AN: To Elbereth49, thank you for being you;)

Chapter 26

The following day was bound to be stressful from the beginning. Waking up with Edward beside me was not as strange as I might have imagined before. Around 6:30 in the morning, he woke me up gently. "I let you sleep for as long as I could, but we're supposed to have breakfast with Professor Walker in 30 minutes," he said, trying to encourage me out of bed.

"Already?" I was still sleepy but, even so, I hadn't felt that well rested for a long time. "Let me just have a quick shower and I'll meet you downstairs in a few minutes."

I had become the heiress of Henry More only four months ago, although it felt longer, and so many things happened in such short period of time. As the water cascaded around me, I had flashbacks of my time with Henry; how he upgraded my tickets from LA to Sydney to first class, and in his search for absolution, he had asked me for forgiveness since he couldn't ask it of my grandmother. Then, seemingly lighter from his confession, his spirits lifted and burgeoned. I remembered that for some rare minutes he managed to even be playful. That night, after 'The Creation' concert we attended at the Sydney Opera House, he deliberately took me to the a.m. opening after party, to make sure I could see with my own eyes the sort of man he considered Edward to be. He died only a couple of days later, without warning, and sooner than expected. Since then, I had to deal with several misunderstandings with Edward and his family, discovered who fathered Alice's baby, was nearly killed twice, and seen the negative impact that the money had in my family. Overall, things weren't going as smoothly as I hoped. My priorities at the moment were finding out who could I trust and resolve all that mess with my mom. I couldn't cope with the knowledge that I had to bribe my own mother to keep her from doing what, to a certain degree, she has always done.

One thing that was particularly worrisome, even though I was judging him exclusively through other people's opinions, was the fact that James More (he went by his mother's maiden name) knew too much about something as personal as my mother's recent behavior toward me. Greta had really let me down about that matter, and left me unsure if someone who's usually so efficient could really have done it innocently, or if she too, like pretty much everyone around me, had her own hidden agenda.

When I came back to the room still dry toweling my hair, Edward was already showered, shaved and perfectly dressed waiting for me.

"I used the bathroom adjacent to a guestroom at the end of the hall," he explained. "Are you ready?"

"Yeah, almost. Could you do me a favor?" I asked and he nodded in consent. "Could you wait for me downstairs? I want to call my dad and my brother before I start the day."

"Isn't it still the middle of the night at Forks?" he inquired bemused.

"He's doing a night shift today."

"Right." He kissed me softly, his lips lingering a little longer than I anticipated, and smiled genuinely as he closed the door after him.

I pulled out from my purse a phone I used exclusively to call to Mr. Jenks and hoped he was already up.

"Good morning, B." He'd been calling me 'B' for a while. I thought it was only natural for him to do so considering that I called him 'J'. "Isn't a little early for you to be calling?" He said, his voice was still a little hoarse from sleep.

"Good morning J," I said chirpily. "How are the investigations coming along?"

"Nothing new, I still have no new leads, just circumstantial facts. So far, all the names mentioned in His Grace's will were cleared. Everyone who could somehow benefit from your death has been cleared."

"Are we anywhere near finding out the content of Henry's first will?"

"According to my sources, the previous main heir was the current Duke of Vidal. Concerning his minor heirs, Henry More didn't change much of the first manuscript. None of the rest was particularly harmed with the document dated from the 15th of December, 2010."

"You know, I've been thinking about this for the last couple of weeks, since we last talk, and I have reason to believe there was a different an intermediate will. I strongly believe that Edward was disowned because of how Henry felt about the way he dealt with Alice's pregnancy. He never had any idea that Jasper was the father. Let's face it, no one expected that outcome in that regard. So if he considered him unworthy of becoming his heir and since he was diagnosed with cancer a few months before he died, why wait so much to change his will? He died just a few days after."

"It makes perfect sense. But if that attempt had been successful, wouldn't your legal heirs be your family?"

"Maybe, but what if Henry had a contingency plan?"

"It's highly unlikely, but I'll look into it," he concurred without enthusiasm. We've been going in circles for months now.

"Please, feel free to use whatever tricks you've got under your sleeve. I'm kind of desperate here."

"Ok."

"But this is not the main reason for calling you. I need you to give me a full report on Greta Masterson."

"Why?" He asked plainly preoccupied.

"Could you try to find out if she has any connection with James More Hunter?"

"Now you've got my attention…"

I succinctly explained the situation to him and stressed the need to keep all matters of the investigation exclusively between us.

"Say no more. I'll get back at you as soon as I can. The information you need is probably going to cost you a whole lot of money."

"That is to be expected. I'll give you a call later this week."

As the phone call disconnected, I noticed the time and realized I was already running late. I decided to call my brother later that day as I hadn't talked to him for nearly a week. We actually had a extremely loud fight over the phone with him basically yelling at me - something that never happened before - over the problem with my mom. Even though he admitted she went ballistic, he couldn't overlook the fact that I offered her money to keep her away not only from me but from our family. Another first was the fact that my dad seemed ashamed of me. He considered that this inheritance was a cross to bear and that he couldn't fathom how I could have reacted so poorly to the situation. Well, he seemed to forget that usually there is no reasoning with my mother, but I didn't want to fight anymore.

Could I have done better? Probably. But I honestly had no idea how.

As I went downstairs I texted Emmett – I love you. Please don't be mad at me, I can't handle it right now. How can I make things right again?

"Good morning," said Professor Walker as I entered the oversized dining room. "You look well rested."

"Thank you, Professor. Was everything alright with your room? Were you comfortable?" I asked.

"Yes, Martha always loves it here," he said. "You mentioned you wanted to go over some things today…"

"We're not having classes today. I have several decisions to make that I've been postponing for a while and I need your help. We should readdress your job description. I need you available at all times to go over everything with me. Now you're my very personal and private administrative counsel."

"But I thought Greta…"

"She's my assistant. She has helped me, but I believe I need all the help I can get. It's clearly not good enough."

"We both know what's going wrong. You have to drop your residency Bella, there's no way around it."

"We've discussed this before…"

"He's right," Edward stepped in.

"Good morning," Greta greeted interrupting us. "You are up early," she stated almost like an indictment.

"Yeah, I was invited by Edward's mom to have lunch today, so I figured we could enjoy the day."

"It's raining…" she said drily.

"It's always raining," I countered.

She eyed me questioningly, but refrained from stating the obvious. Professor Walker was taken by surprise, but unlike the day before, he didn't denounce me."

"We're flying tonight, Greta so I suggest you enjoy your day off. Everything that needs my signature can be handled during our flight."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. On another matter, I need you to book my family's flights. We're spending Easter here together with Uncle Thomas. Nothing has changed."

"And what about your mother?"

"Make her reservations as well, but I'll talk to her about it. Also, you have may schedule that interview with the newspaper for my holidays in September. Make sure that the interviewer sends his questions for approval and ask John to have a complete background check on him or her and deliver it personally to me. Please remember to ask Mr. Hunter to draw up a new contract for Professor Walker as we discussed before. I don't want more bolts from the blue, do you understand?"

"Ok," she answered clearly taken by surprise by my tirade. "His Grace was not…" she stopped mid-sentence when she looked at my disgruntled face. "May I be so bold as to ask you where this came from?"

"Am I not the one in charge?" I demanded briskly.

"Of course, but…"

"From now on, everything that happens in my company goes through me."

"What is this all about?" Her eyes twitched infinitesimally. "Bella if there's anything that wasn't done according to your wishes you can just say so and we'll look into it."

"It's not the time or place to talk about this. As I said before, take the rest of the day off, get some rest and we'll meet later. I need a break," I said in a tone that left no room for any question.

I tried to smile reassuringly, but apparently failed to lift the mood because no one spoke for the rest of the meal. Greta only had some tea and quickly excused herself. Edward eyed me amused for the whole time and attempted to joke when she left, but I quickly turned him off.

"Until I say so, Greta is effectively dismissed from every meeting we might have," I told Professor Walker. "Arrange some interviews as I feel we need to find someone reliable to work with us. The candidates must be completely unattached to the More Enterprises and have their background checked. Later, I'll interview them and make the final choice. Today we'll go over some pressing matters on MorePharm. I'm not particularly happy with the Twivirin file. If there is something I know about, it is how to interpret clinical trials results. I'm not convinced that the ones presented to the board were completely honest."

"I thought so too," Edward interjected. For the rest of the morning we went through not only the Twivirin file, but also the numbers on the global revenues and, much to my dismay, things weren't looking as favorable as I thought.

"We need this to work. We have lost a great deal of business in the cardiovascular diseases division over the last couple of years. The patents are long gone for most of the molecules we developed and consequently, as expected, with a great loss of market share. If this continues, we may get to the point in a few months where we might have to make some cuts…" Edward warned me. "So whatever ethical issues you might have on this matter as a doctor, you have to focus on the fact that this is business and that your employees are counting on you to manage this company with your head and not your heart. You've been postponing this for months, we're losing money as we speak."

"Thousands of patients won't be able to afford this treatment…"

"No, inevitability they won't." Edward said detached.

And as simple as that, my decision on the matter was made, and the final procedures to market and sell that new medicine were made. Several other issues were resolved and the day went by with no further incident. Professor Walker was pleased to see me dedicating myself fully. My chief at the hospital would probably say differently.

We only stopped working to eat and when the odd physiological need made itself noticed. Edward didn't lose his focus at any point. He obviously knew what he was doing, and that got me thinking if Henry had really messed up in his choice.

I called Dr. Green in the afternoon and asked him to draw a contract with my mother. Because it wasn't his specialty, he recommended one of his colleagues and guaranteed the discretion and efficiency I was looking for.

Overall, I had a very productive day. Edward found reasons for concern over the performance of some divisions in a few countries. We decided he would review the files to make sure everything was alright. And, even if somehow he should try to frame, I knew he'd always put the company's welfare first, and that reassured me.

He accompanied me to the airport.

"If you're being too stubborn and keep with this idea of finishing your residency, why don't you move to London and do it here? At least that way you wouldn't have to move from place to place all the time."

"I'll consider it," I said noncommittally. He'd been pestering me about that all the way to the airport.

Our goodbye was strangely sweet, and somewhat familiar. He'd kissed me gently and let me go just a second too late. As I was entering the plane, I could not help but to look back. He was at the same spot, unmoving, following me with his eyes. He raised his hand waving a shy goodbye, and for a moment, I imagined how it would be like not having to do so.

From that day on, things were a little awkward with Greta. I assured her I was not displeased with her work as she was the epitome of competence, however things had to change.

Professor Walker became, to a certain extent, the Executive CEO of the More Enterprises. As the time passed, he became fully integrated, and things started functioning better. Greta was displeased, as she felt she was being overthrown, and she was. She had made many decisions on her own, many questionable decisions, which instigated a battle of wills between herself and Professor Walker. Even though I tried to be fairly pacifying, sometimes I failed, and end up resenting her as we found out that she made too many decisions without my consent. More and more situations came up where her behavior could be considered dubious. I still had some sense of gratitude towards her; I was afraid she might share what she knew about our company with our rivals, and I didn't want another blow. So I gave her the benefit of doubt, and little by little she resumed her previous functions – she went back to being an assistant.

My work at hospital though wasn't going so well though. The first week I came back I did two consecutive night shifts in order to have the weekend off. Angela, yet again, covered for me. On the second night I made a crass mistake. As I was attending a patient with a cardiac arrest, I was called to check on one of Eric's patients. He was a man in his forties who had a lymphoma and was scheduled to have an MRI because of acute onset of diplopia so he was fasting. He was febrile in spite of the IV administration of acetaminophen. I asked if the patient had another prescription and found out he had an oral non steroid anti inflammatory drug in his regular prescription. Because he couldn't eat, I told the nurse to give the IV formula since the patient was uncomfortable and I was unavailable at the time.

When I read the patient's file though, I registered that he had severe thrombocytopenia and that I hadn't bothered to ask the nurse. I quickly assessed his red blood and platelet count and later he had a transfusion. The patient was alright, nothing happened to him, but I was embarrassed by my mistake. I hadn't bothered questioning Eric's prescription…

As I was leaving for the weekend, I found him waiting for the elevator, which we took together. I was beyond exhausted so I didn't bother to make small talk.

"You look like crap, Swan," he teased. "Don't forget you're presenting next week's journal club."

"I wasn't aware of that…" I responded surprised. That got my full attention.

"Really? Must have slipped my mind. The chief asked you to take Mike's place, as he took the week off… he's marrying Jessica next week."

"And you just forgot to tell me..." I laughed bitterly. "How long have you known about this change of schedule?"

"I really couldn't tell…" he smirked. The bastard had the nerve to smirk. I was dumbfounded for a moment, but, as he made his exit from the elevator, with that triumph aura around him, I regained my wits.

"Yo Eric," I yelled after him, "I'll make sure to let the chief know about Mr. B's prescription."

He looked at me quizzically and I smiled with all the hypocrisy I could muster. "You know, the lymphoma patient with thrombocytopenia…"

And with that, he paled.

"About that, I didn't thank you for…"

"Walk with me, Eric." I demanded. He had that you've got to be kidding with me look, but didn't dare to question me.

He accompanied me a few steps behind. The bulletproof black Mercedes was already awaiting me. John opened the door and I entered.

"You're coming with me," I stated.

"You heard the lady," Matthew said coming out of the front seat.

Hesitantly, he took his place next to me, the door slammed and we immediately took off.

"Put your seat belt on." I warned.

"This will be the last time you tried to undermine me at work, do you understand that? My patience is growing thinner by the minute."

"What is this all about? Are you trying to intimidate me?" he unintentionally squeaked. "Who are your friends?"

"You should feel intimidated. There's a lot about me you don't know. If you stay out of my way, I'll stay out of yours. You're not going to make yourself be noticed in a positive way by bullying me."

"So, you won't tell the chief about Mr. B?"

I didn't answer and just looked outside through the dark tinted window. John turned on the radio and Nelly Furtado's Folklore started to play. I laughed quietly because I knew he was a fan, which undoubtedly increased the nonsense of the situation… I really adored the guy.

"Have a nice weekend," I said as we came into a rest at the front of his building.

He looked at me bewildered for a second and just nodded. As he exited the car, with Matthew standing beside the opened door, he asked over his shoulder "how do you know where I live?"

"It's our job to know everything," Matthew answered for me.

Eric nodded, clearly getting the picture. He was intimidated.

Matthew reentered the car, and John drove off.

"I really messed up today…" I confessed. But I didn't have the time to expand as, having worked for two consecutive night shifts, I instantly fell asleep afterwards.

AN: This is kind of a transition chapter, so I'm sorry if not too much happened. The following chapter will be more interesting.

I'm sorry if I didn't reply to some of your reviews, but I think I made it up to you by updating as soon as possible.

As always, take care.

Nofrure.