Bed and Breakfast

This was why I had Damien Torrens of Bradman, Torrens and Clarke ushering me into his office not two minutes after I arrived. Damien had been trying to get my business for years. A few years ago, Randy had required an extra pair of hands to help with an investment I wanted to do, and Damien had taken an interest, even offering to bring Randy on board at the partner level when he learnt the details.

"So, Mr Other, to what do we owe this rather sudden visit and without Mr Johnstone?" Damien asked me with that questioning stare that only lawyers could give.

"I have reason to believe that my wife, my boss and my lawyer are conspiring against me and I need to protect myself," I replied with just a hint of worry reflected in my voice.

Lawyers are often portrayed as heartless unfeeling bastards that bill huge amounts of money and care nothing about the people they represent. Damien Torrens was the epitome of that culture. He wore a very expensive three-piece suit and sat in an opulent office designed to be intimidating.

Upon hearing my statement, Damien stood and turned to look out the impressive view over Melbourne behind him. I heard him exhale, and over the next twenty minutes, I told my tale up to this meeting.

"You like to present a challenge, don't you Mr Other?" he said, turning back to me, a shark's grin on his face.

"Look," he said spreading his hands. "If you are happy to bring your business over to our firm regardless of the outcome with Mr Johnstone, I will provide you an overall discount of twenty-five per cent on our services for the next three years, and I will even throw in a hundred of my billable hours for free to seal the deal?"

I looked at Damien for a minute, studying the man.

"Why?" I asked plainly.

"Thomas, may I call you Thomas?" I nodded. He did in return and sat back down. "For us, holding your account means a lot. It's not just the amount of money in your trust. It's the business it brings with it. You are smart in how you manage your money, you choose good investments, and I know that if I get your business, several other large clients will end up coming our way. By giving you the incentive to move with us now while you are in trouble, it stops you shopping around and gives us both a longer-term benefit."

I laughed, this guy was a great white shark, but he knew how to sell it.

We spent the next hour ironing out details and then he got his assistant to take me to another room where I signed my life away in triplicate. Admittedly they made great coffee and brought me lunch at no cost. As I was finishing the forms, Damien popped his head in, smiling.

"Thomas, just letting you know that Norm from Discreet Investigation just reached out and I let him know that you would call him back and confirm we're now representing you. Just a thought, you may also want Norm to tail Mr Johnstone as well."

I thought for a moment and nodded, "Good idea."

"And Thomas?" He said a serious expression on his face, but that looked a lot less professional.

"Yeah?"

"Would you be open to having brunch on Sunday morning? I mean, it's not like you want to get up to much in your usual circles until this is complete."

I thought about it for a moment and agreed.

The rest of the afternoon I spent back at the Bed and Breakfast, I started going through our accounts. There was nothing out of the ordinary with any of them. However, no longer being the trusting person I was not twenty-four hours ago, I set up a couple of alerts in case anything happened above a thousand dollars a day.

That night I got an email from George telling me to get well soon and hoped I would be back in the office Monday. I got a call from Candice, that was all lovey-dovey, telling me how much she was missing me. I knew that if there was nothing to this that I was going to have a lot of making up to do. But the thing that kept the doubt in the back of my mind was that at no point did Candice say she was looking at options to cancel her trip and stay to look after me.

I got a call from Norm. He confirmed that he had monitoring on all three targets and now it was just a waiting game. In his experience, once a cheater had a pattern, they didn't change it unless they had to, otherwise, it was more difficult to maintain the lie. Bottom line, he didn't expect anything until they left for the conference if indeed they were getting together.

Lastly, I got a text from Iona asking how I was. I replied that I was doing all right, but I was nervous to confirm what was really going on.

By Saturday afternoon, my worst fears had been realised. The conference, if you could call it that, was a hotel a few hours out of Melbourne. The five of them had hired a suite and had not even bothered to close the blinds before they started their debaucherous orgy. Norm's three investigators had met up with their tails, and each found different places to view everything unfold.

Within an hour, Candice was airtight and was being ridden hard. She was taking it up the ass from her boss while my lawyer was balls deep in her traitorous cunt. A friend of mine Roger was fucking her mouth.

The surprise was my boss bending down to suck Roger's cock along with Candice. When Roger blew, George was the first to take it, then kiss my wife. Over the next few hours the gang of five swapped and traded positions. The depravity of the scene of not just my wife getting fucked, but the bisexual nature of people I thought I knew and once respected was shocking. It was only when the sun went down that they closed the blinds. However, over the next two weeks, the investigators got more and more pictures and videos of them in almost every conceivable sexual scenario known to even the most perverted porn directors.

Now as I said at the start, Candice and I have an active sex life. We had tried everything. Tongues, fingers and both our sexual organs had been everywhere on our bodies, but that was between man and wife. What I witnessed made me throw up several times, If you're into that sort of thing, fine, but not my wife and not like that.

Sunday morning, only a couple of days into their so-called conference. I woke and checked out of the BnB. I was feeling ill from what had been reported to me so far. But I needed to head home for a change of clothes and head to Damien's house for brunch as we had arranged.

As I walked into my apartment, I cringed as I looked around. Everywhere I looked, I saw places where Candice and I had made love. But now I also saw each of her other lovers fucking her in those places they had sat when they visited us.

I threw up again, this time in the bathroom, before I had a quick shower and changed my clothes. I knew I was never going to stay in this place again. Candice had sullied my home regardless if she had entertained them here or not.

An hour later, an uber dropped me off at Damien's penthouse in the centre of Melbourne. It was a beautiful apartment, and I met his wife, Mel, and his daughter, Colleen. For the next hour the three of them entertained me. I was surprised that Colleen had an air of refinement about her but a humility that I would not expect from the shark's daughter. After we had eaten a great brunch of potato hash-browns with bacon and spinach and another amazing coffee, Colleen excused herself and left Damien, Mel and myself to chat.

I looked at Damien. The man before me in casual jeans and a t-shirt was the polar opposite to the take no prisoners lawyer I had met with a few days before. He noticed and laughed when I told him of my thinking.

"Thomas, it's all good," he said repeating one of my favourite phrases. "At work I need to be that man. I mean, my name is on the door, but after hearing your story, my invitation was an honest expression of potential friendship. I believe that you're a good man that is being shat upon from a great height by a number of people. When I told Mel of what was happening, she almost insisted that you come." The couple quickly exchanged a look and Mel nodded. "You see, Mel has been where you are once." I looked back at the pretty raven-haired woman. She nodded then placed a hand on her husband's arm. Damien, in a very gentle gestured, placed his hand over the top of hers and encouraged her to speak.

"Thomas, I get what you're going through." Mel began. "Several years ago, I had something similar happen to me. My first husband, Lawrence, cheated on me with two other people," she said, blushing. I saw Damien squeeze her hand. She sighed.

"I hope it's all right," she asked looking at me. "But Damien shared just a little of what you're going through. He said the reports were...graphic?"

I nodded.

"Well, I understand that. When I found my first husband Lawrence, I found him in our bed with two other men..."

"Oh," I said, "Ohhhh...." I repeated, wincing.

She nodded.

"I'm sorry," I said automatically, my mind going back to the images in my head of my wife with those four other men. I winced again.

"At the time, it was soul-destroying; I went wild." She told me, becoming somewhat lost in what was an old memory. "I must have thrown half the house at the three of them in my rage and then threw them out, still screaming in hysterics. I ended up visiting Damien's law firm for my divorce, and one of Damien's graduates handled it."

"Is that how you met?" I asked.

They both shook their heads. Damien smiled, looking at his wife.

"My story is a little different," he told me. "I was engaged to be married, but Cherri, the woman I was engaged to, couldn't handle the long and obscure hours that I had as a named partner in a law firm. So we split. Not the worst break-up, but a break-up nonetheless. It was about a month before the end of Mel's divorce that we met in a café downstairs. I was taken by her face and her pregnant belly."

"You mean?" I asked, looking at Mel as she blushed.

They both nodded at me.

"Yeah, Colleen is Lawrence's daughter," Mel explained. "I found out a few weeks after everything went down."

"It didn't change anything for me," Damien said. "I adopted Colleen without a moment's hesitation when she turned two and Mel and I married. Lawrence was happy to sign the adoption papers as it meant no child support for him."

We sat for a moment, the couple letting me digest what was being said. I looked back at them after sipping my coffee again.

"So what happened to Lawrence?" I asked.

Damien snorted, "During the year that followed, he got really sick from several STD's. We haven't followed up on him in a while, but last we heard, he was living in a shared house working the service desk for one of the major telecom companies." Then he sighed. "But if it makes him happy, then good on him, but he should have been honest with Mel."

Mel squeezed his hand again and looked at him lovingly. "Yes, but it did bring you and me together. I can't complain about that if it cost me a little pain," Mel said.

"There is that..." was Damien's almost guarded reply.

We talked for a little while later, and Colleen came back out and spent some time with us before heading back in to call her friends on discord.

"So what about you Thomas?" Mel asked after getting us each a fresh coffee. Mel, I learned, made a mean coffee. A few years ago, she had taken a barista course and she really knew how to put a cappuccino together.

I looked over at Damien and raised an eyebrow. He smiled waving his hand dismissively.

"You're not on the clock," he told me smiling. "This is honestly just new friends showing some concern for someone they want to support."

I smiled what felt like the first genuine smile I had given since everything went down.

"Honestly," I looked down into my coffee, almost like they were tea leaves that could give me a direction for the future. "I don't know. I assume that Damien has told you I stand to inherit a lot of money in a few years?"

Mel shook her head and smiled, "No, he just told me you were in a bad spot and a bit about your wife cheating on you with multiple people."

I looked at Damien and he smiled. His expression let me know to tell my own story.

"Well," I said taking a deep breath.

"Candice and I have been married for a few years. We were talking about starting a family soon, but then one of the interns where I work brought it to my attention that my wife was cheating on me. It turns out that it was with my boss, her boss, my former lawyer," Damien smiled at that. "And, a friend of mine. Candice has been going out to these 'conferences' for a couple of years, so I can only guess that it's been going on that long.

"What I have seen from the reports, video and pictures so far shows depravity that is at the very least in line with your ex-husband," I blushed a little at the admission. "So I guess first for me is to clean house. They all have to go."

I watched for a moment as the expression of a great white eyeing its prey again came across Damien's face. He saw me catch the expression, and this time he blushed. I paused.

"It's all right, Damien. You can relish the challenge," I told him. He laughed.

I sighed again, looking from my coffee to the couple in front of me and then out over the balcony to stare at Melbourne. The city was quiet for a weekend, and I felt peaceful.

"I guess the first thing is that I need, is to get the complete report from Norm," Damien nodded in agreement. "Then I will enforce the full prenuptial agreement with Candice and sue the pants off everyone involved."

Damien laughed at that, but Mel frowned.

"Thomas," she said leaning forward, "I get that you need to do those things, but what about you personally? You said you have money, so for this group of people to betray you, your money must have something to do with it. But, from what I am hearing, your situation is much worse than the one with my ex-husband. You have been betrayed by everyone. I struggled with feeling inadequate for some time, and with what you have told me, I am sure its going to be a lot worse for you."

She halted a moment and looked at me, her eyes soft and caring.

"Sorry, I guess it hasn't hit you yet in that way, "she told me. "It took me a few weeks, but you're going to need help, you're going to need support and you are going to need a shrink," Mel told me without holding back.

I shrugged, "I suppose," I said, turning again to look out at the cityscape.

"I mean it Thomas," she said. "If you will let us, I'd like Damien and I to be there for you. Damien is a shark at work," I smiled still looking at the city. "But I can tell you he picks the people we hang out with very carefully. That you're here this morning with us shows that my husband thinks a lot about you."

I turned back to the couple's surprise written on my face.

Damien blushed slightly and shrugged.

"I don't make friends easily," he told me. "You're like me in that you are a man of means, you know your stuff and you generally don't stand for bullshit." He glanced at his wife. "When you told me your story, I thought of what Mel went through and I figured at least we might be able to be a sounding board."

I was touched; I never thought this guy would have a softer side or that a lawyer would care. We spent the next couple of hours talking a lot more openly about my situation. Mel kept bringing up the emotional impact side of things and by the time I left to check into a new Bed and Breakfast in another part of the city, I felt a lot more emotional about what I was starting to go through, but I also knew for the first time that I had support.

I spoke to Candice for a few minutes when she called later that evening. She again spoke normally to me like nothing was going on. When I got the report from Norm for that time, I could time-match her phone call with a video of her with Randy's cock up her ass and the others doing things that were a real turn-off.

Damien advised me that I should continue to go into the office and act as normal as possible until he could get as much of the legal paperwork ready as possible. I tried, but I think everyone knew something was wrong. It was perhaps late Tuesday morning when Iona came in and sat on my desk.

She looked at me.

"Thomas, you look horrible. So, you found out there is something happening?" she asked questioningly but quietly, trying not to talk too loudly.

I nodded slowly.

"I'm guessing from your mood that it's worse than we spoke about?" she said like she was expecting it.

I nodded again; I sat back on my chair, willing myself not to break down.

"I'm sorry Thomas, I really am," she said compassionately. "I am sorry that it was me that told you, I feel ashamed." In her German accent, the word 'ashamed' came across a lot more mournful than when said in an Aussie accent. I looked back at her.

"Don't be," I told her, feeling my resolve to fight my way out of this grow, as I watched her trying to understand something of my pain. "If it weren't for you, I would still be a clueless cuckold headed towards a who knows what future."

"What is a cuckold?" she asked.

I called up the simple definition on Wikipedia and I saw her eyes widen in shock then soften in sympathy. I then, in low tones, gave her a summary of what I found out, trying to keep details of the sordid scenes I had seen from being too descriptive. Even without hearing everything she had tears in her eyes by the end. It was good that I had an office because if we were sitting on the main floor, we would get even more looks than we already were. I wondered not for the first time if anyone out there knew whether William Zacks, the other owner of Sayman and Zacks, knew about the affair.

Iona asked if I would meet her for dinner that night because she couldn't keep it together if I took her out to lunch and told her anymore. I agreed that we would head out a few hours after work. She had four days left, including today, before she finished her paid internship, so she wanted to leave well.

I will admit that later in the afternoon, I got a strange look from our Office Manager, Mary as I passed her in the hallway. She was in conference with William for a few hours in the afternoon as I pretended to work for the rest of the day.

Later in the evening, I had dinner with Iona, telling her pretty much everything. She was appalled at how I was being treated and asked what I would do. I tried to stay non-committal, but she also knew me well enough to know I wouldn't stand for Candice or the other four treating me so badly.

The next few days proceeded as normal. Well, as well as they could when your life is turning itself inside out. I worked, ate, sort of slept, and I kept changing the Bed and Breakfast I was staying at each night. Now just a little paranoid that someone might know where I was laying my head.

Norm called me Thursday afternoon and asked to meet with me that evening. When I arrived, I was surprised to find Damien already there, a dark look on his face.

As the three of us sat down and I looked at the two men, my heart sank.

"That bad huh?" I asked, trying to be jovial, but my heart really wasn't in it.

Norm nodded.

"I asked Damien here because it's been noticed that you're not performing at work, it's gotten back to your boss, and he's been talking to your wife. Our team managed to get a few audio extracts with a special microphone."

My heart sank. Thinking back over the past few days, I could now see that both William and Mary were, to some degree, are aware of what was happening and had been talking to George.

If I thought that was the end of it, I was mistaken. Norm cleared his throat and pulled my attention back to the moment. "I'm sorry, but it's worse than what you have seen so far."

"You mean my wife fucking my boss, her boss, my lawyer and my friend and at least more people at my workplace know, and it is worse than that?" I asked with a note of disdain in my voice; Norm didn't take it personally.