Seeds of Tomorrow

28

Madison was furious when she learned that Raquel had gotten emergency custody of Sergio. Though she didn't agree with Victor brandishing a gun, she understood that people don't think rationally in the heat of the moment, especially when catching the person they planned to spend their life with in bed with another man.

Victor was a good man and a devoted father who would never, ever put his son in harm's way. He wasn't a threat to him, or even to Raquel. In Madison's opinion anyway.

With that said, she herself had gone through someone taking emergency custody of her child and remembered the anguish she felt. At the time, Trina, her daughter's paternal grandmother seemed callous for what she'd done to Madi and baby Jade. In hindsight, it had been the best thing for Jade.

Madison was struggling with the loss of Jade's father, and self-medicating with drugs and men. They lived in a filthy, unsafe environment and Madison had left Jade with her grandmother for days on end to get high with men. Trina had warned her if things didn't change, she would pursue custody but Madison had been young and cocky. Instead of getting her shit together for her firstborn, she fucked it off to be a hoe, in the literal sense, and an addict.

She still had been given the opportunity to get her daughter back but to reunify, she had to get clean, complete drug treatment, attend meetings, participate in parenting classes, and go to all her visits. It sounded simple and really, it should have been had she put her mind to it.

Losing baby Jade had been her biggest regret in her life, the second being all the disrespect she had given Trina when she had raised her daughter without any help. In her grief, Madison viewed Trina as an enemy who stole her daughter to replace Deangelo in his passing when it couldn't have been further from the truth.

She knew Krist had also gotten emergency custody of Rocco as a baby before getting sole custody. He would understand the process as well.

In most situations, Madison would have sympathized with the person who had obtained the order as they were typically done when a child was endangered whether it be neglect, abandonment, or an addict parent but Victor...he was none of those things. He was genuinely a devoted, loving father. Raquel was an attentive mother or had been anyway. She was...Madison couldn't even find the word to describe her. Spiteful? Immature? A cunt? All of the above?

She had called Angelina that evening who was completely unaware of the situation, not that it had been a shock. Victor wasn't close with his mother by no fault of her own. When he'd been younger, he'd had explosive rage often taking it out on her. Though he'd gotten help, he had a hard time reconnecting with her after he'd gotten out of the youth psychiatric facility and the relationship had never bounced back.

Angelina had been furious, to say the least, but told Madison that she couldn't say she was shocked by Raquel's actions telling Madison that something had seemed disingenuous about her. Always had.

"She seemed sweet, I thought so anyway," Madison said.

"It was her body language, she just seemed like she was going through the motions of being affectionate to him. I know we had that barbecue last summer and she was being overly friendly with Junior. I could tell it bothered Victor and they ended up leaving early."

"Junior?" Madison repeated.

Angelina laughed dryly, "Yup, Junior."

Junior was Victor's cousin, Karla's oldest son with Fabian. He was a few years older than Victor and very much the player. He never had a serious girlfriend but he always had a girl and had inherited a lot of Karla's manipulative ways which worked well for his career as a car salesman.

Junior was handsome, spent hours in the gym and while he wasn't tall, his muscular build gave him the illusion of being much bigger than he was.

"Like what was she doing?"