A/N: A huge thanks to my ladies Paige, Sherry, Cristina and Tiffany xx

As always, thanks for reading and for your reviews x x

Chapter 40

I didn't like the lack of conviction in Edward's voice. He had always been confident, cocky even, but right now, he was none of that. I could tell he was worried, not just for me, but for all of us. None of us had expected things to go down the way it had. I knew Edward would never have let me come here if he had truly believed that I would be in any sort of danger, and there was no point in us calling Carlisle for help because like he had said, he was two hours away. We were in this on our own.

We all gathered in the basement as Emmett and Jasper explained the situation upstairs. The Russians had the building surrounded. Garrett was with them, which hadn't been all that surprising, not after everything Kate had told us. From the looks of it we were outnumbered 5:1. It wasn't great odds, but it could be worse, right? Jasper and Emmett had secured the doors, but wooden tables and chairs would only hold for so long. We had to come up with a plan and fast.

"Are there any other exits out of here?" Edward asked Liam, hopeful.

Liam shrugged. "If there are, Charlie never showed them to me. We've never had any need to use them before."

"What about you?" Edward said, turning to me, "do you know another way out of this bar?"

I shrugged. I hadn't really been here since I was a young girl. I remembered playing upstairs once or twice when my father had come here to take care of business. Now that I thought about it, that business must have been someone he was holding here in the cellar. I didn't think it was appropriate that he brought me here when he was doing things like that. While I was drinking mocktails upstairs, he was downstairs interrogating someone. I would kill Edward if he ever did anything like that with our children, mob boss or not.

As I thought about the last time I was here, I was hit with a memory of when I was a little girl. Kate and I were sitting at the bar, drinking mocktails and chatting to the bartender like little girls do. Of course, the bar wasn't actually open to the public at that point. Papa had been downstairs for over an hour and we were both getting pretty bored. When he finally came up we thought we were leaving, but he had a young man with him. Someone I don't recognize until now, Jacob Black. He walked him over to the brick wall with the light fixtures. I remembered watching in awe as he turned them in some sort of sequence and then the wall opened to reveal a room on the other side. I had no idea what was in the room. I never got to see inside.

"Isabella?" Edward said, frustrated.

I looked up to see all the men were looking at me, waiting for an answer. I had gotten too caught up in my own memories. "I think I remember a way," I said, touching Edward's arm. "Follow me." I led Edward up the stairs from the cellar. The brick wall in question was just at the top of the stairs. I turned the light fixtures like my father had in my memory, but nothing happened.

Edward cocked his eyebrow at me. "Was it supposed to do something?"

"I guess I didn't do it right," I mumbled, trying again. It took several more tries before the secret door clicked open. I turned to Edward, pleased that I had remembered.

He gently pushed me behind him and went into the room first. Upon first inspection the room looked like nothing more than a glorified storage room. Although, there was some extra ammo and guns that we could definitely use, there didn't seem to be any other point to the room. It wasn't until my foot caught something that we realized there was a trap door in the floor. It had been hidden beneath some crates.

"You okay?" Edward asked as he caught me, stopping me from falling flat on my face. He stood me up, not letting me go until he was certain that I was steady on my feet.

"Yeah, I'm okay," I said, dusting myself off. "Do you think it will lead out of here?" I asked, as he began to move the crates.

"I hope so. How did you know about this room anyway?"

I shrugged. "When you asked me about exits I thought back to the handful of times that I had been here. I remembered sitting at the bar with Kate. My dad had gone downstairs. When he came back, he was with a young man. At the time I didn't know it was Jacob Black, but I recognize him now. Speaking of Jacob… did you ever find him? You never told me."

Edward sighed. He stopped pushing the crates and looked up at me. I could tell by the expression on his face that whatever he was about to share with me was something he had wanted to keep to himself. "Yeah, we did. He's dead, Isabella."

"I don't understand. What happened?" I asked, confused.

"Garrett must have gotten to him first. He was found floating in the river."

"That's why you asked me if I had told Kate about him," I stated, putting all the puzzle pieces together in my head.

Edward nodded. "At the time I suspected that we might have a mole as I knew I hadn't told Garrett."

"You don't suspect any longer?"

"No. We found some recording equipment in a few of the rooms in our house. Garrett must have planted them. So I think it's safe to assume that he also used something similar at the hotel after we did our initial sweep as not many people knew about Jacob and the ones that did, I trust."

"I'm sorry," I said, wrapping my arms around myself. I hated that we were in this position because of my family. Although, the situation had brought me Edward, it had also brought nothing, but heartache and stress.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Edward said, pulling me to him and wrapping his arms around me. He held me tight against his chest. "You didn't know."

"She was my family. I should have known or the very least suspected that something was off."

"They had us all fooled, Isabella. If anyone should be sorry, it should be me. It's my job to protect you, to keep you safe. I am the one that failed you." He caught my chin and made me face him. He looked sincere. I didn't like that he was blaming himself for any of this, but then, I guess he didn't like that I was either.

Emmett coughed in the doorway. "Maybe you two could finish the heart-to-heart later? We kinda have a life or death situation going on here." Liam and Jasper were standing behind him. All three of them were watching us. I guess we had taken too long and they had come to find out what had happened to us.

"Are you going to stand there all day or are you going to help me move these crates?"

As soon as they opened the trapdoor, we were greeted by a god-awful stench. "Oh my God, what is that?" I asked, covering my mouth with my arm.

"I'm guessing it leads down into the sewer," Edward said, as he grabbed a flashlight from one of the shelves. He sat down at the entrance to the trapdoor and shined the light in, revealing a set of ladders. "Yeah, leads straight into the sewer. You're not gonna like this one principessa, you may want to hold your nose."

If only holding my nose helped. After closing the secret door, we all made our way down into the sewer. Edward carried me so that I didn't need to walk in the human waste, but that didn't do much for the smell. I can't even begin to describe how awful it was. The stench was so strong that it burned my nose and the back of my throat, but it beat being dead.

A/N: One more chapter to go of this one, then a small epi, then it is on to Tied to New York.