There is some rather mild torture with a cattle prod in this chapter. I tried to keep the descriptions of it to a minimum as even I have my limits, but it's still there.
Bella was jerked out of her unconscious state as a bucket of ice-cold water was thrown over her. She gasped, partly from pain, partly from cold. Her hands were taped behind her back and her legs were taped to the legs of the chair that she sat on. She was a little surprised that nobody had put a gag into her mouth or something over her eyes.
"Oh good, you're awake," a soft voice said from the other side of the room. Bella looked up, her vision still hazy. A figure stood in an open doorway, and was backlit so that Bella could only see her silhouette. As Bella started to come to her senses, she realized that it was Esme. Esme, the sweet and motherly older woman, who'd welcomed Bella into her home with open arms, was now holding Bella hostage in her basement.
Granted, Bella had been hired to kill her son and had stabbed him in the stomach. It was hard to blame the woman, but this seemed a bit excessive.
Esme walked calmly over to Bella; her movements reminded Bella of a cat stalking its prey. "Oh, that's going to leave a nasty bruise later," Esme said as she gently tipped Bella's face towards the light. "I'm afraid that Jasper got a little too heavy-handed with you when he knocked you out. I'm so sorry about that." It was like Esme was talking about spilling something onto Bella's dress. Esme ran her hand down Bella's cheek in a very tender way before she roughly slapped her. Bella saw star, even though the older woman hadn't hit her all that hard; she was still slightly groggy from being knocked out earlier. "Please bear in mind that the only reason why you are still alive is because Edward is still alive."
Bella's heart hammered in her chest. She wasn't quite certain how she should feel about this news— she'd failed her job and he was still alive.
Still alive. Still alive. The words hammered around in her head to the tempo of her heartbeat.
Jasper came into the room just then with a chair, which he put down a few feet in front of where Bella was taped to the chair. Esme sat gingerly, adjusted her skirt, picked a piece of lint off from her shoulder, delicately crossed her legs, and folded her laced fingers on top of her knee. "Bella," she started with a small smile. "My dear, I'm going to ask you some very simple questions. It is in your best interest to answer them to the best of your ability. If you lie to me, or if I should have any reason to think that you're lying to me… Well then. You aren't going to like what'll happen to you should you think to do that."
Bella steeled her gaze. It had been a long time since she underwent her torture resistance training with Victoria, but spending days in a basement, being whipped, kicked, punched, starved, and isolated for four months was not something that anybody would likely forget.
"First things first, what is your real name?" Esme asked. A muscle in Bella's jaw twitched. Behind her, she heard a hum of electricity. "Do you hear that sound, Bella? It's a cattle prod. It doesn't have enough juice in it to actually kill a person, but trust me when I say that being shocked over and over tends to get a bit… tiresome after a while. If you don't answer, then Jasper is more than willing to shock you. What is your real name?" The only sound in the room was from the cattle prod. "Shock her. Give her a taste of what's to come if she doesn't start to talk soon."
Jasper jabbed the prod into Bella's lower back, in the spaces between the slats on the back of the chair. Bella clenched her jaw harder to avoid making a sound.
"Well, I will say one thing: Whoever you are, you are very well trained. It takes months for me to get my people to be able to resist pain like that. Any person off the street… they get zapped and start screaming almost at once," Esme went on. "Oh don't give me that look. It's not like I snatch people off the streets and start torturing them. I mean, after all, I'm not a cruel person. There is a method to my madness, after all. What is your name?"
After what must have been several hours, Bella's muscles were so tired, her back sore, her shoulders ached from the awkward position that her hands were taped in, and her head throbbed.
"Well well, whoever you are, you were clearly very highly trained," Esme said. "I think that we'll take a little break now, since clearly, this is going nowhere fast." She got up and left the room. Jasper was quick to pick up the chair and carried it out from the room. A minute later, a couple of other men came into the room and started to set up a screen and a projector.
Bella took the brief reprise from her torture to try and assess the situation. Although her legs were very securely taped to the legs of the chair, her hands were only taped to each other behind her back. She tried to twist her hands around to pick at the duct tape, but it would probably take a while to pick at the tape enough to free her hands.
Next, she looked around the room without moving her head. It was a single room made out of concrete. No windows, and only the one door. She'd have to incapacitate any number of guards, as well as Esme herself if she did somehow manage to get free. Things were not looking good for her right now.
Bella's focus turned inward next. Just who exactly was Esme? She'd said very little during the past couple of hours, but Bella sensed that there was something very dark within her. Maybe this was the reason why somebody had hired a hit on Edward— to get back at Esme for some reason. It made a little bit of sense, but not much.
The entire family had just seemed so completely normal and kind. And Bella had spent so much time with Edward! If he was involved in some dark underground, Bella liked to think that she would have caught onto that fact before now. Not to mention the strange fact of his fame. If he really was in some crime family, being famous would only make it harder for the secret to be kept, and for Edward to do whatever dirty work that he did.
Esme strolled back into the room. "Ah, sorry about keeping you waiting, honey," she apologized as she stood by the projector. "I called Carlisle and he told me that Edward is out of surgery now. They've stabilized him, but it's touch and go. And let me remind you of our initial little… well, I call it an agreement, but you didn't exactly agree to anything. But if Edward dies, then you die, too."
Esme fired up the projector, which threw up a bright light onto the screen. "Since you clearly don't want to talk to me and since you were so resistant to the torture, I suppose that a little bit of show and tell is in order now." Esme clicked the projector onto the first slide, which was a birth certificate. Bella saw her own name and birth day written in, as well as the names of her parents. "It was easy enough to track this down. But, it only made me wonder: exactly how many Isabella Swans are there? However, it was a lot easier to track down Renee and Charlie Swan, seeing as how they're dead." She looked over to Bella. "But I assume by the look on your face, that you're very much aware of that fact. I can read you like a book, Bella."
Next slide. A newspaper article about the car accident that had killed her parents. There was a sentence at the at the end of the article that was highlighted, but the article itself was too small to read comfortably. The next slide was a close-up of the highlighted portion, which said "Their only child, an eleven year old daughter, will be looked after by Renee's younger brother." "With Renee's death record, it was easy enough to find out who her parents were, as well as who her brother was. And, wouldn't you know it? It was very easy to find him, too. You seem to have left a peculiar, bloody trail behind you my dear."
A vein pulsed in the side of Bella's jaw as uncontrollable rage boiled within her. "Oh my. I seem to have struck a nerve with dear Uncle Michael, haven't I?" Esme asked. "I do wish that I had been able to find more information on him, but, on the record, he lead such an ordinary— albeit short— life. It is such a pity that census data and death records give no indication of a person's hobbies. Especially not the kind that they never tell their best friends about."
The next slide was a crime scene photo of the inside of Mike's house. It was an image that was already burned into Bella's mind— no matter what happened in her life, she'd never be able to forget that day. Mike lay in a pool of blood on top of the overturned bookcase in the front hall. There were bloody glove prints on the wall, and a couple of footprints that lead away from where Mike lay. The only thing that was different from Bella's memory and the photo were the yellow police number triangles set along certain points, like by the bloody footprints.
"This was no hired hit; this was a crime of passion. Look at that— hand prints and footprints, and and overturned bookcase. I'm honestly very surprised that whoever was responsible for this crime was never caught, what with leaving so many clues all over the place. It's sad that a case like this went so cold so fast," Esme said gently. A picture of the missing person's poster for Bella after she'd run away. "And of course, there's still the one question on everybody's mind: What happened to young Isabella Swan? Orphaned at such a young age, her only living relative found brutally murdered in his home. After she went missing, the police suspected Michael had something to do with it. But after he was found dead, well, they began to look for a grave instead. After three months after Michael's death, there were no leads on either case. More important cases came to light, and although I'm certain that some people never stopped looking for young Bella, the case eventually went cold."
Next slide. This one was a picture of a crowded city sidewalk. Somebody had circled two figures in the center with red; Bella recognized both herself and Victoria. It was when Bella had accepted the job to kill Edward. "Of course, I think that I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. First off, this lady. The only thing that anybody knows about her is that her name is Victoria. She runs a criminal empire in New York. But, of course, you know all about this, don't you? After all, you appear to be very chummy with her in this picture, don't you? But, sweetie, I don't judge. I have some… less than savory friends, myself, after all.
"And it took a lot of digging on my part. Oh, I'm certain that there are probably some people in your old hometown who would love to hear that Bella Swan is very much alive and well— for the most part, at any rate— but I was a little bit more worried about my son. For you see, I know that you'd been hired out to kill him."
"You knew?" Bella rasped out. "You knew this entire time and you did absolutely nothing to stop the events from happening?"
"If that's all that it took to get you to talk, then I should have started with the show and tell earlier," Esme said simply.
"Don't be so fucking proud of yourself— your shit parenting has brought Edward to this point," Bella spat.
"Edward is an adult-"
"But you knew exactly who I was and why I was here and yet, you did fucking nothing to stop it!" Bella screamed. Esme stalked over to where Bella was bound and slapped her roughly. Bella hung her head and her hair fell down around her face. "Face it, Esme. You're nothing but a shit parent who wanted for her son to die." This earned her another slap.
"Do not dare presume that you know anything about me or my family."
"All I know is that you let a known assassin walk into your home, into your son's bed, and you fucking did nothing to stop it."
"Edward knew very well who you were?"
"What?" Now that came as a surprise.
"I mean, sure, I knew that there was a hit out on my son, but he's the one who came back to tell me the name of the agent who'd met him at the airport," Esme went on. Bella looked sharply to Esme.
Things began to click into place. The strange encounter that Edward had his first night in New York. How he went to a club after hours and pulled something off from under the table. Bella had only determined that it was most likely a USB stick, but had never been anywhere close enough to determine what had been on it.
And it also explained why Edward was so keen on getting close to her. It was just about as much his job as it had been hers.
But wait, something was not right. "If you didn't know who'd been contracted out to kill Edward, then why do you have a picture of Victoria and me before I'd even met Edward?"
"Truthfully, I've had a tail on Vicky for such a long time now," Esme said with some annoyance. "After all, she is my New York rival. Most of the time, she's up to some boring, American nonsense. Good work with that guy who killed his family and walked away on a technicality, by the way."
"T-thank you," Bella stammered out. She couldn't believe that she was taped to a chair and calmly talking about one of her previous jobs like it was nothing. And with somebody who was apparently the leader of another criminal guild, no less.
"Arg, what the fuck?" Esme growled out as she ran a hand through her hair. Apparently, she was just as disturbed over their rather civil conversation as Bella was. "I had more to show you, but show and tell is over now. You'd better keep praying that Edward makes it, or else your life will be over, too." She stormed out from the room and roughly slammed the door behind her.
The projector was still on, with the image of Bella and Victoria on the crowded, New York street.
It was easy to loose track of time. Bella dozed a bit, but it seemed as if every time she managed to fall into a deeper sleep, somebody would come barging into the room. Sometimes they had some food, but usually not. And even when they did bring food, it wasn't much; only a stale piece of bread or some hard cheese.
Every time the door opened, Bella would flinch, certain that they had come with the news that Edward hadn't made it. But, the longer that Bella remained Esme's prisoner, the more sure Bella was that Edward was going to be okay.
All of the time left Bella to think about the entire situation. She had no idea why Esme had urged her son to get close to the woman that both knew had been hired to kill him. Although, now that she had some information about Esme— the real Esme, and not the gentle housewife Esme— she could understand why somebody would want Edward dead. Not to rid the world of yet another faux celebrity with little actual talent or claim to fame, but rather, as a message to Esme.
But it baffled Bella that they'd both known and had chosen instead to continue on as if nothing had happened. Edward would have never been stabbed if Esme had refused Bella into her home or if Edward had simply kept her at arms length.
In between moments of sleep, little bubbles of thought would drift to the surface. Thoughts that Bella did everything that she could to not think about while she was more alert. She wondered about Edward's health at that particular moment. About why he'd pretended to be so enamored with her. Hadn't he been afraid for his life? If he'd had the information about her for most of his stay in New York, surely he must have worried.
Every time that Bella caught herself thinking about that, she'd mentally shake her head and think about other things. The different stages of David Bowie. Bill Murray movies. The dumb things that she'd had to do for various jobs over the years. What Rosalie and Jacob might be doing in that specific moment.
Surely one of them missed her. She hoped that they would mourn her if she were to die in Oakenwall.
She didn't want to think about that, either.
The door opened, and Bella flinched as usual.
"My dear, sorry to have kept you waiting for so long," Esme said from the doorway as Jasper stalked over to her. Bella closed her eyes and prayed that her death would be painless. She felt a slight tug on her wrists and a second later, he pulled the tape off from her wrists. He moved to the front and started to cut off the tape that bound her legs.
"What?" Bella asked as a second figure appeared in the doorway next to Esme. Bella would have recognized that silhouette anywhere. Victoria.
"Come on, you disgusting cunt," Victoria hissed as Jasper yanked Bella to her feet. Bella stumbled a few steps, since she'd been taped to the chair for god-knows how long. "I didn't come all of this way to get you just for you to sit around and waste my time. Let's go before Mrs. Cullen changes her mind."
Please review if you've been enjoying this. The end is very close; just 1 more chapters!
Please let me know if you spot any errors. Lady_vyxen looked this over, but we're both only human.