Disclaimer: I still don't own Twilight, or it's characters. Stephenie Meyer does. That probably won't change. Ever.
I first knew something was wrong when I walked into Mr. Turner's bistro. Over the months, Mr. Turner and I had formed a morning tradition of sorts. Every morning, when I came in, I would say, "Good morning, Mr. Turner," and Mr. Turner would always reply, "Morning, Bella. Ready to work?"
But that morning, when I greeted him, Mr. Turner didn't answer. Upon looking at him more closely, I noticed that his normally ruddy face was pale, his eyes were bloodshot and tired, and his usually smiling mouth was pressed into an anxious line. This was out of the ordinary; Mr. Turner was always so...happy. I approached him quickly, worried.
"Mr. Turner," I asked, concern evident in my tone, "what's wrong?" Something was very wrong. Apprehension twisted in my stomach.
Mr. Turner didn't answer me directly. Instead, he said, "Lets go to my office for a minute, Bella. I need to talk to you." Even his voice sounded different. Like he was frightened.
I followed without a word. Maybe I already knew what had happened, somewhere in my subconscious, but didn't want to accept it. That would certainly explain why I was so unreasonably anxious. We entered his small office, and I sat down in a chair in front of Mr. Turner's desk. He – to my surprise – closed and locked the door behind us. That only worried me more – Mr. Turner's office door was never closed, and definitely never locked. Whatever he had to tell me, it wasn't good.
Mr. Turner sat down in his chair, propped his elbows up on the desk, and rested his face in his hands. If I had been frightened before, I was downright terrified after he did that. What could make Mr. Turner so downhearted? His voice came out muffled by his hands when he finally spoke.
"Bella, I have to know something." He looked up at me, and his eyes bored into mine. "And I don't want your half answers, or your question avoiding. The truth." The intensity in his eyes reached its peak. "Why did you come to New York?" I looked at him and I saw fierce determination written all over his face. He wasn't going to back down. Not this time. So I told him the truth. Without the vampire part, of course.
"My dad died about three months ago," I told him in a whisper. "And when my mom and stepfather came for the funeral, they...got in a car accident and died, too." I had never been a good liar, so editing out the Cullens and Victoria made my story sound a little rehearsed. But Mr. Turner didn't notice.
"So it didn't have anything to do with the woman I saw last night," he murmured to himself. He wasn't speaking to me, but his words still stopped my heart. No. It couldn't be, I tried to tell myself. But I knew that it very well could be. I had to know for sure.
"What woman?" I asked urgently. "What did she look like?" Mr. Turner looked up at my tone.
"Why?" he demanded. "Do you know a woman who would be here looking for you? Someone who you're afraid of?" There was a flicker of hope in his face. I didn't know why at first, but it would be obvious soon.
I nodded silently. At the moment, I was too scared to speak. I could feel the color leaching from my face. I pushed past the lump in my throat and whispered a question. "What did she look like?" I asked again. If Mr. Turner had seen Victoria, then he would remember – nobody forgot a vampire's face.
Mr. Turner started describing her to me. "She had red hair." My heart sank. Plenty of people in New York have red hair, I told myself, trying to keep up my morale. That doesn't mean it was her. But I knew it probably was. Mr. Turner continued. "About average height. She looked like she might be in her early twenties." He cleared his throat, embarrassed. "And she was beautiful. Not your everyday beautiful, either. She could have made a model look like a gargoyle." He swallowed, now looking afraid again. "And she had red eyes," he whispered.
There it was. My confirmation. Panic bubbled up in my chest, and my eyes filled with tears. Victoria knew where I was. Mr. Turner wasn't blind, thus he noticed my reaction.
"You know her," he said. It was a statement, not a question. "And I'd be willing to bet that she doesn't like you at all." I almost laughed hysterically. Doesn't like me? That's the understatement of the century, right there, Mr. Turner, I thought.
"No," I replied. "She doesn't like me." I wanted to run and hide under a rock, for all the good it would do me. But I needed more information. "Did she say anything?" I whispered, blinking back tears.
Mr. Turner gulped. "Oh, she said something all right." He was trying to laugh it off. It wasn't working. I could hear the tremor in his voice. My intuition kicked in. What Victoria had said was the part that scared him the most.
I closed my eyes for a long second, steeling myself. Then I opened them and quietly asked, "What did she say?"
Mr. Turner silently looked at me for a moment. I don't know what he saw on my face, but whatever he saw, it made him drop his bravado. "She said that she knew who I was, and that she knew I had hired you. She said --" He paused to compose himself. "She said that if I didn't fire you, she would kill my family." He locked eyes with me, and I could see the horror in them. "My wife, my son, my grandkids; all of them. She knows where they live, where my grandkids go to school..." He trailed off, then took a deep breath. "I need to know if she'll do it," he said. "Tell me whether or not she'll do it."
The tears I had been keeping at bay spilled over. Mr. Turner deserved the truth, and the truth wasn't pretty. I nodded. "She'll do it." I whispered, and gave him a sad, wobbly smile. "She did it to me." I told him.
Mr. Turner's eyes widened. "Your father and your mother and your stepfather? She killed them? I thought you said your mother and stepfather died in a car crash."
I shook my head and wiped my eyes. "It was staged," I told him.
He ran a shaky hand through his graying hair. "Would going to the police help?"
I jerked straight in the chair like I had been electrocuted. The police? What were they against a vampire? What were they going to do, shoot her? Shoot a bulletproof vampire with a nasty temper? Yeah, that would go over like a lead balloon. "NO!" I cried standing up. "No! That will just make things worse!" Mr. Turner stared up at me, shocked. I sat back down and leaned toward him. It was vital for him to understand that getting the police involved would do anything but help. "If you fire me and stay away from me, she might let you all live. But if you go to the police, then there's no doubt about it – she will kill you and your family." I may have sounded cruel, but he had to understand.
Mr. Turner rubbed his hand over his eyes. "So I really don't have any choices here, do I?" he muttered.
I started to cry again. I was going to have to stay away from the one friend I had, the one person who had helped me. It was going to be hard, and it was going to be painful, but I would do it to keep him safe. Another pain to deal with. And this time, no one to help me with it. Great. Absolutely great, I thought, hoping that sarcasm would keep it from hurting so badly. It didn't. I tried to smile at Mr. Turner. It probably came out as a grimace. "I'm going to miss you, then," I said quietly as I stood up and prepared to leave.
He grabbed my wrist when I turned to walk out the door to his office. I looked at him, raising an eyebrow in a silent question.
Mr. Turner looked into my eyes, worry obvious in his own. "Will you be alright? Will I be reading the paper in a couple of days and see your obituary?" He wanted to know if Victoria would kill me.
I turned my gaze to my shoes, and kept it there as I answered honestly. "I don't know." He didn't answer, just pulled me into a tight hug.
"Take care of yourself, girl," Mr. Turner told me. Then I walked out of his bistro and went home. That was the last time I saw Hal Turner.
I walked home to my apartment in the east side of New York City. It wasn't the best neighborhood to live in, but it was all I could afford. And my landlord will evict me when I can't pay the rent, said the dark side of my mind.
I climbed the stairs of my building and unlocked my door. I was so absorbed in thinking about what to do now that Victoria had come back, that I didn't see her standing in my apartment until she spoke to me.
"Nice place you have here, Bella," she said. I gasped, jumped about three feet, and nearly swallowed my tongue. I don't know why I was so surprised. I should have been expecting her. She shrugged away from the wall she had been leaning up against. "Howdy," she said with a roguish grin. "It really has been too long." Not to me! mymind screamed at her. I couldn't say it out loud, though, as I was scared speechless. Being face to face with your family's killer can do that. Victoria continued, "So, how have you been?" She waited for a response, but if she wanted me to tell her how much I had been hurting these past few months, then she was out of luck. She frowned playfully at me. "Oh, come now, Bella. Do we need to have another talk about manners?"
I was finally able to speak. "What now?" I asked. "Are you going to murder me, then make it look like I killed myself because I lost my job?"
Something about my question amused her. "No, no." she replied, chuckling. "I just now found you! And, if you remember correctly, I told you to leave Forks so that we could continue our little game. No, I haven't quite had enough fun with you yet." The smile hardened, turned cold. "I think I'd like to see you after you've gone without food for two weeks. After you've lived on the streets. I want you to know what it feels like to know that you can't get a job – I want you to run out of hope." Victoria backed off slightly. "Don't bother applying for another job," she told me. "I'll make sure that you don't get it." Then, finished inspiring fear, she moved gracefully toward the door, but paused with her hand on the doorknob. She turned back to look at me as she said her next words. "Oh, and, Bella? Don't try to leave New York City." She grinned a feral grin. "I find that I rather like this playing field." After those chilling words, she slipped soundlessly out the door and down the stairs.
I sat down on the carpet, still staring at the door. The silence rang in my ears, until the sound of my crying broke it. I wrapped my arms around my knees, and wished once again that the Cullens would come. I sat there on the floor for hours, the whole time wondering What do I do? What do I do? I kept repeating it, thinking that if I asked the question enough, I would find the answer. I repeated that question for two months, but I didn't find the answer. After that, I stopped asking. Ironically, it was only after I stopped trying to find a solution that a solution found me.
A/N: Next chapter, ENTER CULLENS!
