CHAPTER 26

My town was a wasteland

Full of cages, full of fences

Pageant queens and big pretenders

But for some it was paradise

~ Taylor Swift, Midnight Rain

EPOV

I leaned against the doorframe, hidden in the shadow of our bedroom and watched her. It was late, or early depending on how you looked at it. Nearing three in the morning as she brushed her teeth, her schedule in the process of shifting in the two weeks she had before she started her residency at the newly finished stadium just on the outskirts of the city.

She had started training months ago, while she was still filming folklore. Getting her body physically ready for the rehearsals and hours spent on stage. Physically, she was in shape professional athletes would admire. I admired it on a daily basis.

Now she was fine tuning everything. Her schedule, making her primary working hours between six in the evening to one in the morning. You couldn't just randomly start waking up at one in the afternoon and still function on the level she needed to.

It was an art. A discipline.

I fought against a smile as she yawned into her toothbrush. The smile disappeared quickly when I saw the wrap peaking out around her elbow beneath the sleeve of her four-sizes-too-big t-shirt.

I found her with some kind of bandage or bruise more often than not these days.

I walked over to her slowly, my palm gently cupping the injury as she rinsed out her mouth. "What happened?"

She shook her head, pointing to her throat.

I nodded. Vocal rest would work in my favor for now. "Then this seems like the perfect time to tell you I bought a new property in the city. Only about a ten minute drive to the stadium."

I stood behind her, my palms falling to her hips as she frowned at me in the mirror. Why? She mouthed.

"Because there are crowds constantly outside of every other known residence we have in the city. The building was nearly done and refurbished when the initial investor ran out of funds. Our names won't be anywhere on it so hopefully we won't run into any crowds."

We had been planning on staying at the penthouse for the duration of her residency. Our home was about an hour outside of the city, and cutting down on the drive was a small step to making her life a little easier.

Then the crowds started showing up.

She pressed her lips together, sighing as her hands grabbed mine and wrapped them securely around her waist. She kept her voice barely above a whisper, "Is it pretty?"

I pressed my lips to the top of her head. "I'll make sure it's up to your standards, Mrs. Cullen."

My fingers tensed against her abdomen. I took a deep breath, my lungs filling with the comforting scent of her fruity shampoo combined with the warm vanilla of the lotion I knew had been rubbed into her skin after her shower.

I had refrained from asking, tried to keep myself from thinking of it too much. But watching her career skyrocket to heights nobody ever thought possible for her or anyone only after getting her name cleared by the FBI made it glaringly obvious just how much I had been holding her back.

There were crowds waiting outside of any place in the city she had ever been seen on the off chance she would show up. She sold out twenty-four stadium shows over the course of a month in the same city. The demand for the handful of shows she was doing after throughout the US was astronomical.

All because, suddenly, she wasn't quite as bad as people thought before. Despite still being linked to me.

"Was it ever like this? Before?" I asked, finally giving in.

Her eyes met mine in the mirror, and I knew she understood what I was asking. Her teeth sank into her bottom lip before she twisted against me, hopping up on the counter. Her legs wrapped around my waist, arms resting on my shoulders as she tugged at the hair at the base of my neck.

"Never this… intense," she said softly. She thought through her words carefully, which gave me the impression she was trying her hardest not to hurt my feelings. "With Tainted and my first Oscar I drew my fair share of crowds but…" she shrugged, her voice trailing off.

"I never realized it," I admitted to her. "How much I held you back from your potential."

"You didn't," she said loudly.

I pressed a finger to her lips.

She shoved it away with a huff. "I never would have survived… any of it without you."

"You wouldn't have had so much to survive if I hadn't come along."

"I might have been down a murder charge but…" she shook her head. "No amount of success would have been worth missing out on you."

She looked up at me, a smile so endearing and honest on her face I had no choice but to believe her.

I knew from the first moment I got to call her mine I had gotten the better end of the deal. I got to call the beautiful, talented, successful woman my wife. And she got saddled down with a lifetime of bloodstains and rumors far darker than what she was used to.

Soft lips brushed against my jaw. My fingers dug into her waist as hers deftly started working through the buttons of my shirt.

"I love you," she breathed out, lips brushing against mine. "More than anything."

I captured her lips in a kiss and pulled her closer to the edge of the counter to feel every glorious inch of her pressed against me before I reluctantly let the rational side of my brain win. "You should be resting."

She shook her head, hands successfully sliding my shirt down my arms.

I sank my teeth into her bottom lip as it opened to protest. "That should be resting, too."

"What if I promise to stay quiet?" she said softly, her voice that husky, gritty whisper that had never failed to end with me buried inside of her.

My fingers dug into her thighs, lifting her off of the counter and carrying her off toward our bed. "We both know you're shit at keeping quiet," I mumbled against the soft skin of her neck.

I tossed the oversized t-shirt she had been wearing across the room before I had her naked and waiting for me in the center of our bed. I kissed my way down the center of her chest, very nearly complimenting her on her silence as I did so. Until my tongue traced her navel and a tiny, satisfying squeak escaped.

–Love|Power–

The city of Chicago had spared no expense on the new stadium. It had a peak capacity of nearly a hundred thousand. It was an outdoor stadium, which still baffled me considering we were in Chicago where the weather constantly wreaked havoc, but the overarching sideline of the exterior supposedly left about sixty percent of the seats covered. It would do no good to my wife who I knew would rather catch pneumonia than cancel or postpone a show due to the weather, but even I had to admit the view of the Chicago skyline in the distance and the warm summer breeze had its advantages.

"Mr. and Mrs. Cullen, we're so happy you could make it," a man in a pressed suit happily walked over as Bella and I exited the car.

Bella gave him a smile and shook his outstretched hand. I could see the clamminess of it from my spot beside her. "Thank you for having us."

"The pleasure is all ours, Mrs. Cullen."

"Bella," she corrected with a kind smile. "I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of each other over the next month. We can at least be on a first name basis, Rob."

The man, whose name I had never remembered in the first place, smiled brightly at the fact that Bella knew it. He was a stadium employee, high up enough on the totem pole to have been assigned to show Bella around the freshly finished stadium one week before opening night.

"Of course," he smiled, grabbing a card out of his suit coat. "My personal number is written on the back. If you need anything, day or night, during your time here, please don't hesitate to call."

Bella, to her credit, didn't laugh in his face as she politely took the card.

I, personally, could have punched the fucker for blatantly giving my wife his number in front of me when he knew damn well she didn't need him of all people offering to do anything for her.

There were various employees wandering the halls as we passed. Most very obviously attempting not to stare at Bella and failing spectacularly.

"This will be your dressing room," Rob said, pausing at a door in one of the many backstage halls we wandered through. "We've named it The Era's Room to commemorate your time here," he smiled, his hands framing a lovely golden plaque beside the door.

Bella's face lit up. "Forever? Not just for the month?"

Rob beamed at her excitement. "Forever. You've been very good to the city of Chicago, and we're honored to have you here."

Bella snorted. Her cheeks turning a lovely shade of pink at her reaction. "Sorry. It's still new to me that people don't hate me."

Rob nodded. "Miss Kate has already been by several times to get measurements and decorate. It's not quite finished, but it will be by the time your dress rehearsals start Monday."

Rob kept walking, mentioning the dressing rooms for various band members and dancers and opening acts.

I kept my eyes on my wife. Watched as her eyes took in every minute detail and knew she was listening to every word Rob said.

I could feel her nerves intensifying by the second.

Her hand squeezed mine with an impressive grip as we walked out into the empty stadium.

The sun was bright overhead, the pale blue seats shining and unused. And there, right in the center of the seating between the lower and upper bowl was an engraving that read Home of Isabella Cullen | The Eras Tour.

"Christ," Bella breathed out, eyes seeming to read and reread the sign.

"Like I said," Rob added quietly. "We're happy to have you."

I squeezed her hand back. Not as tightly as she did mine because I wasn't interested in breaking her fingers, but one firm enough to tell her I understood.

I saw that first show again in my mind. Her first tour that had been so tiny in comparison to this behemoth of a stadium.

The world had this perception of her, this idea that everything was easy for her. That she was so innately talented she never had to work for what she had.

She was talented. Unnaturally so. But that didn't mean she didn't work ten times as hard as any other entertainer to get to where she was. That talent was crafted over years and years of hard work and dedication and perseverance.

She made it look easy, but that never meant that it was.

"Thank you," she said, her voice tight and her palm tense in mine.

Rob nodded. "We've talked logistics with your team a few times. I know you've hired your own team of security but we do employ–"

"None of your people will be necessary," I told him sharply.

There would be no one with direct access to my wife who had not been through our vetting process. I had been building her security team for months. Planning their positions and requirements for just as long.

"Of course. They are at your disposal if needed, though."

I gave him a nod, though we both knew I would never take him up on the offer.

Because there was this feeling in my gut. One that was never a good sign.

Every time I looked at a blueprint of the stadium or sat down to plan out the logistics, there was a new hole in the plan. A new way for someone, anyone, to get by if they were clever enough.

O'Malley… he had gone down too easy. Gotten too quiet, too subdued too quickly for how adamant he had been about taking over.

I wasn't going to let him ruin what was going to be a remarkable moment in Bella's life and career, but I had a gut-wrenching feeling that he was going to try anyway.

–Love|Power–

I swirled the whisky around the crystal glass as I listened to Adeline and actively ignored the surrounding festivities. It was a banquet for something. Or someone. An illness, maybe. Could have been an organization.

I made a point to only torture myself at a handful of events like this a year. It was fooling nobody. My parents liked to pretend to be far better and superior than they actually were, felt the need to parade that superiority in front of the city.

I didn't give a shit.

It was something that had been passed down to my sister, though. Alice had more of Esme in her than she probably realized. She put on the pretty dresses and decorated the banquet halls and wore the bloody diamonds her husband brought home to her.

Every year I told her I would go to five functions. No more, no less.

Tonight was one of the five.

Unfortunately when we decided on it, I hadn't realized Bella wouldn't be able to attend with me. She made evenings like this far less excruciating.

"They're scrambling to drop the case, now," Adeline sighed, taking a sip of her champagne. "Thinking if they drop theirs we'll drop ours. When we didn't, they tossed some money on the table. Why they think Bella needs or wants their money is beyond me."

"How much?"

Adeline shrugged. "A couple million."

I scoffed. A couple million to drop an assault charge that had a room full of witnesses more than willing to testify and a defamation case that, if taken to court, would likely win Bella five times that in damages.

Still, it wasn't about the money and they knew it.

She wanted that statement. Wanted as close to the truth as she could get out of Lawrence.

"They know the only way she's dropping the case is if he makes a sworn statement about the truth. He screwed himself over. He's either a liar or has been crooked for decades, making casting decisions based on bribes. Either way he ruined his own reputation."

If I knew anything about the entertainment industry, it was that it wouldn't ruin him. Either way, people would talk about it for a day and then move on. They only liked to tear down the ones with the real talent, especially the women.

I opened my mouth to agree with her when movement over her shoulder caught my eye. O'Malley sauntered through the room with a smug smile on his face, headed straight for us.

"Go find Aiden, Adeline," I told her firmly, downing the rest of my whisky.

To her credit, she didn't hesitate. Didn't take offense to the command either. Knew I wouldn't have told her to do something that wasn't for her own good.

"Edward!" O'Malley beamed, taking the seat my daughter-in-law had just vacated. "Long time no see, old friend."

"Nice of you to come out of hiding for the evening."

"Well, I didn't think you were stupid enough to kill me in front of three hundred witnesses."

"You have two minutes before we test your theory."

He leaned forward, smug smile spreading even wider across his face. "I might need a bit more than two minutes. I'd hate to rush a family reunion."

That gut feeling I hadn't been able to get rid of, the one that had been growing and festering as the weeks went on and O'Malley stayed disturbingly quiet settled into my bones as I watched another man take a seat beside O'Malley.

He was maybe five, ten years younger than me. His blonde hair was muddled with darker strands, his eyes an unfamiliar hazel.

His face, unfortunately, was the spitting fucking image of my father.

"Fucking hell," I muttered, wishing I hadn't been so hasty to finish my drink.

"Caius Cullen," the man said, stretching his hand out across the table. "A pleasure to finally meet you, brother."

I ignored his hand.

"Caius Baker, legally," O'Malley clarified. "We both just recently discovered his paternity. His poor mother was always far too scared to tell the truth."

"Smart woman," I said, sitting back and subtly shaking my head at Emmett and Jasper where they stood a few feet behind my unwelcome guests.

"You see, I realized I don't love the idea of ruling Chicago, but Caius here feels a little… short changed where his estranged father is concerned."

I scoffed. "If Carlisle was your father, not having to grow up with him was a blessing, I can assure you."

"Oh, not in family time," O'Malley clarified. "In power."

"I grew up with nothin','' Caius snapped with a heavy New York accent. "Ma worked day and night to put food on the table. But as soon as I was old enough, the streets took care of me. Us."

I rolled my eyes. "So because you run a couple gangs up in New York you think you can handle my city?"

O'Malley snapped. "It won't be yours for much longer."

"Your two minutes is up," I stood, buttoning my suit coat and staring down at the man I didn't need a paternity test to know was my blood.

"Tell Bella we can't wait to see the show," O'Malley purred.

Emmett's firm grip on my arm kept me from reaching for the gun I had stashed on me.

O'Malley and Caius took their leave quickly once Emmett and Jasper showed up.

"Follow them," I snapped, at no one in particular, but with Jasper's nod I knew our best men would be on it.

"Who was with him?" Emmett asked.

My jaw tensed, my fingers clenching and disappointed there wasn't a neck between them to snap. "Our half-brother."

A/N: Listen, I'm just as shocked as you are. I was writing and it just… happened.

Anyway, a few housekeeping things: Last year I wrote a little holiday story 'tis the damn season and I was thinking of doing another little short holiday sequel this year. I'd need to put one of my current stories on hold in order to have time to get it written. I have a few polls up on my twitter (fragilefanfic) about the whole situation and I'd love your opinion on 1. Whether you want a holiday sequel and 2. Which story you'd prefer get put on hold. If you're not on twitter, feel free to leave your opinion in a review! The whole thing is up to you guys.

I hope you guys enjoyed this one, and I'll see ya next time!