Uh, hi? Long time, no update…I know. Really, my apologies for that. My laptop has been out for an entire month, so I couldn't use it at all! I've been working on updating all my stories, so if you read one of those, it's coming. Once again, I'm really sorry!

Anyway if you would, please check out my new stories:

-Abercrombie & Fitch Never Looked so Good

- Live to Tell the Tale

So this chapter, is a bit intense. It's quite sad, if I do say so myself as a warning.

**And I'm looking for some to make me a banner for this story. So if ANYONE would be willing to make me a banner for this story, please let me know!

LeftRightLeftRightLeft42

Bella

"Ha-ha, the King of Thievery except in a cleaner cut sort of way." He responded to me because apparently being called the king of thievery was funny to him. Although I guess he was clean cut, he wasn't your ordinary criminal.

"Clean cut?" I question, just to hear how he would respond to me.

"Well yeah, I'm not a murderer or anything weirdly psychotic. I'm perfectly normal." I scoffed at the word, 'normal.' This man was anything, but normal.

"Fine, I may not be normal since I do steal for a living." He replied in a cool tone.

"So how exactly did you end up as thief? I asked warily, wondering whether or not I actually wanted to know the truth.

"You sure, you want to know. It's not a bedtime story with sunshine and rainbows." He answered in calm, quiet tone of voice. I contemplated his words, and decided I wanted to know more about him since he probably knew quite a bit about me, thanks to his skills.

"No, sunshine and rainbows but those are my favorite kind of story." I mock, whined to him.

"Your hardly the sunshine and rainbows kind of person, Agent Swan." He joked with throaty laugh.

"Guess so, and I liked to hear it if you don't mind." I answered carefully gauging his reaction to my request. I looked over at him, and he was looking out over towards the water.

"I was 10 when it happened. I was playing outside in the backyard with a new football my dad had bought for me the day before. I remember that my mom was baking cookies in the kitchen, and my dad was sitting at the table reading the newspaper." He paused for a moment, and looked over at me briefly before returning his gaze to the river.

I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that this was going somewhere very bad. I guess he really meant no nonsense about sunshine and rainbows. I was being to feel that his story was headed somewhere pretty dark. I waited patiently in the dark for him to continue speaking.

"I was tossing the football around when I heard my mom scream, from then everything seemed to move really slowly. I dropped the football, ran to the back porch and wrenched the door open. I stood there and looked around the corner and saw my father lying on the floor surrounded by blood. I remember I was frozen, until I looked up and saw three men dressed in black holding large guns and mother screamed for me to run." He paused again, and I understood why. He was reliving the memory in his head.

I looked around, and observed the dead silent forest that was ahead of us. There was no sign of the Kate girl or Emmett, and his blond guard friend.

"She kept yelling and yelling for me to run, so I did because I was so scared I didn't know what else to do. As I ran from the house, I heard another shot fired and my mother's screams. I ran and hide in our tool shed behind the house." He continued sadly, turning to give me a small smile.

"I probably hide in that tool shed for hours, until the police showed up. Turns out the guys were part of the local mafia, and they were robbing the house. My dad was a doctor, so we were pretty wealthy and well known in the neighborhood. They eventually found me crying in the shed, asking for my mom. They took me down to the station, where they had a social worker explain to me what happened. She told me they had killed my father, and my mother was nowhere to be found." He stopped for a moment, to look over at me and I nodded for him to continue.

"She told me my mom was gone without a trace, and that I would be put into an orphanage in Chicago. Once I was in the orphanage I became angry, that they had killed my father to steal his money and possessions and that my mother was possibly alive somewhere. I was so angry, when I was 13 I started acting out."

"That was the first time I actually stole something." He laughed without humor.

"What did you steal?" I asked stupidly. Wrong thing to say at the moment, I guess. He quirked an eyebrow at me and answered.

"I walked in and I stole a pair of shoes that all the kids at school had. I was angry that I had no one to buy them for me." He said sadly.

Wow, was I ever feeling like a bitch for treating him badly before.

"Then when I was 16, I started to fall in with the wrong crowd. We pretty much stole stuff, and they taught me how to hotwire a car. When I was 18, and old enough to leave the orphanage, I did. I hung around the neighborhood with my crew; my name on the streets was "sneak" because I was notorious for being sneaky which meant I never got caught. That's when I started going for the big stuff like a pair of expensive diamond earrings at a private diamond showing in Chicago." He trailed on before I interrupted.

Wait…diamond earrings…Chicago…Hey..

"Hey! That was you? I was looking at that case as an intern, and we never found anything it was a dead end." I trailed of mystified.

"Like I said, Sneak." He replied laughing, showing me a set of pearly whites through the darkness. I could not believe it, that was him! I worked hard to try and crack that case to no avail…figures it was him.

"I remember now, that your name kept coming up quite often after that case. Incident after incident your name kept coming up as the possibly culprit until you became a household name right before I graduated." I said in wonder, piecing things together in my head.

"Right after that, things got good for me. I was living the life, I had money and connections with people around the world. After that I left the country for Italy, and hung out there for awhile, doing my thing. By then I had pulled lots of heists." He replied with a smile.

"And then I did my thesis on you." I replied dryly, understanding how everything clicked into place with a timeline.

"Did you find anything good?" he asked eagerly, amused to know that I had written about him.

"Well you're implicated in over several crimes, frauds, and forgeries." I answered quickly, knowing his track records.

"Well yeah…" he mused aloud.

"You didn't mention the frauds and forgeries, where'd you learn that?" I questioned, curious as to how he pulled making fake paintings and stealing the real ones.

"Well, I had connections with the underground and I was learning since I was 17. I had money, so I developed a love and appreciation for art and priceless pieces. Thus, the forgeries and frauds occurred over the years. I collected art, and ancient artifacts that I could get my hands on." He replied smoothly, while casually tossing a rock into the river.

"Hm, figures." I replied sourly, thinking of the hours I spent as an intern analyzing cases late at night.

"So how'd you do?" he asked, a smile dancing across his lips in the night.

"On what?" I asked, confused. It was getting later, and I begin to wonder what we were going to do.

"Your thesis." He said simply, turning over to look at me.

"Oh, 94." I told him proudly. That damn thesis, was the hardest thing I've ever written. I remembered late nights, and lots of Starbucks.

"Not bad. So Miss Swan that is how I became the King of Thievery." He said, smirking at me in the darkness. I guess, he let the "King of Thievery" comment get to his head because it looked like he wasn't going to let it go.

"Well thanks Cullen, er I mean Edward. And I'm really sorry about your parents." I said, truly thankful that he told me his story, so to speak.

"Nothing to be sorry about, don't sweat it. Thanks though. And you called me Edward." He laughed, happily. I knew he wouldn't ignore it, but he deserved to be called by his first name after everything he told…it seemed appropriate.

"Yeah, yeah don't abuse it or might just start calling you Sneak. Come to think of it, I probably will use that one too." I retorted back at him, jokingly.

"Does this mean I can call you Bella, now?" he asked, being serious. In all fairness, it was.

"Yes, it does. You can call me Bella; after all you are sort of like my partner." I said, sighing finally giving in.

We agreed, that we would rest the night and rise in the morning to scope out our surroundings.

After we fell into a comfortable silence, I sat against the log thinking about everything that he had willingly told me. It all made me really sad all of a sudden, it was just absolutely heartbreaking. He had his family ripped away from him when he was 10, I just couldn't imagine it, it was so tragic.

He was still sitting next to me, against the log with his legs stretched out in front of him. The moon was glimmering in the night, I turned to look at him and held my breath as I took his appearance in. The moon shined on his hair, bringing out the shades of bronze. I had admitted before that he was good-looking, but that was a bold faced lie. He was gorgeous, he abruptly turned to look at me and his jade green eyes illuminated in the dark as they bore into mine.

We stared at each other, for what felt like forever until a twig snapped somewhere in the darkness.

"What was that?" I hissed, suddenly hyperaware of our surroundings.

"I don't know, stay still." He whisper, yelled at me.

I moved closer to him in the darkness, as we heard steps approaching. I squinted in the darkness, and saw the outline of a figure.

"Oh shit…

Sorry, cliffhanger….

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