Chapter 30
ASH
Grandparents? Okay, I am missing some critical information here.
“I thought David’s parents are dead?”
Jace hums and plants a kiss on my forehead when I cuddle closer to use his chest as my pillow. In the darkness of our bedroom, he explains his visit from Bradley this afternoon.
“Justice is taking care of it,” he reassures me.
I am not reassured.
Who the fuck do these people think they are? They have never even met their grandchild in person and yet for some reason think they have a claim on him. Fucking selfish, pretentious, assholes is what they are.
Sensing my aggravation, Jace offers himself up as my toy for stress relief, but I don’t like to play when I am angry.
We’ve tested some heavy limits since we officially got together, and I don’t trust myself to be focused enough on safety when my head is like this.
My Biker Bear means too much to me to risk damaging him unintentionally.
“Do you need it?” I ask because I have to. Part of being a good owner is fulfilling his needs. Even if we don’t play, I can absolutely help him get off if he was looking forward to it.
When he tells me that he is fine to just cuddle for the night, I settle in and try to sleep. Try is the key word.
I slept like shit.
Not even two minutes after Jace and Gerry leave to catch the bus, I text Fred and Cas to ask if I can work from home. Fred agrees within two minutes. Cas tells me to take the day off within five. I fucking love my bosses.
Knowing I won’t see either of my guys for at least six hours, I open up my laptop to do a bit of digging of my own. I trust Justice. Really, I do. But I also looked up what I could find about Gerry’s mother a few months back and didn’t like what I found out.
Sera Carter did not exist until two years before Gerry was born.
Whatever the reason for her name change, it ended up redacted in the public records available online.
Now that her parents are trying to take Gerry away from us, there ain’t a sperm’s chance in an asshole that I am letting them get anywhere near success until I clear them personally.
Never underestimate the abilities of an anxiety ridden twenty-something with more experience reading deception in people than kids reading books for free pizza or whatever the millennials reminisce about. Back home, teachers were happy if half the county graduated with the ability to read at all.
Hopefully, Spencer hasn’t updated his credentials for the records website he uses as a private investigator… Jackpot! The man really should know better than to use Lucky’s birthdate for a passcode.
I’ll tell him to change it once I have all of the information I need on these people. All I need is… yes! Brad has texted me their names.
After inputting the information I know, both of their names, Sera’s information, and the few details that I have picked up from Gerry’s stories from his dad, I let the program do its thing while I get another cup of coffee.
Brad’s follow up text puts me even more on edge about them, and I need the records to prove my gut wrong.
Social services preliminary background check was clean for them.
The ding of my laptop brings a mixture of emotions.
While I wish that Gerry could have more loving family around him, I don’t want to lose him.
That kid has a piece of my heart that I never intended to let go of, and I don’t plan on doing so until he is legally an adult and ready to settle down himself.
Reason for legal name change: protection from abuse order filed…
Oh, hell naw!
While nothing has shown up in the search yet to prove that it was her parents that were abusive, she would not have changed her fucking name and disappeared from them so completely if they were not involved in some way.
I open up another of Spencer’s programs – thank you for the temp work for extra Christmas money – to look up the PFA. The search takes less than a minute thanks to the recorded name change documenting the file number.
Sera Carter, formerly Seraphine Castor, filed for multiple protection orders starting from the time she was sixteen all the way through to her name change.
All of the ones prior to her turning eighteen were withdrawn within days of being filed.
Three different names are listed as the persons being served.
Going back to the other program, I enter the first name. The guy was born the same year as Sera, so I don’t look much deeper than finding out where he is – in a cemetery in New Jersey.
Good riddance, you abusive piece of shit.
The second name is tied to a moderately successful business man who, according to the program, is happily married for the fourth time in six years. The latest social media post from him suggests he is about to shoot for five.
Nothing in the records suggest he is physically abusive, but his ex-wives all went on the record to say that he would punish them financially. Considering the man lives three states away from Gerry’s grandparents, he shouldn’t be an issue and wouldn’t show up on a background check anyways.
The last name doesn’t flag anything directly in the first program. The man is almost as much of a ghost as Sera herself. The only record that is even remotely useful is a heavily redacted document from the family court division.
Plugging the file number into the other program, I am not expecting anything to actually come up.
Juvenile records can only be accessed with a court order, even after the person is no longer a child.
When a long string of arrest records and domestic violence calls show up on the screen, I am shocked.
Jonathon Castor, two years younger than Sera, was taken into police custody forty-seven times as a juvenile starting when he was only six years old.
By the time Sera ran away from her family, he had already spent years in and out of juvenile detention centers as well as psychiatric facilities.
He was later diagnosed with schizophrenia with paranoid tendencies after the courts ordered a mandatory stay in a psychiatric prison the year after Gerry was born.
Nothing else to find after that.
I go to the third program that I used when I was working for Spencer.
This is one that the upstanding private dick doesn’t know about because it isn’t exactly legal.
What can I say? Sometimes it pays to be friends with a professional hacker who is mildly obsessed with the family snickerdoodle recipe I learned from my Gammy.
There are no phone records, no visitation records.
There is no way that a kid whose parents protected over and over would just be abandoned like that.
There isn’t even any treatment record after the initial intake exam.
It’s like Jonathon Castor vanished into thin air as soon as he entered the facility.
I go back to the first program, ignoring my ringing phone because the hunt is on and whoever the fuck it is can wait.
I look at the people listed at the address the Castors have listed in public record.
The owners of record are Mary and James Castor.
That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is a gun magazine subscription to a John Cleaver living at that same address.
A magazine is not enough for a court of law, but it is absolutely enough for me to know that shit is shady as fuck with the Castor family, and there’s no way that Gerry will ever be going with them, even if I have to kidnap him myself.
Picking up my phone to share what I found out with Bradley, I notice the missed call from a random Georgia number.
Looks like my mother hasn’t given up on trying to get me to take her side against Dad in the divorce.
After adding the new number to her contact card, I make sure the ringtone for her remains on silent with no vibration.
I’m keeping a record for Dad to help him not need to pay any spousal support for her psychotic ass.
I nearly gag when I realize my coffee got so cold that it ended up with that nasty film on top while I was searching, so I shoot off a text to Justice that I have some information for him and make myself another cup to get me through the rest of my research.