I meant to update yesterday, but I got wrapped up in some exciting news. I'm finally getting a brand new car! I know to a lot of people, that's not a big deal, but I haven't had my own car in nine months, and all of my cars have been 10-year-old hand-me-downs. It's going to be under my name and everything! I worked so hard for this, so I'm probably going to update a couple times today, depending on how today goes! Enjoy!

Chapter Twelve

"As you already know, my mother called me," I started. "She was freaking out because I didn't tell her that I was moving to New York and starting an internship at this place. The only person I had told was my dad and he was the one who accidentally let it slip."

"That doesn't sound so bad." He said. "At least not to me. And it's kind of understandable that she would freak out about her only daughter moving to New York alone."

I didn't even want to know how he knew I was an only child. I'm sure the answer to that would freak me out.

"It wasn't so much her freaking out about me moving, it was what she did." I said, rubbing my arm at the memory. Something I usually did when I was feeling upset.

"What did she do?" He asked.

"My mom and dad had made me a college fund and spent years saving up. But I didn't need to use it because I had gotten a bunch of scholarships and took out only a small loan to pay off my school. I wanted to save the money because I was planning on moving to New York and I was going to use it to get me started."

He nodded slowly, shoving food in his mouth without commenting so I would continue. I did, of course.

"My mom took her portion of the money back and that left me with just a little bit to move out here." I sighed. "It delayed my plans by a month, and I had to beg the warden to hold this internship open for me until I could make it. I had to scrimp and save every penny I made just to come out here. I had to sell my car so I could get my apartment. My dad tried to help as much as he could, but I didn't want to take anything from his savings because that's his retirement."

"That's really shitty that your mom did that to you," He frowned. "I'm sorry."

"It really sucked." I said. "It almost screwed up everything I had worked for."

"Are you and your mom better now?"

"We're not talking." I said. "And I'm not making the first move."

"Huh, with the way you speak about your mom, I would think you two were really close."

"We are. Or we were. Honestly, we're both the same. We're just… not talking right now." I shrugged.

"Has she tried to reach out to you?" He asked.

I thought about it for a minute. "Not directly. She keeps giving my dad money to send to me and to pretend like it's from him. She just sent me two thousand."

"From what you told me about your mother, I thought she would be more of a free spirit and more understanding about you moving to a new state."

"She really is. She's lived in a bunch of different places and travels constantly. She never stays in one place for more than two or three months."

"It's kind of strange that she would be so angry about you moving if she is such a traveler herself."

"You know, I don't really know why she had such a huge freakout. It caught me off guard. That's why I probably forgot about us meeting before now. I just honestly wanted to forget that whole night."

"Maybe she freaked out because you hadn't told her yet, but you told your dad?"

I shook my head. "I don't think that's it. She never told me when she moved somewhere. When it was time for me to visit her for two weeks, she would call the day before and just tell me which flight I was getting on. She never even told my dad when and where she was moving, we just found out when I got my plane ticket."

Edward's eyebrows furrowed. "I mean no offense when I say this, but that is quite strange."

I shrugged. "That's my mom. She's always been like that."

Edward chuckled softly and turned his attention to the food. I watched for a moment, biting my lip as I worked up the nerve to ask him what I had been dying to ask.

"Can I ask you something?"

He looked up. "Of course."

"Promise to tell me the truth?"

"Always," He gave me a look as if I should already know this.

"Promise not to get mad?"

"Swear it."

I took a deep breath. "When we met… you seemed like you really had your crap together. I remember you telling me about how successful you were and the different businesses you were a part of."

He nodded, waiting silently for me to build up to my question.

"I was wondering… um… what happened?" I asked. "How did you end up in here?"

He grabbed his napkin and wiped his mouth before taking a sip of his water and clearing his throat.

"I am still very successful," He started. "Once I get out of here, my life will go back to normal and me being in jail won't affect any aspect of my life… Well, maybe my decency might be gone, having to shower and defecate in front of other men has certainly stripped me of my common decency."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I was answering the first part. You said it seemed as though I were very successful when we first met. I am still successful now. Being here is just a little pitstop before I go back to my life. And the world teaching me a lesson about trust."

"Why are you in here?" I asked again.

"It's very complicated." He said as he rubbed his chin. "There are so many parts that are hard to understand without knowing the entire truth and I'm afraid you'll laugh, or we'll go back to you pretending to be irritated by my presence, except you might be a little more afraid."

"I can't promise that I'll agree with you if I know everything." I said. "Could you just tell me how you ended up in jail. Tell me about that. I don't want to know anything else."

He sighed. "Alright. Well, way before I was in prison, I had a very good associate who had worked for me for years. I even considered him one of my best friends. He was so loyal that I never once thought he would throw me under the bus."

"So you were framed?" I asked, in a hopeful tone; maybe he wasn't a criminal. Or at least not a hardcore criminal.

He smiled very softly. "Framed isn't the right word. I did the crime that I'm in here for, but I had my tracks covered so well, the police would've never known. And the right people were paid enough to not investigate."

I leaned forward, both intrigued and a little sick by the beginning of this story.

"Several years ago, when I was eighteen, so, nine years ago, I had gotten the loan from my father to open my little brothel—,"

"You were a pimp," I butted in, the conclusion coming out of my mouth so fast my brain didn't have time to process it.

He laughed. "No, I was not a pimp. Will you let me finish?"

"Sorry." I blushed.

"I'm not sure how much you know about the law, but brothels are illegal in New York."

My brows knitted together. I opened my mouth to say about but he held his hand up, reminding me to let him finish his story.

"Even though it's against the law, brothels are still very common in many cities. But proving that these places are brothels is a very big task that no one wants to take on. Everyone, including the cops, know what these places are. Some of my best customers are in fact, cops."

"So you got in trouble for running an illegal business?"

He gave me a look. I sighed, with an eye roll, and zipped my lips shut. He smiled and continued.

"No, I did not get in trouble for the brothel because no one can prove it exists. Nor does anyone want to prove that it exists." He leaned back in his chair, his eyes glassing over slightly. I could see his tongue underneath his lip as he licked his top teeth. I got a cold chill and prepared myself for whatever he was about to tell me.

"I had done a damn good job covering my tracks and paying off the right people to keep their mouths shut. Nine years I've ran a successful business. Not one complaint or close call with the law. Everything has been smooth sailing… until fucking James."

Edward's nostrils flared when he said his name.

"One of my closest associates… The mother fucker I helped countless times and got into the inner circle… Money, women, property, insider trading… Everything I had done for him, and he turned around and threw me completely under the bus. Like the bastard he is."

"What did he do?" I whispered, practically leaning halfway over the table to listen to this fascinating story.

His eyes reconnected with mine. "Since I trusted him so much, he had access to sensitive information about my crimes and coverups. He gotten ahold of some paperwork that I had forgotten to lock away and used it against me."

"He took it to the police?"

"No, the cops wouldn't have done anything about it because the chief is one of my clients. He would've 'lost' the paper and told me that James was trying to fuck me over."

"Who'd he take it to?"

"The mayor, unfortunately," He hissed. "Spineless coward. The paper was a contract agreement between us. He could remain a faceless client and order girls as he pleased, and he would keep his mouth shut. There was also a piece in there where I promised to donate an illegal amount of money to his campaign. Basically, the entire contract outlined how I ran an illegal business, was bribing people to keep their mouths shut and the mayor was not only aware of all this, but he was a frequent client. James threatened to release the document to the public unless the mayor turned on me."

"So, the contract is how you ended up in jail?"

"No, I'm getting to that," He sighed. "The mayor couldn't give this document to the FBI because then he would look just as bad and would be prosecuted as well. So, he dug up a crime I had committed that would get me in enough trouble to get me off the streets. 'Course, that idiot didn't know how tightly woven I was with the NYPD. The only reason I'm in this shithole is because the judge and I had a… well, history that made him hate me deeply. So, he was itching to put me behind bars."

"What was the crime?"

He made a face that was almost kind of funny, but I knew in this moment he wasn't in the mood for laughing.

"Giving misleading tax information." He said, letting out a heavy breath through his nose.

"Misleading how?" I asked.

"Luckily that's a quick answer," He said. "So, at my brothel, the girls make generous tips and because it's set up to look like just your basic run of the mill strip club, they have to declare their tips on their taxes. Well, even though my girls make plenty to survive off of just from their tips alone, I like to give them a little something on the side for two reasons. One, they do a great job keeping the business thriving and two, hush money. Giving them more money on the side keeps them happy and loyal." He let out another sigh. "Years ago, I had mistakenly written down the actual amount of money one of my girls was making on one of the tax forms. Neither one of us caught the mistake and the IRS never said a word. They more than likely chalked it up to a mistake, but when this small mistake was found out by the wrong people, well, they used it to their advantage."

"Wow, that's a lot," I said, scratching my head.

"Yeah, and that's not even the full story." He said as he picked up his fork. "The whole situation was fucked up. Had the judge been indifferent towards me, I probably wouldn't have been charged at all, or at the most, given a slap on the wrist and had to pay a small fine. But no. The judge hated me. He had a vendetta out for me. So he gave me the max sentence for misleading tax information. The bastard tried to get me on destroying evidence and bribery, but I have a very good lawyer."

"That is a crazy, long story." I nodded. "Why did the judge hate you?"

His cheeks turned a little pink and he chuckled lightly. "I had a brief romantic entanglement with his daughter when we were younger. I tried to be as gentlemanly as possible when I broke it off with her, but I guess she cried to daddy and made up a whole bunch of nonsense. Well, not nonsense, I was seeing other women."

"That's gross," I snapped. "You cheated on her?"

"No, I did not cheat," He said in an exasperated tone. "We had agreed that we weren't serious and that we could see other people. She was seeing other men as well, so it was a mutual understanding."

"That story sounds almost unbelievable." I said.

"Yeah, but I told you there were a lot of weird parts to it that you wouldn't understand unless you knew absolutely everything. And it's kind of impossible to tell you everything that lead up to me being thrown in here."

"Why did James want you arrested?"

"There are plenty of reasons to get me taken off the streets." He said as he tapped his chin. "Most likely though, he wanted to take my place at the top of the food chain in New York."

I snorted. "You sound like you're in the mafia or something."

When he didn't answer, I gave him a look.