DISCLAIMER: I do not own Rizzoli & Isles nor any of the characters from the show. I am writing this purely for entertainment, not profit. Rizzoli and Isles are property of Tess Gerritsen and TNT.

Please find the full disclaimers in the beginning of Chapter 1.

Chapter 14

Maura went back with her luggage to the inn, retrieved Jane's luggage, and moved to a normal room. First order of business was to give news to the Rizzoli's back in Boston.

She had to steel herself… She wondered if every time she had to voice her parents had been murdered it would hurt like that.

"Maura! Thank God… You got us worried, honey… It has been almost a week without news…" Angela's voice boomed on the other end of the line. Her warmth reached Maura. "How are you? And Jane?"

"Angela… We couldn't tell you what we were up to. I am sorry… We…" Maura sighed. "We went into Switzerland."

"Oh my God…" Angela gasped in horror. "You went into a war zone?"

"Yes, we had to…"

"Where are you now, can you tell me?"

"We are back in Austria, in a border town."

"Did you manage to bring your parents with you?"

Maura felt the pinprick of tears in the back of her eyes.

"No, Angela… When we arrived at their mansion, we found out they had been murdered…" Maura's voice broke.

"Oh, sweetheart, I am so sorry…"

"Thank you, Angela, I am too… Jane helped me bury them in the back of the property. I was attacked by a deserter, the man who killed my parents, but Jane freed me and then we finished him."

"Maura… Are both of you okay?"

"We will be, Angela… I was just released from the hospital, and the first thing I did was to call you. Jane will need a few more days in the hospital, but I just left her, she was conscious, and I will be back there first thing in the morning."

"How bad is she?" Angela asked in a small voice.

"She will be fine… She… She is only there because once more she saved my life…" Maura explained in a small voice, feeling guilty. Jane had nothing to do with any of this. She didn't need to have risked getting hurt, and still, there she was.

"Then she did what she set up to do, Maura. She wanted to go with you exactly because she wanted to make sure she could protect you. That is what she does…" Angela's voice was soft. "You take good care of her, and keep me posted, honey… I will pray for your parents' souls… What a tragedy…"

"Thank you, Angela…"

"And Maura?"

"Yes?"

"I love you… Take care, sweetheart." And Angela disconnected.

Maura kept looking at her phone, tears streaming through her face. Love. Pure, unaltered love. That was what Jane had brought her. From herself. From her family. Jane had even changed how her own parents behaved towards Maura herself. She was glad they had a better relationship in their final years.

Maura knew now she would need to handle the bureaucracy. The Isles Foundation needed to keep running, with or without their parents. There was a mission behind it, behind all the gala and pomp and circumstance. However, her word, as an heiress, that they were dead, would not be enough. It could be even suspicious.

She sighed and called the Foundation lawyers, and when she disconnected more than an hour later, she felt a bit more relieved. The documents stated that in any case both senior Isles were unreachable, Maura had power to make decisions for the Foundation. So she spent time making decisions that had been pending for a whole month by now.

That would not solve for their money or properties, but Maura didn't need those any time soon, she could let bureaucracy take its course.

Then, Maura called the Secretary of State, to talk to the highest-ranking person she had managed to talk to before coming to Europe. When she explained what she had done, she was connected to even higher-ranking personnel, that also looped in the army and the Swiss embassy.

She explained all that had happened, and all that had been done.

"We are really sorry for your loss, Dr. Isles. But with the information you shared, we can press the UN session to try to at least get out of this deadlock. If and when we get a formal declaration from Germany, we can then try to untangle the bureaucracy to officially recognize your parents are deceased."

Maura hated that word, deceased. They had been murdered. Brutally murdered. Murdered in cold blood, kneeling on the floor, with no chance for defending themselves.

And she had killed a man. Strangely enough, she didn't feel even slightly guilty of it. She also didn't feel relieved. Because even if killing him was a just a self-defense act – he confessed to killing her parents, he had been about to rape her, and he was about to kill Jane – him being dead didn't bring her parents back.

She sighed, and proceeded to arrange her things in the room, before she could go down to have some light dinner, and then get some sleep.

She woke up later than usual, but she felt much more rested, alert and stronger. Her body almost felt like hers again. After a hearty breakfast, she went back to the hospital.

She was informed Jane had just been moved to a regular room, and was taken there.

Jane was sitting in bed, slowly eating her breakfast.

"Good morning…" Maura offered, brightly, relieved to see Jane better than the previous days.

She could see Jane's hands were still shaking badly to handle the cutlery, her muscles having been put to the limit, but she was doing it slowly and on her own.

"G'morning, Maura. I can do it today…" Jane smiled proudly.

"I can see that… I spoke to your mom last night. She asked me to take good care of you."

"As if she ever needed to ask you that…" Jane smiled gently at Maura. "How much did she freak out?"

"Less than I anticipated, but I guess part of it was because her first question was about my parents, and the news got her distracted." Maura's voice was somber.

"I am really sorry, Maura."

"I know, Jane, thank you… I spoke with the Foundation, and I have power of decision on their absence, so I also put in motion a few things that had been stopped for the past month. And I spoke to the State Department so they can try to force some formal declaration on the UN."

Jane observed Maura. Like herself, she was a woman of action. But Jane knew that all those actions would not bring her parents back. Maura would need to grief.