. I guessed I was entirely beyond her perception of me by that point. To bide my time, I took out another cigarette and lit it, letting it dangle from my fingers as I looked up at the round towers above me.

Since I had the ability to feel what was happening, I stretched my awareness out, prepared at any moment to tug the hat back on my head and continue my journey. Instead, I felt surprise and exultation as if someone had just scored a superlative victory.

I swore under my breath and turned off at a slow, non-attention-grabbing jog and was reaching for my phone to call Bella and tell her the jig was up. The phrase was used back a hundred years before I was born, according to Carlisle who paid attention to these things as a matter of personal curiosity. There was no man alive or dead more curious than Carlisle Cullen. Phone in my hand, I was unsurprised when two things happened simultaneously. I ceased to feel that victory – which was damnable because now I needed to feel it to have an idea if it was moving toward me! – and my phone vibrated.

Alice. "Jazz! Where are you? I see you! You went sightseeing in the wrong place, lover boy. That man I saw is on to you. Whatever you do, stay the hell out of Volterra. Do not agree to go there. Wherever you are, get back to our hotel. Oh! No! No! Right now, Jasper Whitlock. Right the hell now."

"All right, hon. I'm on my way. Just keep it cool. Don't blow the cover."

I couldn't call Bella then, because it was apparently more urgent for me to get outta Dodge than it was to talk to her. She'd be all right, I guessed, since Alice didn't even mention her.

I couldn't run too fast, but I could run quickly enough, knowing that any pursuer would also be limited to either human transportation or human speed, I stayed off the roads and ran in as straight a line as I could back to Milan.

I only got about ten minutes out before I was collared.

That scent! Black olives, willow bark and sea salt with the sweetness that all vampires possessed. I knew that scent. Behind an outcropping of rock on the hill where we met, I growled deep in my chest, preparing myself to question this one who had invaded our temporary home.

"You!" The word fell from both our mouths at the same moment. I was disgusted and furious, he sounded thrilled and smug. I hated the man with the medium blond hair and darkly modern clothes. His hair formed an affected peak over his forehead that made me almost feel nauseated. Bizarre reaction, but there it was.

My emotions were back in force and I was hit full in my middle by the same combination of emotions I had felt before. "You were in my home."

"I called, but no one answered. A pity," he said, pretending to check his nails. "I had to meet you. My lord Aro insisted. It seems my friend Felix tried to find you before, but you had gone away on a business trip with your mate. How quaint. Her designs are quite lovely, you know. She's gifted."

His remarks on Alice's work left me feeling as if he'd violated my wife and the rage pulled at my muscles, urging me to rip off this man's head and leave it while I burned his body. But that would bring us even more attention and I had a little sister not too far away who might – lord! – have followed me.

Carlisle should have seen me, I calmed down so fast.

"What's your name?"

"Demetri. I am overjoyed to make your acquaintance, Jasper Whitlock Cullen. Tell me, how is the rest of your family?"

It was on the tip of my tongue to say, "You tell me. I'm sure you're tracking all of us," but I didn't. Don't give away information without a return. Better for him to believe us ignorant of their spying. Instead, I inhaled and scented rain. The smell relaxed me and I rolled my shoulders in a menacing manner. "I haven't seen them in quite some time. Years, in fact. Wasn't that the general idea?"

He nodded as if thinking about it. "Indeed. And indeed it seems that since that holiday debacle, you have been careful in your compliance. I am sure my lord Aro would wish to thank you in person. You and your talented mate..."

"Keep Alice out of this," I spat. I could feel venom start to pool in my mouth. If he threatened her more overtly...

He stepped back. "Why don't you join me, then? I am sure you'd like a tour of the inside of Volterra, Empath. What brings you here?"

"Sightseeing." Give him nothing, I reminded myself. Not one damned thing.

"I could compel you," Demetri said next, but this emotion was merely a testing sort, tentative, not dominating. He didn't think he could take me on his own. Uncertainty crept in.

Not wanting to antagonize him – it was more important to return to Alice and make sure she got safely out of Milan before anything else went wrong – I rolled my hat up and tucked it in my bag. The sounds of cars reached my ears and I realized that we both had to be careful. Humans could be anywhere. "I think not. Not at this time. Perhaps you could come visit us again? Invited, maybe?" It was a hollow gesture, but I only meant to get myself out of trouble. And at home, I had the advantage.

"Hm. Well. I leave you to your...sightseeing. Be assured I will tell my lord Aro that you refused my invitation," he sneered. "Best run along now. You shouldn't keep that lovely wife of yours waiting. All alone. In a strange land."

I wanted to laugh in his face – my Alice could fight with the best, of course, since I had taught her myself – but I refrained. Instead, I nodded my head. "I'll do that. Give my best," I said with sarcasm dripping from my words, "to your lord Aro. I'm sure we'll all get together another time."

As if by some eerie signal, the Tracker and I parted ways there behind the brown boulder just as the rain reached us. A light shower, it was enough to give me an excuse to run perhaps faster than I would have otherwise.

Sorry Bella, I thought, unwilling to risk being seen making a phone call just now. I didn't know how many spies the Volturi had out here. I hope she had learned something, anyway.

Damn.