A/N All things Twilight belong to Stephanie Meyer. I'm just trying to write an alternative with her characters. No copyright infringement is intended.

I'd like to thank all readers, the reactions to my first fanfic have surpassed all my expectations. We've passed 500 reviews on FFn this week. I'm over the moon!

A big thank you, too, to my fantastic team. Chandrakanta, Lorraine Bubbleybear, and LunaDiSangue85.

This chapter comes with a bucket warning! While writing it I was nauseated. it was necessary to show the true depravity humans can sink to.

TWILESQUE

Chapter 20 Negotiations

EPOV

A few days after my all male hunting trip, Bella and I sat in our treehouse and cuddled silently. We were content. Suddenly, I heard a car arrive at Charlie's house. I listened for the thoughts accompanying the car and growled. Bella looked up with a question in her eyes. She didn't need to speak—I didn't need to hear her thoughts—I knew she wanted to know what had me growling.

"Billy and Jacob are here to visit Charlie. He still doesn't know you graduated early and thinks you are at school. He invited them to finalize their plans. Billy thinks he can buy himself a caregiver by marrying his son off to you."

Bella's eyes grew wide. "Say again? Charlie sold off his personal slave to his best friend at the price of his son. That lowlife, drug using, ingrate of a dog! I get nauseated looking at him on a good day. They actually think I would agree to marry him! But we finally find out what those arguments were about."

She was outraged. "Edward, I know I live at your place mostly, and this treehouse is wonderful for privacy, but in a few weeks I turn eighteen. Did my father really think I would stay with him one day after that?! I have to think about this, but we need to know what their plans are. It's also a good idea to listen in so we know better how they see me."

"You're right, sweetheart; let's go to your room. You need to be absolutely silent so we can have the door open and you can hear the conversation for yourself. I will tell you what they thought later. Please don't use your power to listen in; I don't know if you can contain Kitten if you hear them yourself."

"Okay." With that, Bella jumped to the entrance tree and climbed down nimbly. She would become a fantastic vampire. Even mostly human, she was magnificent already; I still couldn't hide my joy in her changing slowly and without pain. I followed her quickly and she jumped on my back; I was still much faster when running. I ran us to the Dump and jumped up to her window, holding on to the ledge and helping her climb inside; another advantage of her changing was her growing grace. She could never have entered so silently before. We opened her door just an inch, and retreated to sit on her bed with our backs against the headboard.

Gruff voices came from downstairs.

"Billy, Jacob, sit down make yourselves comfortable. Vitamin R?" There were two agreeing grunts.

"Jacob, make yourself useful and get us our beers," Billy said.

The recliner groaned as Charlie fell into it, his thoughts gleeful. 'When that cunt is Jacob's he won't mind making her clean here as a chore. This really is win-win for me. The free maid service is the only good thing that ever came of fucking Renee. That ugly bitch produced me a maid, an equally as ugly bitch but...'

I tuned him out before I could lose my temper. I switched to Billy's thoughts. 'Now, if we can only get Jacob to agree to take that little cunt, I think I can keep him in his place for Elder. It worked for me, too; Sarah produced me my heir and that was enough.' Pictures of a wrecked car flitted through his mind. 'I did arrange that nicely, and with Charlie as an 'eyewitness' to the 'accident', nobody looked closer at the brake lines. God, how long ago was that again? Five years, I believe.'

Dear God, Billy murdered his wife, and he and Charlie conspired to cover it up. Charlie wasn't only a lousy cop, he was corrupt, too.

Jacob's thoughts were hazy; he was obviously coming down from a recent high. Vague curiosity as to why he was here could be found behind the psychedelic swirls in his brain. He picked up one of Bella's school pictures, and that started to replace the swirls. He undressed her in his mind and pictured her, to my horror, bound naked against a stone wall, spread eagle. I cringed when he then produced a picture of him caning her for disobeying him. That picture aroused him physically, and I was very glad that Bella picked up on my distress and started to rub soothing circles on my back. I was even more relieved that she had promised not to use her power.

"Well," Billy said, "how are we going to proceed? I mean, I know Jacob will not object to having her for himself. He needs a cunt to produce an heir. That way we can hold on to the hereditary Head of the Council spot. That is the way I did it. This should be even easier because he won't have to go through the trouble of being nice to the breeder to catch her. Charlie, what are your demands for giving up your little whore?"

Charlie bristled. "Hey now, I don't like the little cunt enough to stick my dick in it. She's handy to keep up the house and cook me dinner, but that ugly bitch will never be stellar in the sack. Hmmm, my demands… it has to happen as soon as Jake turns eighteen. I paid for her long enough and the child support checks will stop as she turns eighteen. It just isn't worth my money to keep her up after that. That's one; two, she still has to clean here twice a week, and maybe you can have her cook meals for me, too. I mean Tupperware meals, I won't disturb your fuckfest too much, Jake. Three, I want a bigger cut in your drug profits. I've always turned a blind eye when you guys haul them in on tribal land. I kept my so-called colleagues away by keeping the La Push roads to myself. So, I think that if I give up my free housekeeping service, I am entitled to a little piece. Fourth, keep any spawn coming from that cunt away from me; I'm not a doting grandfather, EVER. That's it."

Jacob's head started to clear when he understood what was happening. "Wait a minute; you two are deciding that I'm going to marry that cunt. Who said that I wanted that bitch?"

Billy chuckled. "Your rock hard cock says you want her. You haven't taken your eyes of her picture since you grabbed it. Look, we need to keep our seat at the Council to continue our smuggling operation. It's the only way to keep the upper hand. For that to happen, we need you initiated as Chief. The only way that can happen is when you have a male heir. Until then you have a free fuckhole to do with as you please as long as you dump it here twice a week to clean and cook. She won't do anything against you; she doesn't have friends and she has always been a meek little thing. Doing as she was told. Use her and dump her when she has done enough."

Bella had her hand clamped over her mouth to keep her from vocalizing. The agonized fury spat out of her eyes. My fury was not far behind hers. How could they be so callous? I was actually wondering which of us was more inhuman. Me, the vampire, or those monsters down there. A very big vindictive smile started to grow on Bella's face. She took something out of her pocket and showed it to me. It was a small digital recorder and it was taping. I looked at the little screen and saw that it had the remote mike connected. Carlisle had obviously warned her that she had to activate the bugs in the house. This was just another time when our in-depth search and bug planting operation paid off.

"Now," sounded Charlie's voice downstairs, "we will need a marriage license. I will go with you, Jake, to get it. We need to do that soon, before the little bitch turns eighteen. You'll have to lie and tell them you got her preggo and want to do the right thing. With my consent, you will get it. Then I will sedate her the night before with Ketamine; when you come out of that haze, you'll do anything somebody tells you to do. Read a case about it once. We'll all go to Seattle and get you two married. Agreed?"

"Sure, sure," Jacob and Billy both said.

Suddenly, Jacob's leering mental voice burst into my brain. 'I would like to test drive this cunt before I'm bound to her. I could hogtie her and use all her holes to fill them up.'

I froze; the rest of his ideas were images he had seen on some perverted site about rape he was a paying member on. I had never seen such depravity, and the worst part was, he was substituting my love's lovely face on all those girls. A violent growl was starting to build in my chest. Bella felt the vibrations and understood I needed soothing; she stroked my cheek while I desperately held back my fury. We could not give ourselves away.

The vile monster downstairs decided to voice his urges.

"Hey, Charlie, what about a little test drive before the big event? I mean, if she's mine anyway, why not break her in?"

"NO!" Charlie was furious. Bella and I looked at each other. Was he actually defending her virtue? "You stupid moron, you 'test drive' her and give it all away. Remember that she's a week older than you, Jake. If you scare her before your birthday, she could disappear. Or report you to the straight cops. You will not bring us down by thinking with your cock. I have kept my hands to myself for almost eighteen years; you can do it for a few weeks."

Bella grabbed a notepad and a pen and scribbled a note, thrusting it to me.

Take me out of here, NOW. Before I go down and kill them all.

I took the recorder and put it under her books on her desk, then I scooped her in my arms and jumped from the window, landing in a full sprint toward our treehouse. I was still monitoring their thoughts and I was glad I left the recorder within range of the microphone. They were now discussing the percentage of the profits Charlie would receive and the dates of the next shipments. The Blacks had quite an operation going: cocaine and ecstasy, marketed under their own brand no less, Werewolf X. The stupid morons talked about everything, like where their labs were, those cabins in the La Push woods that were monitored by several video cameras in the trees ever since we found them. But more importantly, we had the whole exchange recorded. Ironclad evidence against the three of them of not only trafficking drugs, but also agreeing to take part in selling a human being: human trafficking.

We had arrived at the treehouse about ten minutes ago; Bella understood that my mind was still at Charlie's place and sat next to me, keeping me calm by running her fingers through my hair. Involuntary I started to purr, which made her purr as well. That brought me out of the thoughts of the real monsters of this world and back to her.

"Bella love, you're purring."

"Of course I am. You're purring; I need to answer you. Right now I'm here for you because you were still at Charlie's in your mind. Are they finished?"

"No, not completely, but the recorder will get the rest of it and we can listen to it later with the rest of the family. We will have to make a plan to undo everything they are planning. We need to get to the Port Angeles impound lot. We should be able to track down the Black's former car. Billy slit the brake lines and sent Sarah on an errand. Charlie witnessed the accident that killed her, and stated that she swerved to miss a deer and that's why she missed the bend and plowed headlong into the trees. This will not be on the tape, so we need to find solid evidence. I have a degree in criminology; I could write a thesis on murder by car and examine a series of formerly accidental deaths on the hypothesis that some could be murder. Charlie and the Blacks never thought about the fact that even cars from accidental deaths are kept for ten years before they are scrapped. Do you remember when Sarah Black had her accident?"

An adorable frown came between her eyebrows, she was thinking hard. "Five, maybe six, years ago. So that would give you four years to prove that one. But my main concern is pretty selfish if you don't mind. I refuse to even be in one room with Charlie anymore; if he is capable of slipping me a Mickey, I just won't do face-time with him anymore. The only time you will find me in the same room is when he is safely passed out. I'm so glad I don't eat human food anymore. I won't have to inconvenience all you full vamps with human food at the house. And, Edward, can I ask you something?"

"Of course, honey, shoot."

She scrambled off the couch we were sitting on, ran to her drawer of unmentionables, and rummaged around. She found what she was looking for, ran to me and dropped to one knee before me. "Will you marry me?"

I sat there stunned; she had completely blindsided me. My phone vibrated in my pocket. If Alice saw it real time, Bella had comfortably blindsided the whole Cullen information system. I did the only thing I could do. I dropped to my knees next to her, grabbed her face between my hands and kissed her with all the passion in my heart. "Yes, of course I will marry you, my darling girl," I said when I had to let her go to breathe. She slipped a gorgeous male engagement ring onto my left ring finger. It was the most precious gift I'd ever received, platinum with an emerald and pale yellow and black diamonds.

"It signifies your eyes through the ages, the windows to your soul."

Her statement choked me up; I hated the fact that my eyes couldn't produce tears anymore. They filmed over with venom, though.

"Can I ask why you want to get married, though?"

"Edward, I will be eighteen in two weeks; I want to change my address officially that day. If there wasn't a twenty-four hour waiting period on a wedding license, I would want to get married that day. It will have to be the day after now, though. You have to understand that, even though you and I know we are bonded a thousand times stronger than any marriage, it's the only legal way to thwart Charlie's plans. But I will marry you out of love, only the haste is out of necessity. I know Charlie will get a wedding license in my name in the next two weeks; maybe we could hinder that also, because I don't know if we can get one if another one is issued in my name already."

My phone buzzed again, I took it out and read the text:
Legally no problem with two licenses in one name. Best to let them get it without stirring up suspicion. J

I let Bella read it and she grinned. While she had my phone, it buzzed again and she read the text.

Bella has second recorder, collect nr1 and leave nr2 plugged into outlet, mic is voice operated, so will pick up all conversation. Come to the house with nr1 we will have a fam. meeting when you get there. ~ C

We did what Carlisle told us and soon we were seated in the dining room for our family meeting. The Denalis had gone for a hunt; they wanted nothing to do with our human meddling. We explained what had happened that afternoon and let them listen to the tape. I have never seen six vampires slack jawed at once, but that tape did it. When I told them what I heard in their thoughts, the astonishment changed to anger and Jasper had to work hard to keep us calm enough to think rationally. Even passive Carlisle was vibrating in his seat, and I was touched by the fact that he wanted to end all three of them, not counting them as humans anymore.

"Edward, I must compliment you on your restraint, and the fact that you kept your goal firmly in your mind: total humiliation after your mate is safely yours. We will make sure that all three of them will get what they deserve, and I think that death is too merciful for them. Before they will suffer in hell, we will make sure they will suffer on earth even more." We all nodded in agreement with Carlisle's statement. "So, what plans do we have already?" Carlisle asked.

Alice was vibrating in her seat, but I started with my plan to act like a Master's student in criminology to unearth wrecked cars and to see how many car accidents were actually disguised murders.

Rose said, "I understand that you would like to do that, but maybe I would be better suited for that job, to pose as the student, I mean. I know far more about cars, have the same level degree in criminology as you have, and, for the casual observer, have nothing to do with the potentially accused in the wreck we will be unearthing. You are the boyfriend of the daughter of one of them and that could lead to suspicion. My criminology degree is in the name of McCarty and that's a name nobody here knows. Elody McCarty will be the over enthusiastic Master's student with the outlandish hypothesis to be proven. You can help me, of course, but I really think you should only be with me on secret locations or night work. You'll have to describe the car you saw in Billy's head."

"You're right, Rose; it was just an idea I had because of my criminology degree. I didn't think it through. Furthermore, you would have always been involved, but I'm okay with you as the driving force. I still can't be too far from Bella without it being debilitating for her, and she's the absolute last person to be involved in this. That would raise all kinds of alarms. I believe Alice wants to tell the next revelation of the day, because it does not happen often that the text informing me of something is after the fact."

Alice took over. "Yeah, so not true, I don't believe it. But can I plan it please, please, pretty please?"

"Plan what, Alice?" Emmett exclaimed, highly irritated over all the nonsensical babble in a planning mission.

"Well," Bella said, "to thwart Charlie, and because he's my soul mate, I asked Edward to marry me today. The date is set for the 14th of September. The day after my birthday."

"Why the hurry? That's barely two weeks," Esme exclaimed.

"You heard the tape; I need to be away from Charlie and legally untouchable before Jacob turns eighteen. He is only five days younger than I am. Charlie and Billy became friends on the maternity ward where I was just born and Billy's wife was admitted with a complication which resulted in her delivering him prematurely. Something must have been pretty wrong, because the way Jacob has grown up is not stable. He is a head case if I have ever seen one. When we were little and Charlie still took me with him to tend to his needs while fishing, Jacob was there often, too. He had heard their tribal legends about them being descendants of wolves. He believed those legends and ran around on all fours and growled at everyone. I mean, that's funny when you are four, but at twelve? I wouldn't be surprised that the name of those drugs came from those legends. Hahaha, he even used to howl at the full moon, for crying out loud. He probably still does."

I had taken something from the treehouse and put it in a pouch around my neck. My early nineteen-hundred morals made me want to do it right. I took it from the pouch, the pouch which also held my mother's engagement ring. Carlisle's eyes went wide; he knew what was in that pouch. He just didn't know I had bought an addition to that pouch.

"Bella, may I ask you something?" I said, while getting down on one knee next to her. I heard Esme gasp. Bella turned to me with a big smile on her face.

"Yes, Edward, what is it?" she said calmly. I took her left hand in mine.

"Bella, my darling, even though you have already asked me, and I have acquiesced, I still wanted to do this the way I was taught. My angel, with all my heart I love thee. My soul is yours; the bond between us can only grow stronger. In a little while, you will not only be my better in the intelligence department, but also physically. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen; you are perfect for me. Will you please do me the exquisite honor of becoming my wife?"

I showed her the heart-shaped engagement ring, lifted it to her left ring finger, and waited. Bella's mouth was hanging open and her eyes were glassy. She shook her head and the big smile returned.

"Yes, I will," she stated confidently. I slipped the ring on her finger; it was a perfect fit. We fell in each other's arms and I twirled her around and around. Life would be perfect.

For the first time in ages, it looked like Alice was completely on board. She couldn't wait to splash out on this last first wedding in our family. I didn't have the heart to tell her yet that it would be a simple courtroom wedding. Bella had, though, because with one look at vibrating Alice, her hackles rose.

"Alice, please be advised that my wedding will be a very simple affair. If at all possible on my birthday, I already have my wedding outfit, so no conspicuous wedding dress shopping. I will plan the ceremony with Rose. You can do the reception, at a venue. The only humans I'd like to invite are Chief and Mrs. Cope; they are the only people who helped me without an ulterior motive. Edward, I hope you agree that we need to postpone our honeymoon until after we go to Italy."

Alice's thoughts were mildly argumentative, but she agreed to do the party happily, even though she couldn't invite the whole town to spite them. I didn't really understand Alice lately; at the moment, she seemed to be Bella's friend, but I caught her thoughts sometimes being downright hostile toward my mate. I tallied this day as a good one for once.

It took us about three hours to research and implement the plan to bring down Charlie and his cohorts. A very comprehensive package of evidence was compiled. We had video evidence of the cabins mentioned by Billy on our latest tapes, transcripts of all the tapes from Charlie's secret basement, Paul's testimony—that was a bonus, the kid had been in a coma for five months; for everybody outside his direct caregivers, including his parents, he still was. He was transferred to a long time care facility a few states away, to keep him safe. Carlisle worked together with Chief Cope, and when he grasped that Paul was waking up, he kept him sedated until his parents consented to the long term coma unit. One of four in the country, Carlisle made it look as if their insurance covered it, but ultimately it was done on Cullen—read Masen—dime.

Paul's testimony was very interesting. He knew a lot about the inner workings of the Quileute drug ring. Because Jacob betrayed him so badly, he sang like a canary; he told us that if Jacob had shown a sliver of respect, he would have kept his mouth shut.

On the other event what would unfold on the same day, we knew now it could all be done on Bella's birthday. Carlisle would go to Chief Cope to bring Charlie down right after Bella had confronted him. Because my feisty mate was determined to tell him exactly what he was worth to her. I just said that in the nicest words possible; her words were actually that she would fucking tell that lowlife ingrate where he could stick his dick. To add to that, she was looking for an industrial rat trap.

Jasper searched the Internet for the Washington marriage laws; he found that we could get a license as soon as a week before Bella's birthday, as long as the actual wedding would not take place until her birthday. That was fine by us. September thirteenth would be our wedding day.

A/N The total humiliation of the human waste products has begun. I truly hope your buckets remained empty during the reading of the first part of this chapter. To soften the pain of such nasty thoughts I gave you a double proposal. Please tell me what you thought about it all. Review or comment, I really am interested in your thoughts and ideas.

my recommendations this week are:

A Fork in the Road by jane-with-a-y, FFn 6493971, TWCS Sid=3831, FP under janewithay.

Romance is Dead by Kat097, FFn 5589439.

see you next week

Pien