Hello, I really hope that you enjoy this chaptered. I know that it's not very long but it seemed like a good place to tail off. Anyway, I just wanted to thank all of my amazing readers who read, review and add me to you various alerts, it honestly means so much to me to have your support.

Finally, can I ask (again) that if you don't like this genre then please don't read it. It makes no sense to me why someone would read it all and then complain about it. It's kinda like those people who sued MacDonalds because it made them fat...like, seriously?

5 Years Previous, The Cullen House - Vermont

"56 Mississippi...57 Mississippi...58 Mississippi...59 Mississippi...60 Mississippi... ... ... ... 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi..."

"Alice? Sweetheart, I need you to stop and look at me. Can you do that? Just look right here, darlin'," My brother spoke calmly, patiently, pointing slowly at his own wide, tender blue eyes. A mere stranger may not have noticed the slight begging tone which his voice held; but I did. Jasper was my brother, and I knew that he did not use that tone often; or at least since he had been a teenager.

"10 Mississippi...11 Mississippi...12 Miss...13...12..." She lost count. I watched the frightened girl, Alice; her eyes glazed over as though lost in thought. I watched as she threaded her fingers through her uneven, hacked-off, brown hair, she curled her fingers into tiny fists and began to pull her hair outwards from the root.

Jasper quickly reached for her, placing his much larger hands over the top of hers to hold them down to her head, "No Alice, stop. You'll hurt yourself, let go now." Jasper's tone had changed to that which one would use to scold a young child, though the tenderness had not faded from his eyes. "You were on 12, Alice. 12 Mississippi."

The fog seemed to clear from her hollow, lifeless eyes as she peered up at Jasper and met his gaze for the first time in two days. "12?" she whispered questioningly.

He nodded his assent. "12."

"12 Mississippi," she breathed, and the fog returned.

The room fell into silence as Jasper and I shared a troubled look. She rose to her feet, dropping the blanket as she stood. It pooled around her ankles, leaving her as naked as the day she was born; not that she seemed to notice. Brushing past both Jasper and I she left the room with Jasper at her heels. He hurried past her and turned to meet her, gently clasping her tiny, bony shoulders within his broad hands.

"Alice, where are you going?"

"I have to find the room," she whispered.

"What room?"

"The room," she replied, desperation slipping into her voice.

"You mean the bathroom, Alice?"

"NO!" she shrieked, "THE ROOM!" She launched her body at him and curled her small fingers around collar of his crisp, pale-blue dress shirt, clutching it so tightly that her knuckles turned white with effort. She lowered her voice to a mere whisper, her eyes searching his as he stare back, his eyes filled with worry. "Please, the room? I need to get back, I don't think I'm supposed to leave." Her voice rose to a squeaky whimper at the end.

I watched as Jasper ducked forwards and, with a little awkward bending on his part given his height, brought himself eye-level with Alice. "Alice, that's over with now sweetheart, you're not going back..."

"NO!"

"Yes, Alice. Remember, I explained yester..."

"NO, YOU'RE LYING TO GET ME IN TROUBLE!" she shrieked as she tore out of his grasp, fighting feebly to hit his chest with her ball up fists.

Present

It had taken little effort on Jasper's part to fight off her weak fist-work, though it had taken a long time for my family to get over the painful memories of when Alice was brought here; although it took even longer for Alice to get over her nightmares and the dark, distorted recollections of her macabre past. For five months I never lost count of how many nights I had lain awake listening to her terrified screams created by the terrors of her sleep. And the reason why I never lost count was because it had been a nightly occurrence. I had paced my room, listened to music, covered my head with a pillow, some nights I even sat outside her room and listened as Jasper tried his best to sooth her; the whole family did this at one point. And that is how we came to learn her past.

Little Alice had been taken from a children's home to be sold at auction, she had been 16 at the time and lost in the system, deprived of education, passed from home to home to make room for other children, never creating any bonds, never knowing the love of a mother or father. Following her abduction her existence had been little more than that. Existing. She had been incarcerated in a dank, dark, windowless cell. She was a procession. Alice had never been 'a toy' or 'a play-thing'; for two long, solitary years not one living sole spoke a word to her. The scraps of food would come in, and the waste would come out; and that was her days, nothing more, and nothing less. She was treated like an animal and a savage and towards the end was nearly driven mad by loneliness.

Five Years Previous, The Bux'Mount Residence

It was at a New Year's party five years ago, which our friend James' parent were hosting, that we found out about Alice and my brother fought for her release to him. It had been in the early hours of New Year's Day and we were drunk but beginning to sober.

My head flopped back against the horrifically ugly antique sofa. "James, your party rocks but your god-damn sofa sucks so much ass," I moaned.

"Don't be hater, Cullen," came his muffled response.

"I'm not kidding, dude. Wha's it stuffed with, bricks?" I kneaded the back of the sofa with my elbow as though that would somehow soften it up. I'd been watching Jasper for while as he tried to fight sleep and he had finally dosed off about 5 minutes ago, I found the perfect opportunistic moment and launched a solid scatter cushion at his head. He woke with a startled grunt and looked around in confusion and, noticing my smirk, flipped me the middle finger.

"You guy's going to the auction today?" James asked casually.

"Nah, 'it's New Year's, its family time'," I responded, doing a slightly hammed up impression of my Dad. "Besides, I thought you already got yourself a girl? What's the point in going?"

"No, my Dad got me a girl. She was this crazy little pixie thing, completely not my type. I've seen her once in like...two years, or something."

"So you got rid? That's cold, Dude." I told him with a laugh.

"Nah, she's still here. She's like...in the basement, or something".

My eyes flashed to Jasper as he sat up and began taking an interest in the conversation, he quirked his brow. "You keep her in the basement?"

James let out a fed-up huff, "I dunno, maybe. I don't go down there." He looked between Jasper and I's perplexed expressions. "What?" he asked moodily, "you wanna go down and see?"

Jasper and I looked at one and shrugged. "Sure, we got time".

The three of us made our way down to the basement. I always thought that James' house was really cool, all us boys had pretty much grown up together and practically lived at one another's houses; the Cullens and the Bux'Mounts had been friends for years; in fact, I think our Dad and James' Dad had also grown up together. Their house was ancient and massive and had an air of a gothic mansion to it, the old slate roof, the wrap-around porch, spooky attic, and it even came complete with stone gargoyles; believe me when I say that the Halloween parties which had been thrown here in the past were off the hook.

Our trio trudged down the stairs to the basement, it was chilly down here and I shivered hoping that James was wrong and that some poor girl was having the sleep down here. We wound our way around the stone floored corridors until James found where he was looking for. By this time my whole body was consumed by a feeling of unease and I repeatedly found myself silently hoping that James was mistaken. Why on earth would they give someone a room way down here? Their house was massive; they would have more than enough space up stairs for her. The basement was cold, dark and smelled like damp; I could practically feel Jasper bristle as we were led to a heavy wooden door with a bolt...on the outside. I didn't like this at all, and I knew for a fact that neither did Jasper.

The bolt squeaked and creaked as James jimmied it open along with the door; the bile rose swiftly in my throat at the stench which hit us.

"Fuck sake!" James spat in disgust as he cover his nose with his hand.

The odder of human filth seemed to permeate the entire space. I looked into the room, my eyes adjusting to the poor light though I spotted her after a few seconds, the tiniest little ferial human-being. She sat naked staring up at us, her hair matted and overgrown, with hair sprouting from her legs, armpits and groin, and her toe and fingernails were yellow and curling. Her skin was sallow and caked with dirt and grime and lord-knowns-what-else, her cheeks were sunken and her eyes black, I could count her every rib.

James glowered at her in contempt and revulsion.

"Edward, go get Dad," Jasper told me tightly. I used Jasper's request as an excuse to flee from the sight before me, it had been so disturbing to me that and another human being was being kept in such conditions. Slave or not. Emmett now had Rosalie and she had always been treated like his princess, and Dad had Mom; and I hoped and prayed that nobody every treated my Mother that that girl back there. I flew up the stairs from basement and sprinted to get my father.

Present

I watch from my chair as that once frightened girl curled lovingly into Jasper's side and rested her head on his broad chest, he hugged an arm around her still tiny form and placed a gentle kiss on the top of her dark choppy locks. He shifted the history book that he was reading so that Alice would be able to look at it as well; although we all knew that she was not reading it. Despite her best efforts her reading was still not that advanced, although she had come on leaps-and-bounds since we first discovered that she was almost illiterate.

And that was how it came to be. Coming into this life Alice felt no void in her heart to once again feel the loving arms of her mother being wrapped tightly around her and made to feel safe. She did not know and therefore she could not miss. The first person to ever tell Alice that she was loved had been Jasper. She had just turned 20 years old.

Bella was different from Alice though. Their previous situations were not comparable with one another. Bella had been a child very much loved by her parents who, despite their separation and their differences, always stood shoulder to shoulder and supported their daughter from the side-lines. I sighed, frustrated with myself as the disjointed ramblings in my head continued. Was I feeling remorse for buying her? But I couldn't, I told myself. I had saved her at the auction; there was no way that I could allow another to purchase her, and when I spotted James' father I knew that there was no way I could leave France with the innocent brunette. The way that she twisted in her bondage, fighting and struggling against it, the furious blush which coloured her cheeks whenever someone would touch her intimately, I had almost growled when I watch as someone else cupped the soft, round flesh of her breasts and rub the puckered, rosy peaks of her nipples.

Bella had never known the love of a lover, but over time I would make it my mission for Bella to fall for me; the one who saved her. She would break my heart and she would not betray me; she would be nothing like Tanya.

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