Chapter 58: I can handle this. 

(This week episodes...starts!)

[Edward POV]

After getting home from the spa, I made sure to contact Jenna and ask her about her purpose for sending me over there. But in the short conversation we had, I realised that she had no idea about the place and hadn't sent me over there with malicious purposes.

Unfortunately, my decision to contact her had finally given her my phone number and allowed her to save my contact information on her phone.

[3rd Person POV]

In Elsa's house. The room was small, cramped, with a bed for three people, as Elsa stayed with two of her other sisters in the same room. Flowery wallpapers could be seen on the walls, and clothes and toys were thrown everywhere on the floor.

"SHHhh-" Elsa shushed her 7 and 9 year old sisters after Jenna's phone rang.

"He's really calling me!" Jenna squealed in excitement with her best friend while sitting on the bed together before she cleared her throat, put on an act that she didn't care about Ed, and answered the call.

"Hello?" Jenna said.

"Hi. Jenna, I need to ask you something." Edward said on the other side of the line. Jenna removed the phone from her ear, squealed in excitement slowly before answering the question carefully, "What do you want to ask?"

"It's about your gift."

"Oh." The question clearly disappointed Jenna, who exclaimed in a flat tone. When Edward contacted Jacob to ask Elsa about her contact information, she really thought that he had done so to ask her out. But the questions Edward was asking her made her feel like she had done something wrong by giving him the present.

…

[Edward POV]

While holding my iPhone in my ear, I walked into my house after waving goodbye to Haley and Abby.

"Jenna. Please ask your mom about the spa ticket, and whether I should reimburse her for it. I'm sure you took the ticket without asking her, right? Also, I'm not mad at you. Don't cry." I reassured Jenna as I could hear her voice becoming shaky, and she choked up a few times.

Jenna: "Mm-hmm… Okay. I will ask her. But don't worry. I won't ask you to reimburse it, as I was the one who took it in the first place."

"Don't worry. I can pay for it. I'm rich now. Anyway, I really enjoyed the gift. I have muscle pain today, and it all went away after the spa session." I said it in a calm manner while changing the subject so as not to make the girl cry.

"Text me when you have the conversation with your mom, okay?" I said to end the call.

"Really? I can text you?" She asked in disbelief and anticipation.

"Yeah. But if you don't control yourself, I will block your number. Deal?"

"Deal!"

I could hear her squeal with someone, whom I presumed was Elsa, on the other side of the line. I said my goodbyes and ended the call as I entered the house.

A sudden nostalgic familiarity hit me the moment I opened the door. A hot Latina woman was standing by the door to welcome me back into the house as she waited for me to walk in.

"Aunt Camilla." I muttered as I struggled to understand her presence. Wearing a flowery apron on top of her regular clothes– a low-cut tank top and tight jeans, she tied up her hair into a ponytail so as not to let it disturb her cooking.

"Your dad invited me in. How are you, Ed? Did you have fun in school today?" Aunt Camilla asked with a bright smile, as she was incredibly happy to see her nephew again.

"School is fine. I will enter the academic decathlon though, so I have that to look forward to." I said as I gave my aunt a light hug before going upstairs. "I'm going to freshen up."

Aunt Camilla nodded her head to show she heard me, but she didn't know I could hear what she was saying next.

"So. He is a nerd."

I stumbled in my step and almost fell down after I heard that.

She turned towards me and said, "Okay. Today, I'm going to be making Ropa Vieja. A traditional Cuban food. The food of your ancestors..."

"Ed. Phil is inviting you to his house tomorrow to play Mario Kart." Dad interjected as he walked out of the toilet.

I narrowed my eyes as I looked at both my aunt and dad suspiciously. "You guys hang out…just the two of you…in an empty house?" I said in a teasing voice.

"Ed." Dad stopped me immediately, as he knew where I was going with this. "She's your aunt."

I shrugged playfully and said with a mischievous smile, "Hey, I'm not judging."

"What is it? What is he saying?" Aunt Camilla asked dad as she was confused by our inside joke.

"Nothing much. Ropa Vieja huh. I haven't eaten it for years."

"Is the dish the one that is called Old Clothes in Cuba?" I asked in curiosity while standing in the middle of the stairs.

"Yeah. They are." Dad replied.

It has been a while since someone other than me has used the kitchen inside my house. As I entered my room, I immediately went to take a shower, and then I opened up my laptop to do something before going down to the kitchen.

"I'm aware that this type of establishment does not record patrons, but I still need to verify it." I said as I hacked into the spa's system.

"Hmm..I can't access their camera... I guess I need to use a trick."

First, I checked the employee's email and found out who was the manager in the establishment. After that, I searched for the remote owner of the spa and hacked into his email.

"Now, I will send an email from the owner to the manager." I muttered as I studied the owner's way of talking in an email to avoid the suspicions.

"I need to apply urgency, otherwise, the manager wouldn't believe me."

I sent an email as the owner of the business, saying that the FBI was looking into one of our VIP customers and that the spa needed to delete a month's worth of CCTV footage to help the VIP customer and themselves.

"Adding that the FBI is near the building is good, but I'm still not sure that the manager will destroy the footage." I muttered in concern.

…

[3rd Person POV]

A private investigator was exhilarated when he followed the trail of his mission objective to a suspicious spa facility.

"I just need to get the CCTV footage, and I can get the reward from the agency." The slimy, middle aged man in a worn-out jacket muttered to himself.

"Sorry kid. Nothing personal." He muttered as he captured a few photos of the spa with his camera.

At this time, one of the security guards noticed the camera, and he alerted the manager immediately.

"What- Seriously?" The male middle aged manager exclaimed in shock as he had just read the email from the 'owner' at this moment.

"Delete all of our customer list, and the CCTV footage for a month. NOW!" The manager barked orders to his workers before he formatted the spa computer system to destroy all of their data from the past month.

The security guard kept his eyes on the private investigator when he got out of his car and walked into the building.

"WHAT?! NO FOOTAGE!?" The private investigator was flabbergasted when he heard it.

…

While I read the task completion report from the spa manager and the report of a suspicious person asking about Edward Newgate while promising a huge amount of money for the information, I knew that something was wrong.

"I guess some people want to play with me." I said while gritting my teeth.

"Report the suspicious person for taking pictures of a minor and accuse him of being a registered pedophile. Bring the cop to our side by reporting about the situation first." I emailed the manager.

The manager did as I instructed, and the private investigator was put into a holding cell by a few policemen who worked for the spa. At the time, the manager had no reason to suspect my identity because they had successfully apprehended the suspicious man.

The police found thousands of photos from inside a school, all focusing on me and including a lot of upskirt photos of female teenagers; therefore, the private investigator couldn't dismiss the accusations, and he was then arrested by the police.

"Now. I need to know who is behind this." I muttered as I hacked into the private investigator's emails. Unfortunately, the person who hired the investigator had only used a burner phone to investigate him, therefore their identity was still unknown.

"Damn it." I cursed.

A window popped up on my laptop screen as my algorithm to find where Taylor was, had completed its task, distracting me from searching for the culprit.

"Oh. She had a concert in an hour." I said as I read the data compiled by the program. I looked at the time, and there was still an hour before dinner. Therefore, I started to hack into the Vegas concert hall she was in and pinpoint her location in the building.

The camera circuit in the building was a closed-circuit camera, therefore, I was going in blind and depended on the computer connected with the wifi to search the rooms one by one.

"I feel like an obsessive stalker." I muttered as my finger continued tapping the keyboard with a speed superior to the world's fastest typer. My parallel thinking ability also helped me to run two algorithms at the same time, making my invasion of the facility's system twice as fast compared to my normal speed.

"Even before this, I was a ghost in the system. Now that my ability has been upgraded, is there someone else who could actually notice my presence on the internet?" I muttered smugly before I heard my dad calling me from downstairs.

"Ed. Come on down."

"I'll need a little time." I shouted back as I finally found Taylor's laptop. As I infiltrated the computer's operating software, I saw that she was searching for my Facebook account at this time with a fake account, presumably to find a way to contact me.

"Unfortunately, I never opened an account. She must be frustrated." I muttered as I called her using the Skype apps on her laptop.

Through the camera, I saw that she was startled and threw the laptop to the side of the sofa she was sitting on when someone tried to contact her through her brand new laptop.

"Wh-Who is this?" She muttered as she became intrigued by the call. Then, she covered her face with a handkerchief and answered the computer call, unaware that I had seen everything she was doing before.

It was before she got her makeup, therefore she was giving me an average girl next door vibe instead of an artist vibe.

"Hi Tay-tay." I greeted her with a smirk as the call connected. Her jaw dropped, and her brain short-circuited. I waved at the screen a few times and said, "Is this thing frozen?"

She snapped back to reality and said hurriedly while grabbing the laptop, which made her video screen all shaky, "Ho-How?!"

"Long story. So, your dad doesn't allow Juliet to contact Romeo anymore? What the hell?" I asked calmly while picking up her gift for me. "I got the gift. I love it very much."

"Ah. That's great. I put a lot of thought into that." Taylor calmed down a little and finally put the laptop down.

"Yeah. 10,000 dollars worth of thoughts." I said playfully.

"15." She corrected me while showing a sly smile.

"Anyway, what's going on with you?" I asked with some concerns. "Why can't I contact you normally?"

"How did you contact me right now? What did you do?!" Taylor asked fearfully.

"Nothing. I'm just that good." I shrugged my shoulders and we laughed together before she told me what had been going on.

"Oh, you dropped your phone somewhere?" I asked.

"They told me that. I'm sure that I kept them in my purse, but I had no evidence that they had taken it." Taylor said with gritted teeth.

"Hmm…That's too bad. I guess they want to teach you a lesson for disobeying them." I muttered.

"I am talking to my dad, and we're finding a way for me to get out of the contract with the agency. But it'll be a long and hard process, especially with them holding the copyrights to most of my songs." Taylor said while holding her scrunched forehead.

"Ed. Come on down." Dad called again from downstairs.

"What is it? Do you need to go so soon?" Taylor asked while flashing me puppy-dog eyes.

"Yeah. My estranged aunt from Cuba is here. She is cooking me dinner." I explained while feeling conflicted inside. Should I end the call soon as my aunt was waiting for me, or should I continue talking with Taylor as her situation is currently like that of a lone soldier alone behind enemy lines.

"I'll go down in 15 minutes." I shouted back at my dad and decided to talk to Taylor a little bit more.

She told me about her fans asking her where I was during her concerts, and how that question irked her so much that I had to take responsibility for it and sign her up with my agency as reparation. Of course, she said she was joking afterward, but I couldn't help but feel that she was sincere in her request.

"Do you want me to fuck up your agency? If I expose their dirty dealings, then it'll be easier for you to break your contract with them. I can lend you Harvey if you want. She had been feeling that her abilities hadn't been used to their best capabilities, and was itching to destroy something."

Taylor chortled after I said that. While wiping the tears coming out of her eyes with her fingers, she finished laughing and said, "Never mind. I can't let you do that. Those people are vicious. They will get revenge if you slight them. So it's better if you don't do it."

"What if... they don't know that it was me who did it?" I asked with a confident smile.

Taylor thought for a while and said, "Maybe…I can use that to invoke the image clause in my contract. As they failed to take care of their image, it'll be better for me in the negotiation. But, as I said, they are really powerful.

"No need to worry. I'm not saying that I would do it…" I said dismissively. Taylor was a bit disappointed but she felt that it was for the best. But then, I insinuated, "...When their dirty dealings come out, it won't be me who's responsible for them. I never claim that I would try to smear their image."

"Ahh…" Taylor brightened up, but her eyes were fearful. "Ed-"

"No need to worry. I can take care of myself. Also, write down my phone number and keep it somewhere they can't find it."

"I will write it on my body then." Taylor spoke seductively.

"Sure. but it will be challenging for you to read them later, especially if your movement rubbed the ink off. I ignored her blatant attempt to flirt and shared my number with her. She saved my number inside her brand new phone and also on a little piece of paper that she would keep inside her underwear.

"Wait. Before you go, shouldn't you play me something with the 'Taylor' guitar?"

"I know you picked this brand for a reason." I sneered before I chuckled a little.

"What song do you want to hear?" I asked.

"A new song that you'll make on the spot." Taylor said teasingly while laughing hard at my dark history.

"Can you forget that? That is like a bad memory for me."

"I WON'T FORGET IT!" She said in excitement. "Definitely."

"All right, all right. I don't have the energy to create a new song, but do you want to hear a song I made recently?"

"YES! You know, you can consider me your fan right now. I kept going back to the videos from the concert and rewatching it over and over again." Taylor said.

I laughed and explained, "I wrote this after reading a single hateful comment on one of my videos."

"What comment? Which song?" Taylor asked and went to search YouTube immediately.

"The 7 years song. It was the first song I ever played in front of people."

"Got it. At the cafe, right?" Taylor said and clicked on the video immediately. "Which comment? There are thousands of them."

"The one with the longest reply thread."

"Ah, this one. [What is the problem with the world nowadays? How could you guys think that this song is great? It's just a boy trying too hard to be famous. He'd be better off playing Disney songs, Peter Pan in Wonderland, or something a kid would play instead of this sh*t.] This comment?"

"Yup." I replied, unbothered by the comment from the troll who only wanted someone to respond to him and make people mad.

"What song did you make?" Taylor asked, intrigued by the situation. "Did you really make a song?"

"I could do that. But I made a Peter Pan song instead." I replied while I strummed the guitar to create a soft melody. "Do you want to hear it?"

"I do." Taylor said hurriedly.

…

" I heard you sing. Did you write another song?" Dad asked while we were waiting for my aunt to finish serving dinner at the dining table. I offered to help her, but she asked both of my dad and I to wait instead.

"Yeah. I was video calling Taylor and sang her the song with her guitar gift." I explained.

"IT'S READY!" My aunt said while putting the ceramic pot in the middle of the table. She opened up the lid, and the peppery smell of the spices and meat filled the kitchen.

"Damn, it looks good." I muttered as I saw it.

"Yeah. I don't have a lot of ingredients, so I had to do it…my style." Aunt Camilla said with a shy smile.

"It's okay. I'm sure it'll taste great." I said as I scooped the meat onto my plate, which was half-filled with piping hot white rice. Aunt Camilla sat directly in front of me, smiling softly while looking forward to seeing my reaction to the food of our people.

While I was mixing the rice with the dish using a spoon, I asked her, "What ingredient is missing?"

"Well, the bell pepper. I did find a substitute for them though." Aunt Camilla recounted her memory of the farmer's market, where she found a shrivelled looking pepper and thought it could replace the bell pepper.

"I see. That's great." I said as I took a spoonful of the rice and meat. My dad did the same thing as I did, and both of us froze after chewing the food.

With a forced smile, I put the spoon down and asked after swallowing it, "What pepper did you use exactly to replace the bell pepper?"

"Hmm…I don't remember... the vendor said it's primo pepper."

" I see… The pepper that is ranked number 4 on the Schoville scale." I said calmly while standing up. My aunt was confused and asked, "Is it bad?"

"Camilla. It's good. But…" My dad also stood up a second after I did, his face becoming as red as a tomato.

"It's TOO SPICY!" I couldn't keep my composure anymore and ran to the fridge.

"AHH!" Dad screamed as his saliva felt like melted magma in his mouth. He went to the kitchen sink and started to rinse his mouth under running water. I gulped the big jug of milk straight from the canister to wash away the spiciness, but the sensation was like a home squatter that wouldn't leave even after you gave them a warning.

Aunt Camilla's eyes shifted to the pot as a result of our reaction. "Americans. You can't handle the spice as well as Cuban people could." Then, she took a spoonful of the dish to taste it.

"See…it's good." Aunt Camila said smugly before her smile froze, and her face started to burn up.

"I…We latina can…Handle this…NO I CAN'T!" She said as she ran towards the fridge and grabbed the milk from my hand.

"HEY!" I exclaimed as I saw her gulp the milk greedily, spilling it all around her mouth, letting it drip onto her neck and enter her cleavage.

If I wasn't suffering from the spiciness, I would've enjoyed the scene. Too bad the sensation in my mouth was like someone had lit up a fire inside of it.

I grabbed a cake in the fridge and started to eat it to fight the spiciness with sweetness.

After half an hour, finally all of us managed to beat the spicy flavour of the dish. The three of us were sitting on the floor with our backs against the kitchen wall, visibly sweating from our struggle to break free of the food influence.

"What should we do now?" Aunt Camilla asked while feeling guilty that she had put us in this predicament.

"Why don't we go to a Cuban restaurant and eat there?" I suggested.

"Let's do that." Dad said in a tired voice.

"What should I do with the dish?" Aunt Camilla asked. "Should I throw it away?"

"No no. You've worked hard on that. Just put it in the fridge." I said while hatching a scheme in my mind to invite the people I don't like into my house to taste the food.

"He's daydreaming again. I'm sure he's planning some evil scheme, so I'm going to go change out of my wet clothes. Camilla, do you have something else to wear?" Dad asked after accurately guessing what I was doing.

"..No. I think it's fine..It'll dry up soon." Aunt Camilla said not to trouble us anymore.

"No, Aunt Camilla. It's milk, so when it dried up, you'd smell bad. Why don't you go take a shower? I have some clothes in my room that I made for my friend, so you can just pick one."

"No. Ed-"

"Aunt Camilla. We're family, right?" I said with a sincere smile to show her that she wasn't bothering us. She stopped resisting and said, "Okay. Since you offered."

"Good. You can change in my room. I'll lay out a few clothes on my bed, so you can just pick one from them. Oh…but I don't have any…underwear though." I said while scratching my cheek.

"It's okay. I don't wear them anyway." Aunt Camilla replied, causing my eyes to go straight to her wet chest.

"Ed-" Dad called me out softly to snap me back to reality.

While clearing my throat, I said, "That's…okay. I'll call the restaurant to ask if they have an empty table."

It took us only 15 minutes to get ready. Aunt Camilla picked a daring outfit, a red, one piece mini dress with a plunged chest cut as she picked the one I made for Abby.

"Nothing else fits." She said this while covering her popped out chest in embarrassment. We had an enjoyable dinner where Aunt Camila shared a few embarrassing stories about Dad while he was in Cuba, and shared a few details of her life.

Aunt Camila was 33 years old this year, and she had never been married. She had no education, and was working on the family's business until now.

"What is the family business exactly?" I asked, causing both my aunt and my dad to freeze.

"No- Ed, Are you really entering the decathlon?" Dad replied.

"Changing the subject, I see.." I said with narrowed eyes, causing both of them to have cold sweats. I decided not to torture them and let the topic go, making both of them let out a sigh in relief.

"I better go now." Aunt Camila said after we got home from the restaurant.

"Nonsense. It's almost midnight. Just stay here." I said and pulled her hand into the house.

"But-"

"Dad will sleep on the couch, so you can just sleep in his room." I said.

"Why me?" Dad muttered sadly.

I turned to him and said, "You want my aunt to sleep on the couch? Or better yet, sleeping in my room with me? I don't mind if she wants to-"

"Okay. I'll sleep on the couch." Dad spoke hurriedly. Aunt Camila and I laughed after seeing his reaction before she said, "You know. I won't mind if I sleep with you. You're my nephew."

"If I'm under 10 years old, that'll be fine. But I'm a teenager now, and you're really hot. Therefore we won't have the chance to do that anymore." I joked, earning a sincere chuckle from my aunt.