To Jay's big surprise Erin would keep coming. Every time the Intelligence unit got stuck on a case She would tell Voight that she needed some air and drive down to Stateville. More often than not would she return with a plan of how to proceed with the case. Voight had obviously wondered what Erin really did when she went out for "air" only to return hours later to crack the case. But it seemed to be working so he decided not to ask.

It went on for months and for every visit the relationship between Erin and Jay seemed to grow closer and closer. Even though Erin tried her best to remain professional and have their conversation focused on the case at hand, there would always be a few small banters and stares shared.

It was just so easy when they got talking, it all flowed perfectly, no awkwardness, nothing. Like they had known each-other for years, like they were best friends, when in reality it was a detective and a man on death row that had just met in a visiting booth at Stateville a few months earlier.

Every time she visited him Erin seemed to forget about who he was. Ahead of every meeting she would convince herself that this time she would see the real him, the monster, and then she'd be able to stop visiting him, stop thinking about him. Instead she found herself liking him more and more for each time.

She tried her best to remind herself of the monster he was, that he was a psychopath that likely was just playing games with her.

Eventually she came to realise that what she really needed in order to get him out of her system was prof, she needed to see it with her own eyes who he was, she needed to see the monster to believe it. She just didn't know how to make him show her.

Then it finally came to her, the money. The money he'd given to the Turners family, where had they come from? It was just too much money to have laying around. He must have stolen them somehow, maybe it was money he'd gotten of the officers he killed.

"The money! Where did they come from?"

"Huh"… Jay looked at her with confusion, "you didn't mention any money before.. do you think that was the motive for the murder maybe?"

"No, no. Not the case. The money you gave to the Turners, that was a rather big sum. Where did you get all of it from?"

Jay was confused. Where did this all suddenly come from. They had been discussing a murder case the Intelligence unit was on for the last 20 minutes and out of the blew she was interrogating him about the Turners. He thought they had grown close over the last few weeks, created somewhat of a partnership even. Then this came, had she gone back on her word? Was she going to tell the Turners the truth. He started to feel ill just thinking about it.

"Hey Jay.. I asked you a question!"

"what does it matter?" he mumbled as he looked away from her glare.

"What does it matter!?… how does it not matter? That money can be stolen or even worse for all I know!"

Jay looked straight at Erin now, shocked. Did she really think he'd steel money? Then he remembered where he was, on death row, of course she believed that, maybe even that he killed to get them. He sighed heavily.

"Please just don't tell the Turners"

"What? That you stole the money?"

"No, no I didn't do that… just don't tell them that the money came from me, they wouldn't want it then and they need it. You know they need it."

"Depends… it depends on where you got the money from. Jay just tell me."

"They came from me. Just from me, I sent them all of my money. I wouldn't have any use of them dead. I don't have much of a family, I just have Will. So I let my lawyers make sure it was transferred to the Turners, without them knowing it coming from me."

"I get all that Jay, it's a fantastic gesture and all. But where did you get all that money in the first place? A detective's salary isn't THAT good."

"my mom," he finally whispered. He tried not to think about her too much, especially since he got in here. He missed her so much and she would have been so disappointed, seeing what he'd become. His life was full of misery and hurt but nothing hurt as much as thinking about the wonderful woman that had been his mother and that he hadn't even been by her side when she fought for her life. Instead he'd been on the other side of the world serving his country. The very same country that had put him in here.

"Jay… the earth to Jay… what about your mom?!"

He'd been to preoccupied thinking about his mother, missing his mother.. to hear Erin the first two times.

"oh sorry, I zoned out.."

"Yeah I noticed… so what about your mom? Did she give you the money or what?"

"Well kind of." he really didn't want to talk about his mother's passing, it was as personal as it got.

"Kind of? Did you steel them of her… of your own mother?"

"NO!" Jay stood up for a second before collapsing back on the chair, tears running out of his eyes.

"She died, okey… and I wasn't there. I was out fighting a fucking war. I was serving this country and was rewarded by losing my mother and ending up in this shit hole," he was screaming it between sobs as he couldn't hold anything back anymore.

Erin was completely caught of guard, she hadn't expected this turns of events, she hadn't expected to see Jay this vulnerable, his mother was clearly a sensitive topic.

Parts of her felt bad for him, it was difficult seeing him so broken but she knew she couldn't let this go. She couldn't let him off that easy, for all she really knew he could be faking it. He was a master manipulator after all, at least that's what she'd been told.

"..Jay, I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't and it's non of your business either" he snorted back. All of the flirtatious banters they had had going on earlier was long gone and it was like a cold breeze had made it's way into the small room.

"I understand that, but Jay" she used his name again in an attempt to make him understand that she, at least for now, was on his side. "I need to know exactly how you came into that amount of money, I can't keep quiet about it for you if I don't know." She talked in a calm voice trying to reason with him, trying to make him open up even if she knew that he had really no reason to.

Jay swept the tears away from his face as he tried to shake the grief of him, tried to return to the less emotional state he'd been in pervious to his outburst.

Normally he would just have shut her down, she had accused him of steeling money from his own mother. Who did she think she was? But she was Erin Lindsay and it was something about Erin Lindsay that made him act differently. So for some reason he decided to tell her.

He cleared his throat as he started speaking while keeping his stare as far away from her's as he could.

"It was during my second tour in Afghanistan. I got the message that my mother had fell ill, she had cancer and it wasn't going away. At first I decided to go back home, I spoke to her on the phone and told her that I was going to stand by her side every step of the way.", he went quiet for a second.

"You have to understand that my mother was the most important person in my life. I never got along with my father and he eventually left us, I haven't seen him in 20 years. Instead I was a mommy's boy, I had a rough time in school and she was always there for me," Jay was smiling now, remembering the warmth his mother always spread.

"She was my rock in everything. I would have done anything for her. Anything," A new tear ran down his cheek as he realised just how much he missed her.

Jay was going way of track here but Erin didn't want to interrupt him, she felt that he needed to talk this out, that he needed to tell her the whole story and not just the short version. So she stayed quiet and let him talk.

"But just as I was ready to go home to her, one of the guys in my battalion was kidnapped. I blamed myself and decided to stay to get him back. I knew my mother was strong, I thought she could make it. But the cancer was meaner than she had let on when we talked."

"In the end we got our guy back, I was rewarded with a medal and also a way bigger pay-check than I would otherwise. But when I got back home.." he paused shaking his head.

"When I got back home, they told me my mother had died a week earlier. I threw that medal away and refused to touch the money. All it reminded me of was that she had died all alone, she didn't deserve that."

"What about your brother, wasn't he with her?" Erin flicked in.

Jay looked up at her, surprised as if he had forgot she was even in the room.

"no, Will didn't tackle the cancer news very well. He was at medical school in New York when it all went down but dropped out and went on a full on partying spree, he was probably decked out at some club when she took her last breath."

After a few seconds of silence he added: "That was probably my fault too. He was too young to handle it all. I shouldn't have left them, I should have been there for the both of them. Instead of being out getting some fucking medal"

Jay was clearly beating himself up over everything that had happened over ten years previous.

"You can't do that Jay.." Erin suddenly said and he looked up at her confused.

"Do what, what can't I do?"

"Blame yourself. It clearly wasn't your fault."

"Yes it was, I wasn't there. Of course it was my fault." He sighed, "Anyhow my mother had a lot of savings and that's where the money comes from, she willed half of it to me and the other half to my brother."

"I then gave all of my money to the Turners, the money I inherited from my mother as well as the money I got from my work with the military and as a detective. Adding to that I made my lawyer sell everything I owned, my apartment and everything in it."

"You gave everything you owned to the Turners?"

"Yeah, or well I transferred some to Will, but the majority to the Turners, they needed it more than I".

He randomly started to laugh, "What would I do with an apartment full of stuff and lots of money when I got this really nice cell to spend the rest of my life in, you know", he smiled at Erin who remained completely frozen trying to process everything she'd just learnt.