Get out yer hankies folks - I've a sad tale to tell.
My mother and my biological father split up when I was about two. They had a very tumultuous on-again off-again relationship. My mother has always been drawn to domineering men and - from what little anecdotal evidence I have about him, my father was/is a very charismatic, handsome but abusive, narcissistic prick. When my mother asked for a nominal amount for child support, he denied paternity and never attempted to make contact with either one of us again.
When I discovered the power of Google years ago, curiousity led me to search the name on my birth certificate. I found him and continued to do a search every 3 or 4 months or so. He's an academic so he moved around a lot. I thought about contacting him, not because I want some big teary reunion, but because I do want to know about my background. There are practical reasons for this: (1) from a health standpoint, I should know a little bit about where I come from; and (2) he's Italian-American, and there's a chance that I could obtain Italian citizenship under a "grandfathering" loophole. But I could never bring myself to write or call.
Tonight, I did one of my periodic searches. To my astonishment, he's back in New York, at a very prestigious new job.
The pros are as above.
The cons:
-He's a selfish bastard.
-It would hurt my mom a lot to know that he's back (he fucked her up pretty bad).
-I don't know how to get in touch with him discreetly as all I have is his work address and I know from experience that employers DO monitor online communication done on company time.
Part of me says fuck it, he owes me big time and I want to put an end to my curiosity.
The other part says that it's been almost thirty years and I should just leave well alone; after all, if he wanted to be in touch he would have made the first move.
What should I do?


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