Karma's Kiss

Chapter Sixteen: Digging

*Copyright: All Rights Reserved, Stephanie Myrick, 2024. Posted to Wattpad ONLY*

Maverick spent the day digging into Dallas McCoy. People would be shocked at the information a simple Google search and paying a few small fees would reveal about them. He found the wedding certificate and divorce decree from his marriage to Savannah. Massachusetts is an at-fault state, so he could see she filed for divorce because of adultery. They were married in June 2001, and she filed for divorce after ten years. The divorce was acrimonious, to say the least. But the biggest shock was that Dallas was forced to pay not only alimony but also child support until March 2020. A little more digging revealed Dallas and Savannah had a baby girl on March 10, 2002, and named her Jolie.

According to the custody agreement, it started 50/50, and Savannah filed for full custody in 2014 stating Dallas missed most of his court-appointed time and she wanted to move to Maine. Dallas didn't fight it, and if Maverick had to guess, 2014 was probably the last time he saw his daughter.

The alimony stopped in 2015, and he found a marriage certificate for Savannah and a man named Glen Rockford. There was also an adoption certificate for Jolie McCoy that was filed the day after her eighteenth birthday, making Glen Rockford her father officially. Maverick smirked. If he had adopted her earlier, child support payments would have stopped, so they waited; it was a smart move.

He sent a message to Kitty, Abby and Dawn asking if they would all meet with him and Antonia at his office in Boston and asked Abby to pass it along to Savannah and Regina. He wanted a timeline to see if he could figure out the patterns to help him figure out who would be the most likely candidates for him to cheat on Antonia. The backup plan was to spend some time following him to see if he'd cheat on her. He could only assume she was avoiding having sex with him, so if he had the addiction his exes accused him of, he wouldn't be able to help himself.

He was also wondering where Dallas was getting the money to buy Antonia diamond jewelry if he wasn't actually working overtime. She was allergic to nickel, so her jewelry had to be surgical-grade stainless steel, platinum, pure sterling silver or 24k gold. He made a note to ask Antonia to consider having the jewelry appraised for insurance purposes.

Maverick stretched and sat back from his laptop. The jewelry was bothering him. According to Dawn and Abby, he didn't buy them gifts when he cheated, and they all said he was a fantastic boyfriend outside of the cheating. Why was Antonia getting such expensive gifts? Was it because he loved her and felt guilty for cheating on her?

Maverick knew how amazing Antonia was, as both a friend and a girlfriend. She was a lot of work to get to know, but so very worth it. When they first met on the track and field team, she was shy and didn't really speak much. The team tried to integrate her in, but after a few months, they gave up and let her keep her distance. Maverick had been curious and started paying more attention to her, not because he thought she was pretty, which he did, but because she looked so sad and tense. The only time she seemed to relax was when she was running, so he started running with her. He didn't push her to talk about anything, just made small talk, and slowly, she opened up about her mother's cancer diagnosis and what her home life was like.

As he got to know her, he started to fall for her. She was funny, warm, way too mature for a fifteen-year-old, a very talented cello player, and very caring and affectionate. How affectionate she was shocked him. She slowly went from actively avoiding touching him to seeking him out for hugs when she had a bad day. When she told him that her mother was in remission and they were using her sixteenth birthday party to announce it to their family and friends, He noticed that she was working hard to sound happy and upbeat about it, so he pushed a little, and she admitted to feeling like her family always shunted her to one side. While she genuinely was happy her mother was cancer-free, she didn't understand why they had to announce it at her sweet sixteen birthday party.