CHAPTER 23
Now you can blame me, tell them you made me
Ignore the shit that you did on the daily
Think that you played me but you can't save me
All of that shit 'bout how I'm fuckin' crazy
~ Halsey, Die 4 Me
EPOV
"Commissioner," I smirked, not bothering to get up from my seat behind his desk. It was well past midnight and I had to hand it to the man, he had taken his promotion seriously and was putting in the work. He showed no signs of heading home any time soon. It was admirable.
"Edward Cullen," he said, an ounce of fear tickling the back of his throat.
Jonathan Drake had been a street cop when I first met him. He arrested me for possession with intent to distribute when I was sixteen. I barely made it into the station before I was bailed out and the charges dropped.
It had been a valuable lesson for him. A turning point in his career because he realized where he stood. My lack of arrest with copious amounts of evidence against me told him who had the real power in the city.
He caught up with me as I was leaving the station and gave me his number. Told me if I ever needed anything to give him a call.
Now, while he had done plenty of underhanded and shady and downright illegal things for me over the decades, he liked to pretend he was doing them for the greater good. He was always able to twist his compliance into something else, something that showed him to be the vigilante instead of the accomplice.
I didn't give a shit either way. As long as he stayed out of my way and left me to my own devices.
Still, that impromptu decision to follow me turned out to be a brilliant move by a rookie cop that landed him in the highest position in the department. After a few decades of service. Nothing in life was free.
"Congratulations on your promotion," I told him, sliding the bottle of my favorite whisky toward him. "It was well deserved."
His voice was tense, his upper lip glistening with sweat in the dim light. "Thank you."
I had better ways to spend my evening than terrorizing the man. I stood up, buttoning my suit coat and walking around the desk. "You stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours. Congratulations again, Commissioner."
"Could you at least try to be a little more discreet?" he asked boldly before I could bypass him for the door.
I didn't need any further context to his question. "I suppose I could if I wanted to," I sighed. "If Aengus O'Malley hadn't threatened my wife and put a bounty on her head I might consider it, just for you," I told him with a condescending smirk.
"You're slaughtering half of the city," he snapped.
I shrugged. "Only the ones who get on my nerves. Let's hope you don't end up on that list, Commissioner," I stressed, walking out before he could go on.
Slaughtering half the city wasn't exactly an exaggeration. O'Malley had made quick connections upon his arrival, and I had a statement to make. One that said anybody who thinks about touching my wife ended up at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
O'Malley had gone into hiding. He thought he had. I got updates on his location every other day. Fucker was petrified, rightfully so. The slaughtering was as much to show him just what his fate was as it was to send a message.
The house was calm and quiet as I walked through the front door. I relished in the silence. It wasn't often the house was this empty. There was a constant flow of cameras or assistants or stylists on an hourly basis. The tranquility was a rare treat.
I leaned against the doorframe of our bedroom and watched her for a few minutes. She had boxes of album booklets surrounding her, as well as a box of sharpies beside her. It was quite the system she had, a flow that got her through dozens and dozens of booklets as fast as possible. Until her sharpie skipped on one and the process crumbled.
"Fuck," she mumbled, frowning down at what I assumed was a smudged signature. She pursed her lips, drew a quick heart on the booklet, and went on to the next.
"Fucking adorable," I sighed to myself, walking over and pressing my lips to the top of her head. It wasn't nearly enough, so I gently pulled her chin up and stole a lingering kiss.
Chocolate eyes beamed up at me as I pulled away. "What was that for?"
I ignored her question, as if I needed a reason to give her a kiss. "It's late. What are you still doing up?"
It had been a hell of a week since our trip to LA. Technically it hadn't even been a week yet. A hell of a four days.
Folklore received some of the highest praise her music had ever gotten. It was on track to nearly match reputation's first week of sales. And in the last week and a half since the FBI's public apology to her, every goddamn news outlet had issued public apologies as well. Every television station, every talk show, every online outlet, nearly every goddamn person who had said anything about her and the trial apologized for it.
There were still outliers. Still people who were too stubborn or jealous to apologize. Ones who thought the five minutes of attention they got from talking about her were worth it.
The world was very clearly divided amongst those on her side and those not. And for the first time, maybe since I had ever diluted her reputation, those on her side far outnumbered those not.
"I was too nervous to sleep," she said quietly, putting the cap on her sharpie and tossing it in a pile beside her of other dried up markers. "I'm pretty sure I've signed about ten thousand booklets tonight."
"What are you nervous about?"
Wide chocolate eyes stared up at me, appalled at the question.
I carefully stacked up her pile of booklets and put them back in their box before sitting on the bed beside her. "It's nearly a done deal. You just have to sign the papers."
Bella took a deep breath, scrubbing her hands over her face. "It's not just any deal. It's the deal. It's…"
"I know," I nodded, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. "You deserve it, Bella."
Her lips twitched, an argument most likely on the tip of her tongue. Her moral compass was stronger than mine and it wasn't uncommon for her to convince herself that she didn't deserve any of the forgiveness or apologies or chances after her trial.
I was always quick to remind her that if she hadn't done what she did, she would be dead. An outlook I would never accept.
Being with me meant she had no chance at keeping a clean conscience, but that didn't mean she deserved the way the world tore her apart for it. Because Bella, at her core, was just Bella. The girl who turned to acting because she didn't have anybody else. The one who turned to music to process her emotions. The one who spent her evenings signing thousands of album booklets to the people that didn't turn their backs on her even after all this time.
–Love|Power–
I watched her fidget all morning. I watched her re-curl the same section of hair three times before she realized it and listened to her drop every other item she picked up as she got herself ready. Her fingers were shaking as she slid her wedding rings on and they hesitated over the necklace she had laid out for the day.
"An excellent choice," I whispered to her, grabbing the heavy string of diamonds for her.
It wasn't a necklace she wore often. But the diamond encrusted snake settled on her collarbone just as beautifully as it had the first time I put in on her mere hours before reputation took home three Academy Awards.
"Are you sure? Maybe it's too much. I thought–but maybe I should go with something that won't remind them of my time in jail. I could–"
"They know who you are, Bella. This benefits them just as much as it does you."
She shook her head, silencing what I assumed were a dozen different thoughts running through her head.
I couldn't blame her. The deal she was about to sign was monumental. But she was worth every fucking penny.
Even as we sat in the car, the fidgeting continued. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, found the crease in her black slacks and meticulously folded it. Managed to decide she hated the lacy black corset she had decided on weeks ago and somehow pulled out a new pair of black heels from underneath the seat and changed into them with a smile. They looked identical to the ones she angrily kicked back underneath the seat.
But as soon as the car pulled up to the Cullen Inc. office building in the heart of Chicago, her nerves disappeared. There were a few lingering photographers, but they tended to wander the city most of the time these days. It was easy to spot where she would be given the heavy security presence I always had set up ahead of time.
Emmett pulled her door open with a smile. Alistair was immediately by her side as I grabbed her opposite hand. The photographers were hard pressed to get a photo with the four other guards that flanked us, but the documentary cameraman had his shot planned out in advance.
Bella took a deep breath as soon as we were in the elevator. Jasper and Aiden had it ready and waiting as soon as we walked in, the two of them filing in with us and Emmett.
"Do you guys still do that bet?" Bella asked out of the blue. "The one about who makes the most money in a year?"
Emmett cursed under his breath.
Jasper fought against a smile. "Yeah."
"Can I join? We can start my tally now if that makes it more fair."
It was the end of May. A nice proposition in theory, considering she would have five months less of income to contribute. It was all a moot point because within the hour she would have the bet won.
"Of course you can join," I told her, my palm sliding up her back so my thumb could brush against the exposed tattoo on her upper back.
"Winner gets to pick a car from each loser's collection, too," Jasper added with a relaxed smile. He didn't put as much stock in the bet as Emmett always had.
"Oh, I don't care about the car," Bella shrugged.
Emmett relaxed, for just a moment before I said, "I'll let you know her choice."
Aiden eyed the four of us skeptically. "What bet?"
"Who makes the most money in a calendar year," I told him.
Aiden scoffed out a laugh just as the elevator doors opened.
The momentary lightheartedness of the elevator disappeared instantly. The floor had been cleared for the day, half of the boardroom already filled with people. Kate, Claire, and Heidi were waiting by the elevator. Flanked by half a dozen lawyers, Adeline included.
She was an excellent criminal defense attorney, but the last few months had proven she excelled at entertainment law as well.
"Ready?" Heidi asked gently.
Bella nodded. "Everything is still the same?"
"Yes," Adeline said, stepping forward from the cluster of lawyers. "Exclusivity on folklore and If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power upon their release as well as The Eras Tour concert film. Streaming rights on Welcome to the Badlands, Hopeless Kingdom, and reputation upon the completion of their current contract."
"Same price?"
Kate gave her a nod. "Same price."
"Okay," Bella sighed, her hand squeezing mine until I lost most feeling in my fingers. "Okay. I'm ready."
Bella walked into the room, surrounded by the three women who had been by her side for a majority of her career. I watched her put that picture perfect smile on her face as she shook a dozen different hands, no trace of the anxious and fumbling woman she was this morning.
"This is big," Aiden whispered to himself as he stood behind me. We were in the back of the room, out of the way and blending in with the rest of the security detail.
I tore my eyes away from my wife to our son. It was different for him, Bella's fame. Because from the moment he was born she did everything in her power to make his life as normal as possible. It was harder for him to merge the woman who made sure to bake him cookies every Friday night after school with the woman people waited in line for hours to see.
"Yeah," I told him. "It's big."
It was almost as if the entire room held their breath as Bella's pen glided over the contract.
Welcome to the Badlands.
Hopeless Kingdom.
reputation.
folklore.
If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power.
The Eras Tour.
The company was getting exclusivity of three brand new releases, and would get the rest of her back catalog as soon as it was out of Lawrence's hands.
The life's work of a woman who turned the entertainment industry on its head at nineteen and never stopped. A woman whose life had been lived out in headline after headline since she was sixteen. Every dirty little secret she revealed in her documentary and every vulnerable moment in each of her films.
All valued at the modest price of one billion dollars.
–Love|Power–
The elevator wasn't as jovial as it had been on our way up. Bella's hand reached out and quickly hit the level of my office as soon as we were in, beating Emmett to his choice of the ground floor.
"I need to throw up," she said calmly, eyes locked on the door. She was out as soon as she could squeeze through them and walked surprisingly calmly across the floor to my office. I gave security a nod as I followed closely and locked the door behind us.
Bella had already made it to the attached bathroom and was seemingly getting rid of whatever was lingering in her system from the small breakfast she had this morning. I caught her hair before it could slide down her shoulder.
My free hand slid along her back until her body slumped back against me.
"Sorry," she panted, her breath slowly evening out.
I shook my head, standing to quickly wet the washcloth. She took it eagerly, pressing her face against the cool water.
"I just…" she sighed, pulling the cloth away and looking up at me with glistening eyes. "I don't think anyone has ever really understood how much I put into everything I do. Every song, every scene, every show… Everyone has always made it seem like it's easy for me. Like I haven't worked every fucking day of my life since I was sixteen. And it's like… like it's finally worth something,"
I nodded, pressing my palm to her clammy cheek. Bella could have become a billionaire a few decades ago if it was about the money. She kept a steady stream of constant charitable donations, though, because we didn't need the money.
I knew this money was more of a statement than anything. It was the easiest way for the rest of the world to see her value. It was all she had wanted from the time she started working, for people to see her.
"I'm still pissed at how it all went down but I'm ready to finally…"
"I know," I told her, grabbing her hands and helping her to her feet.
She was ready to make the kill.
–Love|Power–
Confetti fell as soon as we walked through the door. There were shouts of congratulations and a wide-eyed pretty little brunette by my side.
Aiden had been planning the party for weeks, but hadn't been sure when exactly to celebrate. There was a lot to celebrate around Bella these days. After her reaction to the deal, I was glad he had chosen today to do so.
Bella liked to brush off her success, especially around the family. She didn't like to be seen as anything other than herself and liked to try to keep her work out of everyone else's lives when possible. An admirable attempt, especially these days. But it also meant she didn't ever really let anyone celebrate her achievements.
Until now.
Not that she was really given the choice.
A glass of champagne was shoved in her hand, the one that wasn't squeezing mine as if her life depended on it. She had the audacity to ask, "What are we celebrating?"
The entire room frowned at her.
"Only you would sign a literal billion-dollar-deal and ask what we were celebrating, Bella," Rosalie chuckled.
"Oh," she blushed. "We don't have to–"
"Celebrate the win, Bella," I breathed out against her temple. "You deserve it."
She pressed her lips together, taking a small sip of her champagne. "It is pretty exciting."
"Fuck yeah, it's exciting," Alec boomed, ever his father's twin. "What are you gonna buy first?"
Bella snorted as we all migrated to the living room.
"Personally," Maggie interrupted. "I think we're all overlooking the album drop. I mean, who just randomly drops two albums right after eachother?"
"Same idiots that drop three albums right after eachother," Peter said, sending Maggie a wink.
After months and months of work, Bella was making her strike. Strikes. Folklore was released last week and the soundtrack she wrote for the documentary would be released tonight. Her third shot was coming next week.
Maggie's entire face lit up.
"Listening party at Alec's tonight?" she asked, eyes meeting every member of the younger generation of Cullens.
Jared, Aiden, Adeline, Alec, Delilah, they all nodded.
"What?" Bella asked, eyes darting between all of them.
"We have little listening parties whenever you drop anything new. Or viewing parties if its a movie," Jared shrugged, taking a sip of his beer.
"Little miss Lead Dancer won't even drop any hints about anything, either," Maggie groaned.
Delilah would have already spent weeks rehearsing for tour as a dancer for Bella, which meant she spent weeks listening to unreleased music.
"That's because she signed a very strict NDA," Bella added with a smirk. "But, back to the listening parties. That's… the cutest fucking thing I've ever heard."
"Those kids online posting videos of their reactions have nothing on us," Delilah chuckled.
Bella froze, pressing her lips together before asking. "What videos?"
"You haven't seen them?"
"The internet is mean," Bella said with a shrug.
She, unfortunately, wasn't exaggerating. On every computer brought into this house there was extensive security and blocking software so Bella could, at the very least, read an article online that didn't end with an ad linking to the detailed list of all of the plastic surgery she had supposedly gotten.
She never searched her own name, never scrolled through any social media.
"Kate sends me a roundup of cute things once a month but I learned my lesson a long time ago about searching for reactions or… anything."
"Well, I haven't learned my lesson. They're fucking hilarious," Aiden said, grabbing the remote to the television and plopping himself down on the couch beside his mother.
I distracted myself with a perfectly curled strand of her hair until the video started on the television.
Two women sat on the floor of a bedroom, maybe in their early to mid twenties. One blonde, the other brunette.
"Twenty-nine fucking songs?" The blonde screeched. "Jesus. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God."
The brunette fumbled with a speaker before grabbing a phone. "Wait. Before we start, can we just talk about the titles? I'm ready for my tears ricochet to tear my heart out."
"Based on the title alone I'm claiming mad woman as mine."
"Okay, should we start?"
"Yes. No. Wait. Oh my God. I can't believe we're listening to a new Bella album. My mother raised me on her. I called her this morning and she was sobbing uncontrollably on the phone because she already listened to it and I had to hang up on her before she spoiled anything."
They both took comically deep breaths. Their reactions were ridiculously over the top, but very obviously genuine. They were so excited they couldn't sit still. Couldn't keep from squealing between every other word. It was incredibly… endearing.
"Okay," the brunette sighed. "Track number one… The 1."
They were sobbing after the first line, I'm doing good, I'm on some new shit.
I looked over at Bella, and saw the most serene, joyful smile on her face. Not even a minute into the video she turned toward Aiden and the rest of them and asked, "Do you guys want to do something for me?"
–Love|Power–
"Jesus Christ," a familiar voice grunted from behind me.
I had to agree with the sentiment.
My wife had performed on some of the biggest stages in the world; literally, and figuratively. But this one was quite possibly the biggest of them all. It was a stage I had seen scribbled on a miscellaneous piece of paper in her office months ago come to life.
"I'm hoping the size means there's no barricade walk," he said, coming to stand beside me.
Ben hated that goddamn walk through the crowd as much as I did.
"No," I told him. "No barricade this time."
Just a two hundred plus foot stage.
As impressive as the stage was, from the diamond in the center to the catwalk to the main stage, it was going to be a bitch to secure. It had to be some form of karma that I married a woman who liked to put herself in the middle of a sold out stadium full of eighty thousand people on a nightly basis.
Ben didn't hesitate when I called and asked if he felt like coordinating the security for the show. My intention had only been to get his thoughts on the logistics; he had helped me with security for every tour Bella had gone on since we met, but he had insisted on joining the team.
While I trusted Alistair explicitly with Bella's security, keeping her protected while on that stage was another task entirely. One Ben had done time and time again.
From the distance I heard a gasp, a moment before a flash of dark hair darted by and arms wrapped Ben in a chokehold.
"What are you doing here?" Bella gasped, reluctantly pulling away.
Their friendship spanned decades and countless life or death situations. Ben carried her to an ambulance after she was shot and he was the one person she called after her incident with Aro.
"Someone has to watch your back while you're up there," he said with a smile as she pulled away.
"You're coming back?"
"Just for the show."
"It took me like five years to get Alistair to even talk to me," she grumbled. "In half that time we had already committed manslaughter together."
Ben coughed out a laugh. "Not anymore."
Bella beamed at him. "That's true."
Bella knew of the increased security presence around her. They'd all been there since she came back from South Carolina after O'Malley's initial threat. I wasn't sure which was a bigger threat to her these days, O'Malley or the absolute monstrosity of attention her career was bringing her way these days.
I wasn't sure if I had ever seen it reach this level before. She was a household name by the time we met, but I wasn't sure if it was to the level of people taking photo's outside of our gated community or waiting outside of my office building to see if she showed up.
Her notoriety had reached a whole new level within a span of weeks. An equally awe-inspiring and daunting realization to be made when she was a month and a half out from being front and center in a stadium with seventy-five thousand people five nights a week.
It was why I had called Ben. Why there would be sixty of the best trained professionals lining the stage every night. Another fifty constantly roaming the crowd. And a dozen stationed backstage.
Bella knew of the O'Malley threat, knew her career was at a point it had never been at before, but even her eyes widened at the crowds she saw wandering the city looking for her.
A/N: We're getting close(ish) to maybe the ending of this story and I am stallllllllllllllling because I cannot imagine actually ending this series. Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed this one and I'll see ya next time :)
The 1 line mentioned is, of course, from the song the 1 by Taylor Swift.