by
theraisingirl
Summary: When 17-year-old Bella Swan is murdered in the woods, her father dedicates his life to finding her killer.
What would have happened if Edward had given in to his desire and killed Bella the day he met her? It's been done before, yes, but not like this.
"Your sister threw you out of the car? That wasn't very nice." I frowned at the thought of the beautiful blonde Jessica had pointed out as Rosalie earlier in the lunchroom. "What did you do to annoy her?"
"Well…this is kind of embarrassing." He didn't look embarrassed. He looked like a cat that had caught a canary, or like a prankster who had set up the perfect joke and was about to see it come to fruition. And something else…but I couldn't put my finger on it.
"See, Rosalie doesn't like for other people to get more attention that she does. Even if she's not interested. She's selfish that way. And she felt like maybe I was giving the new girl a bit too much of my attention." His voice was playful as he said it, but there was an intensity underneath it that made me blush furiously, and I thought his eyes almost looked hungry as he watched.
Relentless takes this idea and runs with it in a way you won't expect. Edward manages to stop himself from massacring the Biology class, and he doesn't go to Bella's house either - thus avoiding Alice's vision of the bloodstained kitchen – but he does get her. The question therasingirl leaves us with at the end of Ch 1 is exactly which of the Cullens helped him, and why didn't Alice look beyond the immediate aftermath to see what effect Bella's death would have on everyone associated with her?
And so we come to Charlie, grieving father, dedicated cop and friend of Billy Black. As a father he is devastated and full of guilt for Bella's death; as a cop, he wants answers and he will stop at nothing to get them. And who can blame him when this is what he finds in the morgue?
Every bone in her torso was shattered, her organs punctured and slashed by the bone fragments. Her jaw was smashed, several teeth knocked out. Her stomach and throat had been torn open, and there were hideous claw marks down her arms. The bruises on her face were horrible, deep purple from chin to halfway up her cheeks, and her nose was practically flattened. Her eyes were closed now. But when they'd found her, he knew they'd been open.
He'd seen it in the crime scene photos: her eyes, wide and terrified, tear tracks fanning out from them as if she'd continued to cry after whatever had killed her had left her dead on her back in the leaves.
As the title implies, Charlie is relentless - one day Edward and the Cullens will come face-to-face with the consequences of their actions, and judging from the first four chapters of this addictive new story, it will be an explosive confrontation.
