𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐍 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌 [𝑽𝒐𝒍𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒊 𝑲𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔]

•38•

It was happening.

Alice had called. The newborns had set their plan into motion. Bella's life was hanging in the balance. And Nora felt sick. Though was this all anything new?

Snow blanketed the ground, people pottered around the Cullen house behind her, the doomsday clock counting down. Yet she remained numb to it, drowning in the sea of unrest inside her mind.

It had only been around 48 hours since the event that had changed something inside her, if she had to guess. She didn't bother keeping track. She only noticed when day turned to night and so on. It felt like it had been an eternity and yet only a second.

His screams still rang in her ears as if he were right in front of her. But he wasn't. His fate had not been so simple as that, not so quick and fleeting though it felt like a lifetime ago. Payment in a few whimpers and he was through. No. She had made him suffer gloriously, indignantly, even after the light left his eyes. But the last step had been up to Aro, Marcus and Caius. And of course the helpful talents of Demetri.

Letters were sent up and down the country. New York, Maine, here in rainy Washington, over the ways in Oregon. Arizona, Colorado, California. The southern states—Mississippi, Virginia, Louisiana, Florida. Fifty one stops, any and everywhere; dorm rooms, apartment buildings, suburban streets. Fifty one women, afforded the knowledge of their abusers death. Topped off with the evidence...one she had been unsure about. But she took the risk: a picture as the cherry on top of the cake. A morbid little keepsake she was sure most of them savoured.

As for his remains...well, that was a different story. Two destinations. The cold dirt for his body, where he belonged. And to the home of Anita and Maverick Goodman, a box had been sent.

Nora only wished she could have been there to hear their screams as they opened it to see his head.

But Nora's part was done. She had pressing matters that concerned her, and Bella was worth far, far more than seeing the result of her revenge.