CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
After spending hours at the crime scene with the Dillon Police, Edmund and Maude arrived back at her apartment, ate carry out, took a long tub bath together, and then got in bed for the night.
Edmund was on top of Maude, and he was grunting so loud as he did her that he could only hope her neighbors didn’t hear him.
But even if they did, he couldn’t stop. He was pushing in so far and so deep that when he came, his veins were showing.
He felt as if he was straining every vein in his body as he poured into her.
It wasn’t his intention to cum before his lady came. That rarely ever happened. But he wanted her so badly. And he needed her even more. It couldn’t be helped.
But it didn’t take long at all before Maude was cumming too. Not as intensely as Edmund. She was still too emotionally spent to be that all-in. But it was intense. Her nails dug into his back as her legs wrapped around him because of the intensity.
After it was all over and they just laid there, Edmund finally eased out of Maude.
And just that feeling of him leaving her left her with that sense of voidness again.
Then he mustered enough strength to roll off of her.
He laid on his back beside her. But both of them had the same thing on their minds. That sister of his.
Then his phone rang. When he grabbed it off of the nightstand and looked at the Caller ID, he swiped it and answered it. But it was a short conversation.
Maude was worried it was one of his women and he was talking in a cryptic way to avoid detection.
But it was no woman. “That was Don,” he said after he ended the call. He tossed his phone back on the nightstand. “He’s got some information. He’ll be here in the morning he said.”
“I thought Don was guarding my apartment door.”
“His men are in rotation doing so. They flew in after what happened at Tasha’s house.”
“Is his information about Natasha?”
Edmund nodded. “Yup.”
“Did he give you a clue what it was?”
“I didn’t ask. It’ll be some of her bullshit I’m sure.”
Maude shook her head. “If I live to be a thousand years old, I’ll never understand your sister.”
Edmund smiled. “Welcome to the club.” Then he shook his head too. “But I still can’t figure out this one. Why would she get in cahoots with a man that would accuse her of murder? Why would she have anything to do with a man that would have her arrested for murder?”
“That’s the part I can’t get over either,” said Maude. “Unless Ross Hampton isn’t involved, and something else is going on that we don’t know about.”
Edmund nodded. “I thought about that too.”
Maude looked at him. “Any ideas?”
He shook his head. He had none.
“What about that safe deposit box?”
“They haven’t found it,” Edmund said. “It’s not at the bank where she usually banks. They have a key, not a code. They’re checking other local banks. That ambushed happened before I could ask her where it was located.”
“Now I doubt if it’ll have any treasure trove of information like we thought it would have if she and Hamp are colluding in this.”
Edmund agreed. But Maude needed more. She turned on her side towards him. “You said she was arrested before for vehicular homicide, right? And that the charges were dropped?”
“That’s right.”
“Were they dropped because she didn’t do it?”
“Oh she did it alright,” Edmund said. “She was high at the time and her car did indeed crash into that woman’s car and killed her.”
“But let me guess: Your father got her off?”
“Via my intervention, yes.” Then a look of regret appeared in his eyes. “Sometimes I wished I would have never intervened.”
Maude leaned on her elbow with her face resting in her hand as she studied him. Unlike what many people seemed to think, she was finding Edmund to be a very emotional man. Maybe more so than most. He just knew how to conceal it better than most.
“Had I let her ass rot in jail like it should have,” he said, “maybe my son would have never gotten caught up in her craziness.”
Wait, what? Did Maude hear him right? “You have a son?”
Edmund looked at her. “And a daughter, yes.”
Maude was floored. She sat upright, her entire upper body no longer covered. “You have children? You never said you had children, Edmund.”
He looked at her breasts, then he looked at her face.
“Why didn’t you say you had children?”
“It never came up.”
“But I asked you if you were married.”
“And I told you no.”
“You also told me you never had a girlfriend.”
“Because I never did.” Until now, he wanted to add, but couldn’t. Although his feelings for her were proven to his absolute satisfaction when he thought she was harmed in that crash, he knew it was too soon.
“No marriage. No girlfriend. But two children?”
Edmund wasn’t proud of the way he lived his life, but it was his life. “Yes.”
“Where are they now?”
“My daughter? I have no idea. My son? He’s incarcerated.”
Wait what? Maude was floored again. “What do you mean you don’t know where your daughter is?”
“She used to spend summers with me her entire childhood. But as soon as she turned eighteen and I wouldn’t bankroll her Gucci lifestyle, but insisted she get a job and take care of herself, she didn’t want to have anything more to do with me.
Child support was over so she and her mother moved on to the next sucker.
That was five years ago. I’ve tried to reach out a few times, but she made it clear she was done with me. I’m of no use to her anymore.”
That was so sad to Maude. “How old were you when you had her?”
“Barely eighteen. Her mother, a med student, was twenty-six.”
“Is her mother a doctor now?”
“Nope. She dropped out and married a wealthy business owner.”
“Are you two on speaking terms?”
“We are not, no.”
“What about your son?”
Edmund exhaled. “He’s a different story.”
“Different mother?”
He nodded. “Very different. She was a rich kid like me who just wanted to have some fun. But as soon as we slipped up and she got pregnant, she wanted a ring on it. And I was actually going to step up. Not because I wanted to, but she was so angry with me for not wearing protection that it just got out of hand.”
“What do you mean?”
“My father intervened and her father intervened and that was that. No marriage. No acknowledgement of parentage by me. She and her family would raise the child and I would have nothing to do with him. That was the arrangement.”
Maude was upset. “And you allowed that? You never acknowledged your own son?”
“Of course I did! They didn’t want me to, but I did. And his mother did allow him to spend weekends with me on a regular basis because she actually loved him and wanted him to get to know his father. My son and I had a very good relationship.”
“What went wrong?” Maude was certain something did.
“While he was a freshman at Yale, my sister recruited him to help her scam her rich but unsuspecting boyfriend at the time. They embezzled something like a million dollars from him all told. But they got caught. My son took the fall even after I told him I would disown him if he didn’t tell the authorities the truth.
But he still refused to implicate Natasha. And he ended up getting ten years.”
“Wow,” said Maude. “And Natasha let her own nephew take the fall like that?”
Edmund looked at her. “My sister has never claimed responsibility for anything in her entire life. We enabled it. But after she allowed my son to go to prison for something that would never have happened had she not recruited him, I was done with her. With both of them.”
“But you just said it wasn’t your son’s fault.”
Edmund snapped. “It was his fault! What are you talking about? Did my sister recruit him? Yes. But he allowed that recruitment. If you sign up and join the army and get killed in battle, it’s not the army’s fault.
It’s your fault for signing up. But the army played a part in your destruction.
My son made his bed. He has to lay in it. ”
“And you won’t intervene?”
“No.”
“But you got the charges dropped for Natasha.”
“That’s because you were convinced she was being set up. That’s a different situation.”
Maude continued to stare at Edmund. “If I live to be a thousand years old,” she said again, “I’ll never understand your sister. Or you,” she added.
That offended him. “I was a kid myself when I had those children. What do you want from me? I did all I could for my son, but he decided to follow Tasha. He even told me to stay out of his life. So I did.” Then his brows furrowed. “He made his bed. He has to lay in it.”
If she ever got pregnant by him, would he be that way with their children too? It was very concerning to Maude. There was a lot about him that was concerning to Maude. And he never even bothered to mention his own children? Even more concerning. She was grateful she was back on the Pill.
Edmund could feel her anxiety. So much so that he reached over and pulled her on top of him. Then he held her in his arms. “I’m not a bad man, Maude,” he said to her. “I’m really not.”
It wasn’t lost on him that she had nothing to say in return.