Author's notes: Sorry about the slow update, there's been a lot for me to do work related recently (which we are very happy about, thank you very much) but I really, really want to finish this - especially since we are soon to be getting into gore galore. Oh and if you haven't figured it out yet, Rebecca is not named that just because it sounds pretty...Hitchcock HINT HINT. Although I can honestly say that I never liked Laurence Olivier much...

After that phone call, I lost track of time for awhile.

It's not like blacking out per say – the dissociation thing. You are aware of where you are, but your mind just...drifts off.

It's not as unpleasant as it sounds like. Or maybe I was just used to the feeling. I lied down on the floor of the living room, the bright and cheerful sunlight warming my face. I felt drained and like I had aged several years in a matter of minutes. I watched the trees sway outside the window, saw a bird fly by – yet I didn't really see it. My body ached, and my stomach hurt like someone had kicked it.

I remained that way for a long time. It was a strange feeling being free – because even though I was, some sick part of me knew that I would always love my father. I would love him and I would hate him until the day I died, in equal measure.

Because despite all the things he put me through, he was the one who had raised me – he was all that I knew.

But not anymore, my mind whispered. I had Aro now. But then it said something else, something that I couldn't quite understand, but that I felt was true.

You never lost him in the first place.

A few weeks went by, and in that time I finally managed to tell Aro about the phone call, and how I wanted to stay in italy indefinately.

"You mean it? Is that what you really want?"

"Yes Aro, of course."

He took my smaller hands in his and just held them for a minute, looking at me with such awe and happiness that it made me laugh. I had never seen him so cheerful before then – like not a shadow could touch his mind, and in that moment I truly felt sorry that I had never seen his face in direct sunlight before – I had a feeling that it would transform him completely. His red eyes were more like a vibrant sunset, orange and tranquil when he was happy, I noted. But there was also a deep sort of grief etched into his face, just like there had been at moments like this between us before. It made a deep mark between his brows, one that made him suddenly look a lot older.

But I just figured that he was touched, so I didn't mind it.

When I look back at these events now, so many years later, I realize how much of a fool I was.

Strange things began to happen shortly after that. Things that I couldn't rationalize away, like I had with so much else that had happened during my stay in Volterra.

It was an ordinary weekday night when I first heard the screams. It was pretty late, and I was just about to go to bed. I heard it through the open balcony door, and thought at first that it was an echo – or maybe someone was watching a movie with the volume up. But then I heard it again, and this time the scream was not singular – but a chorus of screams. But it was so muffled that it was impossible to tell where it came from. But there was somehting about it that truly frightened me, and on instinct I think I understood that the screams I had heard were real. This time I did not dismiss the incident, and brought it up the following day with the other secretaries. But when I asked them if they had heard anything, the acted cool and disinterested.

"Maybe someone was watching a movie, yes?" One of them suggested, barely taking her eyes off her laptop as she said it. I frowned and shook my head.

"No, it did not sound like it." I said, and she shrugged.

"Oh well, it was probably nothing."

I turned to Helen who was sitting a few desks over, who had been watching the exchange with a strange expression on her face that piqued my interest. Perhaps she had heard it too.

"You don't think I should report it?" I asked her, expecting a sensible reply. Instead she blinked several times, like my question was baffling to her.

"Why? You don't even know where it came from, is that not what you said?" she asked me, and if I didn't know better it was like she was...pretending. Lying about something.

"Well yes but…."

"Then I suggest you try and forget about it." she said swiftly, getting back to work once more.

While they were right about the fact that I had no idea where the screams came from, I found their reactions odd and troubling. Like they didn't care at all – not even Helen.

When I got home that night, I noticed that I had 6 missed calls on my phone that I hadn't seen.

All of them were from an american phone number, one that I recognized instantly.

Why was Carlisle so adamant on getting in touch with me? He had told me to leave last time I talked to him – but for all I knew he was in cohorts with my dad. Ruling him out as a person to trust, I decided to block his number.

When I went to refill the cats food bowl later, I noticed that it was still full. And when I went to look for him, I could not find him anywhere in the apartment – nor was he outside.

All that I found was a black patch of fur hanging from a rosebush right below the balcony, along with some red, glistening spots on the flowers.