Babysitter Denouement

Once Lori's orgasm passes, I pull out of both holes. There are wipes on the nightstand—Were they there before? I don't remember—so I grab one to clean my thumb. "Where do you want me to cum, love?" I ask. "Your tits, your belly, your mouth, where?"

"Lie on your back," Lori croons seductively. "I'll take care of you." OK, fine, I think. I lie down and watch in growing disbelief as she straddles my hips and wraps her hand around my erection. Has she changed her mind about— My disbelief becomes total when she brings her asshole down on my knob.

"Lori?" I ask. Everything's a whirl, and I can't form any thought more coherent than that.

"I need to trust you," she says yet again, "and I need to let you make this right—make this good. I need to let you take care of me." Slowly, she lowers herself down, impaling her ass on my spike. I feel that little ring of muscle yielding stubbornly, grudgingly consenting to stretch around my knob. It swallows the ridge and closes tight around the shaft below it. Lori screams, but doesn't stop. In fact, she doesn't stop until she's sitting on my hips. She stays there for several long moments, panting.

My right hand finds a dildo—Was that there before? I guess it doesn't matter—and pushes it slowly into Lori's dripping cunt. She screams again, then goes still and silent, her eyes rolling back in her head; I can feel her climax through the wall of her ass. Her eyes refocus on me and she starts fucking me. I grab the dildo; somehow I manage to fuck her with it as she rides me. "Cum inside me, love," she chants. "Cum in my ass. Own my ass. Take it back. Make it yours. Make it right. Fill my ass. Fill me up. Give me your cum. Give me your love. Cum in my ass. Fill it up. Make it yours."

I feel my balls boil, and I let them go with a roar. Lori shrieks in triumph, then pushes down on me and cums again, even harder.

She's lying half on top of me, head pillowed on my shoulder. "What was all that about?" I ask. "What changed? You have me halfway to Red Queen territory, believing six impossible things before breakfast."

Lori shifts her head to look at me and replies sadly, "I screwed our life up completely. I ruined everything. I just want to go back and do it over and do it right."

* * * * *

I woke up shaking and profoundly disoriented. There was a woman in bed with me, but when I rolled toward her, it wasn't Lori. My mind was trying to tell me it was some sort of supernatural visitation, but after hesitating for several moments, I rejected the idea. Lori trying to find peace? Nice, but... No, it must just be my subconscious—doing what? I flopped back over on my back and groggily pondered that question for a while; eventually I gave up and decided it was obviously smarter than I was, because I had no idea.

* * * * *

Given the autopsy, I had Lori cremated. The thought of doing otherwise was just too gruesome to me. I've never liked open-casket funerals anyway, so it didn't bother me too much. A pastor friend of mine did the service at the funeral home; he kept it simple, and he and the funeral director took care of almost everything.

The one thing I did was take advantage of one small positive circumstance. A few years before, a mutual friend had introduced to Bruce Guthro, the Canadian singer-songwriter who was the second and last lead singer for the Scottish group Runrig, and we'd hit it off. The day before Lori died, I had heard from Bruce that he would be in town—he was hoping we could get together for drinks. I ended up asking him to sing at Lori's funeral. He asked what song I had in mind; I told him I wanted "And We'll Sing," one of my favorites from his era of Runrig. He agreed immediately.

Bruce did a beautiful job—it was the best thing about the service. Hope and Joy sat on my lap and sobbed into my shirt, and I cried with them. We weren't the only ones, either; I don't think there was a dry eye in the room when he finished. I told him I would never be able to thank him enough. He told me it was an honor, but that if I really felt the need to thank him, maybe I'd be willing to write a book with him. He was smiling, but I told him if he had an idea, I'd be happy to sit down and talk about it—but not that year.

Kylie and Megan sat with us, of course. I really wanted one on either side of me, snuggled in to me and my daughters, but of course that would have aroused a firestorm of comment; so they sat on one side of me, and my parents and in-laws sat on the other side. Emotionally, though, they were snuggled in close, and I don't know how I would have made it through everything without them.

* * * * *

A few days after the funeral, I was sitting at my desk staring at my laptop trying to make my brain believe it was capable of coherent thought. My publishers had given me an extension on the book before I'd even asked; they knew I would need extra time, even if they didn't know how I planned to use it. I was alone in the house... everyone else was at the park. Life felt like a bleak mountain I wasn't sure I had the energy to tackle.

A loud ping focused my eyes on the screen; then they went impossibly wide and my jaw came off its hinges. It was an e-mail declaring itself to be from Lori Andrews; the subject line read, "Your distressing damsel's final farewell to her white knight." I sat like a stunned ox, tears streaming down my cheeks. She hadn't called me that in years... She'd never been willing to call herself a damsel in distress, so "distressing damsel" had been her play on that hackneyed phrase—but only when we were alone. Lots of people had heard her call me her white knight, but I was sure only we knew the other. I opened the e-mail.

My betrayed love, it began. I wept. When I could bear it, I started again. My betrayed love, as soon as I send this, I am going to kill myself. I closed my eyes and struggled to keep some sort of rein on myself. It felt like hours before I opened them again, though it wasn't. If all goes as I plan, this has reached you long enough after my death that it has been ruled natural causes and I am safely buried. I do not want Hope and Joy to have to deal with their mother committing suicide; my death will be hard enough on them. But the bitch I have become needs to die for what she has done to you and to me... and, I am convinced, for what she would do to them if she lived. In a few minutes I will give myself a shot of ketamine, and then kill myself with an air embolism. If all goes well, no one will think to look for that before the autopsy destroys the evidence. The ketamine shot will explain the syringe... and keep me from having to feel it. I am afraid, love. But I am more afraid of living.

The links I am including are to files I have hidden in the dark Web; they will explain everything. I don't deserve it, but the last hope I have is that you have enough love left for me to avenge me. I was blackmailed into betraying you, initially. My first sexual encounter with Dick began as a rape. To my horror and disgust, I came more times that day than I ever had before, and so that rape turned into a deranged affair to which I willingly consented. I loathe myself for that.

The irony is, for all that he blackmailed me, Dick was guilty of far worse, and involved me in all of it. He made me his accessory as well as his sex slave. I kept backups and other files for self-protection; you will be able to find everything using the links I'm giving you. I hope you use them to destroy him. Please forget the bitch of the last few years ever existed and remember me as I was, your loving wife. Please never let our daughters forget how much I loved them. Please believe me: I do still love you—the real me still loves you. I'm sorry I hurt you so viciously, and that I can do so little to atone for it. Please be happy with your new love—love her well, and let her love you, and our daughters.

Goodbye forever.

Lori

* * * * *

I curled up and wept some more, then got up and started investigating what Lori had given me. I owed her that; I owed myself that.

The first thing I hit was another letter from Lori.

My lost love,

I'm sorry I doubted you, but I was afraid. No, it's not enough to say I doubted you, I distrusted you. I distrusted you in more ways than one, because I have always been deeply insecure, and I never admitted that to you. I never let you see that because I was afraid if you thought I was weak, you wouldn't want me or love me. I should have trusted you. I could have trusted you. I see that now; if I had seen that when we were first dating, I think we would still be happy. I didn't, and then you became famous, and I became obsessed with the idea that someone was going to take you away from me. The irony is agonizing.

And then Mirelle started trying to take you away from me, and I was sure she was succeeding. Looking back, it's obvious that she wasn't. But I wanted to crush her, and I had the tools to do so. I thought she was sleeping with you and I was terrified you would leave me for her, so I was determined to ruin her utterly. Unfortunately for me, Dick caught me. I would have been disbarred at best if he had exposed me, but he didn't; he'd wanted me since he first saw me (though he'd been very careful not to let that slip; he's the sort of predator who lies in wait), so instead, he blackmailed me for sex. The rest, you will know, if you've read the letter I plan to write.

And then—as a "reward" to me—he destroyed the Peters family. There was no evidence that you were sleeping with Mirelle—at that point, I was still convinced you were—so he created some. Then he dug further into their lives. He broke the law in doing so, but he didn't care about that, and at that point, neither did I. He sent his fabricated evidence of Mirelle's affair to J.P., but only after giving the SEC evidence that J.P. was guilty of significant violations; that evidence might have been just as fabricated, as far as I know. J.P. pled out, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was actually guilty of anything. If he'd beaten the charges, he would have been far worse off financially, and his career still would have been ruined by the scandal. He waited until after he took the plea to file for divorce, to ensure that Mirelle got as little as possible. Poor Michele... I set the whole thing in motion and never once thought about her.

After that, Dick promoted me and started taking me with him on trips. I was now a willing sexual partner, and I was implicated in his activities, so he could fuck me as often as he wanted and he could trust me. Only then did I discover what he was really up to. Someone has said that "the problem with consulting is you are hired by the problem"; therefore, "the most profitable clients are the most diseased," which means that consulting is "the business of propping up diseased managements." It's too true. Unfortunately, in our firm, once you're running your own team, you're largely autonomous with very little oversight, which gives Dick great freedom to prop them up his way.

Dick is a great believer in "three-way trades": do a favor for one influential person, who then calls in a favor with another influential person who can do a favor for you. Sometimes he'll extend the chain by another person or two. So, for example, have your company create a lucrative position for the daughter of Politician X, who then persuades Undersecretary Y into showing your company favoritism in awarding a government contract. Or, during a restructuring, your company lets someone go—accompanied by vague rumors of some sort of misconduct—who happens to be someone Judge Z hates, and then Judge Z quietly has someone at the SEC drop an investigation into your company; maybe critical evidence goes missing due to "an unfortunate clerical error." Or, occasionally, he uses blackmail—perhaps, for instance, to convince Politician A to induce Regulator B to take an action that favors your company (or hurts a rival one, it's all the same).

It's all there in the files. Dick tracked all of this, partly to stay on top of what favors he'd burned, partly to make sure everyone he worked with had substantial incentive to stay quiet, and to protect him if anyone came after him. So, I made my own copies. I knew he'd throw me under the bus in a heartbeat if he needed to, so I kept my own insurance. I should have turned whistleblower once I had enough to take him down cleanly; I can only suppose I'm too great a coward for that. You have no reason not to use the information, and I know you know people who can help you do so effectively. I leave it in your hands.

I'm sorry, Rob. That's infinitely inadequate, but I don't know what else I can say. I can't bear to be this person anymore.

Lori

Another document left me directions for collecting the various files. I opened the first one that finished downloading and discovered a "three-way trade" that involved blackmailing a senior Treasury official. To my surprise, the file included the evidence used to blackmail the man. I only opened one or two more files before I couldn't take anymore. I kept downloading them, but I didn't look at them.

I didn't want to be skeptical of my dead wife, but her claim that she was innocent of Dick Wood's unethical and illegal activities before the affair began just didn't hold water. For one thing, to borrow a line from Bill James (have I mentioned I'm a hardcore baseball nerd?), "we all know that it is not physically possible to get your head stuck that far up your rectum." Lori was a lawyer, for fuck's sake, and a good one. I could believe she wasn't actively involved in his corrupt dealings and that she didn't know how bad it was, but that she couldn't tell that questionable things were going on? I couldn't buy it. The best I could believe was that she had been willfully ignorant.

For another thing, if she had been completely innocent, would she have thought to try to ruin Mirelle Peters? Would that even have occurred to her as something she might be able to do?

I suddenly wondered how long Dick Wood had been in his current position. There was a document with his name in the title, so I opened it. It included his employment history, which told me he had only become Lori's boss a month or so before Joy's first birthday; as far as I could tell, it didn't appear they'd worked together prior to that. That made things look a little better for Lori, at least. It didn't make her innocent, but it made her degree of probable guilt more bearable.

And ultimately, however culpable Lori was in her own ruin, that in no way lessened the truth that Dick Wood was a despicable villain. That motherfucking rat-bastard son of a bitch deserved vengeance of truly biblical proportions. Which meant I was going to need some serious help.

Fortunately for me, I had people I could ask.

* * * * *

To those who requested "burning the bitch" (I had to look up that acronym), I don't know if this will qualify for you or not... but the burning of the bastard is most definitely coming.