Pieces

Adrian was still reeling from the weekend she'd had. Jasper was with her 24/7 now and she was glad for it. He didn't seem to mind being with her. But Adrian was still suspicious of whether or not Rebecca was still alive. She had been so sure that the person on XBox Live had been her, but the person had never called, which led her further along the train of thought that Rebecca really was dead.

But then there was the small matter of Rebecca having been stalked by a vampire named Arthur and the fact that the police had never found Rebecca's body, which really could mean that Rebecca was still alive.

Adrian had asked Emmett if she could borrow the XBox, just in case RebeccaJW2k10 sent another message to her. For the moment, everything was going alright. Adrian was doing alright in school, despite the depressive episodes she still had. Her and Jasper were doing okay, or what could possibly be considered okay in terms of a vampire dating a human.

Then Adrian got a rather strange call from someone she had never expected to hear from again.

Her father, Andrew Zarkovski.

"Adrian? is that you?" he asked in his thick Russian accent. It had been a while since Adrian heard that. In a way, she was glad to hear it, but simultaneously pissed off.

"Yes, Dad, it's me. Who else would it be?" Adrian replied, rolling her eyes as she sat down on the sofa.

Jasper, who was sitting next to her, grabbed her hand and touched it softly, to let her know he was still there. She squeezed it in return and repositioned the phone so that it was on speaker.

"I want to come and visit you, Adrian. There are some things I must discuss with you, and the phone is not the best place to do that." he replied.

Adrian closed her eyes and sighed a long, tired sigh. "Great. When are you coming?"

"Two hours."

Adrian hung up and slammed the phone down on the table. "Two hours? Two fucking hours?! he couldn't have called me two days ago?!" she yelled as she busied herself cleaning everything in the house.

Despite the fact that she and her dad had a kind of screwed up relationship, she still wanted to impress him, let him know that she wasn't entirely irresponsible without him around. After all, she was living alone but as far as anyone else knew, he was constantly out of town.

She had just finished cleaning the house, with Jasper's help, when the doorbell rang. She looked out the peephole and saw that it was indeed her father. She opened the door and let him inside, before closing it behind him.

Andrew Zarkovski was a tall man who Adrian closely compared to Jeff Bridges. He had a rather rugged, weathered look to him, like he spent his whole life outside. His hair was graying quickly, overpowering the jet black that used to reside there, and so was his beard. He was wearing a black pinstripe suit and dark shoes.

"You seem to be doing alright here." he said, taking a look around. Jasper was sitting in the kitchen preparing some salmon and rice. He told Adrian that he would eat it in front of her father but he would probably throw it up an hour later.

"Yeah, I guess so. So, what was it you wanted to talk about?" Adrian prompted, sitting on the sofa.

"Your mother's body has been stolen from the cemetery. Someone exhumed her and the cemetery has no idea who did it." Andrew said gravely.

"Are you serious? Someone dug up Mom's body? Are you sure it was her?" Adrian asked questions like a firing cannon.

"I am positive it was her. Her grave was dug up and her headstone had been smashed to pieces. It looks like some act of vandalism but I highly doubt that. Whoever did this must have known her if they smashed her headstone."

Adrian sat still, trying to understand this, trying to figure out who did this. She couldn't explain how, but she the gut feeling that the XBox Live fiasco and her mother's exhumation was no coincidence. They were related somehow.

"Okay. So, someone dug up her grave. What else?"

"Before your mother was killed, there were people after her, she told me. Italians. They were planning to kill her and that was why she shot herself. The day after she died, the Italians came to our home demanding to see her body. But since she shot herself in the face, they had no real way of knowing if it was really her. So, they went away. But I believe they dug up her grave." Andrew explained.

Jasper, who had been cooking and listening, froze up. These Italians sounded like the Volturi, but then it could have been anyone. It could have been an Italian mob, but something inside Jasper pushed that notion aside.

An hour later, Andrew was gone and Adrian and Jasper were putting away the dishes. Jasper didn't say anything and neither did Adrian.

Later, when they were sitting on the sofa, Adrian brought it up. "I think they're related somehow, my mother's exhumation and the XBox thing."

"I think so, too." And Jasper voiced to Adrian his suspicions that these Italians were the Volturi, vampire royalty who enforced rules in the vampire community.

Just as he was saying this, Adrian's cell phone rang. She picked it up without looking at the number.

"Hello."

"It's Rebecca. I see my XBox messages weren't getting through."