Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the properties of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

March 2009

"Seth, where are the numbers for February? I asked for them ten minutes ago?"

Isabella Swan was busy replying to the urgent emails that had been building up since the morning, when something crumpled landed in the middle of her meticulously organized desk. She looked down at it in frustration and disgust. She had hired Seth as a favor to Peter, doing something she hadn't tried in years and now she knew the experiment was officially a disaster. Unless the kid got his shit together quickly, it simply wasn't going to work out. Internally, she'd justified to herself that she didn't have the time to be a babysitter, but in reality, she just didn't possess the patience. He was busy looking at anything but his intimidating boss, with his innocent little baby face and though he didn't know it, she was barely, just barely, holding back from rolling her eyes.

Scrunching up the paper into a ball, she threw it mercilessly at his feet.

"Print me a new one and pick that up."

It was doubtful whether he realized just how lucky he was when the phone rang, interrupting her train of thought. A particularly tight deadline this week had left simply no excuses for taking ten minutes to print out a basic report. Her fingers itched to just do it herself, but after working her way through three assistants in two years, the company heads were beginning to take notice and she wasn't about to be seen as a failure because of someone else's mediocrity. So she would suffer until the imbecile learned how to perform tasks a trained seal could do in half the time.

She lifted the phone from it's receiver and delivered her usual clipped greeting.

"Bella, what do you have planned for lunch?"

Pulling up her calendar she sighed.

"I have meetings all day starting in twenty"

Just another thing she was going to have to talk to Seth about. How he expected her to make it from the office all the way uptown in ten minutes, was completely beyond comprehensible.

"Who is your meeting with in twenty?"

Moving her mouse over the block to pull up the details, she smiled broadly

"Vicky, you angel!"

She hung up and called Seth back into the office, ten minutes might not be enough time to get across town, but it was plenty to give him a piece of her mind.

Arriving at Demetri's at exactly twelve, she immediately spied Vicky's distinctively vibrant red hair peeking out from one of the booths. Ignoring the maitre d', she made her own way across the restaurant, he was clearly a newbie. As he fumbled around looking for her name, reminding her annoyingly of her own incompetent assistant.

"Bella! You're on time and you look lovely of course"

Bella's teeth were clenched at the hidden insult, but a beautiful smile was all that her companion ever saw. Since she couldn't hold down an assistant for longer than ten minutes, it was common knowledge she quite frequently late to meetings.

"Oh her gosh Vicky, look at you, you're positively huge. You must be close now."

Bella savored the shiver of triumph she felt when her friends smile faltered for just a fraction of a second, but Vicki was too well versed in bitch for her to ever win this battle.

"I wish, but of course you get so much bigger with Twins, at least all this discomfort will be worth something someday, I think it's so nice to know they'll always have each other after all."

Bella's mask was so carefully constructed, Victoria would probably never know without meaning it, her response had struck a chord buried so deep that it resonated throughout her entire being.

Years of Victoria had taught her quite a few things, but Bella really couldn't see her caring enough about her former subordinate to go digging through her past. Seeing no hint of anything malicious in her face, Bella tried to lay her paranoia firmly aside. After all she had never spoken to anyone at work about anything resembling a home, or a personal life and if she had her way about it, she never would.

The waiter came and took their order and they fell into their usual easy lines of conversation. Work, work and then just as a little piece de resistance, more work. Six years ago Bella would have fought vehemently if someone had told her she would become just like the woman across from her, but Victoria was now someone she considered kindred. She wasn't ashamed to admit her own career had been modeled around Victoria's no bullshit attitude and she hadn't looked back since. She knew how she was perceived by the others in the office, but effectively didn't give a damn. After all they were the ones who came in sniveling about their divorces and dead cats, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't contain her wry smiles when their work inevitably suffered accordingly. Bella was proud to say she hadn't had a sick day in her six year tenure and she now had the corner office, title and paycheck to back up her choices.

"So I've been doing some thinking and I don't think I'm coming back after my maternity leave."

Bella's eyes shot up, and in her shock, her fork fell from her hand where it clattered loudly, falling from the table to the wooden floor. She was still sitting there in slack jawed silence, when a waiter came to deliver a new one.

"This is a joke right?"

But the sickening blush of happiness on Vicky's cheeks told her it was anything but.

"No. Jay and I have been talking about it and he's in a decent position right now to support us all. I know you won't understand this Bella, because I wouldn't have either at your age, but I'm going to say one thing to you and then I promise never to speak of it again. I might be the only one, but I can still remember the frightened little deer that came into the office all those years ago. Something changed in you and whatever it was got you where you are today, but it doesn't need to be this and nothing else. I thought that way for a long time, but I was wrong. You're young and beautiful Bella, you can have it all if you want it."

She took a deep breath and seemed ever so pleased with herself, but the glow on her face only seemed to add to the nauseous feeling Bella was trying to suppress. How had the strong woman she'd modeled her instincts on, turned out to be so weak?

Victoria sat there staring and Bella got the impression that her old mentor was looking for some sort of gracious reaction, but she had nothing to say. Of course it wasn't this or nothing, Bella thought, it was this or sharing her life with people who would cheat, lie and disappoint her at every juncture.

"Dessert?" Bella said briskly.

Vicky tried to mask the sadness she felt to see the once innocent girl dismiss what she felt were wise words so easily. Time, she thought, time would show the girl everything that she was missing.

The rest of Bella's week was perfectly perfunctory, meetings with asinine authors who all thought their story was the greatest ever told, lunches with executives who kissed her ass, lunches with executives who's asses she kissed and of course more meetings to round out the days.

By Friday she knew that the rest of the staff was more than ready for the week to be over. So at five pm she smiled as the tired, lazy faces of her Acquisitions Editors trundled into her office. She knew for them this was something to be endured, but for Bella it was the highlight of her week. Knowing she wasn't well liked in the department was irrelevant in her mind. Her opinion was well respected and that was all she cared about.

The afternoon wore on, but the review was more productive than usual and three works seemed to show some real potential. She could clearly remember how it felt to be championing something she truly believed in and the taste of bitterness when Victoria hadn't noted that passion. Trust of judgment was imperative at this level and unlike Victoria, Bella didn't need her subordinates to prove their persistence to her. She could see it in their eyes and liked to believe it was one of the reasons she was doing this job three years before Victoria had even been considered for the position in her own career.

Her cell phone rang out from its docking station, interrupting a presentation made by one of the newest AE's. Bella reached out and hit ignore, not looking to the display for the caller ID. While she could see in Tyler's eyes he was only pitching the book to her out of necessity, he was young and needed the experience of articulating his arguments, so she let him go on for slightly longer than usual before dismissing the group. The six faces all showed similar looks of relief and Bella briefly wondered and not for the first time, if it was predominantly her presence that evoked such a reaction.

Hitting send on the final email of the day, she reclined back in her plush leather chair, passing a brief look at her watch. At almost eight o'clock it was more than likely Isabella Swan was the last person left in the office, more likely for it being the start of most people's weekend. She picked up her cell phone and dialed back through the missed calls from earlier in the day. Several business numbers she recognized and one private number. Her mind raced to one specific person who would want to catch her unawares, but she didn't want to jump the gun. Instead of shutting everything down and listening to her messages as she usually did while treading through the darkened hallways, she sat straight up in her chair and hit the ominous little green button on the phone. Several familiar droning voices filled her ears, before finally the hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention; as an altogether too familiar voice sang out from the small tinny speaker.

"Bella, it's Alice. I know you'll probably just ignore this, but I just thought you should know. I'm moving to Chicago. Before you say anything, it had nothing to do with you. I'm moving there with my fiancé. Anyway, I'll be there from the 15th and would love to see you, if you can fit me into your busy schedule."

Bella listened as her sister laughed nervously at something she obviously thought was a joke and then proceeded to reel off the cell number that she still knew by heart. Rubbing her hands across her face, she didn't care about the perfectly applied makeup she may be smudging, or the strands of hair currently being dislodged from the regimented uniform bun she wore everyday.

Alice was moving to Chicago.

Alice was moving to Chicago in ten days.

Alice was moving to Chicago in ten days and she was engaged.

Bella looked around her polished office and cursed herself for being so efficient. She needed something to remove the Alice images from her mind and the only thing that typically worked on these occasions was to delve head first into work. Rationally she couldn't sit here all night, from experience she knew it would only be thirty minutes or so until the cleaning crew showed up and the idea of enduring any awkward fake pleasantries right now was too much. Instead, she grabbed the three manuscripts the review team had left behind and bundled them into her messenger bag.

As the elevator dropped her off on the ground floor, she revised her walk home to include a stop by the Italian two blocks in the opposite direction, and then revised to again to bypass the liquor store. Alcohol wasn't something she allowed herself often, it just wasn't worth it for the emotions that seemed to be dredged up, but tonight was definitely a bottle of wine night. Scrap that, she thought, as the rhythm of her heels rang out ferociously against the sidewalk, it was a night worthy of two bottles.

The walk home was bitter and cold, but at least the skies had held back until she was safely inside her opulent apartment. She forced the first glass of wine past the knot in her throat, as she flicked rapidly through the hundreds of channels she paid for but never watched. The second glass went down with less trouble and by the third Bella was no longer walking back and forth to the fridge for refills with the poise she had previously possessed. When the television had offered nothing of sustenance, she had finally settled on a gory horror film, the kind she would never normally consider watching alone, but even the predictable scares couldn't invade the barricade of her thoughts.

It wasn't the pain she had expected to feel knowing Alice would soon be so close. It was anger. What right did her sister have to invade the one place in the entire country that was completely hers. It would now be eternally marred. Bella could feel herself bristling at the idea of no longer being able to enjoy the things she loved without looking over her shoulder for the ghosts of her past.

By the fifth glass of wine, she had decided it would be impossible to live in the same city as Alice, making plans to call Kate in the morning to see if there were any openings in the New York office.

By the sixth, she had obstinately decided Alice wasn't going to drive her from another home, no, she would confront her.

And by the remains of her second bottle, Bella had decided that confronting her wouldn't be enough. She was going to ruin Alice's life, after all wasn't that only fair!