These next two chapters are going to be tough but I will try and post them relatively soon so that no one is left hanging with our favorite characters in a bad spot. As a result, there may be more grammatical errors than I would like - apologies! And for those that need the assurance, the ending will not be a sad one.

Bella got into the car.

She exited the pharmacy without so much as a glance up to the penthouse. It was too late at night for anyone to be really around, even if Chicago seemed to always be bustling. There was no one around to help her and she was powerless to do anything other than she had been directed. The lives of her friends -the closest thing she had to family- depended on her obedience.

Even if that obedience was about to lead her to her own death.

Bella's mind raced as she clutched her purse and took small steps towards the black vehicle with dark windows. She only had seconds to assess the situation and as she considered her options for escape or defense, her stomach knotted to realize she really had none that would not harm someone.

She could get her gun out of of her purse, but they would see the movement. She felt the man leaving the store behind her, within a few paces distance of her. Bella thought she recognized him as Luca, Roman's second and favorite son. She couldn't get the gun without him hurting Alice, Esme and Rosalie.

So she got in the car with a furiously pounding heart and a layer of sweat breaking on her forehead.

Almost as soon as she was engulfed in the darkness that greeted her in the interior of the car, she noticed another man in the backseat. Before Bella was even in her seat, the new man had his hand on her arm and yanked her towards him. She had not even a moment to struggle before he was forcefully pressing a cloth over her nose and mouth.

Her body raged against what felt like suffocation, but his grip was firm, and within seconds, all Bella knew was darkness.

By the time she stirred to consciousness, her mind was shrouded in fog, but she knew something was not right.

She was covered in darkness.

Bathed in it and wrapped in it, as if it was a cocoon. It was the kind of black that was so dark and so thick that you couldn't see your arm in front of you.

Truly, she realized as she blinked, there was not an ounce of light streaming in from anywhere.

And as she assessed this darkness in a somewhat unconscious haze, she blinked a few more times and remembered the events that had led up to this. She lifted her head and tried to sit up but found that she could not move.

Bella's heart immediately started to pound as she tried to move her legs and arms.

Nothing.

She felt them of course.

And as she tugged and attempted to flail she realized where they were.

Her arms were secured above her head. They were secured by some type of cuff at the wrists that was expertly fastened and didn't allow for really any movement of of her arms. And it was a similarly horrifying story with her legs. As she tried to kick, she realized they too were stretched out with her ankles which also had a restraint on them. It allowed her almost no movement at all from her legs, due to how snug the bindings were.

Gravity indicated that she was horizontal. She was lying down on her back and as she lifted her head to try and look around and try and find any slack at all within her bindings, she realized something else.

She was naked.

Bella's breath started to come in short gasps as if her lungs were repealing air from entering them. She couldn't breathe as she felt the cold air dancing across her entirely bare skin. She felt her chest rise and fall in staccato beats as the panic began to overwhelm her.

She tugged again, more frantic this time as the severity of the situation held her hostage.

They were tight.

They would not budge.

Bella almost let out a cry but instead bit down on her lip. She bit so hard that when she tasted blood, she released the appendage with a gasp. As the iron taste seeped into her mouth she tried her best to take a deep breath.

Again, her lungs constricted out of sheer terror and she found difficult inhaling.

Breathe Swan. Breathe.

It was Edward's calm voice she heard in her head. As she let out more shallow, terrorized breaths, she brought forth Edward to mind. She mentally clung onto him, thinking of him and the calmness in which he approached everything. She thought of him and how protected she was around him and thought of the love she had for him. She thought of it all as she slowly coaxed her lungs into allowing more air into them until finally she could take a deep (albeit shuddering) breath.

Once she was breathing as normally as possible, she tried to gather her bearings. She was smart. She knew she was smart. All her life, it had been part of her identity. And now, she clung to that, reminding herself of all of the praises she had received and all of the many people from a young age who had commended her intelligence. She needed to believe it if she had any chance of survival. She was smart.

Bella did not know where she was.

Even though her eyes were attempting to adjust to the lack of light, she could not see much. It seemed to her that she was in an empty room. It was cold, but not terribly so. She strained, but could not hear any sort of noise around her. She could be in Chicago…or she could be anywhere in the world in a darkened room.

She swallowed.

As she tentatively shifted her body as much as her restraints allowed, she tried to sense any type of injury. Other than a stomach that was in knots and the blood she tasted in her mouth, she did not feel injured anywhere else. There was no open wound on her that was being rubbed by the air. Her muscles felt heavy, but, they had before she had lost consciousness too.

When had that been?
It could have been 30 minutes ago or it could have been days ago.

The thought made Bella start to panic again, but she maintained her ability to breathe. She fought through the terror and kept breathing. She forced herself to keep thinking and tried to calm her lungs down once again.

It couldn't have been days ago, she reasoned with herself. Her stomach would surely notice if she had not eaten in days, and other than a little bit of a grumbling, she was not starving. Unless they had given her nutrients while she was unconscious, but they wouldn't have been able to do that…

She thought of the tract marks she had seen on Edward's arms so long ago on that bathroom floor in Cullen Consulting. For some reason, that told her that had they wanted to, they could have found a way to get some type of sustenance in her.

Which left her back to square one.

She didn't know where she was or when she was, but she knew it was the Brigados that had her. And considering the fact that she was devoid of all clothing, she knew that if she didn't do something, her fate would be gruesome and horrible at best.

But what could she do?

Bella almost let out a growl as she tried one more time to get any type of movement away from her restraints. She wiggled her fingers, trying to them over the cuffs, but everything so snug that she could only get them as low as her palms. She felt tears of helplessness prick her eyes and she fought to blink them away. She fought through the despair and sheer terror and focused on taking steadying breaths.

Wherever she was, she was lucky enough that there were people who would notice her absence.

The men, women, and children that the Brigados usually bought and sold were not so lucky. They were usually individuals with no one to give a shit if they went missing, or if they did have a family that cared, that family had no wealth or resources or overall ability to go after them. She knew this. She knew it because it shattered her heart when Edward had told her.

But she had people.

Her self appointed family would know she was gone. Edward would know she was gone. They had the resources to try and find her, and she knew with conviction they would. If they could.

Bella remembered the phone Luca had shown her and felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

They had a way to instantly kill Rosalie, Alice, and Esme.

There was nothing to say that was not true for the rest of her friends.

For Edward.

She felt her throat constrict at the thought. She was unable to swallow as her breath once again grew choppy.

They would come for her. If they were alive. If they were not already suffering the same fate as her.

Oh how she wanted Edward.

They should have run. They should have run before waiting for Carlisle's signal. They should have gotten out of the country. They should be living in some destitute hut or cottage or log cabin in the middle of the woods. Oh how she wanted that with every fiber of her being.

Just as her breathing was beginning to even out once again, she was suddenly bathed in a harsh light.

"Time's up bitch."

Edward's head felt like it had been on the receiving end of a few thousand bricks landing on it. It was an overwhelming pain, and it was the first and only thing he felt as he blinked his eyes in consciousness.

"And he awakens."

Edward blinked at the taunting croon and struggled to move his body as fast as his mind was reacting to the situation around him. Before he could try and reach for his gun, two hands were around his neck and forcefully snapped his head back down to the ground. The impact made a loud clunking noise and Edward saw stars and internally cursed as the pained seared across his head.

"Dovidus, that will do for now. I still have use for him."

Roman.

As his vision cleared, Edward saw the man who had just been on top of him step away. As he took in the harsh fluorescent lights, he realized he was in one of the Brigado's bunkers. The floors and walls were polished concrete that always seemed to smell like the strongest of bleaches from whatever torture had previously been inflicted upon a victim. It was one he had been in before, so that meant they were at least still in the Chicago area.

Bella!

Terror gripped him as he remembered that before he had lost consciousness, his little warrior of a woman had not been with him.

Before he could process this further, he was being roughly yanked up by the brute force of Dovidus. The man shoved him onto his knees as if he was a sack of flour and then before Edward could even consider reaching for one of his guns, he felt the cool metal of a barrel of a gun being forced against his neck.

"And here is where you will stay."

Edward rolled his shoulders back in the most dignified of ways, giving a nod of his chin as he did so. Dovidus pressed the gun harder against his veins before removing it from Edward.

In front of Edward was Roman Brigado.

And it was just Roman Brigado.

Roman was standing in front of him, looking the picture of ease. He was dressed in a black suit, sans a tie. His black and graying hair was gelled back perfectly. As he lifted a cigar to his lips, he cocked an eyebrow at Edward, but then lowered it as he blew out a cloud of smoke in a leisurely manner.

"I think I always knew," Roman said with a smirk on his face, not an unkind one. In fact, to Edward, it looked vaguely…fond.

"Sir?" he asked when Roman did not continue.

"You came to this family too conveniently. You…an employee tired of being abused and under appreciated by the great Carlisle Cullen, coming to join us. To be our spy. To be our inside man in an organization we had not yet penetrated." Roman stopped to inhale once again and blow out some more smoke. "We have plenty of men in the police department and in homeland security and the bureau and even the CIA. But we had just began to plan to get inside that firm of yours when you offered yourself to us."

Edward maintained a passive face as Roman continued to reminisce.

"You wished to make a name for yourself. And we have always appreciated and nurtured talent here, and I had no doubts of the talents you possessed. We were not so foolish as to just take your word. I had someone look into you for months before I could trust you. You proved your worth continuously at the beginning, your information being invaluable in protecting some of our biggest assets. You were smart, you were capable, and although I did not trust you for it, you were unattached. Luca liked you and I did too, Masen," he said with that same oddly fond smirk before pausing again.

"Giovanni never trusted you. For the longest time, I figured it was jealously. Things come easy to you, Masen. Your mind works quickly and without error. The cars and money you were rewarded with likely only served to infuriate Giovanni, but my son has always been the jealous type. Luca has always liked you. He and I treated you as if you were part of the family."

Roman sighed. "Still, Giovanni was suspicious."

Edward blinked once but otherwise did not dare and move a muscle.

"And eventually I got tired of his constant complaining. He got that from his mother," Roman commented with an eye roll. The friendlier his tone grew, the more Edward felt ice begin to spread through his blood. "So I allowed him to have his own investigation of sorts. A small one, mind you. I didn't want to waste resources so I told him to use my wife's step cousin. The boy has been sapping up resources at his Ivy League school for long enough, it was time for him to prove his worth," Roman said with a roll of his eyes before pausing with his cigar.

He raised the cigar to his lips and then paused and tilted his head as he stared at Edward with that same smirk on his face.

"And how convenient it was that Cullen Consulting offers such phenomenal internships."

Edward was careful not to react, though internally he let out the longest string of curse words he could think of. No small amount of rage coursed through him as he watched Roman inhale.

Of course it would be a god damn intern which would lead to his demise.

Fate truly did loathe him.

And that bitch had a sense of humor.

Keeping his gaze passive, he eyed Dovidus out of the corner of his eye. The large man was standing off the side, his hands folded in front of him and his gun in one. Edward had never heard him click the safety back on.

If Edward had to guess, his orders were to shoot to kill.

Edward waited for Roman to continue talking, willing his body to remain calm as his mind raced with possible ways to make it out of this situation alive.

Things were not looking good.

"Come," Roman called, not even bothering to raise his voice or look in the direction of one of the doorways.

Edward flexed his back, trying to feel whether or not there was a gun in his waistband. When he didn't feel anything, he swore to himself.

Of course he didn't have a gun.

The last thing he remembered before he lost consciousness was taking a sip out of the bottled water he kept in pantry. Bella always commented on the fact that he was killing the planet with all of his plastic water bottles, but he didn't trust tap or other water sources that he couldn't see. They had to have gotten into his water somehow because Edward didn't remember anything after taking a drink of water while he waited for Bella to return from the drugstore with her pregnancy test.

His heart seized as Roman waited for whomever he had called.

Bella could have been anywhere.

It was unlikely that she made it back from the store before the Brigado's had moved his body. How had they gotten into his penthouse? Had she walked into a trap? Had they left her alone? Edward's mind raced and be fought to remain calm, praying to that same cruel bitch, Fate, that Bella was safe somewhere. As he remembered why she had left the apartment in the first place, he felt a sharp pain in his heart.

Before he could further dwell on this, another man entered the room and Edward found himself looking right in the eyes of Matthew Romero, the marketing intern at Cullen Consulting.

Fuck.

"Matthew even got to meet your Miss Swan before any of us," Roman added, clapping his in-law on the shoulder with a chuckle.

The young man in front of Edward was staring at him with a cocky grin. He was a handsome, fresh college graduate; he had nice brown hair, shiny white teeth, and a baby face. Edward had disliked him the moment he and Bella had run into him on the 33rd floor – a floor he shouldn't have been on.

He had been the intern Bella had put on probation after he had been opening different files on the company drive on his laptop and virtually poking around in the ISC. At the time he had played it off as an honest mistake, and they had believed him. Alice and Jasper had been on their honeymoon and he hadn't had much to do other than acquaint himself with the company. And it seems that had been a huge mistake.

But as Edward looked at Matthew, he could see in his eyes the same thing he had seen when he had threatened the boy with bodily harm for trying to get into the ISC files: fear.

"Stupidest fucking interview I've ever had," Matthew said with an eye roll, replying to the Bella comment.

Edward almost scoffed. Swan was good at her job. Cullen Consulting was notorious for difficult interviews. That boy had likely barely squeaked through.

"Matthew here has been telling us some interesting things about your habits, Edward," Roman said, his voice finally losing the faux friendliness that he had been speaking with. "It seems that after every time you are with us, you return to Cullen Consulting almost immediately. And it seems you and Carlisle Cullen meet more often than any other partner."

Edward raised his eyebrows. "Sir?" he asked calmly.

"And your desk has something that no one else's in that firm of yours has," Roman said, ignoring Edward's question. "Luca," he called.

In walked the second son and in his arms was the safe that held every single note Edward had ever written about the Brigado's illicit dealings.

He could not think of a single way to explain the safe. He had been trying to come up with an explanation since the instant he had seen that it was missing from his desk, and he had nothing.

Roman was looking at him with a full smirk, his eyes dancing furiously as he eyed the man on his knees in front of him. He had a look of glee on his face that Edward had seen often.

It was the look he got before beginning the torture of someone who had betrayed him.

"You and Carlisle Cullen must be protecting some extremely important. My best locksmith has been unable to open it. He's since been relieved of his position," Roman explained with a sadistic chuckle and Edward knew the man was dead somewhere. "Now I understand there is a warning about curiosity killing the cat, but as I see no cats around, you'll have to humor me, Masen, because I find myself extremely…curious about what is in here."

Luca was looking at Edward with disgust on his face. There was also excitement. And it was the same look Roman had on his eyes. They played with their victims – there was rarely a simple killing with the Brigados.

"You will tell me the code to this safe."

Roman's words were crisp and Edward clenched his jaw as he boldly met his stare.

"And to make matters all the more interesting…" Roman trailed off, not breaking eye contact with Edward. "Giovanni!"

Edward did not break Roman's stare, even as he heard a door opening and sound quiet wheels brushing across the polished cement. It was not until Roman's lips twisted back into a sinister smirk did Edward finally look to see where Giovanni was entering the room.

And when he saw what was in front of him, his heart stopped.

"Miss Swan gets to participate too."

I've been putting off posting this part of the story for awhile . . .stick with me, grab a buddy, we'll get through it.

I'll see you soon.