Chapter one

To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.

Ayn Rand

"You know kid, you can still pull out; I can find someone else to infiltrate the Cullen's," Bella turned to look at her father with a smile.

"Dad, I don't think the Cullen's can be so much harder than the Volturi, after all, I did lure Alec into giving us the information we needed on the Chicago Project, didn't I?"

"You did, kid, and I'm very proud of you and I dare say that you are better than any man I have at hand," Charlie winked at her and gave her a hug before he took off, leaving Bella alone to prepare for her assignment.

It was risky, but it needed to be done. Charlie Swan was one of Seattle's two most powerful men, the other one being Carlisle Cullen, a doctor and a very popular man. No one knew the real color of the Swan and the Cullen's; a mob boss wasn't greeted like they would have been in the 1920s. But the Swan and the Cullen's had a mutual enemy; the Volturi, an Italian family that would do anything to get their hands on all the money the United States had, slowly working their way through the country.

Carlisle Cullen and Charlie Swan had decided to integrate their families, but Charlie didn't trust easily, with good reason; he had lost loved ones one time too many.

In 1984, Charlie Swan met Renée Higginbotham, a free spirited young woman. He loved her and would do anything for her, give her the world, and he told her so every day they were together. But three years later, she disappeared, not a single trace to follow, and Charlie never saw Renée again.

In 2009 Charlie Swan got a surprise delivered on his doorstep in a shape of a young woman at the age of twenty-two, looking very much like Renée Higginbotham. Her name was Isabella Marie Swan and daughter of Renée Swan.

From the moment he had laid his eyes on the young girl, he knew that his blood was running through her veins and that she had gotten her brown eyes from him. He didn't need to take a DNA test to know that, yet Bella forced him to have one done. That's where they learned that they both hated needles and that the slightest sight of blood would make Bella faint.

Trained by Charlie and his best man, Harry, Bella turned into an even stronger woman than she had been when she first arrived in Seattle in search of her father. Charlie hated having his girl out in the field, fighting with his men, but she refused to sit in his house or in the top security apartment she had, just waiting for the call.

She hated taking a life, but when she needed to be, Bella was ruthless and she was a master with the knife, her preferable weapon if she knew that someone would end up getting close to her. She was also good with a gun, any kind, and she was daily practicing a curved shot.

"Infiltrate, become trusted and get out," Bella said to herself as she pulled on a black hoodie to cover her grey t-shirt. The plan on how to infiltrate the Cullens had been worked on for weeks and was as close to bulletproof as it was possible.

The Cullens owned several houses and buildings in Seattle, but not one of them lived there. Carlisle Cullen, being a doctor, lived in a small town called Forks, three hours west from Seattle. From what Bella had heard, Carlisle Cullen was married to Esme Cullen, born Platt, and it was a marriage by love. Together they had three sons, Emmett, Edward and Jasper, Emmett the oldest and Jasper the youngest, their ages going from twenty-seven to thirty-one. They were all older than Bella, but she hoped that being slightly younger would perhaps lure them into trusting her, the sweet young girl that had nowhere to go.

Charlie and three of his men would drive with her to the outskirt of the small town where she would start to make her way to the Cullen Mansion, apparently placed outside of the town's heart, letting it be surrounded by a vast forest. Bella was going to hike through the forest, hopefully running straight on to their property where it would only take minutes before she would be surrounded by men dressed in black with their guns pointed at her.

Hiking wasn't one of Bella's favorite things and she counted on the forest to make her look tired, disheveled and hopefully she would get a scratch or two alongside with a lot of dirt on her clothes.

Surrounded by Cullen's men, she was going to break down, cry her eyes out, make the men uncomfortable and have her delivered to the boss himself where she was going to feed him a story about the Volturi, one that would help her get into their inner circles and learn secrets, if there were any.

"Bella, it's time!" Charlie called for her and Bella quickly grabbed her old cellphone from Florida, the fake ID Charlie had gotten her and the trace she was going to place upon her bracelet, letting Charlie see and help her through the woods if it was necessary.

She had proved herself for Charlie more than once, but if they wanted to be safe from the Volturi in the future, she needed to get in and out without anyone knowing her true identity afterwards. Bella hoped that whatever she would find with the Cullen's, it would only be information that would make Charlie trust Carlisle fully.