Fifteen to Life

"David --" I had been rehearsing it all day and when it came time to actually say it, I didn't know where to start. "Why?"

"You weren't supposed to know who I worked for. I was supposed to be the prodigal brother returning after fifteen years, get reacquainted with you and ingratiate myself into your life to get closer to your husband. We've been building this case for years. We had narrowed down the players so we could figure out where to strike first to get the best possible prosecution.

"Your husband escalated the timeline when he decided to cheat on you and you left him. One of the unexpected consequences was your friend contacting Treasury and confessing --"

"Wait, what? Leah was involved? How?" I was way beyond surprised.

"Need to know, Meg. I shouldn't be telling you this much. Anyway, she confessed and told us other things we hadn't been aware of. Your name came up incidentally. Until yesterday, it hadn't been a problem but when we searched Allied Global, records were missing and your login had been involved. That's why they did the search warrant. They also pulled your cell records.

"I was sure you weren't involved but you were close to both Edward and Leah. Atkinson wanted to be absolutely sure. He's a stand up guy, really, but he's very, very thorough when it comes to his job. I'm on paid suspension, just because of our relationship and living arrangements. Anyway, the preliminary search of your laptop was clean, it wasn't that computer that was used to delete those records. Your office computer wasn't used, either." He got up to throw away the empty bottle and came back with two more.

Handing me one, he took a sip from the other. "Right now, they're trying to figure out how your login was spoofed. Atkinson believes you were set up to take the fall when the scheme was finally discovered. Edward isn't the driver here, he's a middle manager. We've identified most of his crew as well as the other handler and his charges. Now that we know it's not you at Allied Global, we think whoever did the deletions is the insider for Edward."

He hit the bottle hard again. "I would be gone as soon as this case wrapped up and went to the grand jury."

There was a cold, hard rock in my stomach. "Gone, as in 'see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya'?"

David nodded, still staring out the window. "Pack my shit, get on a plane, and move on to the next case, wherever that was."

My voice was shaky, 'So, how much of our conversation the other night was actually the truth, David?" I had bared my soul to him, told him everything I had wanted to say for the last fifteen years. I was afraid none of what he said was actually real.

His silence was frightening. When he turned to face me, his eyes were sad. "All of it. Everything I said to you about how I felt was the absolute truth. I left because I couldn't trust myself around you any more. I knew we couldn't be together, it was wrong and it would have destroyed you and our parents.

"I tried to get out of this assignment, Meg. The people who make those decisions felt I had the best chance of getting inside because of my history, as they knew it, with you. They didn't know all of it, the real reason for our split. I couldn't tell them, I'd lose my job, you would lose your job, your friends, and probably your marriage. Mom and Dad would likely disown us both when it came out, and it definitely would.

"When you called and I brought you here, I knew I couldn't let you go again. I didn't know how to keep you here but I couldn't risk losing you again. I want to put Ed away, not because he's a criminal but because he's still your husband and I want him gone more than you wanted Tina gone."

I didn't know what to say. I could only sit and stare at him silently.

He continued, "I tried to protect you. I warned them I would, because you were family. I didn't do a very good job of it. So now, here we sit, suspects in a major criminal investigation. I know you didn't do anything illegal. I'm guilty of hindering a federal investigation. At best, I'll be suspended without pay for a few months. At worst, I'm going to prison. It depends on how pissed off my bosses in DC are about the outcome when this is done.

"Your cooperation is the only thing keeping both of us out of a cell right now. I'm not supposed to tell you that, either. I couldn't encourage or discourage you, you had to do the right thing on your own.

"I will tell you this, though. This case is big. National news for days kind of big. You'll have to testify in court. In all honesty, you'll probably never work in the financial industry again after this. That's just the way it is, your judgment will always be suspect from now on. I'm pretty sure you've figured that out by now and I'm sorry."

I hadn't thought that far ahead. I could feel the tears start with the realization my career with Allied Global was over. I really liked what I did. I liked dealing with numbers more than I did with people. Now that was gone, along with my best friend, my soon to be ex-husband and eventually my brother.

I barely made it to the bathroom before I threw up. David was right behind me, holding my hair and rubbing my back as I emptied my gut and continued to dry heave for a few minutes. Helping me to my feet, I rinsed my mouth out, then he wiped my face with a damp washcloth before he led me to my bedroom and helped me lay down on the bed.

"I never wanted to hurt you, Meg. It's why I left, why I stayed away for so long. Deep down, I knew somehow I would. I love you, more than anything in this world. So much it hurts almost every day. I want to be with you for the rest of our lives but I can't. I can't do this to you. I'll call Atkinson in the morning and have you moved to a safe house."

"No, David, please don't. Don't fucking do this to me again. I want to stay here. With you." The thought of being sent away made me nauseous all over again. He grabbed the trash can as I dry heaved some more. Wiping my mouth with a tissue, I begged some more, "Don't throw me away again. I don't want to spend the rest of my life living in some small town all by myself, trying to live a life that wasn't mine."

I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. "I have you back now. We know how we both feel now. We'll figure something out, David. We will. I'll do whatever I have to do to get Ed and keep you out of jail. I need you. I have no one else. If you leave, Mom and Dad will blame me again and I'll lose them, too."

He helped me sit up next to him. "Meg, I can't --"

"Can't or won't, David? What are you really afraid of?"

His whisper was barely audible. "You."

Our eyes met and then our lips. God, that was sweet. He was so soft and gentle. I let the tip of my tongue tease his lips and he gently pulled it in and lightly played with it using his tongue. His arms went around me and pulled me in tightly. My arms went around his neck as I enticed his tongue into my mouth to play for a bit.

We broke apart, breathing heavily. "Meg, we need to stop right there. You're still married, you're a witness and technically I'm an investigating officer. We can't do this without jeopardizing the case."

My hands found their way to his waistband. "I don't care. I need you."

He grabbed my hands and held them between us. "You need to. It's your freedom, my freedom on the line here. I give you my word, Meg, that we will be together when this is over. I give you my word on that. You need to trust me like I trust you. It will be hard but we'll do it. You just need to trust it will happen."

I stopped trying to fight him and kissed him again, softly and purposefully. "It had better because there is no place you can run to where I won't find you."

His hand found the back of my head and he pulled me in and kissed me hard, tongues dancing some more. "I know."

We walked back out to the living room and curled up on the couch together. At some point, I fell asleep leaning against him. About 8, he woke me up to eat dinner. I hadn't gotten to the store so we ordered Thai again. It took about an hour to get there.

In that hour, it was obvious that the dynamic between us had changed. There was no longer any hesitancy or uncertainty in our interactions, we just knew. There was a little matter of willpower, though. Mine, mostly. Now that I knew he wanted me as badly as I wanted him, it was hard to keep my distance sexually. I'm pretty sure he struggled with the same thing, given the bulge in his sweats.

What helped, in a fucked up sort of way, was concentrating on what I lost. My best friend, my marriage, and my career. Of the three, the career loss hurt the most. All that effort I had put into getting a degree, the hours I had put in, my career dreams...all gone. That wasn't supposed to happen. Marriages end and friendships dissolve, sometimes at the same time like mine. A future shouldn't be tied to the acts of two people you made the mistake of trusting.

I was going to miss Leah. We had struggled together, cried over bad relationships together, got each other off on occasion, and confided in each other. Then she had to go and fuck my husband under my nose, in my bed.

And then there was Ed. Hindsight is supposed to be 20/20 and I was just now beginning to see some of the red flags I had ignored. I had fallen in love with him because he reminded me of David, but he wasn't David. Not even close. His strange interest in meeting my coworkers and total lack of interest in having me meet his. The calls on weekends, especially after a work function. Little things that didn't seem important enough to feel off but actually were.

I needed a new plan. I was 36, not too old for a career change. But into what? Where could I go that this wouldn't follow me? Then I worried about David. Even though I hadn't intended it, obviously, his trying to protect me had cost him his career and maybe some freedom, too. That led to thoughts about what's going to happen when he started thinking this through and he realized what I had cost him. How would he feel then? Should I confront him now and make him think about it while I still have a chance to salvage some kind of relationship? Or should I just pray that blood is thicker than any career and I can convince him to forgive me?

After we ate, we just sat on the couch, looking out the window at the view of the city, and drank beer while we snuggled. There was no work, nothing to watch without computers except our phones. I could tell he was thinking, too. I wanted to ask what about but I didn't dare to, I wanted a night with him without any more drama. So we sat there, staring out the window while he played with my hair and I had my hand on his thigh as we cuddled.

We finally went to bed around 10:30. We never directly discussed it but I think we both understood that we couldn't share a bed. He wouldn't last ten minutes because I wouldn't make it five without trying to fuck him to death. As a courtesy to his sanity, I masturbated face down into my pillow every night. I definitely needed that vibrator before I damaged my hand.

Our celibacy pact lasted three days. I was in the kitchen making breakfast, creating the monster omelet that he loved when we were younger, and I dropped the egg shells. Call it fate, call it thoughtlessness, call it unconscious premeditation or whatever you want, but I was wearing nothing but my oversize t-shirt that I slept in and no underwear.

David was just walking into the kitchen, wearing his sweats and the last vestige of his morning erection as I bent over with my back to him to pick up the eggshells. All I heard was a groan and then I found myself bent over the kitchen sink, my face inches away from the backsplash with his hand grabbing my hair as I felt more than heard his sweatpants drop. I was immediately turned on and I moaned uncontrollably. Then his left hand was under my shirt, squeezing my left tit, fingers tugging on the nipple as he ground his cock into the crack of my ass.

I managed to push back just enough to get my hand between my legs and found his cock. I slid the head down so that it fit between my legs and he moaned again. He rocked back and forth a few times as I just leaked lubricant onto it. I waited for him to pull back far enough and as he started to thrust forward, I pushed the tip into my pussy. My feet left the floor as I leaned forward and he literally shivered as he went in all the way to the base. His pubic bone smacked into my ass with his thrust and it felt amazing. He moaned my name over and over and then fucked me as slowly as he possibly could. Each thrust went as far as he could manage and it felt like he got harder and harder with each one.

I started moaning his name and by the fourth or fifth stroke, I was speaking gibberish. I couldn't fuck back, I had no leverage so I was at his mercy. I managed to get my hand back down to my clit and I fiddled with it at the same pace he was fucking me. It was everything I ever wanted to feel and I lost track of everything, time, place, my sanity, all of it.

When I came, it was glorious. Then I came again. When I felt him swell inside me and his breathing quickened, I tried to clamp down on his dick. I could feel him shiver again and he started with short, quick strokes, snapping his hips into me, causing me to push against the backsplash with my free hand to keep from breaking my nose. I came a third time and it was a doozy. Then he let go of my hair and grabbed both hips.

The coup de grace came, pun intended, violently. I could feel another orgasm starting, he was fucking me with everything he had, and he just had to lean over and whisper in my ear, "Oh. Fuck. Yeah." as he came, hands pulling my hips into him as he drove as hard as he could into me. The feel of his cock pulsing inside me drove me over the edge, along with grinding my hand into my clit at the same pace. I think I lost consciousness as I screamed his name into my free hand until I was breathless. I know I smacked my forehead into the backsplash a couple of times during that last one, so maybe that did it. All I know for sure is that I saw God that morning for the first time.

When I became rational again, I was still bent over the sink, he still had me by the hips and his breathing was hard and heavy. He helped me get my feet on the floor and when I turned to kiss him, I could still see the lust all over his face. It took him a few moments to collect himself and when he did, I could see the shame start to cross his face.

"Oh, God, Meg. I'm sorry. I didn't --"

I kissed him solidly and before he could say anything else, I put my fingers over his lips. "No. I've wanted that since the day I caught you in the basement. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. Do not apologize for giving me what I wanted. I love you, David Lilly, and don't ever forget that."

"Are you --" He was still feeling guilty, I could read it in his face. I kissed him thoroughly in response.

"I'm fine. I'm fantastic. Now pull your pants up and go sit down so I can feed you some breakfast." He actually obeyed me. My legs weren't too steady but I got the omelet made without burning it. He ate it like a starving man, which was definitely good for my ego. While he did, I cleaned myself up with a wet paper towel, his production had been prodigious and it was not only seeping out and running down my legs, it was dripping onto the floor. I had an IUD, birth control pills didn't agree with me, but I found myself not caring if he somehow got me pregnant. I would often worry about that with Ed, which should have been another red flag. Fortunately, I no longer had to worry about that.

David actually went back to work first. He was reassigned to whatever they called their records department and his job was to read, annotate and electronically file field agent reports. He was also formally reprimanded. His credentials and laptop were returned but not his weapon. He would no longer be a field agent for the Department of the Treasury. It was that or termination for cause.

It took longer for me to return to work. I had to go into the office, fill out all sorts of paperwork to get paid for my suspension, and then I had a talk with my supervisor. I was being transferred to Default and Delinquency, since they were restructuring the loan departments and I was the odd person out. My supervisor, Melody, knew the truth and so did I. Appearance was everything and I had become a liability. In D&D, I just dealt with people, trying to get them to repay their loans.

To make matters worse, everybody in that department, including the supervisor, knew I made more than they did, considerably more. That did not go over well at all. It was work, I could do it from home since the workplace environment was beyond hostile, and I could still work on figuring out what I wanted to do next so I decided to stick it out for as long as I could.

Working from home wasn't bad, I was a top producer in the department and things were becoming less hostile. David was able to tolerate pushing paper although I think I was happier than he was, and neither one of us were actually happy.

The case progressed, there was a little blurb in the news about a series of arrests for unspecified financial shenanigans involving several major institutions, and in the course of day to day life, it didn't last long as a news item. It wasn't until much later we found out why from a friend of David's who worked the case to the end.

The operation had a lot of moving parts. The primary reason it went quietly was very simple. All of the financial institutions involved used a version of the same workflow program that had been tailored to their needs. The operation, which is what David referred to it as, managed to get a developer inside the company who somehow installed a backdoor into an integral part of the basic program. This backdoor allowed them to substitute documents at will into a pending loan application after the preliminary checks had been done. Believing they had a secure system, once the institutions conducted their research, they never did it again to that particular application. The operation would submit a legitimate application for a reasonable amount given their current financials, then substitute inflated documents and request a larger amount. The ratios and credit ratings were never rechecked. It was a very popular workflow system, used by a lot of different industries, not just financial. The fallout from revealing that vulnerability would have been catastrophic. So, they opted for secrecy. Apparently, there was a collateral investigation ongoing with regard to other industries that might have been affected.

In addition, information on loans could be sold to competitors as a form of espionage. Copies of the application documentation could be downloaded and sold at will. Everybody involved agreed to a deal to avoid all kinds of financial terrorism and espionage charges, as a lot of the business dealings were international in scope.

Ed and his partner had been tasked to recruit employees from the major institutions to perform those substitutions and downloads. That's why he was interested in meeting my coworkers and why we never went to any of his company's business functions. Most of the time, he was out recruiting other women to do his dirty work. They were good at identifying vulnerable women and exploiting them. Women like Leah and Shelby, the pretty new girl who had been hired a year and a half ago at Allied Global. She was nice, very friendly and dependable. Those who couldn't be bought ended up blackmailed, like Leah claimed she had been. I called bullshit on that but they didn't ask me.

The feds and the banks all had a vested interest in keeping it quiet. That's why we never testified, we didn't have to. Ed rolled over on everybody he could. Leah cut a deal, she apparently didn't serve any time and went into Witness Protection. Ed got 35 years and a divorce. Shelby got ten because she cooperated from the very beginning.