Bella had a dream.
Alice and Jacob walked hand in hand into marriage... then gave birth to a girl who looked like some kind of cartoon wolf-girl hybrid... and in the end, that girl married the cool, eternally-eighteen Edward Cullen.
How had her brain assembled such a god-tier disaster of a storyline? No idea.
She was just grateful—thank God—that she hadn't reached the level of manifesting dreams into reality. Otherwise, she'd never be able to look those three friends in the eye again.
Next morning, she went to find Jacob. Wanted to make her position clear. Instead, Jacob's father delivered unexpected news.
"He went to Seattle alone?"
Bella immediately sensed something was off. Information she didn't have.
The wheelchair-bound tribal elder nodded. "A fledgling eagle must leave the nest. A young wolf must learn to hunt. His decision surprised me too—but I support him."
Bella said goodbye and left the Quileute reservation.
A long-term meal ticket—no, correction! A long-term source of heartfelt praise—had vanished from her daily life.
Besides Shaw, Jacob had always praised her the most. And given Shaw's "non-human" status, it wasn't wrong to say Jacob was the person who praised her the most.
"Hope Jacob stays safe... and doesn't get scammed!" She sighed and returned to Forks.
After a month-long tug-of-war, the compensation plan for Flight 180 victims and survivors finally entered its substantive stage—payout.
Should Bella and the few who hadn't even boarded the plane count as survivors? At first, debatable. But after she led a group of elderly people to win the pension lawsuit, the airline didn't want more trouble. Everyone got included.
Numbers were messy. After deducting all kinds of bullshit fees, each victim's family received about one million dollars. Survivors got five hundred thousand.
That was just victim and survivor compensation. Add death benefits for airline employees, massive fines from state and federal governments, and penalties from the Aerospace Industry Association—the insurance company and airline together owed over $380 million in cash.
Very few companies could produce that kind of liquidity.
Insurance company? Collapsed immediately. Straight into bankruptcy.
Global Airlines struggled for a while, then got acquired by a multinational conglomerate: Tricell Pharmaceuticals. Headquartered in Italy, operating across transportation, pharma, and natural resources. The acquisition was purely for logistics integration. They also promised to cover all compensation.
In this sluggish economy, Big Pharma was still swimming in money. Of course, they used classic capitalist tactics—delay, delay, delay. Never pay everything at once. But the first payment came through honestly.
Bella received $300,000.
The remaining $200,000? When would it arrive? Who would pay it? Nobody knew. She'd have to wait.
She was satisfied. Three hundred thousand could last a long time. Honestly, the airline wasn't even entirely at fault—if Death wanted to claim a life, perfect maintenance wouldn't save any plane.
She deposited the money into her Bank of the West account. Cash in hand, spine automatically straightened.
Money was the foundation of confidence and beauty. Without material backing, natural beauty only got you so far.
Clothes, shoes, bags, jewelry, brand-name cosmetics—all added to her shopping list immediately.
With beauty came confidence. With confidence came power. With power came the ability to shape reality itself.
At that point, it wasn't about what happened to you—it was about what you made happen.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world.
Taranto, Italy.
An ancient Greek city—once part of Magna Graecia. Athenians, Spartans, Romans—all left their footprints here. Scholars like Pythagoras and Archimedes traveled through these city-states, teaching and shaping civilization.
Painting, sculpture, poetry, medicine, natural sciences, literature, mathematics, physics, chemistry—whatever field you named, Italy had something to brag about. Even in weapons manufacturing, there was the legendary Beretta. Aside from soldiers occasionally being unreliable on the battlefield, the country had no major flaws.
In modern times, Italy—and Europe generally—might seem dimmer. Had they declined? Yes and no. The rich were still rich. Absurdly rich.
Those guys wearing leather sandals, loose shorts, drinking cheap beer in some obscure European town? Entirely possible billionaires.
Tricell Pharmaceuticals was exactly that kind of company. Ordinary-looking. Terrifyingly deep-rooted.
"Madam, our clients in Israel want to see the new weapon's power," the well-dressed company president said into his phone.
On the other end, a sultry female voice replied, "Tell their contact to observe. Since Global Airlines is ours now, run the test in Arizona. Pick a small town—nothing too big. Those senators are greedy."
"Yes, Madam."
Thirty-five minutes later, two Mossad operatives secretly escorted a special envoy onto a Tricell aircraft.
Nineteen minutes after that, a truck passed through the Arizona town of Prosperity—and abandoned a barrel of chemical agents on the outskirts.
Bella had turned eighteen. Full control of her finances. To her, $300,000 was a fortune.
She wanted to shop. Spend. Splurge.
In short—buy, buy, buy!
But she wasn't heartless. She brought Charlie along.
"Let's visit Samantha's town for a couple days. It's not far from Phoenix anyway." The plan she and Natasha had been cooking up for a while.
"Samantha just got divorced... is it really appropriate for me to visit?" Charlie pretended to hesitate.
Men. Pretending? Really?
Bella didn't call him out. Still her father. She wanted to preserve his dignity.
So she laid out the facts. Talked about sympathy. Described Natasha's hardships as a single mother in vivid, tragic detail. Then deployed her ultimate weapon:
"We'll just wander around outside the town—no, wait. I mean, we'll only look around the outskirts. We won't go in!"