Edited by Stilldreaming85 and Banshee69.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Isabella Cullen.
I slowly opened my eyes. By now, I was well aware we were in a traveling car. I was also aware of the splitting pain in my head. I thought it might split in two with any slight movement.
I remembered everything though. Carmen: underground, her words, and her men knocking me out. She had said that had been the change of plans and I wondered what the original was.
Ever so slowly, I lifted myself up; sitting upright and properly taking in my surroundings and those who were in the car.
The car had now come to a stop at the entrance ramp to Pier 81. I had been here many years ago. My mother's cousin had her wedding reception here when I was eight.
I turned to Carmen who was seated beside me, giving her an odd look. "Pier 81?" I asked, even though every word that left my mouth added to the throbbing in my head.
"Yes, it belonged to my family. My grandfather and father used this place regularly. Although my brother seems to have no use for it; I find it to be just perfect," she said.
"Perfect for what?"
"All in due time, amore. How is your head?"
"Painful," I admitted.
"I will get you something for the pain."
"No, thank you. I think I'll live," I said. There was no chance in hell I'd swallow anything she gave me.
"It was not my intention to hurt you, Marie. You were never meant to be a part of my plan. You are supposed to be back in Ragusa right now, safe, maybe even with Michael."
"Don't you mean Liam?"
Carmen couldn't lie her way out of that one. She had to have known Michael's true identity. And if her expression and silence were anything to go by, I had my answer.
"What does it matter who he truly is?" she asked as she scooted closer to me and placed her hand over mine. "He can give you what you've wanted all this time. He can give you freedom from those monsters."
"You mean from you and your family?"
"Do not compare me to them, Marie. I am nothing like them, and that is why I am doing this; so that I too can be free of them," she said.
Although I had no idea what it was she actually meant. What was it that Carmen needed freeing from?
"I am begging you Marie, please leave with Michael when he arrives," she said.
My brows knitted together in confusion. Did she not know that Michael was dead? That I had been the one to kill him myself? If they had been working together, if he was her accomplice, how has she not noticed that he had been missing for days?
"Michael is coming here, right now?" I asked.
"Yes!," she said, checking her phone for the tenth time maybe more in only a couple of seconds.
"He should have been here by now," Camren said to the man in the front passenger's seat. "Traffic is not that bad."
"Carmen, Michael isn't coming," I said. "Michael's dead."
She slowly turned her whole body back in my direction as did the men in the front. Three pairs of eyes staring intently at me.
"No, he is not. This is all a part of the plan," Carmen said.
Michael may have cheated death once. However not the second time around, when his brain matter was splattered all over the floor of Edward's underground cells.
"Carmen, trust me, he's dead," I said.
"And how would you know this?" One of the men asked.
I hesitated knowing I've said too much. I should have kept my mouth shut and let them believe that Michael was still on his way here and let Carmen think that her plan was working. Maybe it could have bought me more time for Edward or Garrett to realize I was missing. I hoped they would find me soon. Carmen was an unfamiliar enemy and an unstable one at best.
"Marie!" Carmen said, there was no hiding the demand in her voice. She wanted an answer. Did I really have anything to lose by telling her the truth? Possibly my life, but then again there was a chance we were all going to die today.
"I know because I killed him myself and they didn't stop me," I said.
It all happened so fast I didn't have time to react. I saw Carmen's facial expressions change to one of pure rage. She lunged for me, wrapping her hands around my neck tightly until I was gasping for air. She knocked my head back against the window with as much force as she could. She did it again until there was... nothing, only darkness.
I didn't know what time it was when I woke up again. I didn't know if it was day or night or how much time had actually gone by. The only thing I was certain of right now was the pain, because I was in a lot of it.
I had been tied to a chair. Although my legs were free, my arms were tied behind my back. Every muscle in my body ached as did my head. I could feel dampness at the back of my head; a breeze was blowing in from somewhere behind me, sweeping over the open wound.
"Good to see I didn't kill you," Carmen said as she stepped around into my line of sight. "You had me worried there for a moment. I thought you would miss out on the fun."
I quickly scanned the room as much as I possibly could from my current position, trying to see if we were alone or if there were others with us. I looked for a door, a window, even a vent, any possible escape route. I was certain there had to be one behind me because of the cold breeze I felt, however, I could not turn my head enough to look.
"Open your mouth and take these," Carmen said, holding two small white pills in the palm of her hand and a bottle of water with a straw in it in the other.
I kept my mouth shut, pressing my lips firmly together, I turned my head to the side, away from her.
"Don't be stupid now, Marie. Take them. They're for your head. I am not trying to poison you."
"You're going to kill me anyways. Why offer me pain relief?" I asked.
"I don't want to kill you, I never wanted that. But it all depends on you now," she said.
"What do you want from me, Carmen? I have nothing to offer you."
"You have already played your part, bambina." She smiled. "Because I have you, they will all come here and then they will all die; and then you and I... You and I, Marie, we can finally have it all."
"What are you talking about? Why are you doing this Carmen?" I asked, hoping maybe through some of her rambling she might make some sense to me.
"Take these." She insisted with the pills. I shook my head much to her disapproval.
"Look," she said, turning to collect a handbag a few feet away. She picked it up and brought it back with her. She placed it on my lap as she dug through its contents, pulling out a blister pack of pills. She held it up in front of my face so that I could read the packaging.
She threw the two pills in her hand onto the floor, by our feet, and popped out two new ones. She swallowed those two herself and then popped out two more and held them out to my mouth. I was still very much reluctant to take them, but I took them nonetheless.
"That was not so bad was it? I told you I am not trying to kill you," she said.
She pretty much left me alone after that. She went back to a table, in the far corner of the room, that housed an old style laptop and an odd looking device.
My hands were still tied behind my back, with what felt like rope, but I tried to wriggle them around - to loosen it up. It was something Garrett had taught me how to do. His reasoning behind it was that it's always good to know how to get out of sticky situations should the need arise. If I managed to get free from this and if I ever saw him again, I would have to thank him.
"Stop trying to free your hands. It's not going to work," Carmen said.
"I wasn't…" I trailed off. The look she gave me, told me not to waste my breath. "I thought you didn't want to hurt me?"
"My intention is not to hurt you, Marie. However, at the moment, after what you confessed to me, I do not know how much I can trust you," she said.
"Come on, Carmen, what could I possibly do?" I asked, to which she offered no reply.
"You know, you never answered my question," I said as I continued to fiddle with my hands. Garrett had taught me with my hands in my lap, how hard could it be with them behind my back?
"And what question was that?"
"Why are you doing this?"
She sighed deeply as she stood up and left her corner. "Why shouldn't I do this?" She said with a shrug.
"None of this makes any sense. They're your family."
"Sometimes, bambina, family isn't everything."
"That's a bit harsh."
Carmen walked across the length of the room until she came to a stop in front of me. I noticed she had something small clutched in her hand, I just couldn't make out what it was.
"You may see it as harsh. However, it does not make it any less true. My family," she said the words with such bitterness. I had never heard her talk that way. "... is anything but the nice people they portray themselves to be."
No shit! I thought.
"Regardless of what you and my nipote may have developed I know you will agree with me on that," she said as she leaned over me and wrapped her arms around me and around the back of the chair and cut the rope around my wrists loose.
I brought them to my lap rubbing my sore and red flesh. I found myself staring at them dumbfounded. What had been the point of going to the trouble of tying me up as a hostage that I presumed I was, only to let me free?
"I am putting a lot of trust in you here, Marie. And I know that regardless of how confused you are right now, I know you will not disappoint me."
"You're more certain of that than I am," I said.
"Yes, I guess I am, because you and I, we want the same thing."
"I'm finding that a little hard to believe right now, Carmen."
She smiled at me. It was a warm and genuine smile, just like the one she had given me the first time we had met on the airstrip in Ragusa. She had been the warmest, kindhearted person that I had encountered in this family. How could my judgment of her have been so wrong?
"Freedom, Marie, glorious freedom from our tormentors. Do not tell me that you can look at Anthony or my brother, hell, even Esme, and see and feel anything other than hatred towards them?"
Carmen did have me there; there was a part of me that hated Anthony and Carlisle and even Esme. I knew no matter what, that hate would never diminish. I won't lie; Edward and I had made progress and moved forward, but no matter what I was starting to feel for him, a part of me would always harbour a hatred for him, for them all. However, I had adapted. I think in a way we all had. We had made the best of the worst situation in the best way we knew how. I don't think that is something Carmen would ever accept or understand.
"You and I, we are not as different as you may think. In fact, we are exactly alike," she said.
I stare at her with what I hoped looked like a neutral expression, urging her to continue on with whatever it was she was going to say. With my hands now free, my body was able to move more freely. From the corner of my eye I saw an open duffle bag with a coat draped over it. I saw the handle of something peeking out. It looked to be a handle of a gun. I knew I had to at least try and get my hands on it without Carmen noticing.
"You came into this family through no choice of your own: forced, abused, and so was I," Carmen said.
My head snapped up in her direction. I was taken aback by what she had said.
"You're Carlisle's sister. You're flesh and blood. How were you forced into the family?" I asked.
"Carlisle and I, we share a father and that is it. My father," she said, spitting the word out as if it were toxic. "Raped my mother and destroyed her family, and that is how I came to be."
I had known that Carmen had been a product of an affair Edward's grandfather had had. However that was it. No one spoke anything else of it. From the little that I had managed to find out, Carmen and her mother had been well taken care of by Edward's grandfather.
"My mother's parents, they could no longer afford to pay the family the protection money it wanted. They understood and let it slide for a couple of months, thinking my family would make good on it. But after a couple of months of dodged payments my father went to their store personally to collect payment. It was my mother's unfortunate luck that she happened to be there, and the focus of his sight…" she said trailing off as she stared ahead.
"I'm sorry," I said, although not sure why.
"She was fifteen, Marie, fifteen years old, a baby herself. He didn't care. He saw her, he wanted her and he took her. I do not believe he intended on impregnating her. They tried to keep the secret from my father for as long as they could. Her father even managed to arrange a marriage for her with a small farmer from outside the city so that others would believe the baby was his."
"I'm guessing things didn't work out that way?"
"My father decided he wanted another piece of her and sent someone to check on her. Then someone sent word my mother had not been seen in public for some time. Someone indicated she had not left her home. Inciting his curiosity my father sent men to search their home. They destroyed the place... They found my mother, round, pregnant with me. Then they took her back to him."
"But he took care of you and your mother, didn't he? I mean that was my understanding. That's what Elezar told me," I said.
"He would abuse my mother as and when he saw fit. She was nothing more than a sex toy to him. Just because he put us in a nice house does not mean he took care of us. The entire staff thought of my mother as nothing more than a whore and me a bastard. He eventually killed her one night. He found out she was going to run away with me."
"How old were you?"
"Five. My mother had left me a letter in my room. It was hidden in a secret shelf within my wardrobe. She always told me to hide in there whenever my father was around because the noise would be muffled in there. Meaning, I wouldn't be able to hear what he was doing to her. She always left a piece of chocolate and a picture book for me. I protected that letter with my life until I was old enough to read properly and find out the whole truth for myself."
My heart went out to Carmen, she had led a harsh life. No child should ever have to hear or see their father abuse their mother.
"After my mother's death, his wife came, that was the first time I saw her. She wasn't bad to me, but she wasn't good either. She agreed to have me in her home and with her children. But everyone knew that I was the bastard child. When I was eight, she told my father to send me back to Ragusa because she couldn't look at me anymore. Everywhere I went, no one addressed me by my name. I was always the bastard daughter of the whore who had seduced the Don. That was the story that was told to them and nobody dared challenge it. Mother's wouldn't let their children play with me. They treated me as if I were a disease."
I carefully stood up from the chair, not wanting to startel her as she appeared to be in a dase. I couldn't reach for the gun as she was looking right at me. So I chose to comfort her. I did feel sorry for her. Her story was heartbreaking. She was a child who had her world ripped away by a cruel man. She had had an entire village mock her; belittle her her whole life. Something like that would turn even the gentlest person bitter.
"Things got better with Elezar, didn't they?" I asked.
"Elezar was a good man. I never thought he would be though. It was my brother who had arranged the marriage between us, as if he had some right. Be that as it may I did have a few years of happiness with Eleazar."
"Were you the one that killed him?"
"Someone had to die that night," she shrugged, as if Elezar's life had meant nothing.
"But he was your husband."
"Yes, he was, and he was good to me. Regardless of how many times he had claimed to love me, in the end I was only a deal he had made with my brother."
"Why are you doing this, Carmen? Why are you really doing this?" I asked the question again.
"I want to be free of them and I will never have that freedom as long as they are alive. I have wanted to do this for a very long time. Since my mother's death, as a five year old, I vowed that I would kill every Cullen, but it was always out of reach, until I met Michael and we helped each other."
"That's sick, Carmen," I said, taking a step back away from her. "Your father was a horrible person who did some horrific things. But how will punishing everyone else bring you any peace? Esme didn't cause you any harm, neither did Edward or Anthony or even Rosalie. What are you going to do, kill Sofia as well?"
"Should the need arise," she said.
"She's a child, Carmen, a small child. I get that you're angry. I get that you're hurt. But killing us all isn't going to bring you any peace."
"It's not peace that I want, Marie," she said with a chuckle.
"Then what is it that you want?"
"Everything. I want everything that Carlisle has, everything that Edward is. I want the power. I will be the first bastard child to take her father's throne. I will be the first Donna." she laughed.
I was left speechless. I didn't know what I could or should say. Carmen was crazy; there was no denying that. She was prepared to assassinate an entire family, even a child, to claim herself a title.
"You understand what I'm trying to do, don't you, Marie?" she asked.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded. "Of course I do," I said.
"Then you will help me?"
"What do you want me to do?"
"Not much, really. I only needed you to lure them here. Then you and I are going to slip away and the rest will go... well, up in smoke," she smiled.
