twispitefic

Title: Under Arrest
Author:

gehayi
Fandom(s): New Moon
Rating: PG
Word Count: 782
Summary: When Alice tries to bribe a guard with a wad of thousand-dollar bills, the consequences are anything but what she or Bella expected.
Chapter Inspiration: Chapter 20 – Volterra
Author’s Note: Seriously, why does Meyer think bribery will work with every single person ever?

***

Three hours after they tried to bribe the guard, the young women were under arrest.

One of them--the one with multiple aliases--had started having seizures and temper tantrums almost from the minute she'd been arrested by the Guardia di Finanza. Her blather had been interspersed with inaccurate hallucinations that appeared to terrify her.

Needles wouldn't penetrate her skin. However, sedative gas had worked just fine. And it had kept her out cold long enough for her to be transported...elsewhere. Better to find out now if she was on something or just crazy.

The other one had been sitting in a state of shock since her arrest. There was almost no chance of getting anything out of her, Agent Vanna di Montefioro knew, but she had to try.

"No one read me my rights," Bella Swan said sullenly when di Montefioro sat down to interrogate her. She glanced angrily at the agent's hair. Apparently she disliked blondes. "I'm a cop's daughter. You can't do that."

"The Miranda warning only applies in the United States and U.S. territories," di Montefioro said. "This is Italy. You can contact the American consulate; they can inform you of your rights and give you a list of attorneys, though that's as far as they'll go. And you don't have a right to an attorney, by the way--you'll have to pay out of your own pocket. They may not even do that much for you, given the charges. And you've got forty-eight hours before you have a hope of getting a response--it's Saturday, after all. Not many people there. If there were an emergency, they'd respond faster. But you're not an emergency."

Bella stared. "But-but I don't have any money!"

"Then you won't have an attorney."

"But I don't even know what I've been charged with!"

Di Montefioro checked the form in front of her. "Says here you were told. In English."

"I don't remember! I was thinking about Edward. Please tell me?"

Di Montefioro sighed. "The other young woman--Mary Alice Brandon, a.k.a. Mary Alice Hale and Alice Cullen--is charged with counterfeiting money, attempting to distribute counterfeit money, grand theft auto and attempted bribery of an official of the court. She's also being held on suspicion of drug trafficking. You're being charged as an accessory. Which is serious, yes. Italy doesn't like counterfeiting. Of any kind."

"Counterfeiting! Drug trafficking! What are you talking about?"

Di Montefioro noted that Bella hadn't said a thing about grand theft auto. So she'd at least known about that. Interesting.

"It's the thousand-dollar bill," she said. "Large-denomination bills of $500 or more aren't being printed by the U.S. Treasury these days--and haven't been since 1945. And they were officially discontinued as of July 14, 1969. Even the ones that the U.S. Treasury hasn't collected have mostly been taken by people who collect money; large-denomination bills are worth two to three times their stated value to collectors. About the only people who still do use such bills are drug dealers.

"And Mary Alice just plopped a whole wad of thousand-dollar bills right into a guard's hand as if it was nothing. You can see why the guard turned you two in. I don't doubt that he would have kept the bribe if he could have spent it. But money that he couldn't convert to spending money without banks, State Police, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice asking a lot of questions--well. That may have been the least liquid bribe in the history of bribery."

"But we were just trying to save Edward from committing suicide!" Bella started weeping, her nose swelling and starting to run.

"That doesn't matter," said di Montefioro. "What matters is that you two broke several laws. You can see why we'd be interested. As would a number of other...legal and extralegal entities. You've attracted a great deal of attention."

Bella glanced at her--and then the penny dropped. "You know about the Volturi! Please, let me out so that I can save Edward--"

Di Montefioro spoke so quietly so that no one but Bella could hear. "Edward Cullen is dead--ground into dust and scattered to the winds." She patted Bella on the hand and smiled sympathetically.

Bella froze, every nerve cell igniting into pain at the agent's touch.

"Don't try to move," di Montefioro murmured. "You can't. All you can do is speak. And when you have nothing else to say, you'll die. In horrible agony, but it's better than prison."

"Why are you doing this?" The words were little more than a gasp.

Di Montefioro smiled. "My name is Giovanna di Montefioro. But you can call me...Jane."