Addicted (The Addicted Series, #1)(81)

I had no idea what this was all about, but I sighed and went with it. Obviously Kimberly had a point to all of this. "Johnathan Castelbon met Alicia Youngblood while he was a grad student at Stanford University. He was twenty-one when they met. She was eighteen. They dated for about a year, then got married in a Las Vegas ceremony. I was born four years later. They divorced seven years after that."

"Come now Julian, details are important here. Why did they get divorced?" Kimberly asked, turning off the screen and turning around to face me. "What happened in the divorce that made you hate your father so much?"

"Which part are you looking at?" I half sneered, striding back and forth across the small carpet. "The fact that he cheated on her at least three times with various female employees, or the fact that he beat her and broke three ribs while I was away at summer camp, which led to her finally calling it quits? Or maybe that during the divorce, he used every slimy lawyer trick in the books to take me away from my mother and keep me for himself?"

Kimberly watched me let loose my anger, then sighed and turned towards the computer. "When your father started dating Sandra Aksoy, Krystal approached me to do some research on him," Kimberly said. "After all, Sandra Aksoy's net wealth at the time was over a hundred million dollars. While John Castelbon by reputation was super rich, he had been divorced twice, and Krystal was worried. So she asked me to do what I do. I would have done it for free, but she insisted on paying."

"So you hacked John Castelbon," I replied, my voice flat. "I thought you said you only did legal hacking, not that I'm upset about it. What did you find?"

Kimberly turned back to her computer and turned on the monitor she'd just turned off. "I didn't have to hack at all, it's a matter of public record in the State of California. While they don't exactly advertise it, most of the old records were digitized a few years ago, and that includes divorce proceedings. The majority of my work was merely doing a records search and reading the details of a very ugly divorce."

Before I could interrupt, Kimberly continued. "Case in point, the divorce of Johnathan Castelbon from his wife of eleven years, Alicia Youngblood Castelbon. During the trial, Alicia tried to claim that on the night of July seventeenth of the prior year, John Castelbon assaulted her and broke three of her ribs."

"I already said that," I replied. "I was at summer camp, and when I came home Mom's ribs were taped up, and she said Johnathan had done it. The bastard was so guilty he never even tried to deny it."

"The court found differently. In fact, considering that Johnathan Castelbon wasn't even in the United States on the night of June seventeenth, the claim that he had broken her ribs was a flat out lie."

I felt like my own ribs had just been punched, most likely by Mike Tyson. "What?"

"John Castelbon had gotten on a flight to Nagoya, Japan on the morning of June fifteenth, the day after you left for camp, to meet with representatives from the Nissan and Toyota corporations. He checked into the Nagoya Marriot, and was having breakfast with business clients at the time your mother claimed she was attacked. While she did have three legitimately cracked ribs, it couldn't have been your father who did it."

"That doesn't even make sense . . . then who?" I asked, my throat tight and raw. I could feel something inside me straining, and I was afraid of what it was.

"The courts never did figure it out, but photographic evidence taken from a surveillance camera the night of the attack showed your mother in the company of a Javier Salamanca, a known crack dealer in the area at the time. They were seen getting out of her convertible and getting gas approximately a half hour before she checked into the hospital."

"No . . . no . . ." I whispered, shaking my head. "NO!"

Kimberly sat there quietly, then pointed to the screen. "It's all there, Julian. The photos, the hospital records, all of it. The judge found her lies so unbelievable that she actually cited her for contempt of court, and she spent a time in jail about it. Have a read for yourself."

Kimberly got out of her chair, turning it over to me. My legs were numb as I dropped into it, and started to read. It started with the final decisions of the court, including the citation for contempt of court against my mother. Afterwards, I started in on the transcripts themselves, and certain words kept popping out to me. Words like adultery, theft, and embezzlement. Words that seared into my heart, because none of them were against John Castelbon. Instead, it was Alicia Castelbon, my mother, who was seeing men on the side. It was her who stole family heirlooms and sold them off, and had tried to embezzle money from the family business.

I read until I heard a ding, and realized that tears where streaming down my cheeks. I looked around, and found that Kimberly had left the apartment. "Kimberly?"

A key rattled in the door, and Kimberly came back in, carrying a small plastic bag. "Sorry I stepped out. I said something, but you were too far into your reading to hear me I bet. I just ran down to the Circle K down the block."

"Oh," I said, getting to my feet on wooden legs and walking stiffly across the room. "Your computer dinged a few seconds ago."

"Thanks," she said. She stopped and looked into my face, and saw what I had learned. "I'm sorry, Julian."

Her words almost burst the dam inside me, and for the first time since I was nine years old, I truly felt like crying, but I wasn't going to let Kimberly see that. Instead, I sat there in shocked disbelief.