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But it was Nico’s way.
“Shit,” I sighed, standing up and making my way to my bathroom where I took care of a few morning necessities.
By the time I got moving and got into work later that morning, I still hadn’t come up with any other alternatives on how to explain to Nico about yesterday. Why it’d hurt me so freakin’ much.
I didn’t know why it had.
I knew he had to do his job, and I completely respected him for his loyalty.
However, I’d counted on him when I’d called him for help.
Never in a million years would I have thought he’d go all cop on me.
I reluctantly got to work, going nearly the entire morning, then afternoon overlooking the fact that I was ignoring Nico.
I never received any more texts, but I received ones from the police station, which I only assumed was him.
I found out around lunch time that it couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Mainly because a few pissed off SWAT team members came calling.
My phone buzzed when I was looking through The Sergei family’s folder.
“Um, Georgia?” Fran, the front office’s receptionist, called through my speaker.
“Yeah, Fran?” I asked distractedly.
“Umm, there’s a couple of men out here to speak with you. They’re from the Kilgore Police Department,” Fran said, sounding extremely worried.
I narrowed my eyes at the folder in front of me, seeing that Mr. Sergei was denied adoption twice with his first child, too.
“Hey, Fran. You’ve been at FHAS for a long time, right?” I asked, scanning the file even more.
I flipped back to the very back, the beginning of The Sergei family’s time with us, and I practically felt my eyes bug out of my head.
“Yes,” she replied cautiously.
I ignored her hesitancy and asked, “How long ago did Masha Sergei work here?”
“We’ve had a Masha Artem work with us four years ago, but she got married and started doing pro bono work for her husband. She no longer specialized in adoption law,” she explained.
I flipped back to the bio pages, scanning Masha’s history. My brows raised when I realized that Masha Artem and Anton Sergei had gotten married six weeks prior to adopting their first child.
A child that Anton had been denied for nearly six months before his marriage to Masha.
I pulled out the notes I’d taken yesterday on the Sergei couple.
Anton Sergei. Wife Masha. Married thirteen years. Been trying to have children for twelve of them. After third year of trying, went on to fertility doctors. Tried for six years before started adoption. Two children- adoption.
Why would he lie about when he got married?
Unless…
I flipped back to the social worker that’d been on the Sergei case prior to me, and was unsurprised to find the woman I’d replaced.
“Fran…the woman that I am covering the cases for…how long has she worked here?” I asked.
I could practically hear Fran’s gossip wheel turning.
She was one of the worst gossips in the office, but I liked her.
And her gossiping ways were very helpful right this moment.
“Stephanie Martin was here for around the same amount of time that Masha had been. Would you like to speak with her? I believe she’s going to be coming in later today to show the new baby off,” Fran tittered.
She sure as fuck better believe I was going to talk to her.
“Yes, Fran, I sure would,” I said, brows furrowing as I continued to scan the file.
Seriously, though. Had this Stephanie Martin been forging adoption criteria?
Because if what I read on the files were true, there was no way that Stephanie hadn’t known what was going on. None.
She would’ve had to double check this information like I’d done. She would’ve known.
There was no way on earth that she didn’t.
Hell, she hadn’t even tried to hide the fact. She had to have known. This was my first look at the file. And I was only a few short weeks out of graduating. This Stephanie Martin that I’d replaced was an adoption worker for nearly seven years.
“Georgia,” a man’s deep voice said from my doorway.
I jumped and squealed, eyes shooting to the door to see Luke, Downy, and Bennett standing in my doorway and beyond it to the hallway.
I tilted my head, looking behind them for Nico, but didn’t see him.
I calmed somewhat. I wasn’t ready to see him yet.
I’d hopefully grow a pair by the end of the day, because I didn’t want to make him wait longer than that.
He didn’t deserve it.
I was being irrational and I knew it.
“Oh,” I said breathlessly. “Hey.”
They looked worried, and Bennett looked pissed.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Luke walked inside, and the others followed.
Luke took one seat, and Downy took the other.
Bennett stayed at the back of the room near the door, leaning his back against the wall and crossing one leg over the other.
Luke wasn’t the first to speak, Downy was.
“We were originally here to talk to you about Nico and something we’d found out because you weren’t answering your phone. Now, however, we want to know more about what you’re working on. We heard you ask your receptionist about a Masha Sergei. And her reply. Can you tell us more about what’s going on?” He asked.
His questions were unusually calm, but I could tell he was hyperaware of my answers just by the intense way he was watching me.
So I explained what I suspected.
“I think that one of our social workers on maternity leave gave custody of a child over to someone that was denied. When he was denied, I believe he went to marry the lawyer, and was granted custody of the child he’d previously been denied. Now, that’s not really the suspicious part, since there are times that men or women are denied due to their availability to the child. A married couple has exponentially more possibility at being awarded custody than a single person. Whether it be a man or a woman. This couple, though, really bothered me yesterday during our interview. I knew immediately I didn’t want him or her around FHAS’s Angel. That poor girl’s gone through enough. That’s why I was going into their file to see if my worries were warranted. And, apparently, it was because everything he told me yesterday was a lie.”
