A/N: Thanks so much for all your wonderful thoughts! Just want you all to know how much I appreciate them, and that I'll get back to you all asap!
Most characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belong to me. All mistakes are mine too.
Broken – Chapter 2
"You finally got the samples out to CDC Atlanta?"
Emmett's reply held more than a hint of exasperation. "Finally. It's like a goddamn monsoon landed up in these mountains overnight. The courier had a hell of a time reaching us, and when he finally arrived, he barely made it out of his jeep alive before he was accosted by the locals. We had to stop what we were doing to go rescue him. Ed, they're growing more impatient." He paused. "There was another death late this morning."
"Fuck." I exhaled long and hard while paying the cab driver and stepping out onto the sidewalk corner and into a late, sunny afternoon. "Then, we can't really fault their impatience, can we?"
"No, we can't."
"Meanwhile, I'm over here…" I shook my head, "I should've tried to change my flight to something earlier this afternoon."
I angled my head upward and dropped my shades into place to keep from being blinded by the glare coming off the glass and steel Chelsea neighborhood high-rise in which my sister lived. Personally, I'd always preferred the more understated, brick and mortar, low-rise architecture of lower Manhattan.
"I hate midtown," I muttered as I took up a brisk pace.
"Which is likely why your sister chose to live there," Emmett chuckled. "You say 'Black,' she says 'White,' remember?"
I snorted at the memory of the one and only time Alice had visited my converted loft and the stone-cobbled, Tribeca neighborhood on which it was located, about four years earlier.
'Jesus, Edward, how fucking old is this dump? You've got exposed bricks on your walls, exposed pipes on your ceilings, and the entire place was once a warehouse. Come on, dear brother, with all the money Daddy throws our way, you can afford better than a run-down slum that looks like it's from the eighteen-hundreds.'
'First, dear sister, I pay for this place on my own, like an adult. I don't live on Dad's dime. Not that I'm complaining about my career or my loft because I happen to love 'em both. Second, the reason this place looks like it's from the Nineteenth century is because it's Pre-Civil War, Neo-Classical architecture, which is rarely referred to as run-down slums."
'Only an overbearing, patronizing asshole would prefer something old and tired to something sleek and fly."
'Maybe, but unless you want to advertise the fact that along with all that money you happily take from Dad, you also had him buy your college degree, you probably shouldn't go around referring to building designs as old and tired versus sleek and fly."
'Fuck you, Edward!'
"Ed, don't beat yourself up over not being here yet. There's not much we can do right now other than wait for those results to come back from headquarters. Besides, it wouldn't have made much of a difference if you'd tried to fly down this afternoon. What with that storm, you would've probably just ended up stuck somewhere on the tarmac or worse."
"Yeah, maybe," I conceded. "Though I can't see what could be worse than where I'm headed."
Emmett chuckled. "I keep telling you, if she's been quiet, she can't be up to that much."
Nonetheless, my footsteps gained speed as I caught sight of Alice's glass-enclosed lobby down the block, a few yards ahead of one of the steel staircases leading up and down from The High Line, an elevated park and greenway created on what was once a New York City railroad track.
The High Line was one of the few, well thought out developments in this overdeveloped neighborhood. I recalled it had taken a while to catch on, but time, advertising, and some well-written articles made it a favorite among New York City locals and tourists alike.
I'd happened to come across a couple of those articles. Alice shared them with me a couple of years earlier. They were written by a friend of hers, a senior writer at The High Line Publication – named after the elevated garden, and the publication which became Alice's first post-college, post-BA gig.
What I remembered of the articles wasn't so much the actual choice of words or turns of phrase, but rather the writer's ability to paint a picture of the elevated garden and transport the reader right into the heart of that picture. The writer's style transformed The High Line from another urban, manmade landscape into a destination. The writing had been amazing, for lack of a more imaginative word, but the world of Imagination wasn't my realm. It was, apparently, the realm of a certain writer at The High Line.
As soon as I'd shared my views with Alice regarding the awe-inspiring talent possessed by her coworker, I'd discovered my sister's reasons for sharing the articles with me had apparently less to do with sibling bonding and more to do with a desire to have her ego stroked via reassurances that she was a much better writer than her coworker slash friend.
I received another resounding "Fuck you, Edward," this one in text form, in reply to my reply.
Nonetheless, I maintained that the other woman literally used newsprint as canvas and her words as paint with which to construct pictures and tell stories, much like…
Much like the woman earlier had done; the quasi-not-actually-a-secretary who answered Alice's phone.
"Things aren't always as they seem…" I mouthed, thinking aloud.
"What?" Emmett asked.
I shook my head and blinked back to the present.
"Em, you sent out the samples of the cough syrup to Atlanta too, right?"
"Yep. They said they should have something for us within twenty-four hours of receipt. Though, you should've heard Laurent's bitching and moaning. It was pretty hilarious: 'The fuck is Cullen thinking, having us test a bottle of simple, fucking cough syrup?'" Emmett said, imitating Laurent's hard, angry bark.
"Like I said, things aren't always as they seem, and Laurent can bitch and moan all he wants as long as he does his job."
"He still hasn't gotten over the fact that they promoted you over him last year," Emmett said.
While he snickered over the cell, I wondered if I could still make the earlier flight if I got this little visit over quickly, if as Emmett said, my sister was indeed up to nothing more than what your average, mid-twenties, New York City single woman would be up to.
"If it was up to Laurent…"
A woman suddenly appeared on the staircase leading off The High Line, just a few yards away.
She sprinted then jumped down the last few steps and rushed forward in my direction, the pair of heels she wore making me fear she'd twist an ankle and break a leg. But they did very little to slow her roll.
She's fast.
"What?" Emmett prompted.
"I said if it was up to him…"
Long hair cascaded around her shoulders, her rapid pace causing it to billow around her lean frame like a threatening, dark cloud.
"I think we have another bad connection," Emmett said. "I'm not catching the end of that."
"I said Laurent would've done the job from the comfort of a lab in Atlanta."
Emmett snorted. "That's the fucking truth."
Her full lips moved fiercely around words I couldn't hear, but breaths which I could almost feel from a few yards away erupted from her hard and pronounced. What appeared to be beautiful features when not consumed with fury were now pinched tight.
She's outraged.
"Unlike you…" Emmett continued.
She was ethereal, almost phantasmal in her obvious wrath; an avenging, dark angel on her way to exact retribution from some unlucky bastard or other. And for a quick second, my steps faltered at the vision because, while I was sure I'd never seen her before, somehow…there was a connection…
And at that moment, as I tore my eyes from her, pulled off my shades, and took in our surroundings to determine if anyone else saw the vision or if she was just a figment of my mind, I began wondering if was indeed losing my mind.
"…Laurent never did enjoy…" Emmett went on.
"Someone stop that woman!"
The shout came from above; from another woman standing at the top of The High Line and leaning over the railing.
"She verbally abused my son and destroyed his phone! Stop her!"
So perhaps, the vision before me was no illusion. As she surged forward, I noted that her frenzied gaze was singularly focused…on the glass-enclosed lobby.
"…getting into the actual thick of things," Emmett finished.
"Emmett, I've got to go. I'll be on the earliest flight I can get into San José."
"All right, Ed. Just let me know, and I'll see if I can-"
I ended the call, with my gaze focused on the angry, beautiful woman. As we simultaneously reached the lobby door, I obtained more proof that she wasn't just in my mind. The doorman anticipated her approach, and with his wide and wary gaze on her, held the door open. When she shoved me aside in her haste, the alarm bells in my head rang like apocalyptic warnings.
"Pardon me, miss, but you should be careful on those."
The hell-bent tornado in the shape of a woman ignored me and careened forward, and heaven help whoever got caught in her eye. Meanwhile, my eyes followed her trajectory, and I peripherally noted the handful of individuals in the large lobby: a woman in a corner retrieving mail, two other individuals in conversation, and one other with a leashed dog, speaking with the doorman.
When the woman's mad dash suddenly halted as if she'd hit a wall, I tore my gaze away from her once more and followed her narrowed eyes to one of two building elevators. The elevator doors were parting, and as its occupants spilled out, I took the first one in with more than a faint, growing sense of dread.
My sister, Alice, scrambled out still straightening her skirt, patting down her wild hair, and attempting to cover a bare shoulder. Though, the fact that she'd missed three buttons on her blouse made it pretty impossible to keep it from slipping. Alongside her, bolted out a man with his dirty blond mane disheveled, blue eyes wide and panicked, button-down shirt unbuttoned and untucked, and fly still fucking open. A seven-year-old could've extrapolated from this type of scene.
As a matter of fact, as a seven-year-old, I once had.
"YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES!"
For a handful of seconds, only the reverberation of the woman's shouted words resounded across the glass-enclosed lobby. Then, the literal fucker standing with my sister stepped forward. As he put up his hands palms out toward the outraged woman, I noted the gleam of a gold band on his left ring finger.
"Bella, calm down."
Bella…
The articles…the byline…Isabella…
"Jasper, you fucking BASTARD!" she shrieked, hands balled at her sides, with the matching band to said bastard's ring on her left hand.
When the guy changed tactics and shouted back, "Calm down!" my hackles rose. I took a step forward.
"Bella." Alice's voice shook, but I knew my sister. It wasn't fear or even shame which made her quiver. While her eyes flickered around the lobby, my mind involuntarily took me back to That Day, a quarter of a century in the past:
'Damn it, Carlisle, tell him to look away. He's staring at me, and I'm trying to get my clothes back on.'
'Liz, he's shocked. Edward, son, please…please turn around.'
"And you," the woman hissed sharply, pulling me back into the lobby, "you goddamn whore!"
There were gasps all around. Yet, no one in the lobby attempted to walk out on the show nor on the woman who was the unwitting star.
"Excuse me, miss," I murmured quietly as I took another step forward, hoping to pull the woman out of the rabbit hole into which she was sinking. But she sensed nothing and no one beyond the two people before her.
"You were supposed to be my friend! One of my best friends! And you're fucking my husband?"
There it was, not in the magical language she'd used in those articles, because I was pretty sure by then those had been hers – Isabella, Senior Writer; Bella, Alice's unwitting friend – but in plain language, in case anyone in the lobby hadn't yet finished extrapolating.
More gasps arose.
"Bella, stop," Alice spat. "This is my apartment building and you're embarrassing me."
'I'm trying to button up, and he's embarrassing me!'
'Edward, son, please. I promise I'll explain everything, but please…we have to get dressed.'
The woman appeared much more startled by Alice's cause for embarrassment than I was. After all, I had experience with such scenes. But how had this woman…Bella…figured it out? When her head jerked back, I took yet another step forward and tried again.
"Miss-"
"Are you fucking….? Are you fucking kidding me? I'm embarrassing you?"
"Bella-" the bastard husband began. His tone, unfuckingbelievably, held more than a note of exasperation.
But, with the view afforded me by standing behind the woman, by being focused on her slim shoulders and on how they rose and fell with the weight of her discovery, by noting how her balled hands fisted tighter in barely suppressed rage…and with the clarity afforded me by not being one of the two, cheating assholes, I knew that despite her husband's tone and Alice's chastisement, the woman's fire was being stoked.
'Damn it, Carlisle, why didn't he knock before he walked in? He should've knocked!'
What's more, I knew to what levels my sister's imagined sense of self-righteous indignation could rise.
"Miss…Bella…maybe we should-"
"You were sitting naked as a fucking jaybird on top of your kitchen counter, fucking my husband hardcore with your windows wide open, and I'M EMBARRASSING YOU?"
Another memory flashed through my mind. This one of the only other time I'd stopped by this apartment building. It was for a housewarming, and at my mother's continued efforts to finally make one, big happy family out of us despite the underlying shit our family entailed.
Arriving as late as courtesy allowed, I'd stepped out of one of the two elevators, and onto Alice's floor. Her apartment door was open, loud music streaming from inside, and Alice in the hallway waving goodbye to someone who'd just stepped into the other elevator.
"Are you sure you can't stay longer?" Alice asked.
A musical voice carried over the din and from within the other elevator. "No, I just stopped by, but I can't stay. The hubby's waiting for me. Love the apartment, Al! I'll see you at work tomorrow!"
Curiously, I peeked into the other elevator, but the doors shut before I caught sight of the musical voice's owner. When I turned around, Alice's narrowed gaze was also on the closed door, where it remained for a fraction of a moment longer than necessary.
Later, I'd left the celebrating behind and escaped into Alice's kitchen. Unfortunately, she'd discovered me as I gazed through her huge, floor-to-ceiling windows.
"I bet you're thinking how much better this place is than your old, piece of shit downtown, huh?"
I took a deep breath, drained the last of my beer and disposed of it in the recycling bin before turning toward her.
"What I was thinking is that if I were you, I'd put up some shades."
"Well, you're not me, big brother. I like those windows wide open. Your windows are wide open."
"Yeah, but my windows don't open up onto an elevated park, where anyone who passes can see-"
"You know what, big brother? Fuck you. You've always got to be better, right?"
"Alice," I snorted, shaking my head, "I've never said that."
"Edward," she'd snorted in return, "you don't have to say it."
"Oh, my goodness." Now, in the present, the woman retrieving her mail dropped it; the sound of whispered exclamation and fluttering envelopes and magazines punctuating the momentary silence.
Meanwhile, I recalled that I'd first spotted the woman at the center of all this…Bella…as she rushed down from The High Line. So, it would appear Alice never did take my advice regarding those kitchen windows.
The dog yipped.
The bastard husband gripped the back of his neck and whimpered.
'I don't know what to do here. Jesus, I don't know what to…Edward, son, please step out for a moment.'
Alice's nostrils flared.
"You damn…" she sneered, shaking her head. "We couldn't just do this like adults, could we?"
The woman barked a bitter laugh. "Doing this like adults pretty much went out the window when you did my husband through the window!"
Yet more gasps. I took another step forward and reached for the woman, lifting a hand toward one of her slim, stiff shoulders.
"Miss…Bella…"
"This is your own damn fault, Bella," Alice snapped. "You were a nag, and he got sick of you."
The woman's shoulders fell, and my hand sank back to my side.
"Damn it, Alice," I hissed.
Alice and I…we'd never been what anyone could term close siblings. Seven years her senior, we had little in common growing up. By the time she hit those rebellious teen years, I was out of the house. But the truth was…we'd never bonded. The manner of her creation, while obviously not her fault, was permanently etched into my subconscious.
And the further truth was, as the years passed, Alice left behind the excuse of those rebellious teen years, yet the actual rebelliousness remained. All my adult life, I'd vacillated over a determination of whose fault exactly that was: mine, our father's, my mother's, her mother's, Alice's own fault, or varying combinations of the above to varying degrees.
At that moment, I didn't really give a fuck whose fault it was. But before I could say more, the asshole husband, more defensiveness in his beady blue eyes than actual remorse, finally opened his goddamned mouth.
"Bella…we've been having issues for a while. You know that."
'Esme, you've been so busy with the start-up, and…'
"We've been having issues, Jasper," the woman said, all her fury suddenly leached so that her voice was a small, strangled whisper, "not goddamn lovers on the side."
'So you slept with the neighbor, Carlisle, because I wasn't around? Because I had a last-minute meeting? When you knew our son would be home at any moment?"
The man sighed. "Bella, when was the last time you and I talked?"
'Esme, when was the last time you gave me your undivided attention?'
"This morning when we left for work together?"
The fucker had the gall to roll his eyes. "I mean really talked, Bella. When was the last time we laughed together? Watched a movie together? Went anywhere together?"
"We share a life together, Jasper."
"We share an apartment, Bella," the fucker smirked, "that's about it. We haven't even…"
'Lately, Esme, you've been too tired to even…'
The asshole's face burned in embarrassment, and I withheld a bitter chuckle because yeah, it was obvious what he'd been about to say; fucking, mind-blowingly ridiculous that after what he'd just been caught doing, that was what made him turn red.
And yeah, in the back of my mind, as I watched this eerily reminiscent scene unfold, I wondered if my father…if Carlisle turned red as he delivered his ridiculous excuses. By then, I'd been in my room, listening to a conversation I wasn't supposed to hear after witnessing a scene I was never supposed to witness.
Based on Bella's acidic chuckle, she found her husband's reasoning ridiculous as well.
"Oh, don't worry. I informed your little tramp myself just a short while earlier, when I thought she was my friend, that you and I haven't had sex in almost three months."
Yet more gasps.
"It's because he loves me, Bella," Alice shouted. "Not you."
Ignoring Alice's acerbic provocation, Bella bravely wore on, though it was obvious the fucker she called her husband didn't deserve her courage or her willingness to fight for him, to set aside the mortification Alice's verbal attack had to be causing her in order to focus on him.
"Is that true, Jasper?" she asked, struggling to maintain her once musical voice steady. Because yes, in the back of my mind, I'd already extrapolated that not only was the author of the awe-inspiring articles, she was also the owner of the musical voice. "Do you love her?"
The motherfucker merely held her gaze.
"Answer me, Jasper," she pleaded, fisting her long, dark hair. "Tell me if it's true. Was this all a mistake, Jasper, caused by the stress we've been under?"
She was forgiving enough to give him an out, if like my father, he asked for one.
'It was all the stress, and it was a mistake, Esme, I swear it, and it only happened once.'
"We can work through it if that's the case."
As the motherfucker kept staring at her silently, in my periphery I saw my sister's growing panic at his obvious indecisiveness.
"We can work through-"
"He doesn't want to work through it, Bella," Alice hissed. "He doesn't want you anymore. He wants me. He loves me."
"Alice, what the hell have you done?" I spat. No, the motherfucker didn't deserve his wife's forgiveness, but Bella didn't deserve Alice's venom in addition to his silence.
"Be quiet, Edward, and mind your business," Alice snapped without sparing me a glance.
"Oh, I'd say this is my business, Alice."
"Jasper, talk to me," Bella continued, shutting out everything and everyone else. "Tell me this was a mistake. We'll work it out, Jasper. Just tell me it was-"
Jasper opened his mouth, yet it was Alice who spoke.
"It wasn't a mistake, Bella! Why do you think he suggested you two stop having sex? He doesn't want you. What's more, Michael doesn't want you on the paper anymore! He's decided to give me your office. Nobody wants you, Bella, because you've lost your touch. As a matter of fact, you've lost more than just your touch. So how could you possibly think Jasper would want to have children with you when you're such a freaking basket case? Two years of trying and you can't even give him a baby..."
"Holy…" The word was no more than a staggered whisper, too stupefied by the vitriol erupting from my sister to say more.
Though, I shouldn't have been so stunned. For too many reasons, I shouldn't have been so bewildered…so caught off guard by the impending explosion. For fuck's sake, averting disasters was what I did for a living.
I extrapolated from situations, made conclusions, and found solutions before cataclysmic results occurred.
Instead, in the fraction of a moment before Alice's razor-sharp tongue lashed out with the worst of her poison, I saw the snake poised to strike. Yet, even as I rushed forward, I was already too late. I'd waited too long. Like a viral disease, the infection that was Alice's mouth erupted into an outbreak of epidemic proportion, and the entire ordeal became one of damage control.
"…meanwhile, he and I have been together for four months, and I'm two months-"
Bella lunged.
Jasper stepped in front of a screaming Alice and received the blows meant for her.
"Someone call the cops!"
"No one call the fucking cops!" I bellowed as I reached for Bella and carefully wrapped my arms around her waist. "Bella, come here. Come here."
"I'm going to fucking kill her!" she screamed, struggling against me as she continued to try to reach around her husband, punching and smacking him, screaming and crying, all at once.
"Oof! Bella, damn it, STOP!" he shouted.
"Jasper, get the fuck out my way! I'm going to kill the bitch! She's pregnant! She's pregnant with my baby!" Bella shrieked.
"I've called the cops!" the doorman yelled.
"Fuck." I wrapped my arms tighter around her, tugged with more insistence, but Bella was lost in a haze of pain and fury. "Bella, please stop. Come here."
"Bella, you're making this really ugly!" her husband accused.
"I'm making this…? You want to see ugly, asshole?"
When she released him, I exhaled a breath of momentary relief- before Bella reached down and pulled off her heels.
Jasper's eyes grew wide. Alice screamed again, cowering behind Bella's husband.
"Jasper, the baby! Stop her!"
"Bella, put the shoe down!"
Again, I slid my arms around her waist, but Bella swung her heel around Jasper, catching his shoulder. Jasper roared in pain.
"Oh my god," one of the lobby occupants gasped. "She's gonna kill him! Where are the cops?"
"Bella, I know you're angry," I breathed in a rush, "but if he cheated on you, he's not worth-"
"Go ahead, Alice; keep hiding behind Jasper! I'm still going to stick this fucking heel so deep into your eyeball-"
"She's gonna hurt the pregnant woman!" Another one of our lobby witnesses exclaimed.
"Bella, put the damn shoe down!"
"Jasper, you cheating sack of shit, get out of my way before I use it to chop your balls into a million pieces!"
He grabbed her upper arm hard, wrapped his fingers so tightly around her skin Bella yelped.
"Hey asshole, you're gonna hurt your wife!" I unwrapped one arm from Bella's waist, balled my hand into a fist aimed at Jasper. "Let go of her arm before I-"
Bella threw back her head, roared…and flung the heel at the glass windows.
It was, as they say, a million in one shot. An entire glass wall shouldn't shatter from the force of being struck by a size seven woman's shoe.
Yet, it did.
A cacophony of screams, barks, and approaching sirens filled the air in midtown as a couple of handfuls of people rushed out the way of falling shards of glass.
For one, quick moment, everyone, including the four of us, froze.
"Holy…" Jasper gripped the back of his neck. "Holy fuck! You see, dude? That's why I was holding her arm! Look at what she did to the window!" He glared at his wife, who I held by the waist. "Damn it, Bella, now the cops are sure to come!"
"I don't give a damn!" she shouted back, reaching out and backhanding him with her shoeless hand.
"OW! Goddamn it! Stop it, Bella! Stop hitting me!"
"They can come and take away her dead body and yours once I'm done with you both!"
Again, she lunged for him, but this time, I managed to pull her away from him and held onto her tightly.
"You cheating bastard!"
"Bella, stop! You're acting like a lunatic!"
"Bella?" I said carefully, the sound of nearing sirens filling my ears. "Bella, come here. They're not worth it. I know you're angry, but they're not worth your getting in trouble. Come here. That's right."
"They lied to me!"
When she began sobbing again, I pulled her entire body against me…and her hands fell to her sides.
"I know, but I've got you."
"I'm going to kill them both," she cried with more pain than conviction.
"You have to try to stop saying that, okay?" I whispered in her ear. "Security called the cops."
"I don't give a fuck," she wept, hanging her head while the scent of her shampoo, her sweat, and her fear filled my nostrils.
"Shh. Come here." I held her enveloped in my arms, her limbs stiff, yet…she fit perfectly. And I kept murmuring while she wept uncontrollably.
"They're not worth it, Bella," I breathed. "If they did this to you, they're not worth it."
"They're assholes," she choked.
"Yes, they are. Come here." Her limbs began to loosen, all fight abandoning her. "That's right. Shh. It'll be okay. I promise you."
"I tried," she confessed, her sobbing more controlled. "I tried my hardest to be a good wife, a good friend."
"I'm sure you did." Outside, the sirens stopped their wailing, but the sound of voices communicating through walkie-talkies took their place. "But if we're here right now, they obviously weren't worth your effort."
"Edward, you asshole," Alice spat from behind Bella's husband. "Why the hell are you comforting her?"
Without loosening my grip on Bella, I glared up at my little sister.
"Because you're still a little kid who can't keep her damn hands out of the-
Bella whimpered, and a series of successive sighs took over as her tears slowed all the more.
"Shh. I've got you."
"I didn't deserve this, just like my dad didn't deserve it when my mom did this."
'I don't deserve this, Carlisle. What did I do to deserve you doing this to me…to us?'
I squeezed my eyes shut, dropped my head next to Bella's, our temples side by side as I inhaled her scent.
"Jasper, what the hell is she talking about?" Alice said.
The walkie-talkies neared.
"Uhm…"
"Shh. It'll be okay. Your piece of shit husband isn't worth your tears." Slowly, carefully, I pulled her with me and further away from him, trying to calm her as much as possible before the cops walked into the scene. "Shhh."
"Yeah, get her out of here, Edward! She's a fucking maniac! A fucking lunatic who belongs in the loony bin! Jasper and I would've eventually spoken to her like adults, kept it friendly-"
Bella's head shot up.
"Friendly? FRIENDLY?!"
"Bella, don't listen to-
Her arm swung back.
A sharp pain suddenly erupted from the middle of my face. It radiated outward…throbbed…and for two seconds, consumed all my senses. My eyes stung and watered. I tasted blood in my mouth. When I released Bella and instinctively reached with both hands to where her elbow got me, to where the agony originated, my palms came back painted bright red, warm and sticky.
"Oh, fuck," I breathed as I realized what had happened. "It's all right, Bella," I said.
But Bella's focus was nowhere on me or my nose.
A series of footsteps advanced, treading over broken glass.
"Officers, she's inside that building! That's her! That's the woman who threatened my son and destroyed his phone!"
"Officers, she's in here! She's making threats against a pregnant woman!"
"Bella, the cops are right outside. Please come here." Holding my gushing nose with one hand, I reached for her with the other but then drew it back when I saw the blood. "If you allow me, I promise, I've got…"
"She said friendly! FRIENDLY? FUCK FRIENDLY!"
"No, Bella, No! I've got you; I promise…"
She lunged again, but this time, a couple of cops grabbed one arm each, and together, they pushed her face down against the lobby floor. Both our breaths, hers and mine, left us in a rush.
"All right, Miss, you have the right to remain silent…"
A/N: Thoughts?
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