Chapter 9: BELLE

Rebecca checked the time on her phone screen for the millionth time. If they didn't hurry, she was going to be fucking late. Why was this city always in construction? What was the fucking point? Hurricanes were going to rip the roads apart all over again anyway. Late to lunch with her father was the last thing she needed. It would completely destroy her moral high ground, and God knew how much she fucking needed it today. Clacking her acrylic nails impatiently on the window wasn't making Patrick drive any faster.

"Find another route," Rebecca demanded.

"Bossy," Patrick said, his green eyes studying her through the rearview mirror. "I like it."

Normally she would have enjoyed Patrick's flirtations. It wouldn't have been the first time that a drive with him created a conversation so steamy that the windows simply fogged over. But she wasn't able to entertain such notions when she was going to be late for lunch with her father.

"It's a meeting with my dad. I cannot be late," Rebecca tried to explain. It was futile really, trying to explain it to someone that grew up outside of their sphere. To a normal person. "I have far too much riding on this."

"That's a weird thing to call having lunch with your old man, by the way."

"It's not just lunch with my dad, Patrick. It's his time-" she sighed, looking at the borderline gridlock they were in. It was an audition with the King of the whole fucking castle, but it was useless trying to explain to him. "Just take the next detour before I pull a Kate and walk there myself."

"Cute, but it's like 101 outside. You'd arrive at the Swan Brasserie soaking wet."

Rebecca sighed, feeling her heart race in her chest. The car rolled ten feet and then came to a stop again. God dammit.

"Why do you always treat these lunches like it's life or death?"

"I wasn't always invited to lunch with my dad," she muttered, looking out to the people walking in the streets, covered in sweat and looking like they were about to faint. The heat was miserable, but they were free to roam the scorching streets of New Orleans. Her eyes turned back to the rearview mirror. "It took me a lot to earn this, and it takes very little to lose it."

Life hasn't always been like this. She'd had to earn her seat at this table, and it hadn't come easy because Rebecca grew up invisible.

Kate excelling academically was underselling it. She taught herself four languages, and how to play three musical instruments and had an IQ of 155 by age 10. She has won the National School Science Fair prize every year since age 6, plus another plethora of competitions in chess, mathematics, biology, physics and coding. Kate didn't even care about winning, the prizes or the prestige really, she's never been a competitive person. Any monetary award she received was always donated to the family foundation, and any trophies just ended up in the huge display cabinet outside Dad's home office. Kate just always had fun learning, discovering and innovating. The satisfaction of finding something new, to figure out the puzzle, to beat the equation was all she sought. Winning was just a happy little byproduct of her curiosity. Working on her little projects was always the perfect excuse to get her out of doing anything she didn't want to do, like going to bed early or attending any family social functions. Since a child, she's always been the happiest alone, with her nose buried in books or hunched over a chemistry set or her laptop.

Kate had even been at the White House to receive awards multiple times growing up and met every president and first lady since probably 2003. Google and NASA used to try to bribe her with gifts every spring to woo her into a summer internship. Her sister finished high school with top marks and a perfect SAT score at age 14 after skipping three whole grades. The end of her senior year was like an NFL draft pick at her house, her father literally put down all eight Ivy League hats on the dining room table for Kate's grand reveal and they had a party afterwards.

Her older brother, Richard Junior, was a gifted (and now retired) track athlete. He broke numerous sprinting records in his age category growing up and was placed at the NCAA every year. He almost failed his freshman year of high school because he missed so much school travelling for international competitions all over the world. But he made it to Team USA by age 17 and competed in the freaking summer Olympics. Three fucking times. And won. You bet there was also a huge display cabinet for his achievements at their family home too, with his Olympic medals staged dead center.

Now, Rebecca was a fine student. "Always a joy to have in class," her report cards said. For as long as she could remember she tried finding her thing - her special thing - to excel at just like her siblings did. She played volleyball, did musical theatre, rode horses, played piano and joined her school's debate team. But it never mattered how much she trained and practiced, how many elite private tutors or lessons she had, being gifted never seemed to come to her naturally like it did her siblings. She never found her 'thing', or a talent she excelled at. Even after all this obscene privilege, she was just simply mediocre. Rebecca never had any attributes for her parents to be proud of.

By age 10, she grew deeply ashamed, and frustrated. She didn't feel special, smart or like she belonged in her talented family. Her father was an accomplished businessman, her mother was a top scientist. Why wasn't the family spark passed down to her? What was wrong with her? Why couldn't she be like Dick or Kate? Rebecca simply didn't feel like she lived up to the Bellefleur name. Dick used to joke she was actually an adopted hillbilly cousin from Bon Temps, and that's where she would end up someday, married with five dumb kids.

Call it middle-child syndrome, but she felt forgotten by her parents. Rebecca lost count of how many tears she cried over feeling like a failure, but they were too busy being excellent, talented and internationally renowned to notice. When they weren't busy working, they were accompanying and cheering Dick or Kate in their endeavours. There was no display cabinet of her achievements anywhere.

Her mother at least tried her best to remedy it by taking her shopping or to the salon on Sundays. Growing up she remembered it felt incredibly patronizing, like being feminine and pretty was all she would ever amount to. But now she looked back at the memories with great fondness. Her mother took time out of her incredibly busy schedule of being a mother, CEO, researcher and professor just to make her daughter feel special and loved. Becca would fucking sell both kidneys just to have one more Sunday at the mall with her mom.

Perhaps it was fate, or divine intervention, but things radically changed once she hit high school and puberty came. Rebecca turned into a woman in what it seemed almost overnight, and suddenly she wasn't so invisible anymore. Boys at school were suddenly flirting with her. Dick's friends seemed interested in helping her with homework and taking her out to football games and boating. Her dad's work friends were suddenly fascinated by her post-graduate dreams and interested in anything else she had to say. High school boys, college boys, and men far too old for her were texting and calling her now all hours of the day and night, buying her gifts and offering to take her out.

Everyone became friendlier, arguments became easier to win, favours easier to ask, and people suddenly expected a lot less of her which allowed her to shine brighter in a weird, utopian way. Even her father was now more present, and had taken a keen interest in her friend circle and where Rebecca was at all times as if her social schedule was suddenly just as important as Dick's Olympic training schedule.

Now, she wasn't fucking stupid. Becca knew exactly what the lingering stares, the waist touches, the smiles and pleasantries were about. They were about her tits, her ass, her curves, her shiny hair, her full lips and seductive eyes. Her femininity or womanhood or whatever you want to call it. They wanted to fuck her. Her 'gift', the 'special thing' she once wanted so desperately to have dropped out of the sky and landed on her perfectly round lap. It certainly wasn't what she wanted, nor what she would have chosen if she could have, but it was what she got.

And you know what?

She liked it. She liked the attention, and feeling special and somehow important even if it was completely undeserved and superficial. Now all she had to do was to turn her 'thing' legitimate. So without telling anyone, Rebecca enrolled in a local beauty pageant in New Orleans and she actually won. Her parents were wildly confused when she broke the news and showed them her ribbon. Mild disappointment flashed across her father's eyes, but they were supportive even though they weren't particularly enthusiastic.

She kept up her piano lessons for the talent portion of the competitions. Her mother hired tutors for public speaking, which she learned a great deal from and it gave her communication skills she used to this day. Rebecca learned to use her charisma and how to masterfully yield her charm, milking the ever-living shit out of it. With a team of stylists at her disposal, she signed up for another beauty pageant. And another. And another. The girls were brutally mean, but she paid them no mind. Like her sister, all the money prize went straight to the family charity foundation which only made the judges love her even more.

Rebecca didn't give two shits about where the money went. All she wanted was the trophies - all of them. She wanted an entire hallway in her father's house filled with ribbons, plastic statues and rhinestone tiaras. But her dad seemed to be too busy and stressed with work to bother with any of his children at that time. In her mind, regional ribbons were too small - she was competing with actual Olympic medals and National Medals of Science. No, if she was to earn a cabinet, she had to go for the big guns: Miss Teen USA by the end of high school, Miss USA by the end of college, and Miss Universe before she was 25.

Fate had other plans. On a random rainy afternoon, Rebecca was alone in her bedroom, surrounded by racks of sparkly dresses and shoes, packing for the Miss Teen USA competition in the Bahamas. She was waiting for her mom to come by her room before supper time to help her choose shoes. Her mother didn't know the first thing about pageantry fashion, but she always liked picking the shoes for some reason - and her mom hadn't been wrong yet. Rebecca Bellefleur had taken the pageantry world by storm and was rumoured to be the running favourite for Miss Teen USA. Her mom was her lucky charm, and you don't mess with luck. Her stomach was filled with butterflies, double checking she had packed all her makeup and hair stuff. An hour passed, and then two. The butterflies turned into hunger, and her mother still hadn't come home yet.

She never did.

When she went downstairs to check if her mom's car was in the driveway, she found the butler and her father talking to the police. Her mother would never come home again. She would never help her pick shoes, or take her to the salon on Sundays. Her only supporter, the only person in the world she was not invisible to, was gone. Her mom would never stop by her husband's office and look at her cabinet in awe. She would never get to be proud of her daughter. Maybe she never was.

Rebecca never competed in a beauty pageant again. She just couldn't do it. Somehow, for some reason, those dreams died with her mother. All Rebecca would ever be was a very pretty girl who got the wrong attention from boys. Her gift was to be the 'heartbreaker', Dick Junior's 'hot younger sister' and that her dad 'would have to keep an eye on that one', as if she were innately a bad person just for existing.

But that had been eons ago. Now all grown, Rebecca refused to be invisible. She refused to be quiet. Refused to be small and 'just pretty'.

Which was one of the reasons why she had lunch with her father every single Monday. And today's meeting would not be particularly pleasant, since she had to confront her father on the nature of the business dealings he had been making behind her back. But not all was bad: Bellefleur Tech stock was super high this morning, and it may or may not be because of her little Instagram post. Her dad barely understood how the internet worked, so it may not even be worth telling him. Richard Sr. had a tendency to turn fun little anecdotes into a three-hour sermon quite often.

Their father was a person of routine. For decades he had a weekly lunch alone with Kate and Dick, and it wasn't until Rebecca became COO of Bonne Nuit that he graciously included her in his schedule.

Mondays with Rebecca at The Swan Brasserie, Sophia's Bar with Kate on Wednesdays, and the country club with Dick Jr. on Fridays. He also ordered the same damn thing every week: lamb chops, with a side of mashed potatoes and boiled carrots.

When Patrick pulled in front of the Swan Brasserie with exactly a minute and a half to spare, Rebecca almost broke the door handle trying to get out.

When her high heel touched the sidewalk pavement she could finally breathe again, despite the outside air feeling hot and thick with humidity. She glanced back at Patrick and his beautiful green eyes sparkled back at her.

"If this goes well, I'll be sitting on your face later. Hope you're hungry," she told him quietly before closing the door. She didn't have to look back to know he was watching her walk away from the car, salivating already.

When she entered the Swan Brasserie's main dining room, Richard Senior was already waiting for her at their usual table by the window.

"How's my beautiful daughter?" He asked standing up, giving her a side cheek kiss.

"I'm fine, dad, how are you?" She patted his dad on his arm, and then sat down across the bistro table, covered with fine white linen.

The waiter did not miss a beat at filling her glasses with ice water, and white wine. Another server brought a tiny stool for her purse to sit on. "Same as the usual?"

"Yes, Francis, thank you," she smiled while sitting her bag down.

Rebecca was not a creature of habit by any means, but she had eaten everything on this menu at least 6 times over, and she really liked their French onion soup. They used an extremely rich veal broth that was to die for. And she would savour it even more today as veganism was being forced on her for another two whole days. Freaking Kate.

"My usual for me as well, make sure the lamb chop is medium rare," her father told Francis the waiter and with a nod, he left the table. Francis has also our waiter for close to two years now.

"So," Richard cleared his throat, putting his business voice on.

It was hard to sit still, keeping so much anxiety and anger inside. Her mind was replaying her meeting with Mr. Northman in the dark conference room. Nothing but city lights shining on his dark blue eyes. Remembering his body pressing against hers gave her goosebumps all over again.

"So, you fucked me," Rebecca interrupted. She wasn't one to beat around the bush.

Richard shook his head. "Don't be crass, Rebecca. I didn't-"

"But you did, dad. You didn't tell me you are selling off Bonne Nuit, so you fucked me. Why?"

"Stop saying that, Rebecca, Jesus-" he gave her a stern chilling look. It wasn't the sentiment he was offended at, just the wording. "How much did they offer?"

Rebecca crossed her arms and laughed, scoffing. It was always an odd feeling when all your worst fears come true. The anger took over. This was such a fucking joke. Never in a million years, he would sell Dick Jr.'s company right from under him. "8% above market value, 2 board seats at Bellefleur Tech and the Calantica patent."

The so-called fake eye drops, which Rebecca suspected is what the New Blood vampires wanted all along, the rest was just for show. It somehow made her want to sell Bonne Nuit even less. She loved her company, and her mother's legacy, she loved marketing their new developments and funding her sister's brilliant research. And selling it off to people who didn't really care for it left a very taste in her mouth.

"Calantica is obviously off limits," his bushy brows knitted together. "But 8% above, that's it? That's rather insulting."

Rebecca smiled proudly of herself on the inside. To her father, she just gave him a little smirk.

"Unless," he gave her a cold look. "You mean 8% above the current bullshit price."

Her stomach dropped two inches. "Well,-"

"I was wondering why you had pulled that little stunt on that vain little website."

"Instagram is not-"

But her father had patience for it. "Image manipulation is an incredibly petty and pathetic way of putting your foot down, Rebecca. How much did the vampires really offer? 800?"

She didn't want to say it. A billion dollars. Eric Northman's offer haunted her mind, because deep down she knew it was a damn good offer, but saying it out loud would make it real. "What's incredibly petty and pathetic is selling mom's legacy off to people who don't even care-"

"It's not personal, it's business. When are you going to stop being so emotional?"

The clinking of plates interrupted them, as the servers brought their food. It was also her father's tradition to eat in silence whenever he was with his children. Being a powerful businessman and a workaholic who worked day and night and through every meal, he very rarely got to enjoy food just for what it was. And she knew better than to break her father's rules. The timing was also good because Rebecca was about to say something she would probably regret.

The soup was delicious, and the server brought her an extra slice of toasted bread. She was unsure if this was Francis' attempt of piting her or flirting. Becca ate it anyway, needing the comfort of carbs to drown out the taste of regret. She shouldn't have done it. She shouldn't have artificially inflated the stock price, it could read as an untrustworthy image of the company, and at best it was just a temporary solution for a long-term problem. Her father had the superbly annoying trait of being always right.

"You're never going to make me CEO, are you?" She asked quietly, a moment after her father crossed his cutlery over his empty plate.

Richard Sr. let out a deep breath, relaxing his shoulders as he put his elbows on the table. "Do you remember when you and your siblings were kids and a bird flew into the dining room window? And the three of you ran outside to check on it?"

Rebecca had to dig deep in her memory vault for that one. "Yeah, I think so. I was 7 or 8."

"Well, I remember that day vividly. You immediately took the lead and asked the house manager for a shoe box and blanket to take it to the vet, and then ordered the chauffeur to bring the car around. Neither could barely hear you over the sound of Katherine crying."

"Yeah, the poor thing was screeching in pain, there was blood everywhere and bones sticking out of the wing-"

"Sure, but do you remember what Junior did? Your brother went to the shed, grabbed a shovel and put the poor animal out of his misery."

Rebecca's lips instantly formed a thin line, and her insides burned with rage. They had this talk before, in one way or another, but this time the metaphor was too blatant to ignore.

"Bonne Nuit is not a wounded bird, dad-"

"It had a good run, honey. You perfected a good product and sold the crap out of it. But now you are running in circles, trying to reinvent the wheel for people who quite frankly, no one gives a shit about. Let them have it."

"Let them have it?!" Rebecca could feel her voice wavering. "This was mom's life's work!"

Richard shook his head. "Your mom's life's work was quite more than that, Rebecca. And she's been gone 11 years now. You have to let her go."

She could feel her eyes warm up as tears flooded them. But she wouldn't cry, not in front of her father. "He wants me to stay on, did you know that? Eric Northman wants me to work for him-"

She said it with desperation, but her father smiled instead. "That is very generous of him. And if working at Bonne Nuit is what you want-"

"Being CEO is what I want, Dad! What is it going to take, dammit?!" Her voice was a little too loud, and even though they were basically the only people in the restaurant, staff and guests were looking.

"Sacrifice, Rebecca," he said in a firm deadly tone. "We have all made sacrifices and came out stronger for it. Your brother gave up his Olympic career to work for Bellefleur Tech. Katherine gave up her entire childhood to sharpen her mind and make a respectable name for herself from a young age. What have you lost, huh? What part of you have you sacrificed?"

Rebecca could not in good conscience say she gave up anything her father would respect. She gave up beauty pageants. She gave up every relationship she ever had so she could focus on work, which her father would probably be of the opinion she would make a better wife than a Chief Officer of anything anyway. No matter how much she fought, she did not have a place anywhere.

She leaned forward, looking him dead in the eyes. "You want me to kill a bird, Dad? I'll kill a fucking bird-"

"It's not about the damn bird!" He hissed, holding the linen napkin in his tight fist. "It's about making the hard choices in order to protect what you have, Rebecca. Sometimes, you have to be a killer. And you, my beautiful girl, are not."

He absolutely hated her. It was ridiculous the effect she had on him, he was practically seething. Eric stayed up Monday morning way past sunrise out of fucking spite. Laying alone in the very middle of his bed in the complete dark, just doom scrolling on his phone and watching the stock update on CNBC on the TV. Seeing their little stock symbol BELLE go across the bottom of the screen, its price going up every rotation without fail. All because of one goddamn sexually charged social media post by a fucking millennial.

Eric drew the line when he caught himself stalking on her social media. Rebecca Bellefleur was perfectly poised without being too sexually enticing. A beautiful, proper southern lady but with the body of an elite stripper. He threw his phone across the bed, landing quietly on the pillowy duvet right by his right foot.

It had been almost a decade since a human made him lose control. In Burrell's camp, they had taken everything from him. Stripped him layer by layer, peeling each back slowly and painfully. He was tortured, starved, and forced to play cruel mind games with no other purpose other than to suffer. Bleed or hurt Pam. Bleed or hurt Nora. Bleed or hurt Tara. Bleed or hurt Godric. He chose to bleed every single time. What the doctors running the lab didn't seem to realize was that it wasn't an option for him. In Eric's darkest hours, he pondered if they did. Maybe men were sick and twisted enough that they would inflict the cruellest of tortures, knowing he would do anything to protect his family. They just enjoyed hearing him scream.

When Eric stopped bleeding, they started cutting. Lose a hand, or hurt Pam. Lose a leg or hurt Nora. Lose a rib or hurt Tara. Lose his bowels or hurt Godric. You can guess what he chose. The knowledge his body would regrow flesh did not make the pain of carving and butchering himself any less agonizing.

Eventually, he had nothing else to give and he lost all control. His mind faded as he blacked out and became nothing more than an animal. There was no Eric Northman. There was no Viking, no vitality, no loyalty or love. There was nothing inside him, nothing left of him to sacrifice. His mind deleted everything his Maker taught him. Everything his Maker made was ripped from him, consumed by darkness. They wanted to prove Eric was a monster but all they accomplished was creating something nobody could control, not even himself. It took a very long time for Eric to find the light again. Even after months of travelling the world alone, away from anyone he cared that he could possibly hurt, he knew he carried that animal inside him.

And on Saturday night he felt it slip for the first time since. Just for a split second, he felt the darkness swallow him, and the animal he feared rattled inside his cage. He did not mean to lunge at Rebecca Bellefleur at the club mezzanine, but the rawness of her defiance taunting him triggered that part of him he had no control over. And yet… He found himself craving her. She was poison and his lips wanted to drink her whole.

Bellefleur Tech's stock price hit 61 dollars per share by 11:34 AM, just like she said it would. And she did it so easily, so effortlessly, just because she could. CNBC even showed a short clip of the video she posted, partying at Tara's and 'celebrating' her business deal with the Louvre as a little fun bit to break up the boring monotony of Wall Street. They weren't going to shame or prosecute her, they were fucking cheering her on.

Eric had walked into that meeting thinking he had this one in the bag. They would buy out Bonne Nuit and control the patent for the Calantica eye drops, thus securing their power over governments, politicians and the 1% as they had done for centuries. He had underestimated her, a mistake he wouldn't make twice. It was crucial, now more than ever, to get Calantica.

The development of human technology was what forced vampires to come out of the shadows. Through the centuries, they controlled the narrative of their existence. They intentionally mixed falsehoods with the truth to keep their true nature hidden: holy water burned, they didn't have a reflection in the mirror, and garlic was offensive - all deflection tactics to hide the truth. The now defunct Vampire Authority, though it had many flaws, had enough foresight to know urban legends wouldn't protect them much longer. Internet, facial recognition software, online footprints and DNA technology would eventually catch up to them which is what pushed the creation of synthetic blood and the Great Revelation. Now, the lies they spread had much higher stakes. Their blood did not have curing properties, so they wouldn't be drained and studied like lab rats. They did not have superhuman powers, so they wouldn't be enslaved or drafted. They could not hypnotize, control and alter human memories, so they wouldn't be eradicated. Never mind the fact that it was precisely how vampires controlled governments, Kingdoms and the elite for centuries if humans knew the full extent of their mind-controlling powers, it would create mass panic and revolt if they knew. Another genocide attempt would be unavoidable, and this time it would be at a much higher scale than one lowly Louisiana Governor.

Godric and the Council needed this power to rule. In order to keep the peace they needed to stop anti-glamouring technology from being accessible worldwide, and for humanity not to know the truth. His Maker had been under extreme stress as of late. Keeping vampires at bay wasn't as easy as it looked, even if they held the key to their very survival. Obey his word, or die of Hepatitis V.

Eric needed to speak to his Maker about their next steps. He was conflicted on telling him the effect Rebecca had on him. Would he be disappointed or concerned? He always did warn Eric that one day he would meet someone who would humble him. But Eric was always adamant he would never kneel to no one, and this time would not be any different. He would have to go all in. Bonne Nuit would be his, Calantica would cease to exist and Rebecca Bellefleur would be put in her place. He just had to choose where that would be.

AN:

This chapter is just *chefs kiss* MUAH! So good!

We dove deeper in both Rebecca's and Eric's backstories, the stakes they face and how they clash. Oh, and how they WILL clash

Happy holidays everybody! I hope everyone has an excellent 2024 :) see u soon, leave me some love in the comments will ya

xoxo

Spice