Fill Me with Your Poison Chapter 10
"We need to talk to Jasper," Bella told Edward as soon as they returned to their chambers.
Edward nodded. "Yes, having Emmett find his mate so soon after I mated is very hard on him. I'd probably feel the same way if I was the only one left alone." Just the thought of not having Bella in his life made him ill. He pulled her into his arms quickly and immediately felt right again.
"I'm not going anywhere," she whispered, pressing a kiss to his throat.
"I know." He shook off the bad thoughts and focused on her. "Speaking of people we need to talk to…"
She let out a groan. "Must we?"
"Well, I think at the very least we should let Billy know, right? I don't think he'll be upset. As to your father, well, how much more upset could he get, really?"
"I'll call Billy." She grabbed her phone and sat back on the bed. Edward lay beside her and pulled her body up against his. They both smiled when Billy answered.
"Hi, Billy."
"Bella! How are you, sweetheart?"
"I'm good." She glanced at Edward and then at her ring. "Great, actually. Edward's here. We're calling with some news."
"Did you find your mother?"
Bella winced at the little stab of pain she felt whenever she thought of Renee. Edward ran a comforting hand over her heart.
"No, not that kind of news. The better kind."
"I asked Bella to marry me, and she said yes," Edward told him, then kissed along Bella's jaw. He couldn't help it. Just the thought of her walking down the aisle and taking his name made him overcome with happiness and desire.
"That's great news! I'm happy for you both. Do you know when and where?"
Bella felt a little pang again. Nobody from her family would see her get married. There was no way she'd risk Billy coming to Volterra. She knew that Charlie wouldn't even consider it.
"We'll have a big ceremony in Italy to appease my family and then something smaller and private here for our real friends and family. I hope you'll be able to attend the local one?" Edward smiled at the joy that filled his mate's face at his words. He would never deprive her of anything. He'd marry her every day if that's what she wanted.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world."
"Billy, if Charlie won't…well, I mean, we know he won't, so would you be willing to give me away?" Bella's eyes shone with the tears she could no longer shed at the thought of her father being unwilling to walk her down the aisle. Edward stroked her cheek softly and mentally cursed Charlie Swan for turning his back on his daughter.
Billy cleared his throat several times before he managed to speak. "I'd be completely delighted, Bella. Your father is a stubborn fool, and he doesn't deserve the honor of walking, or in my case, wheeling you down the aisle."
As he'd intended, Billy's choice of words made Bella laugh. "You best oil those things up. Can't have them squeaking the whole way down the aisle." They both laughed, and then the mirth died off her face. "Seriously, thank you, Billy."
"Anything for you, kiddo. Are you going to tell him, or do you want me to?"
Bella glanced at Edward, who shrugged. It was entirely up to her. "I'll try calling but he's more than likely not going to answer."
"He's at the station today, so if you called him there…"
"He couldn't avoid me," Bella finished. "Thanks, I'll do that."
"Remember, no matter what he says, I'm on your side."
She smiled shakily. "It means more to me than I can say."
Edward took the phone from her. "Billy, we'll be in touch soon. Thank you for all you're doing for us."
"It's nothing at all, Edward. You've done more for me than I could ever have imagined. Take care of her."
"With my life." He said goodbye and disconnected the phone. "You don't have to call him if you don't want to. I can, or we can just let Billy tell him."
Bella shook her head. "I can't let Billy deal with his anger. He's not the cause of it, I am."
"No, your mother and his prejudices are the cause, my love. You've done nothing but follow your heart. The fact that he doesn't like where it's led you is his problem, not yours."
Bella rather loved that sentiment, and she gave him a searing kiss. "I love you."
"I love you with everything I am and everything I ever will be."
They kissed again, and Edward's hands started to wander, but Bella stopped him. "I don't want to have this hanging over my head when we make love again. Let's just get it done."
Bella dialed the Forks Police Station and smiled when Mrs. Cope answered. She was the dispatcher and secretary, more or less. "Hi, Mrs. Cope. It's Bella. Is my father around?"
The gasp on the end of the line startled her. "Bella? How can it be? But it sounds like you…"
Bella shot a look of confusion at Edward. "What do you mean? Is my dad not around?"
"No, dear, he is, but he said…I don't understand."
Edward was beginning to. That bastard.
Bella wrinkled her brow at him. "What did he say, Mrs. Cope? I don't know what you're getting at."
"Well, dear, he told everyone that you were dead. Is this a prank call? Is that what this is? Who is this? Marky Stein, is that you?"
Bella tried to ignore the pain those simple words had caused and hurried to correct Mrs. Cope's assumptions. Marky Stein was always causing trouble and playing pranks in the town. The cops had had to deal with him more than once.
"No, Mrs. Cope, this is Bella. I'm afraid my father isn't very happy with my life choices and declared me dead to him. Apparently I'm dead to all of Forks, as well." The hurt in her words couldn't be disguised.
"Well, that's just not right! I made him a casserole. He's gotten a ton of flowers and condolences. We had a memorial, although he didn't attend, which didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time. What in the world?"
The outrage in her voice made Bella feel a tiny bit better. If nothing else, her father was going to get an earful from an irate Mrs. Cope, and she had such a big mouth that the entire town would know that Bella wasn't dead before the end of the day. At least Charlie would have to deal with their anger. It was something small, but something, at least.
"I've become the thing he hates the most." Bella knew she wouldn't have to elaborate beyond that. The entire town knew Charlie's stance on vampires.
"Oh. I see. Well, that still doesn't give him the right to make us all mourn and smother him with kindness! You just wait until I get my hands on him. I'm going to-"
"Mrs. Cope, is he there?" Bella just wanted to get it over with.
"Yes, dear. I'm sorry. I'll put you through right away. I have some calls to make." Even through the line, Edward and Bella could hear that the woman had her teeth clenched. She was right pissed. It made Edward smile.
"Can you believe he did that?" Bella demanded as the call was forwarded.
"Sadly, I can. I'm sorry, my love."
"Don't be. I'm dead to him? Well, he's dead to me."
"You could just hang up."
"No, I have something I want to say."
Her eyes were snapping with temper, and Edward wanted to bite her. She mouthed the word "later" as Charlie's gruff voice announced his name.
"Hello, Dad."
Silence filled the line for several beats. "What do you want? I thought I'd said all I had to say the last time I saw you."
"You said a whole lot of things, but none of the important ones. When were you going to tell me about Mom?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. I told you about your mother nine years ago."
Her glare could have melted ice, Edward was sure of it. "No, you told me she didn't love us and she'd left. You didn't tell me she'd become a vampire."
"I told you what you needed to know. Should have known you'd follow in her footsteps, though. You're just like her. Flighty and uncaring."
Bella winced as if she'd been slapped while Edward let out a long, low growl. Promises or not, Charlie Swan was on a very thin rope, and Edward was more than anxious to silence him forever.
"She is neither of those things, and…"
Bella held up a hand, silencing Edward. "Flighty? I followed the path you laid out for me for years until I decided on my own. Just because it wasn't the one you wanted, it doesn't mean I'm flighty. And if I was uncaring, I wouldn't have made this phone call, even though I knew exactly how it was going to turn out."
"You became a vampire and didn't even give me a second thought! That's hardly caring."
"Did you ever stop to think, Dad, that if you had told me the truth about Mom, I might have spoken to you before I made my decision?" Edward looked taken aback, and Bella touched his cheek lightly. "I would have made the same choice because it's right for me, but I would have at least tried to make you understand beforehand."
"So it's my fault you're a vampire? Of course it is! You and your mother love to blame everything on me."
"I'm not blaming my decision on you. I'm blaming your poor reaction to it, you telling the town that I died, on you. I knew you'd hate what I'd become, and yes, I did it anyway. I'd do it again. But if you'd been honest with me, if you'd told me about Mom and shared your feelings with me, I would have tried to do it differently at least. I wanted, very much, for you to be a part of my life, this new one I've begun with Edward. But you won't even consider it."
"It's not life. It's death. I didn't lie to them. Your heart doesn't beat. As far as I'm concerned, you're dead."
Bella closed her eyes and fought to remain calm. "That's your choice, Dad. Maybe one day, you'll realize that it didn't have to be this way and you'll be sorry for it. Since I'll live forever, maybe it won't be too late."
"I doubt it." There was a pause. "How did you find out about your mother, anyway? Have you seen her?"
Bella shook her head. "Do you really think I'm going to answer that? Aren't I dead to you?" His double standards infuriated her. "It doesn't matter how I found out, but no, I haven't seen her. Why do you care?"
"I don't." Liar. "She's as dead to me as you are."
"Well then, I guess it doesn't matter if and when I find her."
"The only thing that matters is that the two of you stay out of Forks. If you come here, I'll find a way to kill you permanently."
Bella laughed harshly. "Good luck with that. And thank you. Those were the perfect words for you to say to let me know not to bother with you again. I can't believe I never knew what a truly awful person you are, but I'm glad I see it now. I won't miss you on my wedding day, or any day thereafter."
There was a brief pause on the line. Bella shook her head at the thoughts flying through Edward's. He was really and truly ready to kill her father and having a fine time imagining all the ways he could do so.
"I didn't know the undead got married."
"We do everything you do; we just do it better. I'd like to show you exactly what I can do…" Edward growled into the phone.
Charlie scoffed, but both of the mates could hear the hitch in his voice when he did so. "I'm not afraid of you."
"You should be. You should very much be afraid of me. I'd happily end you just for speaking to Bella the way you have, but because she does care, far too much, I won't. For now. But if you come near her-hell, if you even have a bad thought about her in my presence-it'll be the last thing you do. Am I clear?" Edward's red eyes had a deadly glow to them, and the sneer on his face was beyond menacing. Every word he spoke dripped with the threat of excruciating death.
Another long pause before Charlie cleared his throat. "Are you threatening a police officer? Because I could-"
Edward cut him off with a sardonic laugh. "You could what? Throw me into your little prison? Do you honestly think it could hold me? Did you record this call? Because I'm pretty sure that anybody that heard the way you've spoken to your daughter would say the same things to you that I am. No, Charlie, I'm not threatening you. I'm promising you that we're both done with you. You keep on thinking that Bella's dead to you, and you stay the hell away from Seattle. Because if you come here again, all promises are null and void. Your life means less to me than that of a cockroach. Am I clear?"
Edward had reached the end of his rope as far as Charlie Swan was concerned. He wouldn't listen to him say another bad thing about Bella, and he never would again tolerate seeing the hurt on her face that her father had put there.
"I'm not the one who called you," Charlie pointed out. "I've been done since the instant she became your whore and let you sink your fangs into her."
The growl that erupted out of Edward shook the room. Bella quickly snatched the phone away from Edward before he could crush it in his rage.
"That's a mistake we won't make again. Goodbye, Charlie."
She tossed the phone aside and quickly turned to her mate. "Edward, it's okay."
"It's not okay!" he roared. "He has to die. Nobody calls you a wh…that, and lives!"
Bella stopped his frantic pacing and pulled him onto the bed. He sat, but the heat in his eyes and the tense way he held his body made it clear that Edward wasn't going to be easy to calm down. She straddled his lap and took his face in her hands, staring into his eyes.
"Hey, Edward, it's okay. They're just words. And they stopped meaning anything to me about halfway through that conversation. He's as dead to me as I am to him. He's not worth it."
"He has to die, Bella. He has to. I can't stand that he's alive right now, thinking those awful thoughts about you. It's not right. I have to kill him."
"No, baby, you don't." She kissed him, and his arms came up to wrap about her, holding her to him almost too tightly. If she had to breathe, it would have been a problem. "Look at me."
Edward shook his head, but pulled back enough to stare into her eyes. His were wild with the need to kill.
"He's not a threat to us, Edward. Really, what can he do? Badmouth me? That's already done. I'm not calling him ever again, and you put the fear of God into him, so I highly doubt he'd seek me out, not that he was going to anyway. I'm dead to him; he's dead to us. Mrs. Cope will make sure everybody knows he lied, and he'll have to try to hold his head up in town while they're all judging him. It's a punishment for him, believe me. He hates to be the center of attention."
"I want him to pay," Edward growled, fighting the urge to remove her from his lap and run out to hunt down her asshole of a father.
"He's all alone in this world, Edward. His wife and his daughter have left him behind, and he has nothing else. Don't you think that's how he'll pay? I'm sure he'll think about us and it'll hurt. That's a more permanent pain than death, isn't it?"
Bella didn't really know why it was so vital to her to spare her father. Perhaps it was some last vestiges of her humanity that lingered. She certainly didn't love him anymore. Perhaps she loved the man he'd been before her mother left. There was a time when he'd played with her and loved her and called her his little princess. That all stopped after Renee left, and then he'd become cold and she'd been more of a duty than a daughter. The fact that he'd failed to keep her away from becoming the one thing he hated most meant that he failed. Charlie hated to fail. That alone would make him suffer more than anything else.
Edward listened to Bella's memories and thoughts on the matter and felt himself calming. He still thirsted for Charlie's blood, but his promise to his mate was still lingering over them.
"I won't go to Forks and kill him. I promised, and I won't. But if he comes here, after what I told him…"
"I understand," Bella told him. "He has no interest in me anymore, and he won't come."
"So you agree that if he does, I can kill him?" The way he looked at her, with such boyish hope, made Bella laugh.
"Only you could look like a sweet kid when asking to kill my father. I can't deny that he's been warned. So yes."
Edward's slow, deadly smile did something to her stomach, had it flipping around in much better ways than the conversation with her father had.
"But you can't do anything to lure him to town, just so you can kill him. It's only if he comes on his own for some insane reason." She knew her mate, and if she gave him a loophole, he'd run with it.
"You ruin all my fun," Edward murmured as he pressed his lips to her throat.
Her head fell back in surrender, and he licked and sucked as his hands slipped under her shirt.
"I don't think so, Edward. This is fun, and I'm not ruining it." Before he could blink, she ripped his shirt off and pushed him down on the bed.
"No, you're certainly not." Clothes flew, shredded from both their bodies with astonishing speed. "You were so sexy when you got mad at him and told him you were done with him."
Bella laughed as she aligned herself with him and lowered her body down to his. "I nearly came from the look on your face when you threatened him. You're beyond hot when you're so deadly."
He hissed as he slid inside her. "I'd kill anyone for you."
"I know. And I'm grateful." She showed him how much as she began to move, her perfect body flexing and rolling and giving him unspeakable amounts of pleasure. "I love you."
"I love you," he echoed, the last vestiges of his anger seeping away as he gave himself over to her. She was the only one who could drive every thirst for revenge right out of his head. As they came together, over and over, he whispered his love for her and pledged his life to her happiness. That was all that mattered.