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The Monster

By: Captain Jack



I can't believe next year I will be going to UCLA on a full scholarship for football - me, Jack Nelson. I'll be leaving home as an adult. It feels great after always being thought of as a child. My mom and dad are great, I could not ask for better parents. I have a lot of good friends that I will miss but I'm ready to be my own man. I am making extra money this summer doing odd jobs. I don't really have a steady girl; I was always playing football, basketball, or baseball. I did not date very much. 

I looked at the clock it was 6:00 am, I jump out of bed put on some shorts a T-shirt and my running shoes and down the stairs and out the door on my morning five mile run. When I was through with my run I was scheduled to help the Andersons, who have been our neighbors for fifteen years. They were giving a party this Saturday; I was going to help them set everything up. Plus I was making $7.00 per hour, money in the bank! I really felt good, since I have been working out, lifting and running. I was hard as a rock and I was up to 235 lb of muscle. Last year in high school I played at 205 lb, I put on 30lb more which will help me playing next year. I'm 6' 2" with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. I think I look pretty damn good. The extra muscle looks hot on my frame. 

When I finished my run I went up stairs and took a shower, punt on a pair of red running short, white T-shirt and my Nike tennis shoes. I ate my breakfast and headed for the Andersons. I went to school with Marie Anderson; she was a senior when I was a sophomore. She was a real babe but I never went out with her because of the age difference. She was really hot looking, but had the reputation of being cold and never doing the dirty deed. Her mother is a real beautiful lady. She is about 5'2" 100 lb, she is big busted for her small size. I would say she is 34d or larger. She has a great ass too, but is a very nice sweet lady. She has always treated me great.

When she answered the door she was wearing a sundress. She looked like she was in her twenties. The dress was light yellow with a pastel colored flower print. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she was wearing scandals. Gosh! She smelled so good. 

The party was a surprise for her husband's birthday; which was on Saturday and hers was the next Monday. I asked her how old she was going to be, she smiled and told me that you never ask a lady her age. She then asked how old I thought she was. I knew my mom was thirty-seven so I said thirty-nine. She laughed and said, you sweet thing thirty-nine" she grabbed my face gave me a kiss on the lips. Damn, I was getting hard. "Thanks for the compliment." I followed her as she headed for the pool area. I loved to watch her walk; her ass was so smooth when it moved. She showed me what needed to be done and left me to the task. It was hot, so I took my shirt off and I was really working up a sweat. I saw her standing by the pool, she shouted, "Jack are you thirsty, would you like something to drink."

"Yeah" I shouted back. Five minutes later we were sitting in the shade drinking ice tea.

She was looking at me and sipping her tea. "Jack, you really have put on weight and it looks good on you."

"You think so?" standing up and flexing my chest and arms. She reached up and felt my bicep, "your as hard as a rock." Her touch made me feel sparks shooting through my body and my dick was tingling. She stood back and looked at me. I could see that she noticed the bulge in my shorts, which by this time was very large. " Oh my Jack, its looks like I have excited you." I was blushing, "gee Mrs. Anderson I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get like this." I could see her squirming and getting a little flustered. "Do you have a girl Jack?" she asked. "No" I replied. She grabbed my hands and pulled me toward the bathhouse. Once inside she said, "Jack let see what you have in those shorts. She reached forward, put her finger in my shorts elastic band and pulled them down. My cock popped out and was waving in her face, she stepped back. 

"Oh, my god!"

"Jack, you're huge, my god I have never seen one that big"

"You like it" I replied

"It's a monster, my god its like a telephone pole"

She just stood there with her mouth open, gaping at my now raging hard cock. She came forward and reached her hand out and touched it. She put her hand around the shaft and ran it up and down, and then she squeezed it. I just stood there afraid to move, I wanted to grab her tits. I was boiling inside.

'Look at the size of your head, oh my."

She had both hands around my cock and was squeezing and moving up and down. Damn, I reached down and cupped her tits and squeezed them firmly.

She squealed, "God I can't believe the size of you cock it's, it's a monster."

She let go of my cock, reached down and grabbed the hem on her dress and lifted it over her head. She stood there in white cotton matching bra and panties. She unclasped her bra and let it drop. Her tits were beautiful, and she had big brown nipples. She did not have any sagging with those big melons. I really wanted to suck on them, but then I looked down and she was kicking off her panties. She was so small with her big tits and her tiny waist, and her smooth pussy. She lay on the couch with her legs spread, her pussy lips were open and she was secreting great amounts of fluid.

"Jack, come here and fuck me. I want to feel that monster fill me up"

I was between her legs; I rubbed my cock head between her wet pussy lips. She was moving her hips and aching her back. I pushed the head in slowly and she screamed.

Oh my god, be careful you don't hurt me. Please take you time, oh my god I'm cumming OOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I pushed in about half way and she was still cuming, I pulled almost out and then back in a little deeper. She was thrusting her hips into my cock and holding my ass in her hand.

"Oh my god, I feel like you going to split me in half. Harder sweet boy, I want it all."

I rammed my cock in her as hard and deep as I could.

I'm CCUUUUUMMMMMMMMIIIIIIIIIINNNNGGGG. She was fucking like an animal. I was really ramming her hard and she was meeting every stroke with one of her own. I could feel my cock starting to pulse and I exploded into her cunt like a rocket, stream after stream. It felt like I came for an hour. Mrs. Anderson was still fucking and my cock was as hard as when it started. We fucked the whole afternoon and she was insatiable. She made me promise that I would try to fuck her at least three times a week before I left for school. I had plans of my own, which were to fuck her every day at least two times. Maybe I could get her to help me fuck her daughter, Marie! Not a bad plan!

The Monster



How is that the evil people in this world, the liars and cheaters and con men, succeed so often? I've concluded that the real reason is the rest of us. Most of us on this planet are basically honest, basically decent. We tend to tell the truth in most situations and treat one another with some degree of kindness.

Not surprisingly, we also take for granted that those around us will behave the same way. But our assumption that most people, most of the time, are honest, leaves us terribly vulnerable to those bastards who lie and cheat without any conscience at all. They can utterly fool us for quite a long time—sometimes forever—without our ever realizing it. Because we don't lie and cheat, we don't suspect quickly enough that others might be doing it to us.

It was Gina Giannopoulos who taught me this painful lesson. Or I suppose I should say Gina Giannopoulos Macmillan, because that was her married name. I'm Alex Macmillan, her ex-husband.

****************

The engine of my Lexus started making some scary noises one morning, and I dropped the car off at Marshall Motors, where Dominic had been working on my cars for about ten years. He called me around lunch time—but instead of telling me that the car was okay he said, "you'd better come down here and talk to me."

When I got there he took me into the private office in the back. 

"Alex, the engine is fine, just a belt loose. But there was something else."

He looked at me seriously. "Somebody had tampered with the brake-line. There was just enough hydraulic fluid left for some routine stops, but if you'd had to go down a steep hill or stop in a hurry, you would have crashed the car."

I stared at him, my mouth open. Six months before, Gina and I had moved to a new, fancy modern house in the suburbs. It was gorgeous, with cathedral ceilings and lots of glass, and it was surrounded by quiet woods. 

But it was also at the end of a cul-de-sac off a main street that plunged steeply down a hill. Had I driven the car home that night I almost certainly would have been killed.

After a couple of minutes I pulled my thoughts together a little.

"Dominic, do me a favor, OK? Don't tell anyone about this for now. Have you fixed it yet?"

"No, man, there was a crime committed here—or at least an attempt. I have to call the police."

"Okay." I thought some more. "How about we do this? Take some photos of the brake-line, and write it up just as you would for the police. But let's not call them yet. Just leave the car parked on your back lot, and I'll rent one of the clunkers you keep around for a few days. There are surveillance cameras on the lot, right?"

"Yeah." Dominic looked doubtful.

"Here's the thing. Whoever did this is going to want to cover it up when they find out I'm not dead. So I'm betting they'll try to steal that car off the lot in the next few nights. I don't want to call the police until after that happens. We'll have the camera footage to give them at the same time."

Forty-five minutes later I got out of my rented blue Corolla and left it in my driveway. I'd taken the rest of the day off—I wanted to think hard about what was going on.

The attempt on my life had to be about money. I was the President and co-founder of Apex, an $6.8 billion software firm in Silicon Valley, and my first guess was that someone wanted me out of the way as part of an attack on the company.

It was the day off for Carmelita, our cook/housekeeper who normally worked noon-8pm, and the house was quiet; Gina must have been out shopping or playing tennis. I walked around aimlessly, my mind spinning through the possible culprits and possible reasons for whatever was going on.

Picking up the phone, I spoke to Jeff Denham, my old friend who runs the security firm that Apex uses. Without giving him a reason I made clear that I suspected some sort of problem going on: either some sort of financial irregularity already in the works, or a future attack on the company. We arranged to have his financial guys do a complete screening of our computers and financial records. I gave Jeff a temporary password that would let his people access what they needed from my office desktop, and told him that I wanted this done discreetly. We would tell everyone they were doing a routine audit.

Then I called Meredith, my long-time secretary, and told her to put the temporary password into my computer, and that Jeff's guys would be in later in the day.

Once that I was done I resumed my aimless wanderings. I went to our home computer and poked around on it, not expecting to find anything. Out of pure idle curiosity I tried to open some of Gina's files, including her email, and to my surprise they were all password-protected.

What would Gina have on our computer that she didn't want me to see? Outside of something unlikely like planning a surprise party, I couldn't imagine. I made a mental note to ask her about it later.

I was having a cup of tea in the kitchen at about 4:30 when Gina walked in. She took one look at me and virtually collapsed. I'd never seen anything like it: her mouth dropped open, she went white, and her body sagged against the doorframe.

"Alex! You're...you're...what are you doing here?"

I smiled mildly. "Actually, honey, I live here. Remember?"

She pulled herself together a bit, and sat down at the table across from me. Forcing a smile, she said, "of course, baby. It's just...well, you're almost never home this early, and I didn't see your car outside."

It happened in an instant. I was about to tell her all about the brake-line; and then instead I just said, "there was a problem with the engine and I had to leave it with Dominic for a few days. He rented me one of their clunkers, that's what's out in the driveway."

Why hadn't I told her the truth? At the time, I think I believed it was because I didn't want to worry her—didn't want to say, "by the way, honey, someone's trying to kill me." Why terrify your wife?

But when I thought about it later it might have been for a very different reason. Why was she so incredibly shocked to see me sitting in the kitchen—not just surprised but stunned, as if it were the most unexpected thing in the world? I didn't understand her reaction, and the more I thought about it later the more it gnawed at me.

"Oh," she said, and I could see her making an effort to pull herself together. "Well, it's great to have you home so early. What do you want to do about dinner?"

"How about if we go out, since Carmelita's off?"

"Great!" she said. "Let me just shower, and maybe we can go to Andante?"

Then she was headed quickly out of the room, and a couple of minutes later I heard the shower running. I put my teacup in the sink and started toward the bedroom, thinking I'd wash my face and change into something more casual before we went out.

The bedroom door was nearly closed; and to my surprise, as I approached I heard Gina talking on the phone, in a low, urgent voice. Why would she have started the shower running, then called someone? I hadn't heard the phone ring, so she must have made the call.

I didn't hear much; just, "no, Dowdle, I have no idea!....no, of course not...yes, we'll have to...okay, baby, bye."

Not much—but more than enough to freeze me in my tracks. She was talking to Jeff Denham, my friend and security guru. His middle name was Dowd, and I'd been calling him "Dowdle" since about 8th grade. Gina had picked up the nickname from me—there wasn't much doubt about who was on the other end of the line.

I waited as she hung up the phone and headed into the bathroom. Then I waited two minutes more, before entering the bedroom and changing. I washed my face in the guest bathroom rather than disturb Gina's shower. My mind was racing—what the hell was going on? Could Gina—and my friend Jeff—possibly have been involved in what happened to my car?

Despite the evidence of the past ten minutes, it seemed utterly impossible. Gina and I had been married for eight years; I was 46 and she was 37. I'd been married and divorced once before, in my twenties; and I had two great kids whom I saw only on summer vacations and occasional quick visits, because their mother had moved them 2000 miles away after the divorce.

I'd first seen Gina when she toured the Apex offices while working as a sales rep for a computer support firm we did business with. I made it my business to find out who she was, and then to arrange a lunch date with a friend at her company who could casually introduce us.

It was worth the effort. Even if you woke her up out of a sound sleep Gina would be one of the ten most beautiful women you'd ever seen; and when she has time to do the clothes and makeup thing, she is just stunning. Nearly 5'10", with long raven-black hair and dark eyes, high cheekbones and a saucy mouth, and a tight, athletic body.

She also has "the look": the way of walking, moving, presenting herself, looking you in the eye, that says "I know I'm hot, and I know you think so too". I knew from the first time I took an interest in her that I'd have lots of competition, and it was a pleasant surprise that we were soon dating, and then dating seriously; and after about a year, engaged to be married.

I'm not bad-looking, but no hunk, and I'm nine years older than Gina. I knew that my business success and my money had to be part of the attraction for her, and that didn't bother me. Why be successful, if it doesn't get your foot in the door with gorgeous women?

And we had an iron-clad prenup that limited her to nothing more than about a million dollars if we divorced in less than twenty years, so I felt confident that she loved me as well as my money. We'd live very well together, and if she loved being rich with me that was fine, as long as she was also making me happy.

Gina made me very happy. She spent a lot of money—but I had it, so not a problem. She was energetic and lively, very sociable and full of fun. She made a lot of friends, dragged me to a lot of parties, and flirted with a lot of guys—but at the end of the evening she came home with me and, as often as not, balled my socks off. Gina was experienced and enthusiastic, as adventurous in bed as elsewhere (she loved hang-gliding, rock-climbing, stuff like that). She wore me out, and I was completely happy about it.

But the events of the last few hours had changed everything—or at least they threatened to. I needed to do a lot of hard thinking, above all because Dowdle seemed to be involved. Under other circumstances he would be the first person I'd call. In fact, I had already called him, and gotten his people started on a check of Apex's finances. I realized now that I'd perhaps made a bad misstep, by tipping him off that I was suspicious about something.

Thank God I hadn't mentioned the car being tampered with! Neither he nor Gina knew I knew about that—at least not yet.

***************

That evening tested my acting skills to the limit. Gina and I went off to Andante and had a nice dinner, with a bottle of good Chianti. I was incredibly preoccupied, but I tried hard not to seem withdrawn or distant. I made sure the conversation flowed, and when Gina took her shoe off and slid her foot up and down my leg under the table, I responded with a smile and some discreet caresses of my own.

I knew that the evening would end with some athletics in bed—that was certainly Gina's habit, after a nice dinner out with some good wine—and I wondered about what to do. But the right decision was obviously to go with the flow: not just because I didn't want to make her at all suspicious, but because sex with my wife was about the most fun I had ever had! Suspicions or no, I was going to enjoy her, at least this one more time.

We didn't do anything out of the ordinary for us—when she came out of the bathroom in a short red nightie, I was waiting naked in bed for her. She liked to suck on me until I was not only hard but desperately excited, then lie back and let me lick her to a couple of orgasms, and then we'd fuck.

And that's what we did! Gina adored being eaten, and I made sure to give her her money's worth: lots of tongue on her lips and clit, then some finger-attention to her tight asshole, then back to the clit with my tongue while my fingers rubbed her G-spot. She came three times in rapid succession; then, her eyes blazing, she pushed me over on my back and jumped on top of me, riding me cowgirl until I exploded into her, seeing stars as I shot off. It was sweaty, energetic, terrific.

And then we cuddled for a few minutes, said our "wow"s and our "I love you"s, and went to sleep. An exciting but typical romp in bed, after a pleasant but typical dinner out. Nothing out of the ordinary, or so it seemed....

***************

One of my talents is the ability to think about a problem with part of my mind while I'm doing other things—like having dinner with, or fucking, my wife. So when I got up the next morning I knew exactly what I would do to get to the bottom of the mysterious attempt on my life, and my wife's apparent involvement.

I woke early and made the preparations for a quick trip to Los Angeles: I packed an overnight bag, and I had the company's travel agent book me the usual round-trip flight for a three-day trip and a room at the Beverly Wilshire, where I always stayed in LA. I called for a limo to the airport, had a quick breakfast, then went into the bedroom and woke Gina.

"Babe, sorry to bother you." I smiled at her, and enjoyed the sight of her beautiful face as her eyes slowly opened and she smiled back up at me.

"Morning, Alex," she murmured, pulling me down for a long kiss, then another one. God, she felt good! I was more than a little tempted to pull off my clothes and jump back in bed with her, but I resisted.

"I've got to go to LA, honey," I said. "I got a couple of emails this morning about a meeting we've been trying to set up—it's all come together suddenly, and I'll need to be there for a couple of days."

This was a lie, but a very plausible one. I traveled frequently, and business trips quite often came up on short notice.

"Okay, sweetheart. I'll keep the bed warm for you—you'll be back on Friday?"

"Yeah, that's the plan. Just make sure it's only you keeping the bed warm, OK Gina?"

She gave me a big laugh, then squeezed me tight in another hug. "No one in here but me, baby. Just think of how horny I'll be by Friday!" she whispered in my ear.

In the limo I marveled at my wife's ability to lie to me. Either I was completely wrong, and she was innocent of any connection to the attempt on my life, or she was one hell of an actress! More than that—a cold-blooded monster. I hoped I was wrong, but I didn't see how it could be.

On the short flight from San Jose down to LA, I worked out some of the details of my plan. The key was total secrecy—since Jeff Denham appeared to be involved, I had to avoid any action that would tip him off to my suspicions. And since he was the leading security guy in the whole Bay area, that meant bringing in someone from far away.

***************

On the cab ride in from the airport, I stopped off at an electronics store and paid cash for a throw-away cell phone. Then, after checking in at the Beverly Wilshire, I called Dan Camorin and arranged to meet him for lunch near his office downtown. Dan had been my right-hand man when I founded Apex, and we had both gotten pretty rich when it took off. Three years earlier we'd had a mutually friendly parting of the ways: he moved down to LA with his family and took a job running a financial-services company that, thanks to his brains, was doing very well. Dan and I saw one another a couple of times a year, so no one would find it odd that I was visiting with him.

We sat over sandwiches and a couple of beers in an outside terrace restaurant, reminiscing about old times and sharing stories of recent problems and triumphs. He asked about Gina, and told me about his wife Linda and what their kids were up to. But when we finished eating, I leaned forward and spoke more seriously.

"I'd like to ask you a couple of favors, Dan, if you don't mind."

He looked interested, and I continued. "I have reason to believe I may have some sort of problem inside Apex. Do you have a security firm that you trust?"

"Absolutely," he said. "Vertex Securities. Alan Newman, the guy who runs it, is first-rate. But you've still got Jeff Denham, don't you?"

"Yeah, but I want someone from the outside on this one. Here's my first favor: would you give Newman a call and tell him a good friend would like to talk to him over the phone and get some advice, but without giving him my name?"

Without hesitation, Dan called on his cell phone and made a phone appointment for "a friend of his" later that afternoon.

"Thanks, Dan. I'll ask you please to forget that that ever happened. Now here's my other favor—actually it's a question I want to ask you. During the time you knew Gina, did you ever see her...behave in a way that was inappropriate, or suspicious at all?"

To my amazement Dan looked away, and his face flushed red. I waited, and finally he looked back at me, a more sheepish expression on his face than I'd ever seen before.

"Alex, I...this is difficult, OK? A little embarrassing. I hope you won't want to slug me.

"About four years ago, in the last few months before I quit as your Chief Operating Officer and left to come down here, Gina kind of...flirted with me several times. It wasn't just the usual flirtation, though—the kind of stuff that beautiful women do all the time. On a few occasions she came very close to propositioning me."

My face must have shown my amazement, because Dan put up his hands defensively, almost as though he thought I might actually hit him.

"It wasn't obvious, Alex—she never said, 'do you want to take me to bed?' or anything like that. She came close to the line, but always subtly enough that it was never overt.  The offer was there for me to grab, but if I pretended not to understand it was ambiguous enough that neither of us had to feel embarrassed.

"That's why I never spoke to you about it. I felt really strange, believe me—but I didn't want to get you furious, either at me or at her, when it was something so hard to pin down. I was afraid you might think I had imagined it."

He sat for a moment, looking unhappy.

"I think I understand, Dan—and I'm not pissed off at you. So you just let the subtle invitations go over your head, and after a while she backed off?"

"Exactly. It went on for a few weeks and then it just stopped. Gina went back to being the friendly, mildly flirtatious woman she'd been in the past. It was weird—as though she was experimenting on me or something."

"And was there ever anything else, any other strange behavior that you noticed?"

He nodded, still looking unhappy. "This is worse, Alex. Just after we moved down here, Linda told me that she'd had a farewell lunch with Barbara Daniels, Josh's wife. Barbara was very upset; she told Linda that Josh had been cheating on her, and she was almost positive it was with Gina."

Josh Daniels had worked for Apex for seven years and was now our Chief Financial Officer. I leaned forward. "How did Barbara know?"

"She didn't, not for sure. She'd caught Josh lying to her about his whereabouts a couple of times, and there were some other things that convinced her he was cheating. But the part about Gina was much more iffy—maybe he came home once smelling like her perfume or something. I don't remember all of it. 

"But I do know that Linda and I struggled together with the question of whether to let you know. I sure know that if she ever screwed around behind my back I'd want my friends to tell me! But the thing was, it was all so inconclusive. I hope I didn't make a mistake, but I didn't want to ruin your marriage over something that might never have happened at all."




The Monster



We talked a few minutes longer, and then parted. I wasn't angry at Dan—it was clear he'd done what he thought best at the time. But his stories had certainly deepened my sense that my wife was right in the middle of whatever plot had been hatched against me and my company.

***************

My phone conversation with Alan Newman was short and sweet—as soon as he was on the line I got right to the point.

"Mr. Newman, I'm in need of a topnotch security firm to help me with a confidential problem. As highly as Dan speaks of you, I'd rather it not be anyone connected with me or any of my friends. So I'm wondering who else in this area is really good. Who would you yourself hire for what might be a very serious, very confidential matter, one requiring financial and computer expertise?"

Newman thought about it for a minute, and said, "my first call would be to Barry Asimove in San Diego. His firm and mine have worked together on some things. He's incredibly smart, he hires good people and pays them well, and I've always been able to trust him."

At my request, Newman put me on hold, got Asimove on the phone and arranged a meeting for me the next morning at 10am—again without my name being mentioned.

On my way back to the hotel, I called Dan Camorin again. I asked him to rent a car with Hertz, on his credit card, and arrange that "his friend Elliot" would come to pick up the car at the airport the next morning. That way I could have a car without it being traceable to me.

Back at the Beverly Wilshire, I had a quick dinner, went upstairs and had my usual nightly call with Gina, and went to bed. The next morning, after a room-service breakfast, I dressed in some slightly bedraggled-looking sweats, sunglasses, and a San Francisco Giants baseball cap and left the hotel by the side entrance before grabbing a cab down to the Hertz office at LAX. By 9:45 I was in San Diego, parking in the lot next to Asimove's office.

Barry Asimove was a short, fat man in his early 40s. He had a bad combover, and his brown suit didn't fit him very well. In short, he was a thoroughly unimpressive figure. But within ten minutes I realized that he was one of the smartest people I'd met in a long time.

I knew I had to trust someone, and I decided it would be Asimove. I got right to the point.

"Mr. Asimove, I need a security firm who can handle a substantial job for me. It's out of this area, it will call for a lot of high-tech computer work, and it's extremely confidential. I'm prepared to pay very well for what I need, in addition to covering all of your people's expenses. The job might take the next few weeks, and I wouldn't be surprised if your fee ran into seven figures."

He looked at me steadily for a few moments. "What made you decide to come to us, and why do you think we're up to the job?"

"Someone recommended me to Alan Newman, and Newman spoke highly of you."

"Why not just use Newman? He's very good."

"Because I'm trying to cover my tracks. When we get into this, you'll see why I have good reason to be wary. Newman called you for me, but he never learned my name, so it would be pretty hard for anyone to trace me to you. Not impossible, but difficult."

We talked a bit more about preliminaries, and then Asimove said, "let's hear the story. If it sounds like something we can handle, we're in."

I told him all of it: who I was, what Apex did and what it was worth, and the recent attempt on my life. I told him that I suspected Gina and Denham of being involved, and why. And I repeated Dan Camorin's story about Gina's behavior and her possible affair with Josh Daniels, though I never mentioned Camorin's name.

When I was done, Asimove asked me several probing questions—he clearly knew his business. Then he sat back in his chair.

"I know Jeff Denham, at least by reputation. He's supposed to be very sharp—a lot of the Silicon Valley places swear by his work. So if he IS doing something shady, we'll have to be very delicate in how we go after him."

We talked some more, and finally Asimove said, "here's what I recommend. You essentially need two things: somebody has to go over your books and internal documents and memos very carefully, and somebody else has to look into Denham, your wife, and the other top people at Apex. David Carlyss is my best computer guy—I'll put him on the first job. He's got 2-3 financial people who work for him; they can analyze what they find. And I'll get Vera Anderson to put together a surveillance team for the second part of it."

Within 30 minutes, the four of us were sitting in a conference room, eating take-out sandwiches and going over my situation. Asimove mostly stayed out of it, letting Carlyss and Anderson ask the questions. But every now and then he put in his own two cents, and I never failed to be impressed with his savvy. I couldn't help feeling I was in good hands.

By mid-afternoon I was driving back to Los Angeles. To my relief, Asimove had understood why I couldn't immediately give him a large retainer, and he was willing to trust me on the basis of a promissory note prepared by the notary in his office.

Carlyss was going to do all his digging around in Apex via my computer, which was networked to the other important computers at the firm. His method was simplicity itself: he had me memorize the URL of a web site at Asimove's firm. Whenever I was alone in my office for two hours or more, I'd log on to that web address and download and install a piece of software from the site onto my computer. The software would enable Carlyss and his team to upload and copy whatever files they wanted to look at from my computer and those it was networked to. 

Whenever I had to leave the office I would close the connection, log off the web site, delete the software from the computer, and cover my tracks in the usual fashion by deleting the browser history and so on. It was not an utterly untraceable method—but only an expert who was already suspicious and carefully searching my computer would be able to see what had been going on.

Carlyss estimated that within 20 hours of searching through the network he'd be able to find and download everything he needed to see whether something was amiss within Apex.

Anderson's part of the job would include the usual surveillance on Gina and the top people at Apex. We'd agreed not to put surveillance on Denham, since as a security guy he would be much more likely to notice the attention no matter how good Asimove's people were. But she'd have people digging into phone and credit-card records, making sure it was done at a safe remove so that Denham would not be aware of it.

I stressed to them at Denham was no fool. "Tailing him or trying to bug his phone, or his home or office, would be a really bad idea. I'm willing to bet he'd be onto us within a day or so."

"Understood," Vera replied. "But I'd like to put audio and video into your house, along with a bug in Gina's purse and a tap on her cell phone."

We worked out that I'd tip them off when the house would be empty—she promised that her team could do its work in no more than three hours. The first thing they would do is sweep the house to make sure that Denham hadn't already put surveillance equipment in himself.

As for Gina's purse and phone, I gave them the address of her tennis club. Vera assured me it would be no problem to pick the lock of her locker, quickly check her bag and phone for bugs, and plant bugs of her own.

My part of the business was simple: to go home and pretend everything was fine. Go on with my normal life at work and at home, while watching my back. Asimove was sure that whoever tried to kill me would wait a bit before considering another attempt. "At the very least they'll have to make damn sure your Lexus is destroyed, so there's no evidence of the first try. And within a few days we should have enough to know what's going on.

"So don't do anything stupid, Alex—no hiking in forests or venturing to unfamiliar places. You might even make an effort not to drive alone. Find excuses to have Gina take you in to work, that sort of thing. But I don't think you'll have anything to worry about right away."

I smiled ironically at him. "Easy enough for you to say, Barry! But I'll be as careful as I can."

Before I left them we worked out a system of communication. All of it would be one-way: from me to Asimove. I'd keep using throw-away cell phones. When I was free to call, I'd dial and ask for "Larry Asimove". The receptionist would be instructed to correct my "mistake", and then put my call through directly to Barry. We agreed I'd try to call at least every other day.

Back at the Beverly Wilshire, I had some dinner, then called Gina to let her know I'd be home a day early. She was lively over the phone, teasing me about how lonely and cold she'd been in our big bed, and I promised to warm her up Thursday night. As I got off the phone I realized how totally crazy it seemed that my wife was conspiring to have me killed.

Before all this started I would have said I had no illusions about Gina. She was beautiful and sexy, adventurous and high-spirited; but she was also self-absorbed and a little bit cold. She was no bleeding-heart who took in stray cats! Her number one interest was Gina, and you didn't have to know her long to be aware of that fact.

Yet I would have said she loved me, in her way. She was not a warm, nurturing kind of wife; but then I wasn't an especially touchy-feely kind of husband. We didn't snuggle by the fire much, or take leisurely walks along beautiful beaches (except on the occasional Caribbean vacation, between making love in the afternoon and heading to dinner and the casino in the evening). We were both ambitious, driven people.

And even though Gina didn't work any more, she energetically pursued the things that interested her: tennis, shopping, time spent with her friends, and sex with me. I would have said that, in her way, Gina loved me. In fact, I would have said that Gina loved me as much as she could love anyone, given her basic nature. And given my own basic nature, that was good enough for me. I liked our life together; I was content.

But, needless to say, all those assumptions were now up for grabs. While it was shocking to think that she might be trying to kill me, the preliminary evidence certainly pointed that way. It was not hard to come up with a motive—it's the money, stupid! And if what Dan Camorin told me was true, she may have been involved with at least two of my associates: Josh Daniels at Apex, and my friend Jeff Denham.

In other words, if all my worst suspicions turned out to be accurate, she was a monster—a cold-blooded, heartless, evil bitch. If she'd really slept with Daniels, tried to seduce Dan Camorin, and was involved in some way with Denham, it strongly suggested that she was the motivating force behind whatever was going on.

Most of the way back to San Jose on the plane I thought about how it all might play out. I was convinced I could be a good enough actor to deceive Gina for the time being. If she'd really been deceiving me, it would be a challenge to see if I could do as well! And if by some miracle it turned out my suspicions were wrong, I'd be more than happy to open my heart again to her love.

But if she HAD been behind the attempt on my life....let's just say I already had some ideas for how I wanted the endgame to go, and a part of me was looking forward to it.

****************

My reunion with Gina on Thursday night was great, in a couple of ways. First of all the sex was terrific. It almost always is when we've been apart; whether it's love for me or pure horniness on Gina's part I don't know, but either way I have no complaints.

She had ordered in some Chinese food because she knows I like it, but she also met me wearing a short robe with nothing on underneath (as I quickly discovered), and I decided I'd rather have some bedroom time before we ate. We had a quick, energetic romp that left us both panting, and then we showered together and headed back downstairs to have some dinner.

The second reason Thursday pleased me is that there was nothing special about it. As you can imagine I was observing Gina very carefully, to see any sign of guilt or worry or watchfulness—and there was nothing at all. She was her usual self, with the usual stories of beating Sharon Combs 6-4 in the third set, how she found just the shoes she wanted but unfortunately in the wrong color, and so on. I was convinced that she had no idea of my suspicions.

When I got to the office on Friday, Jeff Denham had already called to say he was on his way over—no surprise there. Presumably he wanted to report on the audit I'd requested. Moreover, though, I was sure he'd probe to find out why I'd asked for it; he would want to make sure that I didn't have any suspicions about what he was up to.

Jeff came in with a smile on his face, shook my hand and said, "hey man—how was Los Angeles?"

I instantly wondered how he knew about my impromptu trip; had he been talking to Gina? But I wasn't going to make him wary by asking, and in any case he might have called the office and heard about it from Meredith.

"Hey Dowdle," I replied with a matching smile. "LA was fine—Dan Camorin thought he might have a lead for me on a new account, but I'm not sure it's going to pan out. It was nice to see him, though. Are you here to tell me about what your guys found out?"

He settled into a chair across from my desk. "Yeah—it was routine. They actually turned up a couple of accounting errors–just small stuff, I passed them on to Pogrebin downstairs.

"But there was no sign of anything suspicious, no siphoning off of funds or new payees or any evidence of tampering from the outside. What made you ask me to do the audit, Alex?"

I watched Denham, and he seemed to be going out of his way to make his question sound as casual as possible. It was a good thing I'd anticipated it, and was ready with my lie.

"I was pretty sure it was nothing. But I heard from Bert Williamson at 2K2 on Monday. One of his VPs was at a meeting in New York, and a guy there talked about hearing that one of the Silicon valley software firms was under attack. It was all very vague, something about false subsidiaries to which money was being sent.

"It sounded like bullshit, but it had been a while since I asked you to sweep our accounts so I thought 'what the hell'. Sorry I put your guys through it for nothing, but it's always better to know."

He grinned at me, and I thought I saw him relax just a fraction. "No problem, man—that's what you keep us on retainer for."

We chatted for a few more minutes about nothing much, and as soon as he was gone I logged onto Carlyss's URL, downloaded and installed his software, and let his guys begin checking Apex's finances and communications. I wanted to give them as much time as possible, so I asked Meredith to order in lunch, telling her I'd eat at my desk today.

She also brought me the San Jose Mercury News, which I hadn't had time to read that morning, and as I ate my lunch I was brought up short by a story on the Metro page. "Fire at Auto Body Shop destroys Twelve Cars". I read the story carefully.

A fire had broken out in the back parking lot at Marshall Motors. Police didn't know yet what started it, but it totally consumed a dozen cars and damaged another six or eight. I wasn't all that shocked—I had guessed someone would steal my Lexus, but burning it to a crisp worked just as well, perhaps even better because it concealed which car was the target.

I got Dominic on the phone, reminding myself to be very careful what I said—Barry and I both figured that Dowdle had probably bugged my office. "Hey Dominic, I just saw the story in the Mercury News. First of all, is everyone okay?"

"Yeah, Alex, thanks. It was after 10 last night, and nobody was around. But if you're calling to find out about your Lexus, I'm afraid I've got bad news. It's a total loss."

"That's all right, Dominic—that's what insurance is for. Okay if I stop in for a few minutes after work today?"

We agreed he'd hang around until I could get there at 6pm, and we got off the phone.

I was doubtful that the surveillance tapes at Marshall Motors would have caught anything suspicious, but I intended to have Asimove's people check them to make sure. Thank God Dominic had written up a report about the brake line, and taken some pictures.


****************

Whoever had lit up my car knew his business. Dominic showed me around the lot, now that the police and the arson squad had packed up and left.

"They think it's suspicious," he said, "but they doubt they're going to be able to prove it. It looks like this old Ford truck parked next to your Lexus"—he pointed to a twisted, blackened hunk of metal—"had a gasoline leak, and somehow a spark ignited it. The explosion set all these other cars on fire," he continued, waving his arm vaguely in the direction of the destruction.

We were standing out in the lot, unlikely to be near a bug, so I asked him quietly, "are there surveillance tapes from last night?"

"Yeah, from two different cameras, and the police took them. But I thought you might want to see them, so I made a copy of them for you. They're in my office at the back of the drawer where we keep the coffee filters."

"Bless you, Dom! Now I'm going to ask you one more favor—a big one."

I asked Dominic to wait until Monday, then FedEx the surveillance tapes and his initial report on the car, with the photos, to Barry Asimove's office. I told him the address and made him memorize it, repeating it back to me several times.

I also left my rented clunker with Dominic, thinking that I'd use taxis for a few days. If I picked them up in different places, acting spontaneously, it was very unlikely that any of them would be a trap.

As I walked over to the nearest taxi-stand I put in a quick call to "Larry", and was on the phone with Barry Asimove within two minutes. Nothing much was going on. Carlyss had gotten a lot of stuff off my computer but would need several more hours to complete his downloading—I promised to try to get into the office over the weekend. Vera Anderson's team had swept my house for bugs, found none, and installed their own. They'd also cracked Gina's computer password and copied her files, though they hadn't read them yet, and they were all set to tackle Gina's purse the next time she played tennis.

I told him about the fire at Marshall Motors, and that he would be receiving the tapes and report within a few days. We agreed I'd call back early the next week.

****************

The next two days were so normal, it was almost weird. Gina and I did all our usual weekend things. Saturday we slept in, made love in the morning, then Gina cooked bacon and eggs (breakfast was the only meal she enjoyed cooking, so we usually ate dinners out, or had Carmelita cook for us). We clowned around at the table, feeding each other and giggling. (Also a good way for me to be sure she hadn't poisoned the food!)

In the afternoon we went over to our club, where I played golf with my regular foursome and Gina hung out with her friends at the pool. She had on a typically revealing bikini, and with her bombshell figure she got more attention than all the other women there—which was fine with Gina!

We stayed at the club for dinner on the terrace with our friends Sam and Ashley, and then headed home where we made love again. I wanted it my favorite way, from behind. I knew Gina didn't particularly like it that way, but after I ate her to a couple of intense orgasms she was happy enough to oblige me.

I arranged her comfortably on some pillows, so she didn't have to hold herself up on her knees. Then I smoothly slid in behind her, going deeper with each of my first few strokes until I was buried to the hilt. She relaxed and let me take her, sighing gently but otherwise being more passive than usual.




The Monster



But that was fine with me! I took my time, savoring the feeling of her tight pussy clasping me, enjoying my hands on her hips, her ass, sliding them around to hold her lovely breasts. She is so damn beautiful, and I loved just looking at her while we fucked. It was relaxed and delicious, and I probably fucked her for twenty minutes before I let the sensations bring on my orgasm. I sped up for a couple of intense minutes, then jetted my semen into her. We were both asleep within another five minutes.

On Sunday we went our separate ways. I told Gina I needed to spend part of the day at the office, not an unusual occurrence. I asked her to drop me off, and then she headed to the club for some tennis. I used my throw-away cell to let Barry know, and he promised to have Vera get her operative into the locker room while Gina was playing.

I logged onto the web site, set up the software and let Carlyss do his stuff. It gave me plenty of time to think--in particular to wonder why I wasn't angrier. After all, my wife and my best friend seemed to be plotting to kill me! And Gina had apparently been fucking around on me, at least with Josh Daniels if not with others. So why wasn't I bursting with rage?

All I came up with was, first, that I didn't yet know for sure; and second, that revenge was a dish best served cold. (Out of pure curiosity I looked it up on-line: it turns out the phrase comes from some guy I'd never heard of, Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderlos de LaClos, back in the 18th century.) Somehow I had been able to put my anger and feelings of betrayal in a little box, off to one corner of my mind. I wouldn't have any trouble getting even—or spend even a minute feeling sorry for Gina or Dowdle—but until the proof was in front of me I wasn't going to let myself get crazy. 

At around 5:30 Gina picked me up, fresh from her tennis game, a swim, and a shower, and we picked up some Indian food and had a quiet dinner at home. Neither of us seemed to want to make love, so we watched a couple of episodes of "The Sopranos" that we'd Tivoed and hadn't seen yet—then we went to sleep. As ordinary a weekend as we'd ever had.

****************

Nothing out of the ordinary happened on Monday, either. I pretended to work in my office, while setting up the software so David Carlyss could finish his downloads. But when I called Barry on Tuesday afternoon, while sitting in a back booth at a bar downtown, I found that his people had made a lot of progress.

"Several things to tell you, Alex. Starting with your car: it was arson, as we knew it would be. Done by people who knew what they were doing. Two guys, dressed in black with ski-masks, so we'll never identify them. They made a tiny hole in the Ford's gas tank, then splashed around some more gasoline they'd brought with them, making sure to get lots of it under your Lexus. Then they dropped a match and got the hell out of there."

"What about Dominic's photos and paperwork? Will that be incriminating?"

"I think it would convince the police that someone tried to kill you, absolutely—but it's hard to see how they can link it to Denham or your wife without some further evidence."

I thought for a moment. "Okay—thanks. What else has turned up?"

"David is finished with your computer, and his financial guys think they're onto something. They'll need another day or two to be sure. It looks as though somebody was skimming some money for about eight months, starting a little over a year ago, via some sort of dummy subsidiary. Maybe $2 million got stolen, no more than that. Then the thing was quietly shut down. David is pretty sure he'll be able to trace it back to a particular computer in your office, if you give him a bit more time."

"Any chance of recovering the money?"

"It's impossible to say for sure, but not likely. The best chance will be to find out who did it, take him to the cops, and demand that it be repaid. If whoever took it has already spent it, it's probably gone forever."

I didn't like the sound of this; but I knew that losing $2 million wouldn't break me, nor the company. It was the principle of the thing, and it pissed me off a lot. Still, compared to being murdered, losing the money clearly was a lot less serious.

"And is there any news about Gina? Did Vera's people get the bugs, and get into her computer files?"

He cleared his throat. "It looks bad, Alex. I won't shit you—it appears that she was probably involved with two of the three guys at Apex whose names you gave us: Josh Daniels and Eddie Kreitler. And she made a call on Sunday to Denham from her cell phone that makes it pretty clear she's sleeping with him."

"Jesus," I said. I realized I wasn't all that shocked—but it still felt like a blow to the head to have my suspicions so amply confirmed, all at once.

Barry's voice pulled me away from my dark thoughts. "Listen, give us a couple more days to pull this all together. Vera's people are monitoring Gina's cell phone, the bug in her purse, and the bugs in your house. Plus they're still working on her phone records and credit cards. It turns out she had two cards in her maiden name, and the monthly bills get mailed to a post-office box—did you know anything about that?"

"Hell no," I answered, still feeling a little stunned.

"Alex, I know this really sucks. Do you think you can hang in there a little longer, and keep your cool while we wrap this up?"

"I know I have to, Barry, so I guess I will. Do you think they'll make another run at me?"

There was a brief pause; then he said, "they might. But they'll be very very careful, with the news about your car still so fresh. They won't want anyone to put 2 and 2 together. So if you take reasonable precautions—stay out of dark lonely places and things like that—you should be fine. Do you want me to put a couple of people on you?"

"No—there's too much chance that Denham's guys would pick that up. No, I'll just have to take care of myself. I'll call you on Thursday."

"I'm sorry, Alex," he said, in a surprisingly gentle voice.

"Yeah, me too," I replied, and hung up.

*****************

Wednesday may have been the least fun day of my adult life. I knew that my marriage was over. I knew that my best friend, a guy I'd known since junior high school, someone I trusted more than anyone else, had been banging my wife. And I knew that one or the other of them—or both!—was looking to kill me.

That's what I was carrying around inside me, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it—yet—or anyone I trusted to tell.

So I wandered around the office aimlessly, pretending to work, chatting from time to time with Meredith, while my mind chewed on the problem of how I was going to avenge myself. The details obviously depended on exactly what Barry and his team could find out, but the broad outlines of what I wanted to do were already clear in my mind. 

And as my anger started to grow, the sense of outrage and betrayal, the cold fury, I found that I was very much looking forward to what was about to happen.

*****************

On Thursday I waited until late afternoon to call Asimove, wanting to give his people as much time as possible. At 4pm I went to my usual place for a haircut, then instead of heading back to the office I strolled down the street into a diner, settled at a table in the back with a cup of coffee, and made the call.

Barry and I were on the phone for nearly an hour. I asked a lot of questions, made sure I understood everything he was telling me, and discussed various options with him. When we were finally done, he wished me luck and we said our goodbyes. I had what I needed, and I would take it from here.

That evening, like the previous few, I earned an Academy Award at home, treating Gina with the same affection and exhibiting the same sexual desire as I usually did. I won't claim I'm a better liar or actor than she is, but I think I was just as good! We dined on a roast chicken that Carmelita had prepared, watched a movie on TV, and fucked before we went to bed.

It crossed my mind that this would surely be the last time I ever had sex with Gina—probably the last time I'd ever touch her. But I hadn't the slightest desire to "make it special". Now that I knew what she was, the physical attraction I still had for her was mixed with such loathing and repulsion that it was a little hard to get excited, at least at first.

But, not to my surprise, Gina's gorgeous body and her talented mouth solved that problem without difficulty, and we did the energetic, sweaty things we usually did. Then we said good night and fell asleep. The end of my marriage: not with a whimper, but a bang....

*****************

I left early on Friday, not wanting to speak to Gina again, and had a quick breakfast on the way to the office. I took Gina's car, a BMW convertible. I was pretty sure her car wouldn't have been tampered with, and I wanted to make it to work alive today. When she discovered her car was gone she'd undoubtedly be annoyed—but that was going to be the least of her worries by the time today was over.

When Meredith came in around 9:00 I called her into my office, said good morning, and handed her a list I'd written out.

"I'm going to need to change my schedule around today," I said. "Would you take care of setting all of this up for me, please?"

She scanned my list, and I saw her eyes grow wide. She looked up at me in surprise, clearly waiting for an explanation, but when I remained silent she just nodded her head and said, "okay, boss, I'll take care of it." I smiled at her and she left the office.

My morning I had left pretty wide-open, with the exception of a 10:00 meeting with Nancy Leggett. She was one of the principals of Leggett & Hyne, the PR firm that had worked for Apex for about six years, and she'd become a good friend. Nancy was an attractive, businesslike woman of about my age. She was very sharp and had a great sense of humor; in fact she was one of the few women I could imagine dating, if I hadn't been married to Gina.

We spoke in my office for nearly an hour, in quiet voices, with my radio turned up quite loud in case anyone might have been eavesdropping. All they would have heard was a Beethoven symphony and some Strauss waltzes.

At my request Meredith had ordered me in a sandwich and a soda, which I ate at my desk while reading the paper. The real fun was going to begin this afternoon, around 1:00.

Meredith buzzed to say that Jeff Denham was calling—he'd like to see me right away.

I smiled to myself and said, "tell him I can't see him or talk to him right now, Meredith. He can meet with me at 4, just the way I asked you to set it up."

Did this mean that Denham had a bug in my office? If he did, an hour of loud music while I met with Nancy Leggett would surely have put him on edge. But something else might have tipped him off—perhaps he'd bugged Meredith's phone or her office, and heard her making the arrangements for today that I'd asked her to take care of.

In either case, I knew he was going batshit, and the thought pleased me greatly. Just wait, you fucker—it's going to get a lot worse!

*****************

At a few minutes before 1:00 I strolled into the conference room and found it set up just as I requested. The big conference table was bare except for a company laptop at one end, which was open and running. At the far end of the room was a video camera on a tripod, with one of our tech people standing behind it ready to do the filming.

"Hi," I said, "it's Arthur, isn't it?"

He smiled broadly at being remembered. "Yes, Mr. Macmillan, Arthur Wendtner. All set up and ready to go. Would you like me to stay and run it, or shall I just show you how it works?"

"Just show me please, Arthur. I want it to run all afternoon, just filming the meetings I'm going to have in here."

He set it up to cover the part of the room I and my "guests" would be sitting in, and we did a quick 30-second test. It worked fine.

"The film cartridge holds 6 hours, so you should be all set, Mr. Macmillan."

I thanked Arthur and he left. I fiddled with the laptop for a minute, then clicked it into screensaver mode and sat back in my chair. Not more than two minutes later, Josh Daniels knocked on the door and came in tentatively. At last it was beginning!

"Josh, come in and sit down please," I said with an affable smile. "You don't mind if we record the meeting, do you?"

He looked worried and confused. "Alex, I'm...what is this about?"

"We'll get to that in a minute. You understood what I asked Meredith to tell you? This meeting is absolutely confidential—you agree not to speak about any aspect of it with anyone at Apex, now or in the future."

He shrugged, still looking uncomfortable. "Yes, of course Alex, you're the boss."

"And the filming is okay?"

"I guess so. But why all the..."

I interrupted him. "Just hang on a sec, Josh, it will all make sense in a few minutes."

I sat back in my chair, looking at him with a bland expression on my face, watching his discomfiture. Then finally I spoke.

"Josh, I know all about you and my wife."

He started visibly, trying in vain to appear calm. He couldn't keep his eyes on mine, as they bored steadily at him; they kept slipping away from my face.

"Alex, uh, I don't know...what...what you're talking about."

"No need to pretend, Josh—I've got the pictures right here." I spoke this lie with complete assurance, patting a thick manila folder sitting next to me on the table.

"But now I'd like to hear all about it from you, please. You are in some pretty deep shit, and if you aren't completely honest with me it's only going to get deeper."

I've been in some pretty hard-nosed negotiations during my business career, but I've never seen a man look more miserable than Josh did at that moment. And I savored every instant of his misery, as I waited for him to try to squirm out of what he'd been caught at.

After a minute he said, "Alex, I'm...can we turn the camera off?"

"No we can't. Just go ahead, Josh, I'm waiting. When did it start, and how? And how were you able to justify fucking the boss's wife for months behind his back?"

He kept his eyes on the table. "Christ, Alex. It...started about four years ago, and went on for about three months. I guess you know all that.

"Gina seduced me. That's what it was, pure and simple. Linda and I had known you and her for years, and she'd always been a little flirtatious. God, who wouldn't be, with that body?"

He stopped suddenly, cringing a little at the thought of how that sounded. I just waited, and finally he went on.

"Anyway, she flirted heavily with me one year at the Christmas party, the one we had at that old ballroom. It was pretty obvious she was coming on to me, but I couldn't really believe she meant it. Then two weeks later she called me one day while you were in Chicago and asked me to come out to the house.

"When I got there she had nothing on but a long nightie, completely see-through. I couldn't believe it! And I tried to leave, I swear to God, but she pulled me in, locked the door, and just stood against it, gazing at me with a smile on her face.

"Then she said something crazy like 'I've wanted you for a long time, Josh—and now I'm going to have you.'

"I'm sorry, Alex...truly I am. I feel like the world's worst asshole right now. But I was 38 years old, and never in my life had I ever even kissed a woman as amazing as Gina. I knew it was wrong, but I let it happen. A team of guys with flamethrowers couldn't have gotten me out of there.

"She took me by the hand and led me to the bedroom, and she...we...had sex for two hours. It was unbelievable, like nothing that had ever happened to me in my life. After that I was pretty much her puppet. All she had to do was call, and I was there."

Josh sat with his head in his hands, looking at the floor, totally defeated.

"How long did it go on, and what ended it?"

"She did. Suddenly one day she said she'd had enough—she wasn't even particularly nice about it, either. I'm pretty sure it was because I wasn't willing to do what she wanted."

"And what was that?" I asked.

He looked up at me for the first time since beginning his confession—now he was able to face me.

"She wanted me to set up some phony accounts to siphon money out of Apex. It was about money, Alex, nothing more. She said you had all these millions, and she wanted a larger piece for herself. She asked me a lot of questions...in bed, I mean, after we...afterwards. About how our accounting systems worked, whether one could set up fake accounts in some way, how dangerous it would be, and so on.

"At first I thought it was just a joke, but she brought it up over and over. Finally I just said I wouldn't do it."

He straightened in his chair. "I won't lie to you, Alex—not anymore. I didn't refuse out of morality, or loyalty to you or Apex. By that time I would have done anything to keep...being with Gina. But I didn't see any way to do what she wanted without running a substantial risk of being caught, and I wasn't willing to go to jail—not even for her.

"So when Gina realized that I really wouldn't do it, she just dropped me. And it was a good thing, too, because Linda was sure I was having an affair. But it ended before she could ever get proof. I denied it over and over, just lied and lied and lied, swore it was nothing more than a lot of extra projects at work.

"I don't think she ever really believed me, but she sort of let it die down. And I did everything I could to make it up to her, and thank God we're still together."

We sat for several minutes in silence. Much of what Josh had said was new to me. Barry's people had been able to find evidence of the affair—lots of phone calls between Josh and Gina, as well as some steamy email messages from her to him—and they pinpointed the dates. But Josh's story about Gina being the instigator was new information, as well as her hopes of stealing money from the company.

I stood up. "Okay Josh, we're done for today. Go home for the weekend—don't go back to your office, and don't say a word about this conversation to anyone, whether inside or outside the company. Is that completely clear?"

I spoke in a neutral, cold tone. 

"Yes, Alex." He sounded submissive, and frightened. "Am I, that is, do I...?"

"We'll talk on Monday, Josh. Until then, just go home to Linda and the kids."

*****************

My conversation with Eddie Kreitler at 1:30 went much the same way. Eddie had risen through the ranks at Apex; he managed international sales and marketing, then became the number two operating officer (under me, of course).

Gina had targeted him a few months after she broke it off with Josh, judging from the phone and email records, and it went on for more than six months. He was single, so the two of them didn't have to be quite as careful. And the way Eddie told it, Gina had raised the prospect of stealing from the company a bit at a time, probably not wanting to spook him.

He said it began as a joke between them, and only very gradually turned into something serious she wanted him to do. He said he went as far as to draw up some possible ways to do it—but he never found one that wouldn't expose him to too much risk.

"Frankly, Alex, it was because the company is well-run; the oversight of our financials is tight, and I didn't see how I could pull it off. And when I finally confessed that to Gina, poof! She was done with me."

My conversation with Bernard Eisenhart, Apex's Treasurer, took a very different turn. When I said, "Bernie, I know all about you and my wife," he looked at me blankly, his expression startled but not in the least upset.

"What do you mean, Alex?"

"Bernie, I've got the photos right here," as I patted the manila folder. "There's not much point in denying it."




The Monster



"Photos?!" He sounded a little angry. "I don't know what you've got there, Alex, but if they're photos of what I think they are it's Gina you need to be talking to, not me! I turned my back and walked the hell out of there!"

I believed him, too. His annoyance was so obvious, and Barry had told me that they'd turned up nothing between him and Gina beyond a single phone call from her to him.

"Okay, Bernie, I believe you. Could you tell me about it, please?"

He was still pissed. "She invited me over, Alex! Gave me some crap about a surprise party, wanted my ideas on what you liked. Not that that made much sense to me.

"And when I got there, she—well, you've seen the photos! Dressed in a transparent nightie that didn't go past her hips! She pulled me inside, gave me a kiss and tried to stick her tongue in my mouth. I'm sure that's there in the pictures!"

"What happened next?"

"I told her I couldn't do anything with her, she was married to my boss—and I unlocked the door and walked back out to my car. I just sat there, waiting for my hard-on to go down, and then I drove away!

"I didn't figure there was much point in telling you, Alex. Nothing happened, and frankly I was afraid you'd blame me rather than Gina. So I just let it alone. And now, here you are accusing me of..."

His voice was rising in anger, and I cut him off. "Easy, Bernie, easy. Let me explain. I've just found out Gina was cheating on me with at least two other people at the company, and I'm simply trying to get to the bottom of it. I believe you—I believe nothing happened between you two."

His anger disappeared, replaced by surprise. "Two other people? Jesus!"

He sat back. "I actually remember hearing a rumor about her and Josh...a few years ago. I didn't believe it, of course, figured that was the kind of thing people were bound to say, given how attractive she is. But then, after she made that crazy pass at me, I kind of wondered. Still, it wasn't any of my business."

We spoke for another couple of minutes. I assured him of my trust in him, mollified him about having accused him, and reminded him to keep our conversation totally confidential. Then he was gone.

*****************

As I sat back, thinking of what I had learned, Meredith came into the conference room.

"Alex, Jeff Denham is outside and he's practically jumping out of his skin. I know you asked me to set up his meeting for 4:00, but he's about to pee his pants. Says he has to see you this minute, it's life-and-death, and so on. If it weren't for the security guards you had me post outside the room he would have barged in here already. What do you want me to do with him?"

I smiled at her. "Just give me five minutes, then you can let him come in."

I wanted the five minutes just to savor what was about to happen. It's not every day that you discover your best friend wants you dead. And it's certainly not every day that you have a chance to get even....

When Jeff Denham entered the conference room he was practically trembling. He looked like a man who'd been hooked up to an IV full of espresso, though he was trying to hide it.

"Hey Alex, what's going on?" It was said with elaborate casualness, but his voice was several tones higher than usual.

"Hi Dowdle, thanks for coming in. You want coffee or something?'

He shook his head. "What's with the video camera?"

I smiled and said, "I just thought I might want a record of the meetings I'm having today. You don't mind, do you?"

He looked very uneasy, but all he said was, "not at all, of course not. But what's the big mystery, anyway? Meredith wouldn't tell me a thing, and when I passed Bernie Eisenhart coming out of the elevator he just gave me a kind of a funny nod and kept on walking."

I pulled the laptop around so it was facing him, and said, "take a look".

When he touched the built-in mouse the screen saver disappeared, revealing a freeze-frame from a video taken in my bedroom earlier that week. It showed Gina, naked, lying on her back, legs spread wide—and a naked Jeff with his head buried between her legs and his hands wrapped around her thighs, eating her out. She had her head thrown back in apparent ecstasy.

After a split-second Denham looked up at me, utter shock on his face. I waited until he said, "uh, Alex, I..." and then I hit him with my right fist just beneath his right eye, absolutely as hard as I could. He went flying over backward, smacking his head on the carpet as he hit the floor, the rolling chair gliding smoothly away from the table.

I stood over him, pulling off the thick winter glove I'd put on my hand. It still hurt like hell, but at least I didn't think I'd broken a knuckle.

I sat for a little while, smiling grimly and massaging my sore hand, waiting for Denham to come to. It took several minutes before he opened his eyes and moaned, feeling his face with his hand. When his head cleared a little more he looked around for me, then quickly scuttled away from me to sit against the wall, looking both sheepish and wary.

"Want more, you slimy prick? I could still hit you with my other hand." I spoke casually, almost flippantly.

"Jesus no, Alex!" I saw him look towards the door, as if gauging whether he could make a break for it or whether I'd catch him before he got there.

"Forget it, Dowdle—those two guards are still outside. You're not leaving quite yet."

We sat a bit longer, and I watched him morosely contemplate his situation. No doubt he was hoping I didn't know quite everything, but he was about to be bitterly disappointed.

"All right, Dowdle, get up and sit back down at the table. Don't worry, I'm not going to hit you again. What's ahead for you will be much more painful than that."

Warily, he got up and sat in a chair a good ten feet away from me, never taking his eyes from my face.

"I'm not going to waste much more time on you, you piece of shit. My best friend since junior high! You're a fucking disgrace!"

He didn't bother to reply, and I went on.

"You've not only been screwing my wife and trying to steal my money, but you tried to kill me"—here he jerked his head suddenly, looking at me in shock and alarm—"and I'm going to see to it you get to make some new friends in prison.

"Gina has confessed it all to me," I went on, now lying through my teeth, "and I know the stealing and the murder plot were all your idea. It wasn't good enough just to cuckold me, huh, you cocksucker? You thought knocking me off in the bargain would just complete the picture?"

"For God's sake, Alex, it's not true!" He sounded absolutely desperate. "She's lying! I admit I...we...I had an affair with Gina. There's no point in denying it now. But stealing the money...and then killing you, that was all her idea! I tried over and over to talk her out of it!"

"And when that didn't work, you said 'what the hell' and arranged to have my car tampered with, is that it?"

He hung his head, not looking at me.

Within a few minutes he'd told me all of it. The affair had started much like those with Josh and Eddie. Gina had put on the full-court press, and Denham wasn't able to keep it in his pants. He swears he fought her off two or three times before he gave in, but then that doesn't make too much difference, does it? He never came to me about it, and he ended up fucking her.

When she'd been screwing him for about three months she started in about stealing some of my money. Unlike her previous co-conspirators, Denham was willing to go along. He invented a "subsidiary" and found a way to have legitimate payments logged into Accounts Receivable, then diverted to the invented company. Since he was the head of security (which included the financial division) he was able to keep anyone else from taking a close enough look to discover what he was up to. Within seven months or so he was able to skim about $1.8 million. All this was pretty much what Barry's people had already found out.

"But that wasn't enough for Gina, Alex." Now Denham was talking freely—never mind the camera, he was eager to get it off his chest. He wasn't such a complete asshole that he didn't feel guilty about what he'd done to me.

"She said you had so goddam much money, a million or two for her simply wasn't enough—it wasn't fair. So I closed the account and covered my tracks as thoroughly as I could. A month later she started talking about killing you.

" 'Then we could be together, Dowdle!'—that sort of thing. 'You could run the company, or let the other guys run it while you and I went off to spend some of that lovely money!" She wouldn't let up about it. Every time we...were together, she had some new idea about what we'd do 'afterwards', when you were dead and she inherited your money."

"And you believed her?"

He sighed heavily. "I was a fool, Alex. The sex was incredible—the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. And I convinced myself she loved me. I was certainly in love with her, or I thought I was.

"I held out for a long time, and then she started hinting around that if I wouldn't do this for her, maybe we 'weren't meant to be together'. After a few weeks of that, it began to seem like my only choice.

"Alex, Gina is a cold-blooded monster! Once she got the idea in her head she was like a terrier with a bone—she just wouldn't let go. So I...finally, I...made some calls and found a guy who knew how to do this kind of thing. He said it would be no sweat to tamper with your brake line, and if it were done right no one would suspect a thing."

He gazed at me, a tormented look on his face. "I know you'll never forgive me—how could you? But I still can't believe that I did it. It was like I was another person, like Gina programmed me and I carried out her instructions—like I was a little monsterette."

"Were you going to try again?" I already knew the answer, from seeing the video Asimove had sent me.

In a choking voice he said, "she wanted to. I insisted that we had to wait a few weeks, to make sure that no one got suspicious about the car. I was trying as hard as I could just to put her off; but eventually she would have made me try again. She wasn't going to give up."

He covered his face with his hands. Denham was broken, finished. He hadn't even tried to deny the truth.

I asked him about the stolen money, and without hesitation he gave me the numbers of the two off-shore accounts where he'd stashed it. "All but about $60 thousand—Gina's already spent that."

It was a little past 4:30. I handed Denham off to the guards, who would hold him until the police arrived. Then I sat back in the conference room to wait for Gina, who was due to arrive at 5:00.

With each successive revelation, the incredible and painful truth seemed to sink in a little deeper. My wife was not only fucking around on me and stealing my money—she had tried to have me killed! How does a normal person get his head around that? What did it mean that I had lived with this woman, for the most part very happily, for more than eight years without having the slightest idea of who and what she really was?

****************

Gina came sweeping into the conference room, about twenty minutes late as usual, looking glamorous and slightly irritated. 

"Baby, what on earth is all this about? Meredith practically commanded me to come meet you here, and she wouldn't tell me anything about what you wanted! Is something going on with the company? And why on EARTH did you leave me without a car this morning?"

I watched her very carefully, and I could see that the irritation was an act. Behind it Gina was worried. In all probability she and Denham had been burning up the phone lines today, trying to figure out what was going on.

"Honey, just sit down please, okay? This isn't going to be easy for me."

I sat quietly, as if doing battle with my emotions, and watched her struggle to stay calm. I was determined to enjoy every last fucking minute of this!

After a long pause, during which Gina's knee started to jiggle nervously, I spoke.

"Gina, I know you cheated on me. How could you do this to me? I thought you loved me!"

She tried to sit still, but her eyes widened and she stiffened a little. I watched as she composed her face into a look of sorrow and compassion. It was impressively quick—she must have expected this.

"Baby, I am SO sorry. I never meant to hurt you. It just...I guess...you were away so much, and I..." She broke off and began to weep. Convincingly, too; I might have been softened if I hadn't known the whole truth.

Still crying, she reached across the table and took my hand. "Alex, I...is there any way you can ever forgive me? I don't want to lose you!"

"I don't know, Gina. I just don't know." Then, after another pause, "I need you to tell me about it. When and how it started, and when it ended. And WHY? Above all, why? Why did you do this?"

"Oh baby, please don't make me talk about it. We can get past this, you'll see! I can make it up to you. I'll be the best, most perfect wife you could ever..."

"No Gina," I said, giving my voice a cracking sound. "If we're ever going to get past this, you need to be honest with me. Here and now.

"When did it start? How long did it go on?"

I had her by the short hairs, and I was reveling in it. She didn't know which of her lovers I knew about. I had deliberately spoken about her affair in the past tense, so she would think it might not be Denham but one of the others. Now she had to guess—and if she guessed wrong, she'd be admitting to an affair I (supposedly) didn't even know about!

Reluctantly, she began to talk. "Like I said, Alex, it was...you were away a lot, and I felt lonely. Abandoned. I know that's not fair, you were working so hard and being successful, building the company for both of us, but...

"But I let it get to me, I guess. And then he...I'd had a couple of drinks, and when he made a pass, I...just gave in."

I laughed to myself. Nice try, Gina! But you're not off the hook yet.

"When was this, Gina? I really need to know."

She suddenly rose from her seat, came around the table and tried to throw herself into my arms, tears on her face, crying, "Alex, I'm so sorry!" 

But I held her at arm's length, still looking into her eyes, and said, "when was it?"

I saw the split-second mental calculation as it appeared and then disappeared from her eyes. She sighed, sat down in the chair next to me, and said, "a little over four years ago."

She had placed her bet on Josh Daniels! I chuckled to myself. Nice try, Gina—too bad you don't know that there IS no right choice!

"And?"

She looked at me, her annoyance showing a little behind the mask of sorrow, but she realized she really didn't have much choice.

"And it went on for a couple of months. I don't know why, Alex—I just got a little crazy. I knew it was wrong, and finally I just told Josh I couldn't see him any more, it was destroying me. I was crying all the time, and..."

"Josh?!" I interrupted her with a yell. "You cheated on me with Josh too?!"

If you could have seen the look on her face at that moment!

Desperately, her eyes wide with fear, she said, "baby, I don't understand what..."

"Eddie Kreitler wasn't the only one?" I shouted at her. "You slept with TWO of my employees? What the fuck were you thinking of?"

She tried to break in, to slow me down, but I was on a roll.

"For God's sake, Gina, how can we ever make this right? How am I ever going to be able to trust you again? Jesus, everyone at Apex must have been laughing at me behind my back! The boss's wife does the underlings—just get in line, she'll get around to you soon enough! Who else did you fuck, the janitor?"

"No baby, I swear, it was just the two..."

"And how am I supposed to believe that?" I demanded. "For all I know you've been screwing everybody I've ever been in business with! Did you do Dan Camorin, before he left? And what about our friend Archie, or Debbie's husband Peter? Or Dowdle? How am I supposed to be sure you haven't been fucking all of them?"

Gina saw her opportunity and she leapt in. Her face got a solemn look, and she reached out and took both my hands in hers. In a quiet, serious voice she said, "Alex—as God is my witness, it was only those two. And it was years ago. I regretted it so much! I've been completely faithful to you since then—and I will be for the rest of my life."

There was silence in the room. I gazed at her, wearily, sadly, concealing the angry joy I felt at her impending destruction.

"All right, Gina," I said slowly. "Okay, you...you cheated on me with two of my employees, but then you stopped. You got your act together, and decided to go back to being my faithful wife. Is that right?"

"Yes, baby," she said, hope beginning to show in her eyes.

"Well, there's...just...I guess I just need to ask you one more thing," I said, pulling the laptop over in front of her. "Can you tell me what this is all about?"

I touched two keys. This time when the screensaver vanished the video leapt into motion. We saw Jeff's head bobbing between Gina's thighs, saw her arching her back in pleasure, and heard her harsh voice. "Oh, yes, yes...oh baby...oh Dowdle, do that! Yes, baby, do that!"

I have to give Gina some credit. She didn't jump back from the laptop as though it were a snake, she didn't try to run from the room, she didn't even cry out. Just a quick "oh!", choked off almost as soon as it began. Then, after a few seconds, she pushed the laptop closed and turned to face me.

Her face was nearly unrecognizable from a few moments earlier. Now it was a tight, angry mask, her eyes flashing, her mouth a tight-lipped sneer.

"Okay, Alex, you got me. Good for you! What do you want me to say? Yes, I was fucking Dowdle, and he did me a lot better than you ever could!"

"Is that so, Gina? Does that explain why you tried to have me killed?"

That one shook her. She froze, staring at me for a minute; and the best she could manage was, "what? I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Really?" I said mildly. I opened the computer, pressed a few buttons, and turned it around so that she could see it. The scene was our kitchen, with Gina and Denham sitting together at the table, both with robes on. Gina was speaking.

"I don't care, Dowdle. So we got unlucky and he didn't crash the car. You can try again!"

"Gina, you don't understand how risky this is! If someone starts looking into what happened, they..."

"Bullshit! You had the car burned up, right? Totally destroyed, along with a bunch of other ones! Who's going to suspect anything? We just need some other way to kill him. Can't you poison him, or have him shot and make it look like a robbery?"

I pressed a button and the computer fell silent. I smiled at Gina.

"Too bad for you I've got this video, hey baby? It's going to be pretty hard to stand up in court and deny you had anything to do with it."

I watched Gina's cold eyes as the wheels turned behind them. She was a rat, caught in a nasty trap, searching every corner for a way out. She no longer made any attempt at looking sorry, or even affectionate. When she finally spoke her voice was low and contemptuous.

"You'll never go to the police with this, Alex. It would make you a laughing-stock, and turn Apex into a joke. The head of a multi-billion dollar company, and his wife is screwing the employees! You'd be a worldwide fool!"

She sat back, looking satisfied and disdainful. I picked up the phone and asked Meredith to have Nancy Leggett come in. When she entered she sat across the table from Gina and me, regarding my wife as though she were a sack of dirty laundry.

"Nancy, my lovely wife Gina thinks that it would be bad for me and bad for business if I had her arrested for grand theft and attempted murder. Why don't you tell her what you told me this morning?"




The Monster



With a broad smile, Nancy said, "sure, Alex. This story—Gina and Denham and their sordid little plot—will be the biggest story on cable news for some time to come. It's got everything: money, adultery, attempted murder, an extremely attractive woman, a man's betrayal of his best friend, you name it. It will be bigger than Paris Hilton, bigger than the saga of Anna Nicole Smith.

"Gina will be the harlot of the month for a while, and Apex will get more publicity than it's had for the entire life of the company—more publicity than $500 million of advertising could buy, all for free. Alex will find himself on Larry King, on the Today show, you name it. He'll be the honest, hard-working businessman victimized by the unscrupulous slut and her puppet.

"By the time the trial is over and Gina and Denham are in jail, Apex will have been profiled in Business Week and The Wall Street Journal. Somebody will have given Alex an "Entrepreneur of the Year" award. The company will have maybe a hundred million dollars in new business, and Alex will have gotten ten thousand letters from women just dying to be the next Mrs. Macmillan. Some of them will send photos.

"This is a Godsend for Apex. Not much fun for your husband, Gina—at least right now—but you're about to make a rich, successful man even more rich and successful. As his PR representative I couldn't have dreamed of coming up with anything this good!"

Nancy winked at me, then stood and left the room. Gina sagged back in her chair, her eyes a little unfocused, her mouth drooping in a deep frown. For perhaps the first time in all the years I had known her, she looked utterly defeated.

I picked up the telephone. "Meredith, you can send in the police now."

************

The next fourteen months may or may not have made up for what came before—that's a tough call—but they provided their fair share of entertainment.

The police charged Gina and Denham with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, grand larceny, and six or seven other things. Apex's attorneys also immediately filed a civil suit demanding the return of the stolen money, which we knew the location of thanks to Denham's confession. And, of course, I immediately filed for divorce on the grounds of adultery.

Happily, because of the criminal and civil complaints, all Denham's accounts and all accounts of Gina's and mine that she had access to were frozen. By the time the two of them made bail, they didn't have the money to hire high-priced attorneys to defend them, and had to make do for a while with public defenders—quite a comedown!

I threw Gina out of the house and had no trouble getting a judge to place a restraining order on her—the video of her and Denham discussing a second try at murdering me was pretty persuasive. She got Susan, one of her tennis buddies, to put her up in Susan's guest house temporarily. Gina never made any attempt to contact me, not that I expected it or wanted it. She must have realized there wasn't a thing she could say that would make any difference.

On the Monday after Gina's "day of reckoning", I called Josh and Eddie in and fired each of them. Neither was terribly surprised. Eddie asked only that, in the event a prospective future employer called me for a reference, I'd be willing to say that his work for Apex was good. I had no problem agreeing to that.

Josh tried to make a deal with me: if I'd help him find a decent job, he'd be willing to testify against Gina at her trial. I laughed him out of my office. I reminded him that I already had his confession of the affair, and her attempt to get him to steal from the company, on tape. If he didn't agree to testify the prosecutors would simply issue him a subpoena.

I promoted Bernie Eisenhart to Josh's position as Chief Financial Officer, with every confidence he'll do a first-rate job. I've asked him to take on the job of interviewing for his own replacement as Treasurer and for Eddie's position.

Gina and Denham's trial began after about seven months, and it was a hoot. It lasted nearly three weeks. I went to court a few times, but felt no need to be there every day. Not surprisingly, they were in no position to deny what they'd done, and each lawyer's defense concentrated on making the other one look like the main bad guy.

Gina's big assets were her beauty and her ability to act—make that lie—on the witness stand. The men on the jury ate her up. The trouble, of course, is that there was video that clearly showed her pushing a reluctant Dowdle to make another attempt on my life, and even Gina couldn't overcome that.

They were both found guilty of about eight counts, including all the big ones. By the end of the trial all the publicity had enabled Gina to sign some deals for magazine and TV interviews, enough to pay for some expensive legal talent. The new lawyers have filed appeals and managed to delay sentencing so far, but Gina and Dowdle both appear to be looking at 10-15 years or so. All the money they stole has been returned to Apex, minus $72 thousand.

With Denham's security firm out of business, I needed somebody to take over that role for Apex. When I flew down to Los Angeles to settle my account with Barry Asimove—and to thank him for all he had done—he suggested that I hire David Carlyss.

"David's been looking to move up to the Bay area, and you've seen how good his work is. I don't think you'll regret offering him a contract, and with you as his main client he can build a business up there."

So I offered Carlyss the work, and it seems to be going very well so far.

While I was visiting Asimove's office he surprised me with one more bit of video I hadn't know about; there hadn't been time earlier to talk to me about it, and it wasn't germane to the threat from Gina and Denham.

"Come into the screening room for a minute, Alex—I think you'll get a kick out of this."

To my surprise and amusement, there in bed with Gina, his flabby, paunchy body bouncing up and down on top of her, was Charlie Pemberton, my attorney! He was nearly 60, and it didn't look like he was giving Gina much pleasure, though he was certainly enjoying the ride himself.

After they finished fucking—which didn't last all that long—they chatted in bed. It seems Gina had seduced him a couple of months earlier, and set him to work trying to find a way around our pre-nuptial agreement. Not surprisingly, since Charlie was an excellent lawyer and he'd drafted it himself, he wasn't having much success. But that didn't stop him from enjoying Gina's favors whenever she gave him the chance.

I particularly enjoyed burning Charlie's ass. I charged him, as publicly and loudly as I could, with unethical conduct, and the California Legal Ethics Board had no choice but to disbar him. I also sued him and took about $240,000 of his life savings, which I donated to charity. The whole thing gave me great pleasure.

As for me, and Apex, things have gone just as Nancy Leggett predicted. There was a firestorm of publicity, above all on the cable TV news stations and in the tabloid press. There I was on CNN, on the cover of Fortune magazine, on the front page of the National Enquirer, and just about everywhere in between.

Nancy had to hire three new staff people just to deal with the workload, and she and I met nearly every day to plan strategy and decide which interviews and other offers to accept. The boon to Apex's business was a nearly 20% increase in the first six months after the story broke.

Nancy was right about the letters from women, too. More than eight thousand so far, and they keep coming. After reading the first couple of hundred—a few with provocative or even downright obscene photos enclosed—I turned the job of answering them over to one of her interns. For all I know, that guy is getting laid on a regular basis!

The local divorcées and single women came out of the woodwork, too. I had more pussy offered to me than I knew existed in the world; but surprisingly, I found I wasn't all that interested. Gina had kept me very happy sexually, right up until it all fell apart, and I didn't feel the need to sow any wild oats. I went out on dates with four women who attracted me, and screwed two of them (though I could have had the other two if I'd wanted), but I quicly confirmed that the promiscuous lifestyle really didn't tempt me.

After a few weeks of working closely with Nancy, I found that she was the one I wanted to date. We've been going out for nearly a year. Neither of us is any hurry to get married, but it might happen after a while.

Last Sunday was my birthday, and Nancy got me something special as a gift. We'd spent Saturday night at her place, watching an old Humphrey Bogart movie and then making love. Sex with Nancy is wonderful—sweeter and more relaxed than with Gina, who liked it hard, sweaty, and athletic. With Nancy it's not just about the sensations, it's about the feeling of intimacy, and it's great.

On Sunday morning she let me sleep while she made breakfast for us and brought it up to the bedroom. I opened my eyes to see her standing there in her robe, holding breakfast on a big tray.

We ate together and then she said, "ready for your present? I'm wearing it, actually, under the robe."

I raised my eyebrows questioningly and she just grinned at me.

"Ready?" she said. Then she slipped off the robe and stood posing in front of me.

She was wearing only a white tee-shirt that covered her just past her hips, showing off her long legs. The shirt had a scanned image of a glowering Gina, no doubt taken from a photo of her that Nancy had found at my house. Below the photo, in big block letters, the shirt said, "I Survived the Monster".

I laughed and laughed; then I said, "come here, you". I pulled Nancy down onto the bed with me, and after a few minutes we took the shirt off.



The Monster behind the Desk



I'm a monster. Not necessarily a bad man, I go to church and pay my taxes, but I don't process emotions the way other people do. I don't feel guilt or remorse and in their absence, everything else seems to be amplified. If I get angry, I'm livid and if I'm in excited, I'm obsessed. Not exactly Shelley's Frankenstein but not human enough for most.

If we're going to get into nature VS nurture I'm pretty sure I could blame everything on my father. He was truly a bad man. After luring my mother here from Korea as a mail order bride with the promises of a loving supportive spouse, I don't think he spent a day of their marriage without beating her. As soon as I was old enough, I started beating him back and thus I was sent off to every expensive and prestigious private school he could afford, anything to keep me out of the way. He wouldn't pay for my flights home so I learned to work hard and seek opportunities with a feral sort of drive and hunger. I saved my money and started investing well early on. The joy I received from the look of shock on his face when I'd just appear on the doorstep to cave his face in was magnificent.

Eventually, I graduated and headed to an ivy league but not before spending the necessary funds to make sure my father never hurt my mother again. I would have enjoyed doing it myself, slowly and painfully, but I'd reached a certain amount of clout where such a pleasure would be hazardous to my future. So, I let a professional handle it. The only thing that was left of him was his eyes because mine were the same villainous green.

I moved my mother from that house to the city where I would attend and asked her what she wanted to do with it. I was more than delighted to hold her hand on the front lawn as we watched it burn to the ground. I'm sure she's always known there was something wrong with me but compared to him, I was her angel. Better the monster you love.

I graduated Summa Cum Laude in a master's program. With my mother in the same city, I could go year round without issue. I only took time off post graduation to take her on a visit to her homeland, a place she hadn't been in over two decades.

Now at 28, I work as an Angel Investor. I could work from home but I have an office downtown because my mother wanted to see me behind a desk. It takes up a whole floor of a high rise just for me, my secretary, and a lounge for clients. 

I'd achieved so much so young that I had to prioritize on what I wanted next. I could spend my life roaming the world but the constant traveling seemed a bit pointless. What would I see? People and land. It would be beautiful, no doubt, but people and land, people and land. I could volunteer somewhere but that was also pointless, I would just be a person doing more for my own experience than another's benefit. 

And then, the thought started in my head. It was barely a flicker at first, not yet a glimmer, but it grew brighter with each passing day. Maybe it was time to start thinking about immortality. I'm not talking about the fountain of youth or anything mystical, but the old fashioned way. It was time for progeny. 

I pushed the idea around in my head for a while until I realized it wasn't going away. I was going to have children within the next few years. It was no longer an option, only inevitability as I started rolling the ball forward. I would talk about going on a hunt for the perfect mother of my children but she was working for me all along. 

My secretary was the perfect fit. Her name was Pristine Evans, nicknamed Prissy. I couldn't make this up. She grew up in a small town in Southern Georgia. So small, the biggest event of the year was a peach festival. Her father was a minister, mother a school teacher. She was my perfect little slice of pure Americana. A wonderful wholesome balance to the mighty level of fucked up which I inherited.

She was beautiful. Tall, which for me was another bonus, wild curls that she kept in a high bun, and glowing mahogany skin. Her thighs, god I could just think all day about her thick thighs, wide birthing hips, and juicy ass. Prissy was a full woman, even her waist which pulled in tightly from her hips was still soft. I just wanted to run my hands all over her when I watched her move. 

The only thing was that she just so damn shy and scared. She was great in business situations but socially, she shielded and hid constantly. It annoyed me because I couldn't even take her to formal dinners because she'd freak out as soon as she was out of a suit and in an evening gown.

I found her exquisite but Prissy was a chubby young woman who grew up a fat little girl, an experience from which her confidence never quite recovered. I'd bet a million that she was still a virgin. And honestly, it would be one of the safer bets I'd taken. At 25, I'd never seen her on a date or with anyone male or female. I could tell she felt a certain way about me: stares lingering a bit too long, sudden jumps at my voice, the way her fingers twitched and flittered nervously when I talked to her. 

I'm a good looking man: 6'4, brown black hair, swimmer's build. I consider my looks a tool of my trade and work to keep my muscle defined and my appearance groomed. I usually use them to ensnare resources and charm a few wives to influence their husbands but now I had to be a lure for my secretary. I'd be bait to break her out of her shell once and for all and to start my family as soon as possible. 

With a plan set, I slowly began changing and readjusting appointments until a Friday was completely clear. Prissy didn't seem to catch on and I personally made calls to make sure some numbskull didn't call her directly and throw off my hard work. I hired a private investigator to follow my little secretary while I did my own research and purchasing in preparation of the big day.

It was as if the stars had aligned, everything went so smoothly. I received the reports from the private dick and the date I'd chosen was perfect, everything that I ordered arrived on time, and Prissy never had a clue. The trap was set and she was going to waltz right into it.

She came into work that Friday in a pretty blue business dress and sweater. Her patented nervous smile and head nod greeted me before she took her seat and booted up her computer. She stared at the screen and clicked, then clicked again. The fact that there would be no one in the office today must have finally hit her. I walked and stood in the doorway of my private office.

"Prissy, it seems we're going to be awfully lonely today."

"Uh, Mr. Jones, I'm sorry. I must have made some scheduling errors somewhere. I can call some of the clients to see if they want to come in earlier." Her voice fluttered out, making me smirk.

"No, no. We should get some things handled here anyway. However, would you join me for tea?" There was a lovely bistro set in the lounge that we used for coffee and tea together.

"Oh? Sure." She stood quickly. "I'll go make it right now."

"No, no... That's quite alright. I'll make it today. Just have a seat there." I winked at her and she bit a luscious full lip before going to sit at the bistro.

The tea I ordered was mild like I knew she liked but had enough flavor to hide the sedative I added to her infuser. It would knock her out quickly but burn out fast, leaving me just enough time to get her prepared. I set her mug in front her and sat with mine.

"I don't know what I'd do without you, Prissy."

She nearly choked on her tea and stared at me. 

"Really Mr. Jones?"

"Absolutely. I find you an integral part of my life. However, I don't think you're being fully utilized at your current position."

Her eyes blinked a little slower than usual as she continued to sip the tea. "Are you going to fire me?"

"No no no..." I caught the cup before she could drop it and wrapped my other arm around her waist, lifting her with me as I stood. "In fact, you should think of it more as a promotion."

"Tired..." Her eyes batted for a few seconds before shutting.

"I know... I know." 

I set the cup down and scooped her up bridal style, carrying her into my office. I had about 45 minutes to get everything prepared. I'd cleaned off my desk already, so I set her down on the main section in front of my chair. The sweater went first, tossed on the couch in my corner then the dress was easy to unzip and slip over her head. There was no way it was coming down those thighs. I took a moment to run my tongue across the soft flesh and groan. This was going to be fun.

Her underwear was cute, a matching brief and bra set in a pale pink with little white polka dots. I was going to cut them off of her but I wanted to see them on her again so I took the extra time to remove them and send them flying with the dress to join the sweater on the couch. It was definitely longer than I wanted because she started to stir a little as I was tying the silk rope on her hands after securing her ankles to the desk legs on each side of where I sit.

I sat at my desk, enjoying my work as I listened to her mumble. She was stomach down on the desk, arms tied behind her and legs spread. The combination of the desk and chair made her the perfect height to do whatever I wanted with her beautiful pussy.

And it was beautiful. It wasn't bare; she seemed to be the type to be scandalized by such a thing. The lips were soft and fat and as I ran a finger across them she shuddered, so nice and sensitive. I ran my hand up from the back of her knee to her mountain of ass and gripped it gently. It was a dream come true.

"Mr. Jones?" She seemed to be coming together once more.

"Yes?" I answered her nonchalantly.

"What are you doing?" Her voice trembled with a bit of fear.

"Getting you ready for your promotion... why?" I ran a finger over the rope binding her right ankle.

"I'm... tied up... and naked." Her body was quivering in front of me.

"And?" 

She gasped and I heard her sniffle. I stood and walked to the front of the desk. I lifted her head with a gentle grip to her bun and smiled soothingly. Her eyes were wide and panicked, too much white showing. It didn't help her cause, only stirred the feral hunger of want inside of me more.

"Prissy. I'm going to eat you and then I'm going to stretch you and fuck you. It's not because I want to hurt you, in fact this won't hurt at all. I'm doing this because I want you and no one else. I'm going to marry and put a baby in you and I don't have time for your crippling shyness, ok?"

Her jaw dropped and her eyes darted over my face looking for a smirk or grin, anything to let her know I was kidding and would release her. "But-"

I sighed and raised an eyebrow. "But what?"

"Why? Why me?"

I leaned forward and pecked her lips. "Because I want you."

She'd closed her eyes during the kiss but they popped back open as soon as I pulled back. 

So cute.

"Why would you want me?" She looked incredulous and I laughed hard.

"I'll show you." I walked back behind the desk and put my hand squarely on her back. "Don't lift up."

I sat back in my desk chair and ran my hands up the backs of her thighs. She shuddered but didn't lift, good girl that she was. My hands ran up over her ass cheeks and down until I could pull her lips apart with my thumbs. I lean in and licked from just above her clit and across her inner folds to her already wet hole. I circled the tip of my tongue around it before dipping in to catch some of her sweetness. She tasted even better than I'd imagined.

"Does being restrained excite you Prissy?"

I could feel her skin heat but she didn't answer. 

"I'll forgive you for not talking just this once but next time there will be a punishment. Are we clear?"

There was still no answer. I sighed and bit the top of her thigh. She shrieked and struggled. 

"YES!"

I released the flesh and licked over my red teeth marks. "Yes what?"

"Yes we're clear."

I kissed the spot tenderly. Since I'd converted the whole office from scratch, I never had to worry about a nosy interloper hearing the sounds of screams. The whole thing was sound proof. It was initially for both the client and my confidentiality but now it had a new purpose.

"Good girl." I fluttered kisses across her clit which had fattened after the bite. My little secretary got off on being dominated. We were a match made in heaven. I heard her try to muffle her moans so I sucked the whole thing tightly into my mouth.

Her sounds were guttural as I tugged and nipped at it with my teeth, all while keeping the suction going. She struggled and writhed but knew better than to lift up. I released it when I heard her whimper but pressed it flat with my tongue as her hips bucked. She shook bad and squealed before drooping against the desk.

'There's no way' I thought but as a slow stream of her juice reached my lips I knew. I groaned and chuckled, lapping it up and digging my tongue a bit further into her hole. "You came already my little sweet? God, you must really love this. I love doing it to you. Are you a virgin?"

She responded but I could barely hear her. I dug my tongue a little deep within that tight little hole as she writhed and whined. "You're going to have to be a little louder my dear."

"Yes!"

I chuckled and gently eased a finger into her. "Relax. Just relax." She was nice and slick so my finger eased deep in her slowly. I pumped it and grinned, feeling her muscles clench and relax around it uncertainly. She moaned and I kissed her hip. "Feel good?"

"Mmmhmm..." She shuddered and I saw her twist to look back at me but I put a hand on her back. 

"If you have to lift then don't move." When she stopped, I picked up the pace of my plunging and latched onto her clit again.

"Oh God!" 

She whined and I felt those thick thighs trembling around me. I expected her to cum again but she seemed to be stuck on the edge. I just kept up the speed and hummed against the nub. She bucked and I used the second orgasm to slip another finger into her clenching core. I flexed and made them scissor back and forth to keep the pleasure going. 

"Mr. Jones, please!" Her voice rang out in a wail as her body went limp.

I pulled my fingers out and sucked them clean as I watched her quake and pant. She was much more sensitive than I'd anticipated but I'd gotten her this far and didn't plan on stopping. "Hold it together little Prissy. We're just starting."

Reaching under my desk, I pulled out the bag I brought with me. Inside was the thin vibrator I'd bought just for this. There were sleeve to go with it but I didn't know if I could wait through them. No, I had to be patient. If I didn't, I could hurt her.

I traced the tip of the thin metal vibrator around her still quivering hole. "Phase two my dear." I pressed it slowly in as she trembled. When was about half way in, I turned it on the lowest setting.

"Ah! What's that?" I couldn't help but smile as she worked back against the toy.

"A petite vibe, I thought it would be a good start for you." I pumped it slowly, forcing her to work her hips faster to keep up the feeling. When she did, I decided to reward her by turning it up.

"Ah-Ahh..." She arched her back and I stood to lean over her to watch her face as I pumped the toy faster.

"Kiss me." I groaned at her eagerness as her lips crushed against mine. My free hand gripped her bun to keep her locked there. My tongue slipped into her mouth to caress hers. "I think you're ready for the sleeve now." I spoke against her lips.

"What?" 

I pecked her one last time and stood up again, turning off the toy and sliding it out. "One last stretch before I go in."

"Mr. Jones..."

"You know my name is Dylan, right?" I began to ease the sleeve over the metal vibe. It was the regular cock one; I couldn't see how she could handle the ridged one just yet.

"Dylan... please wait." Her voice softly pleaded. 

"For what reason?" I raised an eyebrow as I traced back and forth across her slit with the head.

"How can you be sure you want this?" Her voice fluttered and her hips twitched with every stroke.

"I want you." I sunk the toy in gently, watching her body tremble at the new invasion. 

"Ah! It's big!"

I reached my hand down to strum her clit, halting the toy's progression. "Tell me when it's better."

It took a few moments but soon her hips were pressing against more of the toy. "It's better."

"Good girl." I slowly moved the toy back and forth but never stopped stroking her nub. As she got wetter, the pace got faster and I turned the toy on: first at the lowest then up to the second notch. Her moans were music to my ears. 

I wanted to see her cum just once more before I took her completely so I ratcheted it up to high and pinched her clit. As I expected, the sudden abundance of stimulation knocked it right out of the park and she was thrashing on the desk. It was like shooting fish in a barrel with her. I almost felt bad.

When I'd thought she'd had enough, I snapped the toy off and eased it out. I ran my hands over her still quivering flesh and placed kisses in a random wandering pattern across her skin. "You've been such a good girl. I'm going to untie you but if you act up I'll have to restrain you again. Understood?"

"Yes." Her voice sounded dazed and far away.

I untied the silk ropes, starting at her ankles then her arms. Even if she wanted to run, I don't think she'd get far after a bombardment like that. I eased her onto her back and kissed her knees. "How do your legs feel?"

"A little sore..." 

I nodded and began to massage them for her, taking my time lean down between them and steal more kisses from her full lips. "Do you wish you'd never come in today?"

"No..." She seemed embarrassed by her own answer but I rewarded her with a deep kiss anyway. I felt her arms wrap around me and broke the lip lock to nibble at her forearms and wrists.

"Are you ready?"

Prissy's eyes locked with mine, staring deeply into them and searching for something. She found whatever she was looking for because she began to nod. "Yes. Yes, I am."

"Good." I pulled back from her arms and stripped off the rest of my suit, grinning at her as each piece joined hers on the couch. I dropped my boxers last and had to grab her ankle when she tried to scramble back.

"Are you kiddin' me? That ain't gonna fit!!" I laughed hard at the onslaught of her unfiltered accent before grabbing the other ankle and yanking her forward to the edge of the desk.

"It will. I stretched you enough. Just relax and it won't hurt." I moved one hand to hook under her knee and let the other leg drop. "You can take it, I'll go slowly." 

I pressed the fat head against her entrance and used my free hand to circle her clit, occasionally dragging my thumb across it. As she began to relax, my cock head slipped in with a sudden pop. 

She arched and cried out and I strummed her nub until her body relaxed. She was tight, a hot wet vice grip. I gritted my teeth and focused as I slowly began to pump. I didn't come all this way to finish early.

Her whimpers faded into moans as she began to lift her hips against me. I smiled at the sight and leaned down to give her another kiss. "Good girl. See, it's not that bad. Does it hurt anymore?"

"No..." She groaned out and I picked up the pace a little, leaning over her to add some pressure. It was so sexy to see her watching me, then her eyes dropping to see my shaft pumping in and out of her. The look she had was intoxicating. It was something like hesitant lust. As if it was in a battle with nervousness and the latter was losing.

I took the time to appreciate her beautiful breasts as they bounced up and down on her chest with each thrust. They were beautiful, delicious handfuls of mahogany topped with dark chocolate. I leaned my head down to catch one in my mouth and suckle hungrily. She arched and writhed under me, so sensitive and so tasty. I hummed against the flesh as I pumped.




The Monster behind the Desk



Our eyes locked as I switched sides, sharing the pleasure with her other breast. I could feel her walls fluttering around me and she broke our stare as her eyes rolled back. I was getting close too, she was too damn tight to last much longer but I wasn't going to cum until she did.

"Dy... lan... Wait... I'm... OH GOD!" 

As she came, I let her sweet core's convulsions bring me over. I gripped her hips and buried myself to the base, feeling my seed fill her. She arched and cried out before collapsing back. I leaned over to kiss her neck and between her breasts as I ran my hands up and down her sides. She whimpered and trembled before finally meeting my lips for a kiss before snatching back.

"Wait! I'm ovulating!" She tried to pull back but I leaned forward, settling my full body weight on top of her. Poor little Prissy struggled under me for a little while before realizing she couldn't win and stopping with a whine. I stroked a few of the springy curls that had come a loose from her bun.

Of course I knew she was ovulating. I wouldn't have hired a man to follow her and go through her trash for many other reasons. "Well I guess we should get married soon huh?"

She looked at me incredulously, panting and biting her lower lip as her mind seemed to struggle with the concept of how well I'd trapped her. "I... Ok." That earned her another peck and I smirked, putting my forehead to hers. 

We were married the next day and lucky enough because she was good and pregnant after that weekend. I'd like to think we conceived on the desk but with as little rest as she'd get in those three days, it could have happened at any time. My little Pristine is not longer the shy girl anymore and I don't regret a damn thing.