Assumptions

A man assumes a number of things when he gets married. I am no different in that regard.

I assumed that my wife loved me and only me. Wrong assumption number one.

When our vows said, "To death do us part," I assumed that my wife believed that wholeheartedly. Wrong assumption number two.

I assumed that when we said that our wedding rings signified our unending love for each other that my wife thought so too. Wrong assumption number three.

I assumed that when my wife said she was going to the gym that she went to the gym. Wrong assumption number four.

I assumed that when my wife said she was working late on an important project that she would be at the office. Wrong assumption number five.

I assumed that when my wife said she was going to be away with her work on a 'team building' weekend that she would be team building with her colleagues. Wrong assumption number six.

And the one that really broke my heart, I assumed that our three children were mine. Wrong assumption number seven.

As I said earlier I think I'm a typical male. I like sports, I like beer and I love my wife. We have been married for almost twelve years after going steady for a little over three years. Fifteen years I've known and loved that woman. I assumed many things that most men would take for granted. That was a mistake.

I will explain all of that soon but first a little about my wife and I. She is a tall, athletically built blonde who has just turned thirty-five. With her toned body and beautiful face she could pass for ten years younger. In fact we went to a bar not long ago and the barman asked to see her I.D. She was thrilled.

I am only slightly taller than her, standing at an even 6'. I am broad shouldered and look like a person who works with my hands. I do, but only at the weekends. I am a computer security analyst. I run my own business from home and work with businesses that need computer security. I work with small firms mainly but I am getting a reputation around town that I know what I'm doing.

All the assumptions I made began to crash and burn when my wife's boss called me at work one Friday. They needed to see if their network was as secure as they thought it was. I asked why he picked me and his reply was interesting. He said that he didn't trust some of the people in his company and suspected them of industrial espionage.

He ran a small electronics firm who were in the running for a major defence contract. If it came to fruition he stood to make a lot of money. I believed him when he said that his network security was the key to the whole thing.

I asked him about the conflict of interest with my wife working there and he simply said that a few people might be burned if his suspicions proved correct. I must admit his reply made me wonder whether my wife was under suspicion.

I decided to take the job and went straight to work. My wife was travelling for work that weekend so I knew that I could work without fear of interruption. The kids were spending the weekend at my wife's parents place, as they usually did if she was away overnight as I often worked late. They loved it and so did their grandparents.

I knew a few of my wife's colleagues and believed I had enough knowledge of them to find a way into the system rather easily. Most people don't take network security seriously and I expected that this firm was no exception.

I decided to try with my wife's immediate superior simply because he was the one I knew best. She had worked at this firm since before we were married. So had he so it was logical that I knew him also.

I didn't much like him so I figured if I could embarrass him with his lax security then I could have a little fun along the way. He always seemed a little too 'familiar' with my wife. Whenever I mentioned it my wife told me I was being silly and that they were old friends who had worked together for a long time.

Using a basic knowledge of their networking system I knew that if I could log into the system via a senior person then I could infiltrate the whole thing. As I expected it didn't take too long to find his password and user name. I didn't even need to use my encryption software for that. So I needed to decide what to get into first.

I decided on his company email. That was easy so I challenged myself to find any personal email addresses he might have. Talk about stupid. He had emailed himself from two different personal accounts to his work email. He had obviously worked from home and emailed it to his work so he could collect it when he was in the office.

As I expected there were many work emails to and from my wife. He was an executive officer and she was his executive assistant. I looked at a few and got bored quite easily as they were all work related. I decided to look at his personal emails.

The first address I looked at was a winner. It was a Hotmail account that was set up under a false name. It showed emails to and from a major competitor of his firm. This proved to me that there was something going on here.

I was also able to take a peek into his bank accounts because he had emailed those details to his spymasters. That was shock number two. He had a private Cayman Island bank account with millions in it. Wow - jackpot.

I copied as much as I thought necessary and prepared a package that I would show his boss on the Monday.

Many of his contact with his spymasters included references to a third party, a woman. It was obvious what he had planned. He was going to sell secrets to a rival company, make a quick fortune and ride off into the sunset with his woman on his arm.

His emails gave great detail about when and where he had met with the people who were paying him. The one thing I noticed was that it had been going on for many years. The earliest emails I found that referenced his illegal activities were from seventeen years ago. No wonder this business was still quite small. It had some great ideas but nothing seemed to come from them. But finally the boss was doing something about it by hiring me. I'm certain he had a few ideas that this was going on but the stakes had gotten much higher with the Department of Defence involved.

I catalogued the most damning emails and made a timeline to see when these things were at their peak. I'm sure the boss would see some sort of pattern. As I looked closely at these dates I noticed that quite a few referred to times my wife was away on team building exercises with the company, as well as times that she was away overnight.

My stomach tightened. I decided I was being paranoid. But to be sure I looked at my diary and cross-checked the dates in the emails with my wife's schedule. Many either directly matched or were around the time my wife was both busy at work and staying late or times she was travelling for her job. The tight feeling in my stomach worsened.

I had circumstantial evidence that my wife was involved but nothing concrete. I decided to check cell phone records. Once again my target made it easy for me. He still used the number that he got with his original phone. This meant that I could access all of his billing and call details from the last seventeen years, coincidentally the time he got his first cell.

And what interesting reading they made. Cross-checking dates and times with those in the emails I found a pattern. He rang the same number often around the dates mentioned. My heart sank. It was my wife's number.

Still, it was circumstantial. She was his assistant so naturally there would be calls between them. But while he averaged one or two calls per week, around the dates in the emails the calls rose exponentially, to as much as five or six calls per day.

I needed a break. I went to the kitchen and made a coffee. I had a million thoughts going through my head. What was going on here? Did my wife's boss know something or were they merely suspicions? Did he deliberately choose me for this for any particular reason? I was really getting worried about what I would find when I delved deeper into this mess.

After about half an hour I knew I couldn't put it off any longer. I decided to go for the other private email address. This would let me know one way or another.

I hacked back into the system and opened the second private email address. The first thing I noticed was that there were thousands of emails. He'd had this address for many years and it seemed like he never deleted anything.

The second thing I noticed was that the emails were almost exclusively to the same person - my wife. My heart sank even deeper. While still circumstantial it was beginning to look bleak.

I took a deep breath and thought about a strategy. I decided to start from the earliest email and go from there.

The first email was dated about seventeen years ago. It was quite personal and described how he had enjoyed the sex that they'd had. Note that this was a couple of years before I had even met my wife.

By reading the emails it seemed that their affair was quite intense. He was married at the time but as I kept reading he divorced around the time my wife and I met.

What surprised me was that the affair continued after we met. She slept with him right through our courting and engagement. I remember she would see me at the weekends. We always had great sex. But it seemed she was having great sex during the week too.

I read an interesting string of emails around the time I asked my wife to marry me. She told him and he asked her what she wanted to do. He explained to her that he didn't want to commit to a second marriage but still wanted to see her. Her reply was chilling. She said that she would marry me and make sure that she would still see him.

As our wedding approached it seems that their affair became even more intense. In the week before she practically lived with him. She even fucked him on the morning of our wedding.

I was heartbroken. This was the woman I loved. My assumptions were wrong. She didn't love me at all but used me. I have no idea why. She had a perfectly good arrangement with him. Why bring a husband into it?

Reading on through their emails I found out why. She wanted his children but knew that he wouldn't marry her. One line from an email simply shattered me.

"Lover, I want your children. I'll make sure when I'm the most fertile I won't fuck him but only you. When I'm pregnant I'll fuck him a few times. He'll never know. And our children can have a stable home with the typical mom, dad and kids."

Tears rolled down my face. It seemed that I had been played for a fool for most of my adult life. I determined that I would get a DNA test on the kids just to confirm what I'd just read. That would have to wait because I needed to find out more.

I read emails from the time our first child was conceived. She had written to him that she was definitely pregnant and she hadn't has vaginal sex with me for about a month. I remember that there was plenty of sex but it usually ended in a blowjob or hand job. Then it became really intense fucking for a few weeks. Then she revealed she was pregnant.

I thought that my child arrived a couple of weeks early but according to these emails she was right on time.

Horrified, I went to the time our second child was conceived. The same thing happened. And with the third it was the same too. Each time I thought they were born a couple of weeks early. I remember my wife saying that she had read somewhere that some women were like that; their babies were early each time but completely healthy.

I just accepted that. I assumed that she knew what she was talking about. All three of our kids were spitting images of their mother. They had her dark hair and facial features. She had an oval shaped face and our three daughters had exactly the same shaped face. Our friends always joked about the fact that they looked nothing like me. Now I knew why.

I spent the rest of the night cataloguing their affair. It seemed that it was still going on. In fact she was away with him this very weekend. It was going to make me a very happy man to reveal all I knew to their boss, as well as the authorities, on the Monday morning.

It seemed that her numerous visits to the gym weren't always that. Sure she went often but judging by the email correspondence I had discovered it was less than half the time I thought it was.

The same with her 'late meetings.' It seemed that none of these ever happened. In fact I read one email from very early in her career that showed that her boss didn't believe in out of hours meetings. She had fabricated the whole thing.

I slept all day Saturday and spent the Sunday making sure I had all the evidence lined up for a meeting with their boss on Monday morning.

I was heartbroken but determined to go through with my job and let the cards fall wherever they did. I realised that my wife and her lover had broken many laws with their industrial espionage and with the Defence Department involved it would be a Federal case.

My wife wasn't due home from her weekend of work until the Monday so I didn't have to confront her before I revealed all to her boss. Thank goodness for that because I have no idea what I was going to do.

When I arrived her boss saw my face and ushered me into his office. Before I spoke he said, "I'm sorry, but I think I knew that she was involved. I knew you would be thorough especially when you found out what I'd always suspected."

I looked at him and said, "My kids aren't even mine."

He looked at me and said, "I'm really sorry. I had no idea."

"They have been together since before we were married and just didn't stop. They've been ripping you off for a while too. Every time you were close to getting a plum government contract they conspired with your rivals to cheat you out of it. They have offshore accounts and are ready to go. When they stuff this contract for you they are planning to quit and live a life of luxury. One thing you need to do first is get the Feds to talk to their bank and freeze their assets.

He said then that he knew something was going on and just needed the proof. He had already spoken to the Feds and they were ready to pounce. He called his contact and said that he had the evidence they needed.

The Feds arrived thirty minutes later. I took that time to show him the depth of their deception. When the Feds arrived I showed them what I'd found too. Their cyber team would be able to access all of this for themselves so they were satisfied that they could move in and arrest them both.

My wife and her lover arrived that afternoon as expected. Unfortunately for them they were not arriving to any fanfare but to the waiting arms of the Feds who arrested them on the spot.

When they were confronted with the evidence they fell apart. They suddenly realised that their carefully laid plans had gone up in smoke.

I confronted my wife. "Just tell me one thing. Did you love me at all or was I just a convenient parent figure for your children?"

She wouldn't look at me so I continued, "I hope it was worth it. You do realise that because Federal Government contracts were involved that it is treated as spying? There's mandatory life sentences for that, you do realise that don't you? That means the rest of your life in jail. And guess what? Your kids will never see you again. I love them all as if they were my own and because of that they will never see their mother again."

She collapsed at that. I just walked away.

EPILOGUE

Sure enough, there was enough evidence to show that the two of them had manipulated contracts of over dozen cases. They were found guilty on all counts and were sentenced to consecutive life sentences for them all. They were whisked off to Federal prison. I attended every day of their court cases. That was the last time I ever saw her. I filed for divorce and was granted sole custody of the kids. They sort of understood what had happened and never saw their mother again. I learned to never assume.