77 comments/ 117923 views/ 41 favorites Redialing for Dollars By: Stultus Copyright© 2008, 2012 by Stultus Synopsis: A chance use of his boss's cell phone leads a wronged husband to discover that he is having an affair with his wife. A tale of revenge served quite cold... but was it all worth it at the end? Sex contents: Minimal Sex Genre: Drama Codes: Cheating Originally Posted at SOL: 2008-11-16 Chapter 1 I hate my cell phone. My peak signal area is about the size of a small basketball court and far from getting 'four bars' I'm lucky to ever get two, even in the middle of the city. Out here in the boonies I'm lucky to get one, depending upon the phase of the moon, how I hold the phone and what Gods names I invoke while slowing moving my phone around a room until I can pickup a stray signal from the nearest tower. My boss, Joel Woodlake, the majority owner of our business and the managing partner, has a Blackberry that could probably pick up a good signal on the far side of the moon. The bastard can run his entire life with that little gizmo - and does. He watches sporting events on it, day trades stocks, does all of his banking, and even plays the ponies all online. Oh yeah, he sometimes even does a little bit of work when he's not playing his golf game on it. It's good to be the boss, I guess. He owns apparently 66% of the company; the rest is apparently controlled by some 'old neighborhood friends' from Philadelphia that put up the original money for the venture. I've never met them, but I've heard some scary stories through a friend of a friend that strongly suggest that they have mob connections. Not nice folks to know if a business deal goes south. Apparently "Whoops, I'm sorry" just doesn't cover it. They don't know me from Adam ... and I'd like to keep it that way. Me? I'm strictly a salaryman living paycheck to paycheck and waiting for the odd moments when I get to sit up and beg to get my sales bonuses or a tiny annual profit sharing check. As the chief tech guy and resident gear head of the company I'm supposed to be getting a small bonus from each original sales commission every time I help one of the sales guys out with a pitch – if they close a deal, but it's funny how those checks are few are far between. Our company installs fairly high end computerized alarm and household automation system. It's a pretty good product and usually demonstrates well to a knowledgeable client, especially working couple young professionals. With micro cameras in every room, a young mother could go back to her job and still watch everything the nanny or house maid is doing on her computer screen at work. The only drawback is that we don't exclusively own the rights to this product, nor do we manufacture it. Someday, some smart well funded competitor is going to come along that can buy these units in bulk and squeeze us out price-wise. Not my problem, hopefully when that day comes I'll be working somewhere else ... or even for the new competitor. Yeah my job sucks and I should quit, but the economy is a bit sluggish right now and no one is beating down my door waiting to kiss my pinkie ring this week. I've quietly been looking for something better but for now I'm content to wait. Having some money regularly coming in the door is better than having none. Terri, my wife, works as well and we do okay for ourselves in my opinion, but that's not the way she sees it. We both make about the same amount of money, but she can sure spend it a lot faster than I do! She's a very attractive woman and always likes to show her assets off. She likes to dress up to the nines, even just for work and she enjoys turning heads and attracting admirers everywhere she goes. She's also a bit of a flirt and could easily get the full attention of anyone she wanted to. Things aren't perfect in our marriage but I was pretty sure that I couldn't ever upgrade to anyone better than her, at least in the looks department, if we ever were to separate. That helped to keep my thoughts (and hands) from straying on the fairly regular occasions when we fought or went through a rough patch. Terri works as a senior bookkeeper for a fairly good-sized accounting firm. It's a pretty decent job with a well regarded local company with a reputation for treating their employees much better than their competitors. Her salary isn't top-notch, but they offer a good benefits package, paid training, annual bonuses, lots of parties and other functions and an extremely flexible work schedule. They work a lot of flex-hours so her work schedule is erratic and she gets lots of compensation time off instead of overtime pay. She also has to travel a few times a month usually just overnight but she enjoys it. She's also often allowed to work from home and she telecommutes usually at least one day a week. This would have been ideal for us if we had had any children, but it hadn't worked out that way until about four months ago when she announced she was finally pregnant for the first time. This surprised me to no end since I assumed that she had remained on the pill and we hadn't discussed starting a family lately. Still, being in your early thirties isn't bad for just starting a family and if you keep waiting for the timing to be perfect you could end up waiting forever. She seemed happy about it, so I decided I would be too. Overall I thought we had a pretty decent marriage. Sure we fought fairly often but I didn't think it was a serious problem and in comparison with most of our friends, our relationship seemed to definitely compare favorably as one of the better ones, but Terri was a hard woman to satisfy, let alone make content. We somehow just barely lived within our means. Terri didn't like to live 'economy' and she sure liked to keep up with the Jones'. This meant that we were paying for a nice late model car for her to drive, an expensive wardrobe (with frequent updating), regularly scheduled maintenance at the spa and hair salon, and a house that was bigger than we needed and took nearly every bit of my base salary just to manage the payments. Usually though, I thought it was all worth it. ************************** My illusions that we were doing 'ok' as a couple vanished when I borrowed Joel's Blackberry to make a routine call while we were out on a sales trip together. He was having an important business meeting with a large residential home builder out on a golf course and didn't want any interruptions for any reason so he could close the sale, and so he parked his cell phone with me. The potential customer was old fashioned and would likely demand 100% of Joel's face time for the next three hours, which would more or less leave me hanging in the wind bored, but it beat a day stuck in the office. This deal would be for providing and installing over one hundred full security and home automation units for inclusion with the builder's current housing project and would definitely improve this quarter's sale figures. Maybe, I'd even see a small bonus check from this one. For the next few hours, I was very much stuck at the 19th hole, the country club bar, nursing iced teas while waiting until they finished their round of golf and business discussions. I wasn't quite sure in the first place why I was even needed for this sales meeting, but I guess Joel just wanted me nearby to handle any urgent tech related questions the builder might have. I was starting to think about calling back to the office to get some hypothetical delivery figures for Joel when my own cell phone suddenly chirped at me to eagerly announce that it had finally locked down a tower signal out here and I could use it instead. And I did ... there would be no problem with promising delivery of the units in about two weeks, with at least three full crews available then for handling the installations. The bastard would be pleased ... and in my opinion he now owed me a small favor. I decided to collect it myself by sneaking a peak onto his Blackberry and see what hot stock tips he had been receiving lately. It seemed like his stockbrokers were always texting him with the latest hot market advice and he constantly bragged about how great his brokers were! Instead of scanning his old emails, I somehow hit the wrong button and got into the wrong set of menus entirely. I've always hated the tiny buttons on a Blackberry, it's why I don't have one. I have fat fingers ... I admit it. Trying to back my way out, I instead hit Redial, and things suddenly started to get very interesting. The last number Joel had dialed, a bit earlier this morning, was my wife's cell phone. How the heck did Joel have my wife's cell number? And why? I quickly cut the connection before she could answer it. Now I was a man with a mission. After a bit more fussing, I finally got into his email archives and found some folders of saved text messages and emails from his brokers (three of them), his other business friends and associates, his silent partners, and last but not least... a folder containing stuff from his more intimate partners, which included my wife. The text messages alone made it quite clear that they had been having an affair for some time, perhaps nearly a year. The candid phone camera images removed any remaining semblance of lingering doubt. Heck, my wife never sent me any naked pictures of herself, let alone ones as explicit as these! I was amazed and dumbfounded. Really, I had had no clue at all that this was happening right under my very nose. They had been extremely careful, cautious and clever. Without my accidental access to Joel's Blackberry there was probably no way that I would have discovered what they were up to. They had been exceedingly cautious and smart, but now I'd get a chance to prove that I could be smarter ... or at least a little nastier. I had about two hours of assured privacy with which to act and I needed nearly every minute of it. ******************************* Dealing with cell phones, especially Blackberry's, was at the edge of my tech comfort zone. For what I wanted done I'd need the skills of a specialist. I didn't know one ... but I knew someone who certainly would. Oscar the Grouch. Not the green talking carpet sample on Sesame Street, this one ran a spy toys shop near a suburb mall not too far away from the golf course. This Oscar was also a lot grumpier and harder to deal with. We bought a lot of our ad hoc extra materials and supplies from him and he knew and tolerated me pretty well. I also had an ace up my sleeve. "Oscar, oh great and wise one." I began my preamble to him. "You are shrewd and all-knowing, let your wisdom bring joy to the heart of this poor cuckolded fool! Teach me, magnificent one, the arcane secrets of cloning a 'crackberry' that I might wreak vengeance upon my unworthy adversaries!" Oscar had no love of cheating wives, having been taken to the cleaners by his own ex entirely by surprise a few years ago. He warmed up to me nearly immediately and within minutes we were in his private office and Joel's Blackberry was being taken apart by the skilled hands of master. An hour later I had a perfect clone in my hands that would receive everything that Joel sent or received... and with all of his password protections removed! The cost was extremely moderate, mostly just the cost of a new Blackberry and a few other necessary parts. Oscar liked to make money, but he hated a cheating wife even more. Revenge was his favorite coin of the realm and I assured him that he would not be disappointed. With my new toy in silent mode in the bottom of my tech bag, I had just time to get back to the golf course clubhouse and enjoy another brisk iced tea before Joel and our new client finished their game. I was surprised at how civil I could be to my boss after I discovered that he had been regularly sleeping with my wife. I just smiled a lot (while visualizing him being sodomized by a red hot poker) and muttered under my breath repeatedly "I'm going to get ya sucker!" Once I was assured that the contract was ready to be signed and a done deal, my presence was no longer required and I slunk back to work and brooded in my office for the remainder of the day. My revenge would take time ... I really wanted it to be done right. I had never been treated fairly by my boss and had been essentially cheated out of probably many thousands of dollars in earned bonus money that I'd never received. Now stealing my wife from me too was really the final straw! The first beginning step was a complete and comprehensive download of everything that was on my new cloned Blackberry onto a real computer so I could see what I was doing and wouldn't accidentally delete or change anything on my perfect copied phone. Plus any mistakes I made there might also affect Joel's original phone, possibly warning him that his device was no longer secure. This took awhile. Man, he had a lot of junk files and never deleted anything apparently! When I was done I could now safely read on my PC everything Joel had stored away on his phone, and the information went back nearly three years. I could now use this information against him to plot a most terrible and complete vengeance! ***** ________________________________________ I didn't get much real work done the next few days but things were otherwise fairly quiet at the office, giving me time to view and review every single one of Joel's files, emails and texts. Slowly, a comprehensive plan was coming together inside my head, but it would take time to pull off. At least now I fully understood what the full background situation was: Joel was most definitely a thief — and not just from stealing away my wife. He had been skimming money right and left from the company from every place he could ... including the obvious known problem of skimming from employee commissions and due bonuses. We were also paying too much for most of our supplies and 3rd party support services, for which Joel was apparently receiving large cash kickbacks in return. He was also underbidding every sales contract to near cost — on our books, but he was secretly invoicing most of our bigger sales clients a much higher rate. Money seemed to be flowing under the table from every direction I looked. I was sure that his silent partners knew nothing of this clandestine double set of bookkeeping, and would undoubtedly be more than a little interested. The loot, and there was a great deal of it, was largely in the very capable hands of Joel's stock brokers. Three of them in total, each with about equal shares of the seed monies that they were carefully cultivating for later harvest. One of Joel's brokers was a clear genius and he had been played the ups and downs of the recent stock market like a concert violinist. He had grown his working share of the money into a small fortune many times the size of Joel's original investments. I made a note to myself to value this broker's financial advice especially carefully. The other two brokers were each competent and had grown their shares also, but not nearly the way the other one had. Each apparently thought they were Joel's only financial advisor, and they each knew nothing about the other rival accounts. This knowledge would be very useful. My wife Terri was involved in these accounting shenanigans up to her eyeballs, both in preparing multiple sets of creatively accounted books and ledgers, as well as being his primary mistress. Her 'business trips' were nothing but monthly little erotic getaways with Joel at some fancy hotel or resort away from local curious eyes. Oh, they still managed weekly amorous encounters, usually at an upscale local hotel, but occasionally at a no-tell motel if they were feeling especially wicked or naughty. She loved the secret cheating sex and also had her eyes fixed upon the big jackpot she had helped Joel cultivate. Her goal was obviously to eventually chuck me and trade up, becoming Mrs. Joel Woodlake. I'm not sure that she would find it amusing to know that there were currently at least three other young ladies that wanted that same position as well. Joel apparently had a very active and full sex life, which included several other married women he saw on a rotating basis. Oh, he seemed to be especially fond of Terri and definitely enjoyed fucking her, but he had no plans of marrying anyone. If the shit hit the fan and he needed to run for his life, he would probably try to run alone. On the other hand, Terri had no intention now of letting Joel ever get away. Especially since he was very definitely the sperm donor that had fathered Terry's growing child. This was by her own admission to him in one of their loving text exchanges to each other. Any thoughts I might have otherwise had about exacting a milder revenge and trying to rebuild our relationship were permanently now abandoned. From now on, it was going to be scorched earth. The other information on the Blackberry was somewhat interesting, but of less critical usefulness for right now. I had complete access to all of his banking information and brokerage accounts, but it was too early to play with those yet. He had an active account with a local gambling organization and played the ponies fairly frequently, placing his bets via text messaging. He didn't win often but didn't lose much either. Currently that account was running a slight positive balance and he had credit approved up to $50,000. He had a similar credit account with a casino in Reno that held a slightly higher amount on account and preapproved signature loan credit of at least $200,000. Joel had been there a few times and had played big spender, losing a large amount his very first visit, but he had promptly paid his debt marker. His last visit had been two months ago, apparently with Terri, and he had come out a little bit ahead, but left his winnings with the casino on account. The casino would be more than happy to see Joel return again some day soon. With this information all carefully gathered, I began to put my plan together. I was in no hurry to enact it ... there seemed to be no need to rush things along or act precipitously. I resolved to carefully put all of my puzzle pieces together first and wait for serendipity. ************************ Sharing the same house with a cheating whore that just pretended to be my loving wife was easier than I thought it would be. Our paths the next few weeks didn't cross much as she pretended to be busy and tired from a heavy work schedule. To my eyes I saw her as nothing but a slutty whore and I took unexpected delight and pleasure in treating her as one the couple of times that we had sex. She treated my aggressive lovemaking with a new considerable amount of interest; apparently she was much used to coarse handling and a bit of rough treatment these days from her other lover Joel and had come to enjoy it. Now, even sex acts that had been normally forbidden to me, such as oral (especially cumming in her mouth) and anal, became regular parts of our revived sex life. Oddly, our sex live improved. I didn't mind fucking and using my wife like the dirty whore she was. It gave me a channel for my anger to use her exactly like I would the lowest of street walkers. I'd call her dirty names, bite, slap and pinch her tits, and even turned her ass a bright cherry red once before I gave it a good hard sodomizing when she attempted to beg off sex one evening. She loved every minute of it. Sometimes I think now that if we had just communicated a bit better together and she had told me of her more submissive sex needs, we could have worked something out between us, and there might have been no need for her to cheat. I began to become emotionally confused and conflicted between my rekindled affection for my wife and my growing need to utterly punish and destroy Joel. I even began to wonder if Terri had begun to reconsider her affair with Joel and I think with a little bit of pushing that she might have even confessed to the relationship. Second thoughts or not, she still met him as scheduled the next week ... and also the weeks afterwards. The new photos (and short videos) on Joel's Blackberry showed that they had quite enjoyed themselves (mostly in bed) on her next 'business trip', later on that month. The lure of the money I suppose was still just too much for her. Redialing for Dollars For the next month I kept a close eye on Joel's cloned Blackberry so that I knew exactly what was happening with both cheating parties, so I could be ready to act on a moments notice if or when things suddenly began to change. It came sooner than I was expecting, but I was more than prepared. ****************************** Chapter 2 I was paying a late evening visit to Terri's office to photocopy some of Joel's forged accounting files when I saw the notice on the company bulletin board in the copier room. I had made a copy of Terri's office key some time ago and knew when the coast was very likely to be clear, with no one likely to see or remember my visits. After I idly read the notice, suddenly the final steps of my revenge plan came immediately into sharp focus. It was an appalling and audacious plan, and if it went all wrong I was going to be hanging out trapped on a limb with no hope for escape. But it just seemed so right. The notice was for a memorial service for one of the head accountants of the firm who had died the previous day in a hit and run automobile accident. I recognized her name, Betty Mitchell - she was the accounting manager that supervised Joel's company account and she had personally prepared the annual Profit and Loss statements and other reports that went to the other partners. Her accounts were honest — garbage in, garbage out — as they say. It was not her fault that Joel and Terri had provided her with grossly inaccurate forged documents with which to work from. Her death was chalked up to be a tragic and unfortunate accident according to all of the news reports. The car that had struck her had been stolen less than an hour earlier by several young teenagers, who panicked and abandoned the wrecked car at the scene of the accident. Nothing sinister, just bad luck ... she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, with the right materials in the just the right hands, an entirely less innocent explanation could be created. And I had just the right materials at hand to do so. I finished making photocopies of a large collection of Betty's original source financial documents, particularly invoices and expenses that I knew to be fraudulent. I then paid a late visit to our office and found with little effort the matching 'original' untainted documents in Joel's secret files, stashed away in a back room, and I made several sets of photocopies. Together I shoved these sets of 'before and after' documents into a large manila mailing envelope, giving the printed return address of the accounting firm, and I neatly addressed the package to the senior member of Joel's silent partnership. I couldn't resist writing on the back of the envelope, "To be mailed and opened in the event of my death — Betty" in a neatly printed but anonymous block style hand. This would certainly open a very nasty can of worms, but this was only the first phase of my overall master plan. Phase Two was much simpler to enact. Using my clone, I texted Joel's superlative top broker and instructed him to 'shoot the moon' and liquidate everything and go all-in on a highly recommended, can't miss stock he had messaged Joel about earlier that day. I messaged Joel's 2nd broker to instruct him to also immediately liquidate his holdings but then transfer the entire account funds into a new off-shore bank account that I had just established. The 3rd, and poorest performing broker was instructed to also shoot the moon and 'go short' on the same can't miss stock that the 1st broker was picking to skyrocket. Phase Three came next and went equally smoothly. I texted Joel's bookie and placed a large number of wildly random bets for the next week's assortment of races, mostly on long-shots that had no chance of paying out. On the odd chance that one of two of the nags actually came through I instructed the tout to hold all of the winnings and place them all on a certain, ill-favored horse that was running at a major national race the following Sunday. Phase Four was also rather simple, I sent an email to VIP Guest Relations at Joel's casino saying that I would be arriving sometime this coming weekend and asked for a suite reservation and the full availability of my approved casino credit limit. They replied back nearly instantly with my confirmation. Phase Five handled the more mundane facets of my scorched earth campaign. I wasn't too worried about what to do with my house or our other marital assets. The house was fully mortgaged up in both of our names and with the downturn in the housing market we had little or no equity built up. Our joint accounts were equally meager and didn't require any adjusting. In fact, I took special pains to make sure that our recent banking transactions all fell within normal parameters. There was sure to be some sort of investigation and I didn't want there to be the slightest red flag that I was preparing any sort of getaway of my own. The overseas bank account had been set up under a false identity (also courtesy of Oscar the Grouch) via a public computer at the library, using numerous proxies to completely obscure my Internet trail. Phase Six was equally mundane, but quite necessary. I next prepared email packets complete with attached saved photos of a very candid and pornographic nature to be mailed out to the other three husbands that Joel had cuckolded with his affairs. I didn't want to mail them just yet, but I had the messages prepared and ready to go at a moments notice. Now it was just time for cleanup. My work computer that I had used to download the material from the cloned Blackberry I gave a complete and thorough security wipe. Then I bounced the original hard drive onto the cement floor forty or fifty times before it took a final swim to the bottom of a local lake. I left Terri's laptop completely untouched. I was certain that there would be incriminating emails and other documents on it, but I had more than enough of that available from other sources. No fingerprints of mine had ever touched that machine. I hoped that this would help keep my butt safe. I kept an especially sharp and vigilant eye on Joel's incoming messages for the next two days and only had to intercept and delete two messages that might have gotten him alarmed or concerned. Friday, just after lunch, I transmitted a tailored Blackberry virus I had obtained from Oscar unto Joel's actual Blackberry and listened with delight when Joel later discovered that his cell phone was kaput. I kindly offered to take it for him to the repair shop and assured him that everything could be restored, in about a week or so. Hehe. My final act for setting up this drama was arranging a business trip of my own to take place starting the next Monday. It really wasn't too hard to manufacture a good legitimate reason to leave town and I'd earlier made the phone calls to arrange it. One of our largest old clients is in Carson City, Nevada and they had been having some slight software problems with the security computer suite and had been wanting me to come out there for a day or two to handle the problem. It would be an easy fix, but it was also one that I could exaggerate about the seriousness of for a few days, if I needed more time away from home to let the smoke settle. If anything, Terri was delighted to hear that I would be going on a short road trip. "You don't get out of town and get to have fun very often." She remarked. Nor did she object in the slightest when I mentioned that I'd leave Saturday afternoon, as getting a Sunday flight to Carson City was pretty much impossible at this late notice. This probably suited her plans fine, I was sure that she'd use the opportunity to hook up with Joel while I was gone. She was certainly having a few regrets, but her torrid affair with Joel hadn't seemed to have cooled off very much. Again, I'm sure now that she was blinded by the money... millions of dollars that would soon be in her wild spending fingers! ****************************** We had a great 'goodbye' fuck on Saturday morning. It was an old fashioned gentle lovemaking, the kind we used to share together in the happier early years of our marriage, and for a minute I thought that she had developed a bout of conscience and perhaps was even ready to confess. Something inside her seemed to have clicked, as if she now realized what exactly she was losing with her affair with Joel. Maybe if I had stayed a few minutes longer she would have come clean with me. Maybe we could have worked it out, maybe not. We'll never know. She kissed me lovingly goodbye at the airport passenger drop-off and I never saw her again. ************************ The trip to Carson City went off without a hitch and I picked up my rental car for the short drive to Reno. Oscar the Grouch had provided me with a new top notch (but expensive) fake ID in my pocket under the name of Joel Woodlake and within minutes of my arrival I had the casino eating out my hands, eager to let me dig as big a hole for myself as I could manage. I was amazed at how few hoops I actually had to jump through to collect my credit advance. I was expecting loads of paperwork, a set of fingerprints or even a retina scan, but all I had to do was smile and show my ID and give my reservation and casino account number and sign an illegible scrawl to the receipt they put in front of me. I wore one of Joel's old USC college jackets, a wig that matched his hair color and covered it with a ball cap and a pair of Joel's aviator sunglasses. I did my best to keep my face out of the security camera when I collected my first $50,000 in chips, but it was apparent they either didn't care much about security here or they didn't want to take the risk of offending one of their VIP high rollers. I blew through that first stack of chips like a drunken sailor on shore leave before the breakfast buffet was set up in the restaurant, and toddled off of bed a broke but happy man with a pair of $1000 high class hookers under my arms when I went off to bed. They were worth every cent of Joel's money — I'll remember that night for a very long time. Naturally they cleaned out my room before they tiptoed out early the next morning of every cent that I had in cash left over from last night, but that was entirely to be expected. My personal money, ID, etc I had carefully left locked up in my rental car, and I'd hidden the car key under a sofa pillow. Sunday morning I signed for my next $50,000 pile of chips and started to cautiously play much more conservatively in order to try and break nearly even. I made a big show of being seen spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave, but I tried to play smart to keep my losses small. After lunch I grabbed myself another brace of high class paid ass and screwed their asses, giving them a nice $500 chip bonus each for the nice lez show they put on to get us all warmed up for a second round of fun. Then I signed for another $50,000 but I played smart with that money too, being seen as a high-roller, but quietly stashing away at least half of these chips too. That evening I collected the final $50,000 in casino play money and stashed all of these chips away for cashing in later, using my real identity. I resisted the urge to cashed in my total haul of a little over $132,000 in chips under my own name and I settled for just collecting $7000 in petty cash. This was small enough to avoid IRS reporting and I got out of Reno with my head still attached to my body. I had a lot of the casinos money in chips still waiting to be cashed in, but I could return in a few weeks to handle this. I wanted enough time to pass so that some overly clever cashier manager didn't suddenly remember me as impersonating Joel weeks or months earlier. To be safer, I'd also have to cash these out in small amounts, preferably less than 10k at a time. Inconvenient, but definitely the safest way to collect the money. The stolen $125,000 was much more in fact than I had anticipated getting, and Joel was now on the hook for the full $200,000. I was pretty sure that they would want it back pronto ... especially since Joel had never officially checked out of his suite and had appeared to skip out. Late Sunday night back at my hotel room in Carson City, I checked the clone phone to see what was happening. Things were already starting to percolate. Joel's partners had received my little care package in the mail on Saturday and were already beyond upset. So far, they had left over ten voice mails for Joel that obviously, due to his real phone being DOA, he hadn't received. The last two messages strong insinuated that certain friends of theirs would be paying him a visit real soon to get answers. It was time now to finish the rest of the clean-up. Knowing all of Joel's regular checking and savings account, and with full online access to them via my cloned phone, I set up an automatic transfer to clean out all of Joel's accounts and moved their balances into my hidden offshore account. I then did the same thing with his three other smaller 'emergency' accounts in other banks. When I was done, Joel's total net worth was approximately eighteen dollars and change. The brokerage account updates I received early Monday morning also satisfied me immensely. The uber broker's tip had been spot on and the value of that stock (and the portfolio) had risen nearly 50% in the two days of trading since my buy order. The broker was even advising me to hold on to this position for another day for some further projected uptick in the stock price. I sent him a brief confirmation, but gave firm orders to sell and liquidate the entire account no later than 3 p.m. Monday, Eastern Time, when the market closed for the day. All funds were to be transferred to the overseas account. The second broker had already liquidated the account on Friday as instructed and the funds had been already been transferred with no difficulties. The third broker was in a panic over Joel's account, which was now deeply in the red due to the 'short' option that had dramatically misfired, exactly as I had intended. In fact a margin call to maintain the short position was urgent or he would be forced to close and freeze the trading account as of noon eastern time on Monday. Either way, Joel now owed someone else a large amount of money. I decided to leave this last account open and active. After all, Joel's partners would want to know where their money had gone to, and an open account showing a tremendous recent stock loss would be a perfect exhibit. The pre-loss money in the account would also square quite well with the estimated embezzlement losses that the partners could easily estimate just from my pocket of mailed paperwork alone. Oh, they would be sure that there was more money hiding somewhere, but this would seem to be the main money pot. Finally, I hit the send button to mail out my surprise packages to the three other unsuspecting cuckold husbands. There would certainly be some outrage here. I wasn't expecting them to hunt down Joel like the dog he was, but the more folks that were pissed at him the better, I thought. Nothing says plausible deniability like having another handful of angry suspects added into an already overflowing stewpot! ***************************** I spent Monday with my own cell phone turned off and I forced myself to keep my thoughts solely upon the needs of my client in Carson City. I finished installing the updated software patches by early afternoon, but I spent the remainder of the day running tests and even offered to stick around another night to check things out in the morning one last time before flying back home. Terri had left one very anxious voice mail message for me late Monday evening. She sounded frightened and in near tears, but wouldn't say why. I phone her back and left a succession of voice mail messages for her, but I never received a reply back. She never phoned again. There was absolutely nothing new of any importance on Joel's cloned Blackberry. The partners were apparently quite done talking. All of Joel's financial and brokerage accounts had now been either liquidated or administratively frozen. The gamblers were now also starting to look for Joel after his weekend of horse race betting had netted him a final gambling loss of over $27,000. Everyone was now finally in the act and the dancing had just begun - my work was finished. With the satisfaction of a job well done, I slept the good sleep of the virtuous that night. ********************************* On the way to the airport on Tuesday I smashed the cloned Blackberry onto a hard roadway a few dozen times and the pieces were finally scattered into a local river. I burned my fake ID in Joel's name and scattered the ashes slowly all the way on the drive to the airport. Joel's USC jacket and cap were placed into a Goodwill donation box and I 'forgot' the aviator sunglasses on a busy diner counter in the airport just before catching my flight. I'm sure someone else was glad to find them. Time to go home and see what music the band was playing. ****************************** I first stopped by work late on Tuesday to report back in from my business trip and found the place a padlock on the front door. Joel was 'gone' and the silent partners were now apparently running things. They had seized all of the files and were conducting an exhaustive audit with the help of a private investigation firm whose employees were so muscle-bound that they appeared to not have any necks at all. Professional knee-breakers, from the looks of them. I left my name and home phone number and scooted off home before they took any special interest in performing any more leg-breaking, especially upon me. Terri was not home and the house showed signs of hasty packing and an even faster getaway. I left everything as it was untouched and phoned the police to file missing persons requests for both my wife and Joel. The responding officer took over four hours to arrive and she left in less than ten minutes, satisfied that it was a normal 'domestic separation'. I didn't much care what she thought about it, but I did want a copy of a police report to show any thugs or leg-breakers that might arrive at my doorstep that I was innocent, and doing my own due diligence. The first bullyboy, obviously working for the Philadelphia partners, arrived at my doorstep early on Wednesday. I was as polite as it was possible to be to a guy who looked like he had more in common with a gorilla than a human. He didn't seem to be looking for me and he wasn't exactly looking for Terri either, and that gave me a very bad feeling. He just wanted to "look around", and I let him. He took away most of our personal financial files and records and Terri's personal Mac computer. I didn't see her laptop and assumed she'd taken it with her when she ran, probably off with Joel. I got most of the files back about a month later in a box just left on my doorstep. They kept the Mac apparently, which suited me fine, I hated the damn thing and never used it either. ************************* Joel and Terri's maimed and completely frozen bodies were found in a railroad freezer car in Idaho about ten days later. Both had obviously been extensively tortured in rather messy and violent ways that I would prefer not to even think about. There was a long list of suspects; the business partners, the gamblers, cuckold husbands, and also the casino debt collectors. All were interviewed, but each could claim plausible deniability and 'reasonable doubt' and the police murder investigation went cold almost immediately. No one ever looked at me twice. I've kept my head down and played the bereaved widower, and will continue to do so for a good long while yet... except every few weeks I take a short gambling trip to Reno, where I quietly cash in another small pile of Joel's gambling chips. Redialing for Dollars I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Joel's ex business partners were the ones responsible for their deaths. I know their names and their 'friends' and their own peculiar inclinations towards revenge. I could see it in the cold gleam in their eyes when they offered their condolences to me for my loss. I hadn't expected Terri to run and join her fate to Joel's. That wasn't at all part of my plan. If she had just stayed home there would have been some trouble, but nothing that couldn't be handled. She could have dumped most of the blame on Joel and her pregnancy should have protected her from most of the rough stuff. She'd have had to have answered some hard questions for the partners and would have been at worst, deeply in debt to them, but she should have escaped with nothing worse than financial ruin and divorce. Maybe I would have later picked her back up from the gutter ... I hadn't considered that far yet. But when she ran with him, her guilt was confirmed in their eyes as an equal accessory to all of Joel's crimes. Maybe he confessed to try and protect her before he died, absolving her from much of the guilt, but in reality, Joel was a weasel... and maybe he even tried to put all of the blame on her! That wouldn't surprise me at all. Maybe their captors just didn't care any longer by then and they were both expendable. In any case they died together, messily and without a whole lot of dignity. I really can't say that was entirely what I had in mind when I set up my revenge, but it's too late to cry over spilt milk now. I set a few snowballs into motion and it was my fault that it turned into a huge avalanche instead. The company eventually reopened but it was never profitable again. With the life insurance settlement I received from Terri's murder I made an offer to buy out the existing inventory of the business, for pennies on the dollar. I frankly didn't much care if they accepted it or not and was a little surprised when the Philadelphia gangsters accepted it. I think now that they wanted to hide back into the shadows and assume a lower profile after their murder of Joel and Terri. Selling out to the poor widower also made for good PR and maybe gave them a way to save some face within their criminal organization. Now that it's my own company, things are a bit better run now, and we definitely have better financial audits and controls over things. Sales and support folks also definitely get their commissions and bonuses now. Business is pretty good and it keeps me usually too busy to think about the past very much, but I will say this - that my revenge didn't taste nearly as sweet as I had hoped it would be. I have no regrets for what happened to Joel ... he had hurt too many other people and his fate was deserved, but he should not have taken Terri to join his destruction. Someday I think I will have to do something to avenge Terri. I don't know how, when, where or even really why, but someday I'll find a way. My wife was a lying cheating slut and a whore ... but she didn't deserve to die the way she did, like a butchered and mutilated animal at the hands of psychopaths. I still have Joel's bank and brokerage money stashed away completely untouched — millions of dollars - and I'd pay every cent of it to be able to stand over Terri's grave and be able to say "I'm sorry this happened to you babe, but I've hunted down and killed every single one of the bastards who did this to you." Until that day, I burn slowly inside with the need for revenge ... and this time it shall be served up hot!