Nine Billon Dollar Heist

*Co-authored with the stupendous LivesInDreams and TRDancer*

Chapter 19: Bitch Slap Sunday

"Did you… Did you just fucking bitch slap me?" -Felix

I stared angrily ahead of me into the deep dark black of the leather seats inside the Hummer. Alice was wrong. Bella was wrong. And Jasper and Emmett were the biggest epic assholes on the planet for not backing me up.

That's all-fucking-right. Let them laugh it up at the hotel. I don't give a fuck.

"Damn straight I don't give a fuck," I muttered to myself and to the angry silence that filled the Hummer. Ha. Hummer. More like Giant Ass Monster Hummer of Death.

"I don't believe I said anything, however, that is a most interesting way to being a conversation. I don't believe I give a fuck either," Felix commented sarcastically across from me.

"Oh, screw off. I've had enough of you for one night," I shot back.

He laughed without humor. "Yeah, because you're such delightful company to keep, Edward. All your petulant whining and continuous scowling and bitching about everything. It's a wonder you've lasted this long leading this group without one of them punching you in the face."

Actually, Emmett had punched me in the face before. But we were drunk and playing bloody knuckles… And I'm absolutely sure it was accident… possibly.

But that was totally beside the point.

"I am perfectly capable at what I do. I've kept them out of trouble, off the radar, and we've done some serious shit. Fuck you. I know what I'm doing without some hot-shot asshole trying to tell me that I'm not good enough to do what I know how to do best!" I shouted.

"Like hell you know what you're doing! You know how close Bella was to the limit tonight? Do you realize what would have happened to her? Do you really? If you were the leader you needed to be you would have figured out the clue and made damned sure that all your people weren't anywhere near getting close to that limit, making sure they were doing what they were supposed to. Tonight was a complete fiasco!" Felix shouted right back at me, making me flare up in anger. So now I was not only a horrible leader, but I also risked Bella's safety?

Like fuck I did.

"Do no - do not dare say that I was not looking out for Bella. Ever. You think I don't know how much trouble she could have gotten in, the stakes? Fuck you," I said angrily.

Felix simply sat there, calm. He was 'chill,' as Jasper would call it. Then he sneered.

"Well, you certainly have a funny way of showing it, Mr. Masen. Especially since you didn't even have the decency to solve the clue before you sent your team in. They were blind, and you knew it, and—"

But before he could get the last bit of his sentence out, I had, in the span of no more than four seconds, got up—because, yes, one was capable of standing in this monstrous contraption—and had taken Mr. Felix by the front of his outrageously priced suit—more expensive than anything I had ever bought—and cocked my hand back.

And then I did the most chick-like thing I had ever done in my entire life.

Because you see, even though I was angry at Felix, with his implications that I had knowingly put my team in danger, in harm's way, I knew that if I were to punch him I wouldn't be able to stop, and ending up with a dead body in the back of this limo was not in my best interest.

And so instead of punching Felix in the face, I bitch slapped the mother-fucker like the bitch he was.

The resounding smack of flesh on flesh was satisfying, and I smirked at the sting in my hand and the giant, red welt that swelled on his face.

Had I put my class ring on before we had left tonight? I checked my hand.

Yep.

I snickered.

Whoops.

Felix, needless to say, was stunned for about five seconds before he turned an angry face towards me.

"Did you… did you just fucking bitch slap me?" he asked incredulously.

"What the fuck else do you think—"

But before I could finish, in the blink of an eye, Felix's own hand came across my face, shocking me for a moment before turning to him.

"The fuck? You just slapped me!"

"You slapped me first!"

"You deserved it, you were being a jack-ass!"

"Like fuck, I was telling the truth, you self-absorbed, pig-headed, stubborn, useless, selfish—"

My hand struck his face promptly.

"Listen here, you stuck-up, arrogant, big-headed son-of-a-bitch—"

Thwack.

Pop.

Smack.

Thump.

I can't recall how long the endless bitch slapping went on. All I know is that the more the slapping went on, the worse the insults got until I found myself saying and hearing things I had never thought I would in my life.

What the hell is the sideways inside of a pink goat's ass? I have no idea. But according to Felix, that's what I was.

And along with the escalating insults and facial pain, there was also the escalating nagging feeling in the back of my mind from the things that Felix would throw at my face. My inexperience, my lack of command over the others, Emmett in particular, my emotions getting the best of me…

My having put the team in danger.

And so that just made me more angry, to the point where, in between the slapping and the insulting and everything else, I burst,

"Why the hell do you care so much? Why? If we're so beneath you, so inexperienced, so incapable, why are you here? Why not just let Bella get caught today, huh, why?" By the end of my outburst, I found myself shaking the man furiously, demandingly.

I needed to know. Why, if all he was going to do was criticize, was he here? Why did we matter?

He froze, either surprised by my shaking him or my question, and cocked his head to the side. He got this sort of blank look on his face, like he was remembering something or someone, and then his face got sad.

"Because I had a team once. I had a team who I loved and respected and who made me happy." He stopped, looked down and to floor and looked back up. "And I had a Bella, a girl not quite unlike her, and I wasn't careful one night, and I lost her. I lost them all."

I let go of his shirt and fell into the seat next to him. Suddenly, I had lost some of my anger. Suddenly, I wanted to know what he was talking about.

"You… lost her? Them? How…?"

He was quiet for a moment before he opened his mouth.

"Casino owners, they don't like counters too much. They love their money so badly that anyone who takes too much from them is an instant enemy, a threat. And here, in this city… it's not that hard to get rid of a few young, foolish kids who played a little too high for what it was all worth." He chuckled without humor.

"So, what happened?"

"They went out one evening to do some 'no cheat' playing. I stayed behind; I hadn't felt like going down since I had had a slight cold the whole week during our scams. So Amanda—" he choked over the name "—decided to go ahead and take the other two with her down, to give me some space." He shook his head. "They weren't even counting that night. They weren't counting, but they were taken in by security."

I could tell that, though short and ill-elaborated his story was at this point, we had reached a part in it that was hard for him to recite.

"You know… you don't need to tell me anything…"

He pushed on anyway; his eyes glazed over like a frozen pond. "They shot the other two, in the head. Right between the eyes. Quick, smooth. But her, Amanda… they beat her head in with an aluminum baseball bat and left the three of them in the street to make it look like a mugging. She was still alive… but she didn't remember anything. Not the scam, not the year it was or her name. And she didn't remember me."

I was silent. The story, tragic as it was, was almost unbelievable. No one would go that far to show some kids that it was bad to steal money.

"But… but what if it was a real mugging? You can't be certain that—"

"Oh yes, I can," Felix interrupted. "You see, the next morning, there was a note shoved under my door. Told me to turn on the news and then proceeded to tell how sorry they were for my misfortunes, and that, should I want the same thing to befall me, I would never speak of what had happened to anyone. I would have complied… had they not brought my family into this." He turned his face to mine, and looked directly in my eyes.

"The wrong move, the slightest mistake, can take away the people who you care about most in this world. I learned it that hard way, Edward. I learned it by losing the ones I loved most. I wasn't too different from you when I was your age. I was a leader, a lover, a friend. I had it all. Money, a woman, the cars, the life… But I screwed up, and I wasn't there to protect my team when I should have been, and for that, I paid." He shook his head. "I do not want to see you end up like me. I am alone. I am by myself. There is no one to console me when I need counsel, no one to hang my head on their shoulders when I need it. And I wish you would take me seriously, Edward, because what happened tonight could have been the last time that young Bella would have ever remembered your face, the last time that perhaps you would have been able to see her with something that looked like a face."

I sat there, stunned. Something small and nagging in the back of my mind told me not to believe what Felix had just told me. This wasn't real. There was no way I had gotten myself involved in something so sinister like this.

No way had I gotten my team into something like this.

But there was no reason for Felix to lie about something like this. I mean, for God sake's, his girlfriend and two best friends had been horrifically brutalized. Why would anyone lie about something like that?

"I see," I said, letting that information stew in my brain. What if tonight had been the last night I ever saw Bella looking like…Bella? Or what if it had been the last night I had ever seen her alive, what then?

And that's when I realized Felix was right. Holy shit, was he right. I needed…I needed to be a leader. I needed to stand up and really be one. Tonight had been a fiasco. We had gone in unprepared, and it was because I felt like we could go in blind because I was overly confident in what I was able to do with what we were—or weren't—given.

It all could have ended tonight, and I hadn't even realized it.

"My God…" I said, running my hands through my hair. I had fucked up big time, and had taken it out on the only person who seemed to see my shortcomings in the light as we were. "I am… I am sorry," I finished slightly pitifully. I owed him more than that, but honestly, I had just been in a bitch slapping fight with him, and I really didn't know how to recover from that one.

So sorry was what I gave him.

He smirked a little. "I am, too, Edward. I was… slightly insane, about everything. I should have explained my motives better. It would have prevented…" He seemed to struggle for words. "Well, it would have prevented all of this," he said, gesturing in between he and I, and I assumed that stood for the whole 'fighting' thing that had gone on.

I laughed. "Yeah."

And then there was that awkward silence thing that happens after guys make up.

"So…" Felix said after a few moments of silence. "Does this mean we're friends?"

"Friends? Maybe not now… Buds? Or perhaps acquaintances?"

He nodded. "I'll be a taker for the last one."

I smirked. This was going to be the beginning of a very… interesting relationship.

When we finally got back to the hotel, it was about one thirty. Felix and I parted with a simple 'good night,' and said we'd meet up sometime in the morning with everyone else at breakfast to discuss some changes that needed to be made. So while he made his way up to his room, I made my way up to mine. It was while I was in the elevator where I contemplated what he had told me about him being so alone and with no one anymore. I wondered if it came close to what I felt in this elevator. Isolated, closed in.

But then again, I thought to myself, he's truly alone. No one. When you get out of this elevator, you'll have someone to go to, someone to love. He won't have that when he gets off.

I frowned as the elevator door opened, and I stepped out into the empty hall. I looked one way, and then the other before turning towards the left down where my room was. I contemplated the thought of not having Bella in the room when I finally got to our door, what it would be like if she weren't in there when I opened it.

And right then and there, I almost panicked. What if she wasn't, once the card key was inserted and the door opened? What if it was an empty bed that I was to face tonight?

I unlocked the door and pushed it open.

There were no lights on. The air was still. My heart pounded in my chest as I shrugged my dress jacket off my shoulders and onto the floor. I didn't need the lights on to know where the bed was; I knew the layout of the room like the back of my hand by now.

As I moved forward, I kicked off my shoes, pausing momentarily to slide off my socks. I unbuttoned my shirt with each agonizingly slow step I took towards my destination. I couldn't hear anything in the room. No breath from a sleeping body, no sound of life from the woman I loved.

I told myself I was being stupid for panicking so bad, but even as my shirt fell to the ground and my pants followed, I felt the sinking feeling that I wouldn't find what I wanted once I got to the bed.

I startled as my knees hit the edge of the bed, the fluffy comforter brushing my legs.

I stopped for a moment before crawling in. Nothing, no warmth, not body to hold onto.

No Bella. I felt around feverishly then. She wasn't gone. Not like Amanda. She couldn't, she—

My hand came in contact with what felt like a bare shoulder. I moved my hand down slowly. An arm, a hand, fingers.

Bella's fingers.

I relaxed. She was here, safe. She wasn't in some alley somewhere, dead or dying.

I moved the comforter back so I could crawl under it properly as I scooted my body right up next to hers. I wrapped my arms around her torso, engulfing her. She moved a bit.

"Ed… warrr…d."

I smiled and nuzzled my face into her hair.

"I love you. I love you. I love you. You are my Bella, and I will never let you go," I whispered to her sleeping form.

And I would never let her be the next Amanda.

I held onto that declaration as sleep took hold of me.

She would never be the next Amanda.

Lenn: I'm back. Edward's back. Felix is back.

And we're all bringin' sexy back ;P

Review?

Cane: Hello. I dunno if you remember me, but my name is Jenny, aka TRDancer. I write this story with Lenn and Dream. You probably don't remember them, either. But we're back, and sexy is with us.

We'll update again once we've planned out the next few chapters. ;D

If you've come this far, I think you should review.

Dream: Yeah I'm shell shocked too. But review kay? Sexy demands it :D