The story deals with adult subject matter and occasional description of explicit sexual abuse. Not meant for underage readers. Read at your own peril. And oh, Twilight belongs to SM. This is just a fanfiction.

Beautiful Sorrow

End of Chapter 8:

As his car sped by on the 101, he sat in the back and forced his mind to think about Isabella, his wife, without letting the simmering magma boil over in his heart. Looking back through the years, he reminisced over the chain of events that brought him to this point in life. It went back a long way, further even than when he'd first met Bella.

Chapter 9

Carlisle, age 18

Carlisle had just turned eighteen when he was thrust into adulthood to take up his father's mantle leading the Cullen fortunes. Kyle Cullen had passed away unexpectedly three days prior when his private jet went down near Newfoundland on his way back from Europe. Carlisle excused himself from the funeral crowd and found a quiet spot in his father's – now his – office at the house. Eleazar Goldsmith entered the room with the customary grim expression on his face.

Eleazar was the veritable pillar that his father heavily relied on to run his massive enterprise. Other than being the company's CFO, he was also perhaps the only family Carlisle had left now; the only family that acknowledged him at least.

Eleazar was a pragmatic man who was not prone to displaying emotions, not even towards those he cared deeply about. He preferred to keep people at arm's length with his gruff and irate exterior.

Today he was even more morose than usual. Kyle Cullen was his dear friend and brother-in-law. His responsibilities now lay in making sure that the path to Carlisle's ascension to the Cullen throne went as smoothly as possible. The dead man's will had been read and predictably, all his worldly possessions had been passed along to his only son, Carlisle. Eleazar was entrusted with the young boy's proxy to represent his interests to the Board, and act as his mentor and guide until he reached his twenty-first birthday. His task at hand today wasn't an easy one, but he was determined to perform his duty to the best of his ability.

"Carlisle," Eleazar called out to the grief-stricken boy.

"Son, I wish I could put off telling you this, but I'm afraid there's something you need to know. It affects you and the business, and it's my duty to prepare you for it." He came to stand by the young boy as he spoke.

"What is it, Uncle El?" Carlisle asked as he discreetly wiped away tears from his eyes. Eleazar, unlike his father, would consider such a show of sentimentality a weakness. He didn't want to appear weak.

"We should sit down for this. Come, let's talk business like real men," he said as he placed a hand on Carlisle's shoulder, motioning for him to take his place behind the desk.

This had been his father's sanctuary in the house for as long as he could remember. Of course he'd played around in the room as a child, and sat behind that desk in playful charades on many an occasion, but this was different.

After a brief hesitation, Carlisle sat down in the comfortable armchair and looked at Eleazar expectantly. He could guess what the older man might have to say. He was most likely going to lecture him about how sacrifices had to be made on his part to meet the expectations of the thousands of Cullen employees; that he needed to grow up. His uncle had been prepping him for the role ever since he turned thirteen. He was used to it, but he was not ready for what Eleazar had to say.

"Carlisle, there's something important I need to tell you. It's not going to be easy for you to hear, and I really wish I didn't have to bring this up. But I have to. You will find out about it sooner or later, and I prefer it be sooner 'cause I want you to be prepared for it. I want you to be able to protect yourself."

"What are you talking about?" Carlisle asked in a perplexed tone.

Eleazar didn't answer him right away, as though the words he was about to speak were painful for him.

"For the last year or so, your father had been seeing someone, a woman."

"What?" Carlisle nearly laughed at the news. "That's not possible, you are wrong…" he said with conviction.

In many respects, Kyle Cullen's life was essentially over the day his wife died eight years ago. To Carlisle, it was obvious how much his father loved his mother. He barely managed to carry on his duties as a parent. His work had taken a bad hit, and if it weren't for Eleazar's firm support to guide him, he probably wouldn't have anything left to pass on to his son. He never got over being the grieving widower. The idea of him shacking up with some random woman was unthinkable. He wouldn't do that. Surely he'd tell his only son if he was considering entering the social scene again.

"Kyle didn't want you to know. Even I found out purely by accident. He was… afraid that you'd take it badly. He didn't want to hurt you." Eleazar refuted his nephew's skeptical retort.

Carlisle was dumbfounded by what he was hearing. How could his father do that to him; to his mother's memories? Didn't she mean anything to him? He knew eight years was a long time to mourn the loss of a spouse, but he couldn't bring himself to think logically when it came to his mother.

"Who is she?" he asked while seething.

"He met her in Boston. He's been cutting her a check every month from his personal account. That's how I found out. I tried to warn him how this woman was taking advantage of his vulnerabilities, but you know your father, always seeing the best in people. I told him he needed to tell you, at least. I guess he never felt the time was right."

Carlisle felt an irrational rage overcome him. The idea that after everything they'd been through as a family, his father would simply allow some leggy blonde to soil his mother's place in their world was infuriating. How could he fall for the oldest trick in the book? It disgusted him that his father would pay a woman for such 'services'.

He couldn't understand why Eleazar would want to bring this up today. He didn't want to think this way about his father. What good could possibly come out of blighting his memories now?

Almost as if he could read his nephew's mind, Eleazar continued talking.

"You must be wondering why I am digging all this up now. Believe me; I wouldn't if I had a choice. I am not trying to make you question your father. Yes, he made some questionable decisions, but he loved you, always. Never doubt that. Kyle was a great man, a good man. Even his mistakes were made out of best of intentions.

"The reason why we need to open this can of worms now is because there's more to it than your father simply seeing someone.

"Carlisle, after I spoke with him about the matter and he refused to listen to my warning, I felt I had to find out more about her. For Kyle's sake. I mean, what kind of a woman accepts money from the man she's dating? But Kyle was blind when it came to her, he wouldn't hear a word I had to say."

Carlisle noticeably paled at the insinuation being openly voiced; his father had resorted to paying for carnal pleasure. How could he stoop so low? Carlisle wanted to vomit.

Eleazar, the ever perceptive man that he was, picked up on Carlisle's distress and proceeded on to defuse the crisis.

"Don't be too hard on your dad, Carlisle. He was a decent man, never doubt that. But he was lonely too, son. It's been eight years since Eli passed away. Men have their needs. Don't judge him. That's not the reason why I have come to talk to you today.

"There are things that I have found out about this woman, and I was planning on talking to Kyle about this as soon as he got back from Geneva, but…" he trailed off. Kyle never made it back from Geneva. Death had intervened.

"The woman is pregnant, Carlisle." He spat out the words. "And I am afraid she will come after you and the Cullen name with everything she's got to make a buck, claiming Kyle to be the father. We can't let that happen. There could be a long and dirty fight ahead and it's my job to prepare you for the battle. That's why you need to know about this now."

Carlisle went visibly green at the thought of a woman with questionable morals out there somewhere in Massachusetts, prepping up a nursery and plotting to drag his father's name through the mud. He would stop her if it was the last – or the only - thing he ever did.

"Is she blackmailing us?" he asked with a shaky voice.

"Not yet, not that I know of. It's still quite soon after the plane crash. She's probably just finding out about Kyle's death. But make no mistake, she will. As soon as she realizes her egg laying goose is gone, she will come after you. She will demand money, and quite possibly a share of the company for her kid. She will think that you are just a boy, that she'd be able to scare you into settling, but you can't let her take advantage of you.

"You have to be firm, and she needs to know that you are in full control and under no circumstances will you buckle. We need to get a legal team pulled up as soon as possible to flank the defense. We need to decide on a cap of how much we are willing to pay to make her go away and keep quiet, and we need to make sure that word doesn't reach the Board of Directors. They can't do anything to hurt you, but we have to do everything within reason to make sure the Cullen good name is not compromised."

Carlisle nodded his head in agreement, grateful for Eleazar's sound counsel. It was something he had come to depend on throughout his life, as did his father.

"Who is she, El? What's her name?" Carlisle asked out of curiosity.

"Elizabeth Masen. She's an office assistant at Ion One, the solar panel producers we invested in a few years back. My guess is that's when she set her eyes on him."

"She has a regular job? So, she's not a…" Carlisle's words faltered. He couldn't bring himself to articulate 'prostitute'.

"No, no. She is not a…professional like that, but a gold digger is a gold digger. It's clear as day that she pursued him for his money. Why else would she agree to be treated like a dirty secret, or take his money? We need to be weary of this woman, Carlisle."

"I know, but is it possible that she…this baby, is there a chance that it's really…"

"Kyle's?" Eleazar finished his question. "The Kyle Cullen I knew would never allow his child to be born as an illegitimate bastard. And I have reasons to believe that he'd known about her pregnancy for a while. If the child was his, he would have done the honorable thing; he would have recognized her in public, no matter how bad it made him look. So, no. I don't think for a second that baby is a Cullen."

Carlisle saw no flaw in Eleazar's reasoning. Whatever might have prompted his father to keep his liaison with this woman a secret, he wouldn't have stood for hiding away his child. He was a sentimental man, driven by emotions, not someone who'd hideaway his own flesh and blood just to maintain his reputation.

"You said she works for Ion One? So she works for us? Why don't we just fire her?"

"Because even though we have investments there, we don't have the controlling share. We can't arbitrarily ask them to hire or fire people without drawing attention. Of course, you can buy out the whole company and then get rid of her in the restructuring process, but as things stand, Ion One is doing quite well in the market. You should involve people on a need-to-know basis only. Other than your legal team and investigators, no one needs to know about this right now," he explained. "I want you to be ready when the time comes."

Carlisle agreed, and that's exactly what he did over the course of the next month or so. He fortified himself with the best litigation team money could buy who assured him of his victory in the unlikely event the case went to court. A top-notch security company was retained to investigate everything there was to know about Elizabeth Masen.

Once all preparations were made, he laid in wait for the harlot to come calling. He was ready for battle. He'd been offered an early acceptance at Harvard, his family's alma mater, to begin his college education that fall. He wanted to resolve this unsavory affair before he went off to college.

He waited, and then he waited some more, but no claim or demand came from Elizabeth Masen. As the summer neared its end, he started to become agitated with impatience. Half a year had passed by since his father's demise. Elizabeth Masen had had plenty of time to perfect her strategy as did he, but she wasn't showing any interest to engage him in combat. He was growing frustrated with inaction.

As September came around, he had to begrudgingly step down from the full blown, battle station and pack up and move across the country to start school in Cambridge. Eleazar helped him pick his courses and he had a clearly mapped out path ahead of him.

He settled into college life relatively well, but the thought of an annoyingly absent Elizabeth Masen kept nagging at the back of his mind. Why wasn't she making her demands known? What was she waiting for?

He had become greatly curious about the woman over the past months. The fact that he practically lived in the same city as her made it very tempting to simply look her up. As the idea took root in his mind, he found himself checking out the file he'd received from his security people that contained her home address. He was surprised to realize that he recognized the Boston neighborhood where she lived.

He knew that preemptively contacting Elizabeth Masen would spell disaster for the defense strategy his attorneys had drawn up, but his curiosity got the better of him. He had to see this woman who could make his father fall from grace.

One Saturday afternoon, on a cold winter day, Carlisle found himself in front of the apartment building that housed Elizabeth Masen. He was surprised to see that the front entrance had no lock and there wasn't any security in sight. He took the elevator to the desired floor and then knocked on the door that bore the number he had in his file.

When the door opened, he looked up and saw the woman whom he'd grown to despise since his father's death.

After months of speculation and morbid curiosity, he was face to face with Elizabeth Masen.

AN1: Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all those who voted for me at the Avent Garde Awards. I won as the Best New Author. I am duly elated! What makes this really special is that my friends won in nearly all the categories they were nominated in. BellaScotia won two awards! Woohoo! Bronzehyperion and Lady Tazz won in their respective categories too. Congratulations to these amazingly people.

But since the award season is only just starting I have more PR campaigns to run. Polls are open at The Eternity Awards. A bunch of my friends are nominated, as am I *blush*! Please send your vote in a single email to the(dot)eternity(dot)awards(at)gmail(dot)com.

You can find the nominations at:

http : / the-eternity-awards . webs . com / nominations . htm (remove the space!)

I humbly ask you to vote for these awesome people:

The Long Walk Home by lulabelle98 (The Bella Award, The Edward Award, The Esme Award)

Crash by BelleDean (The 'I Can't Believe It's Not Real!' Award)

Bring on the Wonder by Bronzehyperion (The Meadow Award)

BellaScotia (The Vampire Award)

Love In Idleness by twanza (The Emmett Award, The Pause Award)

A Quiet Fire by Magnolia822 (The Edward Award and The Switzerland Award)

Beautiful Sorrow too is nominated for The Jasper Award, The Rosalie Award, and The Victoria Award. Include it in your vote if you think it has earned it.

AN2: A HUGE thanks to Indie Fic Pimp for featuring Beautiful Sorrow in their blog and a million kisses to IcarusToSun for reviewing my little story. I am truly honoured and humbled. Thank you. The link is on my profile, if you want to check it out.

AN3: Story rec- Sinnerman by Detochkina. Summary: Loss, greed, unfulfilled ambitions, and a ticking clock. Bella finds herself in the middle of another family's drama and while on the mission to help, she loses the track of what's right and what's wrong. Canon, AH, OOC. This unusual crime-ward story completely blew me away. Please give it a chance.

AN4: Thank you lulabelle98, for making all this readable. I couldn't do it without you. Please read her storyThe Long Walk Home and vote for her at the Eternity Awards.

Thanks to kimbo06, lulabelle98, roon0, karebear8706, rsher1111 and Shattered1025 for WCs. You ladies rock! They are all esteemed authors. Check out their stories.

Thank you Emergency Beta Service and Detochkina for the writing bootcamps! You guys are amazing!

I am thankful to all those who read, review, alert and fav-d my story. Kindly review and let me know what you think. It kinda helps...