Hola chicos!

Oh my gosh, can you believe I'm fucking updating this shit! ? !

Me either. I know it's been a while, so I'll be quick. Things in real life were hard as hell for me for a while, if you want to know, I left a message for all my readers on my Twilighted thread. But basically, all you guys need to know is that I'd never abandon this story. And for those that have stuck by me, I can't thank you enough, really. I'm seriously writing this story for you.

Karen and Misti, you two have been my rocks through all of this. I know you might think, oh but we didn't really do much, but I'm just SUCH a private person about the the family stuff, and you guys were there to hold my hand in JUST the way I needed when I needed it. I'm so blessed to know two fabulous and compassionate ladies like you guys and just thank you so much. This chapter's for you guys.

Jess, PunkyBumpkin, you're the world's greatest beta. You really are. And no matter how many times we gotta go over a chapter to make sure we both caught all my tense slips, you're always there with me.

Last time on Stolen Souls:

Jasper made the crucial decision to go to the club and confront Bella about all of the information inconsistencies he found. The biggest of all is that Renee and Phil are still alive. As he confronts Bella at the club, in a compromising position, both Alice and Edward walk in catching them. The information affects them both heavily, but on very different levels. For Alice it's overwhelms her emotionally, for Edward it enrages him. A fight breaks out between Jasper and Edward and an emotional destruction falls to Alice and Bella.

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight or any of its characters. No copyright infringement is intended.

Stolen Souls

Chapter 25

If I saw it, then sure as fuck someone else noticed this shit too.

..xx..

"The hospital called," Rosie said from her perch on the sofa, against the window, millions of miles away from where I lay on the bed. If the distance didn't scream the words we weren't saying, then those cold blue eyes of hers did. I'd have half a mind to care if she wasn't, at that very moment, rolling up pantyhose on one of her luscious legs. I fucking loved watching that shit. So, like everything that had been going on recently, I put it in the back of my mind and let my thoughts drift towards things I'd rather entertain.

My arm swung to the right until it came crashing with the nightstand and the lamp on top of it. When I felt the alarm clock I was searching for, I brought it back with me to my face: noon. I'd slept in and I didn't hear the phone ring. A slam of frustration put the clock back where it belonged. "What hospital?"

"In California?"

A groan escaped me as I rubbed my eyes clean of lethargy. I didn't need this shit on top of everything else. "It's not a hospital, Orchid. It's a clinic."

She narrowed an eye at my irritated tone, but I didn't even care to bother hiding that shit. The last thing I needed right now—most especially right now—was to deal with this. I couldn't get the time away from the club with the way things were currently. But the fact of the matter was that call only came in when they wanted one thing . . . .

"You going to go?"

"Like I have a fucking choice."

She watched me briefly as she stood up, something indistinguishable in her expression, before she turned away from me completely. The clattering silence of the dressers opening and closing spoke for her. Just like with her distance and stare. And I hated when she did this shit. Rose was a master of nonverbal communication, but what made it worse was that when you called her out on it, she could easily feign ignorance since she said nothing; but the implication was always read loud and clear even if, for whatever reason, she denied it. It was all beginning to wear very thin. I'd been so on edge lately, and my frustration was clawing at my skin, begging for a release. If she had something to say, she should just fucking say it. "Just say it."

Her eyes met mine in the mirror over the dresser and held them too long. A simple twitch of her lips and narrow of her eyebrows judged me and found me guilty all in the same instant.

"Is your father, Emmett . . . ."

"Don't fucking start with me, Rose," I said in exasperation. Quicker than a blink a shoe came flying at my head, the crash clattering against the headboard behind me. If that shit wasn't intended to hurt me, I might have been impressed with her fucking aim. But the only reaction I had was to duck out of the way.

I had fucking slept in, had to wake up to a lovely reminder that I needed to be in California this month around the 30th for shit I just didn't want to deal with right now—why it was even necessary so often was ridiculous—not to mention the fact that she seemed to be judging me for shit she didn't understand. Shit that she had no fucking right to even call my ass out on, and she had the audacity to throw something at me? Automatically, I grabbed the shoe and threw it back at her, without the same purpose she had, my jaw tightening as it left my grip. "Don't fucking throw shit at me, Rose."

She didn't flinch when the shoe collided with the mirror, almost as if she anticipated it, knew where it'd strike, and how much force was behind it. I had no idea how she could have known all of that from just looking in the mirror.

"Then don't be asshole. I just asking question. Is you only family—you could care more."

I watched her continue to get dressed in front of the mirror, my neck straining with each turn to catch her movements as if the weight it carried had doubled overnight and I just couldn't hack it anymore. And double standards weighed more than anything.

"You know, Rose, if you want to talk about that shit, let's talk about it," I said while sitting up and attempting to bring a level of interest to a conversation that was becoming more and more apparent we'd never have. "How's your family? Your parents? Do you"—I gritted the words through the hypocrisy that coated them—"even fucking have parents, Rose?"

She spun around to face me dead-on. I nonchalantly tilted my head up at her with a shoulder shrug as she crossed her hands over her chest; the challenge in her silent glare flipped me off. Those ocean-wide baby blues tore me apart piece by piece like only her stare could, telling me that she wouldn't answer anything, like always. There was always something authoritative and instinctual in that stare, militant almost in its discipline and lack of waver. And I'd seen men double her size not come close to achieving that type of look, even the men I worked for. It could simply be just a Russian thing—I mean, who the hell was I to know the difference—but something about it felt like it was something more.

"My family still in Russia, Emmett—you know this. Don't take you problems out on me."

My back straightened. Fuck her challenge. "Do I, Rose? Do I know that? Because you haven't fucking talked about it. Don't pull your hypocritical, lying bullshit on me."

Purposefully she crossed the distance of the room, each measured step of her long legs like a guillotine slamming down. Just as meticulously, she dropped her arms to the bed to lean closer to me, seething through every pore of her perfect body. "Lying?"

I met her glare for fucking glare; I didn't know what type of weak ass men she had dated before, but this shit just wouldn't fly. "Did I stutter?"

It was her next action that spoke more than her words ever would, not that her words weren't ice enough. But the way she hovered over me, face directly in front of mine, stare piercing, jaw clenched, eye slightly twitching to the racing pulse she tried to rein in, told me that I didn't know her half as well as I thought I did. And that thought fucking destroyed me because it would figure that when I did finally fall for someone, it would prove to be the worst fucking decision of my life.

And I was good at making poor choices.

"Watch how you talk to me, Emmett." Each stilted word was deliberate; her breathing wrapped around them like the firm grip of a suffocating hand around a frail neck, completely wiping out her accent so that only those words remained.

She kept my stare for mere seconds longer before turning to leave the room, grabbing a few things she'd need first.

The front door didn't slam when she left. The control she had over her emotions was something to be envied; I saw the look in her eyes, felt the fire radiate off of her. There was no doubt in my mind that she was ten times angrier than I was, yet the only thing that gave her away were those blazing blue eyes.

We were going to have to have a serious fucking talk soon, because all this suspicion was poison.

Yet it was such a fucking double-edged sword—and the biggest reason I hadn't pressed her lying before—because I wanted her to be honest with me, but I knew there were things that I could never tell her. Even now, no matter what, nobody could ever know. So, in reality, who was lying to whom here?

..xx..

I didn't know just how many red flags I'd missed tonight . . . or plain fucking ignored because all the drama lately with Rose was playing like a never-ending Nascar loop through my head, speeding by so fast that I hadn't felt the draft and wasn't able to grab ahold of any of it.

First, I'd let that fucking Dean in the club. Jasper Hale. I knew from the letter that Jasper was his first name, but I also knew from that first time I saw him in the club in a tuxedo that he wasn't an idiot. There was no way that was his last name—which meant that there was no way that was his address either. So instead I made sure to memorize the code engraved under the scan on the back; if anything could be traced, it would be that.

He even dyed his hair darker. That I found a little fucking funny. Your hair color didn't mask who you were. And I knew who the fuck he was from the second I saw those blue eyes. There was something so familiar about them, like I'd been staring into them for the past six months. No doubt it could have been my fucking subconscious; that shit was known to play tricks on me time and time again.

I knew I shouldn't have let his ass into the club. But I did it for her, which only brought me to the second thing.

Second, something was bothering Pixie. She wasn't her usual, well, Pixie self. Bags were forming under her eyes and I knew a lot of it had to do with that letter. That fag with blond hair and a shit-eating grin that I gave the letter to, Mike Newton—he was the type of idiot to use his real driver's license and it checked out—hadn't come back to the club. So I knew that meant that Pix didn't get a response to her letter. I couldn't help but feel partially guilty for that. Maybe my threat passed down to Mike Newton did make a difference; I honestly doubted it, having remembered just how fierce Dean was with Twilight when he was in the club that time. But it didn't change the fact that he didn't answer the letter, and Pixie asked me almost daily, wide-eyed and hopeful, if I knew anything, if either Dean or the fag came back to the club. I had nothing to report back to her, and had to watch from the sidelines as each day those wide eyes dropped and their glow faded.

Third, that fucking letter was a sore that no matter how much I scratched didn't stop aching. Her story in Seattle just didn't sit right with me. I knew for a fact that as a daughter of a fallen police officer, there were resources available to her. Survivor's funds, government assistances—not to mention he had to have life insurance on the job—and so many other things. I had no idea her dad was a cop. In all the times she talked about him, she never said what he did for a job, just what he did with her and their hobbies together. Which was the only thing that made sense; you didn't go around screaming in a place like this that your old man was a uniform.

But everything else . . . it didn't make sense that they were put into a situation where they had nothing available to them. It just didn't work like that. And depending on their ages—which I still wasn't too clear about since the letter didn't specify and Pix wouldn't tell me the exact number—they'd had to have been taken care of by the state. They'd have gotten assistance from the state in foster placement, or that woman that was the girlfriend of her dad could have gotten lots of help financially to keep them; all she'd have to do was apply for them. Then what happened to her sister's parents? There should have been insurance from the car accident, the liquidation of assets, not to mention someone had to identify the bodies . . . so if they didn't have family in Arizona, who identified the bodies? It was highly unlikely that the police in Arizona just ignored all procedure. How did everyone miss all of this?

I knew she was young, really young, when this shit happened to her, but she wasn't alone. Her and her sister had to have had help. It just didn't make sense. Someone had to have denied the help—that was the only thing that did make sense. And if that were the case, why? Why the fuck would they deny help only to end up in this shit?

There was so much fucking wrong with Pixie's past that I made sure to take careful note of. I wasn't missing any details later. I tried to talk to Pix about my suspicions, but she was so gloomy lately that I didn't know what to do for her. I asked her all the time if she remembered talking to anyone from the state after the accident, or if the woman she was staying with had. And at the time she said that it was because they were going to go to her step-mom's. But after the accident, she didn't know what happened. I tried to explain to her that the same thing should have happened. People would have contacted them, and got the ball rolling on things. When I didn't get much out of Pix, I even tried talking to her sister—Bella, said the letter. Which brought me to my next red flag.

Fourth, Pixie's sister was a fucking mess. I didn't know what the hell happened to her, but if Pixie looked sadder every day, her sister was fucking disappearing—those eyes hollowed out and didn't look at anything, just past everything. Not to mention the fact that she was high more often than not. On the outside she looked decent enough, and maybe that was why she was high so often, but those big brown eyes were fucking gone; and considering how much weight she was continually losing, her eyes swallowed her face. I was certain that her behavior was influencing Pixie's as well. Pixie was a sort of needy person, and companionship was something she really needed. But her sister was pushing everyone away.

It was a train wreck watching that shit. I had no idea what happened or which one affected the other more, but it was obvious that what happened to one was reflected in the other. Those sisters really were half of the same soul; it was too fucking much sometimes.

Fifth, Rose's enigmatic shit was getting worse. Actually Rosie was always number one, but I tried to keep that shit on lockdown.

Maybe about half an hour after I had let Dean into the fucking club, Felix came out from the back to give me my lunch break. Immediately I went looking for my desert bloom, to at least smooth things over from earlier; I hadn't seen her since she left. She was dancing tonight. But I couldn't fucking find her anywhere. And I fucking looked everywhere.

Frustration rose like a pulse in my body, ringing in my ears with doubt.

Obviously we didn't drive together, but we never did. Rose had said that she felt it was best if we kept our relationship as hidden as possible while we were at the club. Which was fine—she was probably right. I could play platonic at work. But even though we hadn't driven together, I had seen her here not too long after I had arrived—though she wouldn't stop and talk to me. Which was only more reason for me to go looking for her during my break. She was here; yet I couldn't fucking find her. There were only a few places that I usually wasn't allowed and none of them were places she should be.

It was driving me fucking crazy. I couldn't stop thinking that she had to be in one of those places. Which meant she had lied to me.

She had been fucking lying to me, again.

I wasn't a hard bastard to deal with. I was pretty chill, not controlling, and didn't pry into people's secrets. But when I asked a straight up fucking question, then I expected a straight answer. It wasn't even about lying; it was about respecting the other person enough to not want to lie to them. When we had that talk months ago, I poured my heart out to her. And, yeah, I'd fucking noticed that she hadn't said she loved me back. But I didn't need to hear the words; I was a believer in "actions speak louder than words," and I could feel it in the way she touched me or the way she stared when she thought I didn't notice.

I did notice.

But if actions spoke louder than words, what the fuck were her actions screaming now?

And it was that shit that ate at me like some parasite. Her actions left a lot to the imagination. Just like tonight. I wasn't a suspicious person, until provoked. And I fucking hated that she was giving me a reason to doubt her, because this was all too complicated to just wipe my hands clean now.

I knew I would have to talk to her again. My mind couldn't even wrap around what would happen if she continued lying . . . if I caught her in a lie.

Yet, as much as I dwelled on the Rose issue, I couldn't ignore one of the most important red flags of the night.

Sixth and last fucking red flag was Raggedy Ann. He was a regular. There were plenty of regulars; fools who obviously couldn't get it on their own so they came and paid for that shit. He wasn't an ugly-looking dude, but the ring on his finger didn't lie. He was the type of idiot that got his rocks off on cheating; if I had a fucking dime for each one of those I saw walking through the front door . . . . All things considered, I didn't pay too much mind to it before, until that letter.

I was almost one hundred percent fucking certain that Dean's friend that Pixie was talking about in the letter had to be Raggedy Ann. An Edward Cullen, said the license he showed at the door. It just fit. His coming to see Twilight, the way Pixie ran after him in the parking lot that one night, and just a gut feeling that he was involved in all of this somehow. So I made sure to memorize his license, most importantly that address, because I had a feeling since he was a regular that I'd have a much better chance with this one not being a fake like I knew Dean's was.

Sadly, though, it wasn't until Twilight came to the door to get me, looking worse than I'd ever seen her, that I realized I should have seriously paid fucking attention to those red flags.

The girl looked like death, a complete mess. I'd have fucking worried about her, or maybe the guys at the club like Demetri or Felix or Oleg, but that chick was always flirting with the Reaper; lately, however, she'd full-blown fucked him. And he literally screwed her shit over. There wasn't one guy in here that gave her a second look anymore; it was obvious the baggage under her eyes wasn't the only shit she was carrying around. Not to mention the fact that bones were only attractive to the dogs.

I honestly had no idea why they let her continue coming into work. Or . . . I guess "let" would be the wrong phrasing there, but in my mind it'd only deter customers—not entirely what they were going for, I was sure.

"Emmett . . . Emmett," Twilight said as she pulled on my large forearm. Her voice came out in a haggard whisper, somewhere between the Reaper clawing at her throat, closing off her air supply, and an attempt at not drawing attention. There wasn't anyone at the door, so I ducked inside and took her with me, shielding her from any possible eyes looking in our direction. Her eyes darted everywhere in a red-rimmed haze. I had to shake her a bit to get her to focus.

"What happened?"

Judging by the look of genuine fear in her eyes, this wasn't the run of the mill reason for her to come and get me. It was a club after all; I could count on my fingers and toes how many times I wasn't needed.

"I . . . didn't know . . . came and hit him . . . she wasn't saying anything . . . you have to help," she stammered. I wasn't too sure if it was because she was out of breath any more than her frantic nerves. My hand flew to my temple and eyebrow to squeeze; that didn't help me at all.

"Okay, okay. Calm down," I said as I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her a little bit. "Gimme a sec." Quickly I made my way to the bar and nodded to one of the guys. We'd all worked here so long that words were no longer necessary. With a tilted nod I said, got a problem—take care of the front. His eyebrow raise was you need help? My final upward nod reassured that I could handle it and thanks for taking over. It's part of the job, he shrugged.

While I made my way back to her, I hoped that the brief time away was enough to get a grip on whatever the fuck was going down. She knew she shouldn't act like this. The last thing she needed was for someone to notice the way she was behaving. And judging by her deep breaths, her clenched fists and eyes, she knew this fact too.

When Sasha got to my post, I followed Twilight to where she was heading, not ignoring the fucking brick in my gut that told me this was my fault. And it had something to do with a fucking Dean. If he had anything to do with this, I would kick his fucking ass. Twilight was trying her best to not run to wherever we were headed, but it wasn't that successful. Her stampede was pretty fucking fast, one leg twitching to go faster, while the other dragged along to try and slow her down.

She led me past the golden double door, and Felix just nodded. It wasn't the first time that I'd been led back there to stop something, and we all knew it wasn't going to be the last time. Hell, it wasn't the first time Felix had been dragged back to pull some dipshit off the fucking floor he'd puked on, or something equally as fucking disgusting or stupid. He didn't envy Twilight coming to get me instead of him.

The pounding of the music from the speakers in the ceiling of the hallway was always louder than the speakers out in the club, and it wasn't much of a surprise as to why that was. But the second we reached closer to a door, there was no doubt in my mind that was where we were headed. I was able to pick up the unmistakable grunts of men fighting and slamming against walls. Pushing Twilight to the side, I stormed in. The scene in front of me wasn't anything I would have expected. And in that moment there was only one thought that kept ringing in my ears.

What the fuck was Oleg doing back there?

How the fuck was he missing this on the cameras? Did he just jack off to some of the shit he saw on one screen and not catch the stuff on the others?

There was a thrown-back couch in the middle of the room; Pix off to the side of the door with black tears covering her face; and in the midst of all of it was Raggedy Ann pressed against the left wall with his arm wrapped around Dean's neck, head shoved into his chest. But Dean was ramming his fist into Ann's side. There was a thick smell of anger and adrenaline in the room, a fucking idiotic combination that fell from fools like sweat and blood.

I made a beeline for the fighting idiots. Whatever kept Oleg from seeing this shit on the camera couldn't keep him that long. Lady Luck was a teasing whore, and this shit was about to run dry any second.

Pulling my arm back, my elbow connected hard with Ann's jaw, throwing him back and stunning him, causing him to loosen his grip on Dean. Then the same elbow dove into the center of Dean's back, causing him to arch away from Ann, giving me enough time to pull both of Dean's arms into a lock behind his back. It didn't even faze me that I used way more force then I needed, or that I knew how to place elbow blows in a fashion that wouldn't hurt me but would have them regretting it in the morning. These two were already on my fucking last nerve anyway. Ann's bounce back was a quick reflex, though I knew it had to do mostly with the adrenaline coursing through his hyped-up blood system. I pegged him with a dead stare. "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY CLUB!"

Dean began to try and break free, but I wrapped one leg around his, bending my knee against the contorted way I had captured his leg, making him give into the pain and stopping any fucking attempt from leaving. "Don't be fucking stupid. I'm taking your ass out of here." To emphasize my point I bent my knee more. The anger in his tight stance melted away quicker than wax in a blaze and might have drove my knee deeper once more, just fucking because.

My stare pegged Pix. "You okay?" She didn't even look up. Her eyes were fixed on her sister who was standing—barely—off to the left of her. I would have to come back and check up on her, but I didn't have time to waste right then. "Make sure she's okay," I said to Twilight.

"Wait five minutes, then I want you to leave the fucking club too. I'm going to come back and you better pray I don't find your ass still here." Ann met my glare with nothing but pure rage in his eyes.

I shoved Dean, reminding him to not fuck this up for Pix; if he had some sense, he'd walk out of here on his best fucking behavior. There was no way I was playing around or wasting any time with any of this shit.

His body was finally feeling the effects of the fighting as it limped against mine. Once we were out of the room in the hall, I let go of him and he walked out of there with a head held higher than I would have ever believed. But I wasn't an idiot and shoved him towards the back exit; we weren't pressing Lady Luck any more tonight.

My eyes never left the back of that head, though, and I was never more than a step behind him. It was obvious he was being escorted off the premises, and the blood on his face and swelling wasn't going to deny any suspicions, but the fact that he wasn't being forced out worked in all of our favors.

The cops were never something we wanted involved in the club, and so we took whatever measures we could to prevent that. My eyes darted around the back entrance; to the left was the girls' changing area for the dancers, and it was an open space. I took careful note of who was around and who was watching the show. The regular workers, which wasn't a blessing or a curse . . . yet. Only time would tell. And I fucking hoped for that broken girl crying back on the floor of that room we just came from that time would ignore this one little hiccup in its routine. Because the fact of the matter was that it needed to fucking ignore this shit.

"I better not see your fucking face in this club again, you hear me?" I said from behind him as he continued walking. We'd made it out of the club and were walking along the side of the building towards the front parking lot to whatever piece of shit car he drove here tonight. He didn't acknowledge my words, but the twitch of his head and fingers as if he wanted to make a fist told me he heard that shit.

And because I was a fucking dick, I continued to tell him all about the ass-load of trouble he was in, or that I'd get him in if he ever returned, as I walked too fast for him, clipping his heels every other step. I made sure to let him know just how much of a fuck-up he was and that he'd never be allowed within one hundred feet of Pix, and how he'd better not even consider sending another fucking letter, because there were connections at this club that he couldn't even dream.

Once I was tired of staring at his back and was sure I'd said enough, I turned and headed back toward the front of the club. Not but a couple of feet away, Ann was heading with purpose toward the parking lot. I slowed my step and memorized the swing of his arm. When he came within reaching distance of me, I pulled him into me from that swinging arm, slamming his chest against me.

"Whatever fucking shit you've got going on, you take it somewhere else." I didn't bother hiding the fact that I couldn't care less if he and Dean beat each other to death, just not on my shift or in my parking lot. He glared as he tried yanking his arm out of my grab, but he was trapped. "I better not fucking see you in this club again either." That glare widened before he turned his head away condescendingly like he had my fucking number, when I was the one who was calling the shots now.

His lips opened to say something but stopped. When I was done with him, I forcefully pushed him away from me. I watched as he walked through the parking lot, and just before I turned away I caught sight of Dean leaning against his car with his arms crossed over his chest, just waiting. It wasn't the first time that the thought that that motherfucker was insane crossed my mind.

Once I was back in the club, I had to dodge questions from Sasha first, telling him that I needed him to man the post for a bit longer, and then Felix who was just as much of a gossiping bitch as Sasha.

When I went back to the room, it was empty and the couch was sitting upright; the thin drapes that were decorations on the wall were back where they should have been. There wasn't a sign of anything out of the ordinary in the room. And I didn't see Pix or Twilight anywhere.

My hand made laps through my hair and over my forehead as I tried to figure this whole fucking thing out. Then the thought that Oleg hadn't seen any of this crossed my mind once again, and I decided that was the best place to start.

I left the room, turned off the lights, and made my way to the last door in the hallway for the second time tonight. The door was at the end of it, instead of the sides, leading to the back changing room, bathroom, and the back stairwell. At the top of the stairwell were two rooms. The furthest down the hall was Aro's office, but the first one at the top was the control room, where all the video feeds led to.

Very few workers at the club were allowed on the second floor of the club, and even those people were only allowed if they were specifically asked by Aro or had urgent business.

As I made my way through the changing room, I saw Rose by the mirror. Her eyes caught my reflection in the mirror and she turned up to look at me. The downturn of her lips and the eerie softness in her eyes stopped me for a minute. There was something in her eyes that looked a whole lot like regret. But I had to be wrong, because there was no way my girl was sorry for anything she'd ever done. She was too proud for that shit. We both were. Maybe that was where we started to go wrong with all of it. But before I could think anything more of it, she turned her eyes away from me and continued fixing her hair that was a mess.

Again I was reminded of all the fucking reasons I was pissed at her this night. And the one that held the most weight right then was the fact that when I wanted to smooth things over, I couldn't find her ass anywhere. The suspicions were poisoning all of it, and I was seriously one argument away from calling it quits with her.

When I reached the top of the stairs, the door to the control room was wide open and Oleg was toying with some switch.

"What the fuck were you doing?"

His body jumped and his hands fumbled all over in front of him. He was probably one of those fucking geek losers who spent all his time alone in a room with a screen than with real people. The glow from the screens on his glasses made his eyes look wider.

"What you talking about?" His voice was grainy, like he'd just woken up . . . or gotten off.

"The shit in room ten. Did you even see that shit?" His eyes darted to the screens in front of him, looking for room ten's, no doubt. Thin hands made their way to his shirt and then his jeans that were unbuttoned. And I fucking knew it. He was some sick Peeping Tom and jacked off to the footage from the cameras.

Disgusted—because did this shit ever not fucking repulse me?—I slammed the door before reminding him to do his fucking job instead of whatever the fuck he did back here alone in his dark room.

As I looked down the dark hall on the second floor, I decided now was as good a time as any. Aro was in the club tonight and I needed to talk to him about my time off to go to California. Since I already needed to speak to him, I'd tell him to put that fucking Dean on the list.

It wasn't my fucking fault. I'd warned Dean, but it was obvious that he was more fucking trouble than the effort was worth. And if my threats weren't working, maybe making sure that he was on the list would get the job done.

There were two running lists of people that the club had. There was a list the bouncers had that we didn't really share with anyone, since these were just lowlifes that didn't cause too much of a stir. But then there was the list that Aro was aware of. People who'd run tabs into significant financial zones, people who'd caused damage to the club or involved the authorities, and then those that weren't allowed to return.

And if I went to Aro with Dean, I'd make sure that he wasn't linked to Pix. I could keep her safe and still make sure that he never returned to the club. I was done with that shit, and it was time I put it out of my hands. And while I was at it, I'd add Ann to it too. If anything, I just knew his address was correct on the license, and it wouldn't hurt anyone if both of them were made known to Aro.

The echoing boom of my steps on the landing down the hall to Aro's office engulfed me as I made up my mind that I'd just cut the problem with these two off at the source. There was no doubt in my mind I was making the right choice.

Author's note continued:

So some of you guys may have noticed that I didn't write whose POV this was at the top of the chapter like I usually do. That's something that's going to change about the set up of the story/chapters. Adding the POV name at the top of the chapter was something a reader recommended to me early in the beginning when I didn't have but a couple of readers, because she felt it was better that way. I continued to do it, but it was never my intention to do that in the first place. I wanted the reader to be able to figure it out by the voice in the chapter, the language, and the clues. I work really hard to maintain a specific style and voice per character, and I think now is as good a time as any to revert back to my original plan. Especially because we've gotten at least two chapters per character to establish themselves. I have faith in you guys and my writing that you'll be able to figure it out, but if I didn't do my job adequately and you're still unsure of whose POV it is, feel free to ask. But I sort of love the guessing fun in it. Also, when I put my chapter teasers up on my Twilighted forum I WILL post the banner for the character's POV the chapter belongs to.

Also, I've decided on a posting schedule! I know, crazy right. But I'm gonna do a chapter a month. It's doable and also a push to keep me on my toes. I'll upload the chapter every month shortly before or on the tenth. If I have more done sooner, I'll do that, but if not, expect a chapter a month. Again, guys I TOTALLY understand if you want to put this story on hold until it's complete. Real life is too hectic for all of us to have to stress over something that's meant to be pleasant and entertaining.

Just wanted to thank you guys again, I seriously have the best readers EVER. See you guys around! xx Naya

I want to thank those who are reading and supporting this endeavor!

Leave me some love and let me know what you think, it makes all this hard work worth it! Thanks! Xxooxx