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Chastity is my first obsession. My first foray into romantic mania.
I smirk at the screen, where the cameras follow the dark-haired girl with bangs over her brows. She walks with a natural sway to her full hips beneath the pink tiered skirt she’s sporting. Just how did whoever choose her to trap me manage to choose so perfectly? She’s everything I could possibly want, but nothing that anyone would expect.
The knock at the office door makes me jump, and I press a button, immediately feeling cold as one of the screens cuts away from Chastity to show the view of the corridor outside.
“Come on in,” I say when I see who’s there, pushing the buzzer on the top of my desk to allow entry.
George Claude, a robust fifty-year-old man, enters with manila envelopes in his hand. “Good morning, Mr. Carter,” he says in his thick Glaswegian accent, nodding with the slight half-smile of a man who’s utterly confident in his own abilities.
As well he should be.
He’s my personal private investigator. And when I say personal, I mean he works exclusively for me. He’s been on my payroll for the last decade. I pay him enough to keep him off the open market.
I trust this man with my life.
“Morning, George. I was expecting you. How are the kids?”
He nods. “They’re well, thank you, Mr. Carter. I have a good portion of the information you requested.”
I know that’s the end of the conversation when it comes to his personal life. With George, it’s all business during business hours. He doesn’t appreciate small talk. Which is just as well.
With a nod, he hands over the envelopes.
“We finished our final sweep of her apartment today after she left for work. There was nothing indicating any recording equipment, video or audio. In my professional opinion, it’s a complete coincidence that you came upon Chastity Nash. As well, the Uber driver was booked for driving under the influence and he is an official Uber driver. Well, he was until they let him go. I do not believe that someone would take on that sort of criminal charge, even if they were being paid to help set you up. With Chastity, it doesn’t make sense. She appears to just be an intern, here for the summer on the marketing program. Nothing shows her taking a payoff from anyone. Her cell phone records show very few calls. Most traceable to a father in West Virginia. Some to a few co-workers. And it was her co-workers that chose that bar. Not Miss Nash.” He pauses clearing his throat. “Sir, about your birth parents.”
I nod. He has been working for the last year to locate my birth parents. It’s no easy task, considering I knew nothing but my mother’s first name, the date I was dropped off at the Catholic mission, the clothes I was wearing and of course, my DNA sample.
I never much cared about finding out about them until last year. After I got deep into starting my charity, the micro loans and the mentorships…I don’t know, I just wondered about them. I started to think differently, and I wanted to know my story. Their story.
Apart from locating my parents, George has also been tasked with digging up info on the other women who are bringing charges of sexual harassment. Until now, we’ve found no common thread between them, and precious little on my birth parents either.
“What is it?”
“Well, sir, it’s not much. This has to stay strictly off the record, you have to understand, but I had a friend at the justice department run your DNA through the system.”
“The justice department?”
He nods. “He turned up something that could narrow down the search area at least. He can’t give me much more as it would raise too many questions as to why the search was being run, and we also can’t be sure if the records will be sealed and therefore inaccessible, but it’s a start.”
“It is,” I agree. “Thank you, George. Where do we take that from here?” I question, but my mind is on Chastity.
“Well, it means I can start pulling court records, criminal records, newspaper reports and the like, anything that’s in the public domain. I’ll start scanning through for anything that could be a potential link, and we can start making inquiries. It won’t be cheap, there’ll be a lot of hours of work, but—” I wave a hand, the money not even an issue, and he nods. “That’s what I thought.”
So, someone close to me, my birth mother or birth father I would assume, has probably been on the wrong side of the law. Interesting. I know George will let me know if he finds anything else.
I open the file on Chastity that he’s prepared over the last couple of days—not enough time for a full comprehensive report, but enough for George to have a pretty clear picture of who we’re dealing with—and lean back in my chair.
