Brotherly Love

"Let's do it. Make the call, and then we go computer shopping."

An hour later we both stood and watched as 'eBola' set up our new computer and routed all internet and email traffic through his server. There was an impressive level of security including a random rolling password set up so that if Henry, or anyone he hired for the occasion, hacked our password and tried to remotely access our computer, it would shut it down and lock onto the remote computer used. We would not lose any data and eBola would be able to identify who it was that was trying to get into our system.

We called into the construction site on the way back to the office to establish our reason for being out of the office all morning.

"I don't know what you said to Hamish the other day, but I have never seen him so co-operative. We are already a day ahead of schedule, and we're still in the first week."

"I'm impressed. I noticed that all of the under floor services conduits are in place, when can we expect you begin the concrete pour?"

"Monday. We will also make a start on the external service connections to the sewer and stormwater drains and power to each of the buildings. As soon as the slab has cured and we are ready for the columns for the next level, there will be a power board in place for each building. The same applies for each level."

"Good. Now all that we have to do is to prevent Henry from interfering."

"Why would he want to interfere? It is his company after all."

"It's a long and involved story. The why doesn't concern you, just the how. Keep your eyes open at all times for little things like changes to parking restriction on surrounding roads that will catch the workers out and cost them shit loads of money. If you notice anything like that, let me know immediately so that I can take care of it."

"Will do. I'm glad that you're in charge of this site, and not some of the other Project Managers."

"If you don't mind me asking," Sasha said as we drove off-site. "But what made you think of that thing about the parking restrictions?"

"Past experience. I had a party years ago, and I didn't feel like asking him, so he got his revenge by applying to the council and getting them to whack parking restrictions in the vicinity of my place. Every guest got, not one but, several parking tickets, they were at the party for five hours and every half hour the Inspectors would do the rounds, booking them for overstaying the half hour parking restrictions."

"Ouch, that must have cost them."

"No, it cost me. Even though I was ignorant of the changes, I felt responsible, so I reimbursed them all for the fines."

"More and more I love this man." At the next red light she leaned over and kissed me. Her hand rested on my thigh, and even though she wasn't touching my cock, he was heading in her general direction. We parked in my designated space and we both concentrated on the notes that we had made, not because we needed to do anything with them, but so that I didn't have a raging boner when we walked inside. That would be too much information for the staff to handle.

"Where have you been?" Henry was waiting for our return.

"On site checking on progress and making sure that it was running on schedule."

"Did that take all morning?"

"No. I had to go home and collect a few things that I needed. Sasha came with me because it seemed pointless me going home and having to come back here to pick her up. Did I do something wrong?"

"No, but I would like to know where you are at all times."

"Henry, I am not a kid anymore, I am a responsible adult doing a responsible job. You do not need to be hanging over my shoulder all of the time."

He looked from one of us to the other. "I know why you went home. You two are fucking, aren't you?"

"If we are, and that is a big if, neither of us would think of doing it in work time, and what we do in our own time is of no business of yours."

He was getting just a little angry. "I'll trouble you to remember who it is that you are talking to. I am your boss and I demand that you treat me with the respect that that position deserves."

"Is that all? We have work to do, and we can't do it and talk to you at the same time."

Henry turned on his heels and stormed out of my office.

"I have never seen you this forceful with him, please, don't overdo it."

"I won't, the time for overdoing it will come soon enough."

"This is how I've imagined it to be." Sasha had just finished helping me cook us a meal. This would be the first time that we spent the entire night doing the husband and wife thing, and not just the making love. I have to admit that this meal was so much better than my solo efforts, or Robyn's solo efforts. She would not let me help.

After we had finished, we adjourned to my study to see what eBola had found out. He had been a busy little beaver, and the stuff that he had sent us was going to take some time to dissect and itemise for easy reading.

He had no trouble getting into Robyn's banking records, despite the supposed fool-proof encryption that the bank had in place. There had been several large amounts of undisclosed cash entering her accounts over the last eighteen months. So she and Henry had been colluding since before she had left me, another thing to punish him for. A couple of days after these funds had gone into the account, they had left, into three different accounts. "That one's Henry's private account, it's the one he used to pay me for spying on you." Sasha said.

"And I would hazard a guess that the other two belong to Hamish and James Robinson. I tell you what, these guys are doing very nicely out of this scam."

"So what are we going to do about it?" She asked.

"We wait for confirmation of the other two accounts and we take this to ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) and see what they'll do about it."

"I don't think that they can do anything about it."

"Why not?" It was my turn to ask a question.

"Because the evidence that we give them has been illegally obtained."

"I would hope that they use it to carry out their own investigation."

"But as soon as they start to sniff around, Henry and his mates will probably transfer their money to Rarotonga or somewhere like that so that the local authorities can't touch them."

"So what do we do?"

Sasha looked at me with this wicked smile on her face, the one that meant that we would soon be involved in some serious love-making. "We can't do anything about it tonight, how do you suggest that we fill in our time?" Her voice was husky and her chuckle at the end of it was filled with so much sensuality that I made no attempt to fight off the inevitable. I stood up and drew her up after me. We met chest to chest, face to face and groin to groin. Her tongue enticed its way into my mouth, her nipples pressed into my chest and my cock made his hardened presence felt.

"Oh god, is it going to be like this every night?"

"You'd better believe it. Is that going to be a problem?"

"I wasn't complaining, in fact it's what I've dreamed of for ages." She reinforced this by grabbing him in a strangle hold and leading me, un-resisting, to our bed.

The morning brought with it some more information from eBola. He had traced the other two accounts, and it came as no surprise that they belonged to Hamish and James.

"We've got to go to ICAC with this. Henry is breaking the law, as are the other two, and we can't let them get away with it." Sasha said as we gathered the information together and placed it in a lockable file case. We would contact ICAC and arrange an appointment as soon as we got to work.

We arranged a lunch appointment with Rod MacPherson, an investigator from ICAC, at a 3 star (if it was lucky), out of the way Bistro. There was little likelihood of us being discovered, the ambience was atrocious, but the food made up for it. "So, what have you got for me?"

"Evidence of corruption on a massive scale, involving the company that we both work for, a government department and a Union Organiser. It involves millions of tax -payer dollars ending up in their bank accounts, some here and some, the larger 'some', off-shore."

"And you have proof of all of this?"

"Yes, but there is a slight problem with this evidence."

"And that is?"

"It was illegally obtained, only because we had no way of obtaining it legally, and without it you would have had no starting point for any investigation that you mount."

"We shall see. Show me what you have."

Sasha took the file case from her attaché case and handed it over. Rob skimmed through the first couple of pages. "Fuck. Pardon the French, but this is dynamite stuff you have here, and I'm not even going to ask you how you managed to obtain this. Leave this with me, I'll get a team onto it straight away. I'll keep you in the loop and hopefully we will be able to move forward on this in three or four weeks. In the mean time, tell no-one. Is that understood?"

"Yes, understood." We got up and left him studying the papers.

We had only been back in the office for thirty minutes when Sasha's phone rang. "Who? Okay send her in." She got up and came straight into my office. "You'll never guess who's on her way in."

"Robyn."

"How did you know? She's standing right behind me, isn't she?" She turned around. "Hi Robyn, it is Robyn, isn't it?"

"Yes it is. I would like to have a word with my husband, if that's all right with you."

"Sure, I'll leave you two to it."

She turned to leave. "No, stay." I looked at the surprised Robyn, this would be the first time that I went against her wishes. "Sasha stays, she's as much involved in anything that we have to say as we are."

"So Henry was right, you two are lovers."

"Yes we are."

"I guess that is to be expected, after all I did leave you, and she is a very pretty girl." (Meow, she can be really catty when she wants to be.)

"What is it that you want to say to me?"

"I have this feeling that what I want to say is redundant. I was going to ask you if there was any possibility of you taking me and the kids back."

"The short answer to that is no. But this is not because I have no feelings for you, because I do, just not enough to want to live with you again. I have been led to believe that Henry has something on you that is stopping you from leaving him, so what has changed?"

"My desire to leave has become greater than my fear of him and what he has on me. As well as that I have something on him that I can use to bargain my way out of what he has."

"That something wouldn't have anything to do with the scam that he's working with a couple of guys, would it?"

"You know about this, how?"

"We sort of stumbled onto it because of the project that we have just begun, so we found someone that could get us the evidence that we need to do something about it."

"Are you going to do anything?"

Now wasn't the time to tell her that we already have. "No, you see the evidence that we have will not be admissible in court. If you must know, we got it illegally."

"You keep saying 'we', does that mean that you and, what is your name? That you and she are more than just lovers?"

I looked at Sasha and she gave me an almost imperceptible nod in response. "Yes, it does mean that, in fact Sasha is in the process of moving in with me."

"Oh. Don't get me wrong, I wish the both of you all the best. I have no right to be so disappointed that you're no longer available. I can see that you two have every right to be together, and I suppose that this digging up of evidence has brought you closer together." She stopped talking for several seconds, it was as if she was making up her mind as to what to do next. "Robert, Rob, the other reason that I came to see you was to ask your advice. I know that Henry is involved in a scam, and I have evidence of that. I will give that to you."

"But aren't you cutting off your nose to spite your face? If Henry goes down you will be left with nothing."

"No. I am about to do something illegal, and I'll probably end up in gaol for it and I want you to look after the kids, they'll like Sasha, not because she's close to their age, I think that you'll get along fine and the kids deserve better than what they have at the moment. I'm sorry, I'm rambling. But I have a favour to ask."

"What is it?"

"There's a final payment due in a week on one of your projects."

"Yes, the country hospital."

"Well, when the payments are made, there's a large sum of money deposited into my bank account. It stays there for only a few days before it is divided up and transferred to other accounts. What I planned to do was to take that money out of my account and transfer it to another, unrelated, account that I plan to open. No sooner is it deposited in that account than it is transferred into another account. Several steps later it has virtually disappeared off the face of the earth."

"How did you work this out?"

"You've forgotten that before I married you I worked in a bank, in the International Transfer section, so I know how to organise this. What I'm asking you is to give me time to arrange this before you go to whoever you have to go to."

"How soon can you get us your evidence?"

She rummaged in the large bag that she carried and took out a large bundle of papers. "Is now soon enough?"

I looked at what she had given me. They were similar account balances to those that eBola had given us, the major difference was that these were legally obtained. Robyn had every right to print off her own account balance sheets.

"These are great! They're actually the same as the ones that we already have, this just confirms it. Okay, we'' sit on this until after you've done your fiddle with the money. Let us know as soon as that happens, will you?"

"I will. About the kids?"

"If anything happens to you, I'll look after them."

"We'll look after them." Sasha said grabbing my hand.

"You were taking a chance coming here, weren't you?"

"Not really, I knew that he would be out of the office all afternoon."

"What about Janice, if she sees you here she'll tell Henry."

"No she won't. I spoke with her earlier today and told her that I wanted to speak to you about a matter that concerned you and the kids, I wasn't lying, this does concern you, and that Henry would get jealous if he saw me with you. She was fine with that. I'll see myself out."

We both looked after her as she left. It had taken a lot for her to come to us. She obviously knew about me and Sasha, I'm sure that Henry would have told her that to hurt her ambitions to come back to me.

"What do we do now? Do we ring Rod and tell him that we have legal confirmation for the illegal evidence that we provided to him, or do we sit on it until after Robyn has done her thing?" Sasha asked.

"We sit on it. I want him to suffer knowing that the way that he treated her made her angry enough to screw him big time. If we go now she'll lose everything."

"But, how will he react, he's not known for his balanced temper."

"He can't go to the police because that will expose him and his mates, can you imagine it? 'Tell me Mister Blakely, where did this money come from?'

'I can't say.'

'You can't or you won't?'

'Both.'

'So, someone steals money that had been deposited into your, what is she, girlfriend, partner, her account. Money that you won't tell us where it came from, so we could assume that it was illegal. What was it, drug money? You had a huge win at the casino? What are we to believe, Mister Blakely?'

'It's not drug money, that much I can tell you.' "Can you imagine Henry going through that? I don't think so."

What Henry did, a week later after Robyn had taken the money and run, dropping the kids off to me at work on her way out, was to chuck a huge hissy fit.

"What do you know about this?" He hurled the question at me.

"About what?" I answered quietly.

"About your fucking wife taking money belonging to me and leaving me, that's what!" He shouted, everyone heard him.

"Robyn and I can barely exchange a civil word, so what makes you think that I know what she's doing?"

"Well her kids are here, what are they doing here?"

"They asked to come and see me so she dropped them off this morning. I assumed that she was going shopping to spend your money. I don't know when she's coming to pick them up."

"Fuck, what am I going to do? I owe these guys money and if they don't get it by tomorrow there'll be hell to pay." Henry stormed out of my office, this was getting to be a habit.

"That's your problem. If you don't mind I have a project to run and work to do."

"You guys know what's happening here, don't you?"

"Yeah, Mum filled us in on everything. You know that she was hoping that you would take her back, don't you?" Jason asked.

"She mentioned something about that the last time that we spoke."

"Then she told us that you had another woman in your life and we would only be staying until she found somewhere else to live." Phoebe said. "I kinda hope that she doesn't find anything straight away, I like Sasha, you've done well for yourself there Dad."

"I think so." I looked up as Sasha arrived back from the local café loaded down with coffees and cakes for all of us.

"Okay kids, dig in before your father gets his sticky fingers on it." She handed me my coffee and made a show of denying me my favourite cake. "Has Henry finished his hissy fit yet?"

"For now at least, but I wouldn't turn my back on him, especially as you failed to mention anything of this in your last report."

"Bastard, you know damn well that my last report happened long before the shit hit the fan."

"What was this about the shit hitting the fan?" Jason asked.

"Nothing, just business talk." I told him.

"Credit me with some sense Dad, things haven't been quiet on the home front lately, and Mum hasn't helped by telling Henry that she wished that she hadn't left you. That was really pissing him off I can tell you."

"Do you mind going and sitting with Sasha, I have an important call to make."

"No I don't mind, she's great Dad, she's gorgeous and funny, and smart, and did I mention gorgeous?"

"Go!" He went.

Rod answered the phone. "Hi Rob, before you ask, we're getting there, it's a slow process, but we will get there, this is too big to let go."

"I have something for you, something that you'll like."

"Tell me more."

"We have obtained, by strictly legal methods, bank account records that confirm everything that we have provided illegally."

"And this stuff is squeaky clean?"

"So clean you could eat off it, on second thoughts, that wouldn't be a good idea, it would make the paper soggy."

"Originals or copies?"

"Originals."

"Email them to me, better still, I'll come and get them. I'll be there in ten minutes." He was good to his word, arriving exactly ten minutes later. After reading through the papers he picked up his phone and dialled a number. The message was succinct. "Come and get him."

Minutes later a squad of plain clothed police walked in and through to Henry's office. His previous hissy fit had nothing on this one. He had to be restrained and was led, yelling and screaming from the building. Within minutes we were inundated by the media. "Mister Blakely, can you tell us what the charges are that your brother is facing?"

"No, it's something to do with a corruption inquiry being carried out by ICAC, anything more than that I can't say. We are waiting for news from the courts, and until then, it's business as usual."

This appeased them for about an hour. That was how long it took for the charges to be heard. The three of them faced the ICAC hearing together. Our board got together and decided that I should be the one to face the media, after all, they couldn't afford to be involved in this scandal which was a matter that didn't directly involve them.