The Dark Side

It was a while, but eventually she unwrapped her legs from around my body and let me pull out to collapse on the bed on her right. We lay there, softly touching every once in a while.

* * *

"I need to tell you something," Allison said when we both had ourselves under control again, laying companionably beside each other.

"Hmmmmm?" I answered.

"You know Dave?"

"Ahhhhh, no, I don't think I do," I replied. Evidently she was referring to one of them men I'd met at the party where I'd found Tricia cheating on me. I couldn't put a face to the name Dave, or David, or whatever.

"The guy Tricia was doing," Allison prompted.

"Oh ... okay," I said. Now I knew who she meant.

"Mom put me in charge of the guest list for the party," Allison said quietly. She waited a couple of beats. "I made sure Dave got an invitation," she explained, apparently expecting me to understand.

"Um hmmm?" I mumbled. I still didn't know what she was getting at.

"Dave was one of Tricia's old boyfriends," Allison said. "Not that she was exclusive or anything; I sent invites to all of them—the ones I could find anyway."

"Oh!" That was a nasty thing to do to one's sister. It did explain why there'd been so many men in our age group flying solo at the party that day, though.

"I wanted to tell you ... confess to you that I did something really ... underhanded," Allison said gently. "I wanted you back and I knew Tricia is an idiot. I was pretty sure she would ... do what she did ... with one of them."

I was quiet, thinking over what Allison had told me; what she'd confessed to me. I wasn't even remotely upset. I'd been pretty sure my relationship with Tricia was going to crash anyway and I'd been looking for a way out. What Allison described was a lot like a police sting operation. Give a crook an opportunity to foul up; don't push them into a criminal act or anything, but if the crook does take advantage of the opportunity, a badge was waiting to lower the boom.

"You're welcome," Allison cooed. She sensed I wasn't mad at her. Maybe it was the little grin on my face. To tell the truth, I wasn't even a little upset.

"I just wanted you to know I wanted you and I was willing to fight dirty to get you back," she said quietly. "And if that's bad, then you need to get used to me being bad 'cause I'll do it every time, baby ... every ... damn ... time."

I rolled up on my left elbow to look her in the eyes. I couldn't find any guile there. "Okay," I told her, and leaned in to kiss her.

* * *

Over the next few weeks and months, we talked everything out. I was twenty-seven; she was twenty-eight at the time, but she was actually only seven months older. I'd just received an early promotion to police lieutenant, she had an MBA and was working for her father in one of his various ventures. I was on the graveyard shift, working from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM the next morning, assuming nothing held me past that point into the later morning hours. She technically worked a 9 to 5 job, but frequently had to work overtime. It would be difficult to keep a relationship going strong and fresh, but we committed ourselves to doing whatever it took.

Her family was going to be a huge problem. Tricia was not going to be terribly happy about the situation and would throw a colossal fit. She was her daddy's favorite and if Tricia wasn't happy, Daddy wasn't happy. Allison's mom might not ever recover from me dumping her darling daughter. In her world, Tricia should rightly have dumped me. Allison was pretty sure she was going to have to quit working for her dad and find another job. Daddy was likely to be thoroughly incensed at her, and me.

On the other hand, I was a lieutenant in the police department and I brought home a decent paycheck every month. As a watch commander, I wouldn't normally have any grinding patrol duties other than being out and about, spot checking the officers under me. I should be able to manage my time so we would have plenty of time together and we'd be able to live fairly comfortably on my salary even if she wasn't bringing home a paycheck. Our life wouldn't be on the scale she'd been accustomed to, living in her father's mansion—and her relationship with her family was going to suffer, big time—but we'd manage. We'd find a way to make everything work. We were in love and had no doubts about our ability to bring it all together.

Eight months later, after lots of angst and quite a bit of drama that monopolized everyone's attention but us, Allison and I were married in a quiet church ceremony. Allison's mother and father attended, albeit reluctantly, but Tricia did not. She was in Reno getting a divorce from a guy she'd been married to for only sixty-seven days. Admittedly, Tricia had a tough row to hoe. Even in the upper crust world she inhabited, where infidelity was treated more or less as a given for powerful men and their women, Tricia's indiscretion stood out. My personal opinion was that her inability to keep her cheating hidden was the real reason she was finding things so difficult. Whatever, by the time Allison's and my second anniversary came around, Tricia was getting her third divorce. The longest of her marriages lasted seven months.

* * *

The first three years of our marriage were tough for Allison. Tricia shamelessly pitted herself against anything Allison stood for, and played their mother against their father to get her way. Allison finally stopped trying to resolve all the issues with her family and told her parents when they got their stuff together to let her know. Until then, she would be wherever I was. She made sure they had our phone numbers. Working for her father was impossible because of the hostility, so Allison quit the job. We lived on my salary for a long while, not extravagantly, but we weren't suffering either.

Our first daughter, Megan Alicia, was born eleven months after we were married and Evelyn Marie came to us fourteen months after that. Allison had difficulties with the second pregnancy and had a tubal ligation done after Evelyn was born. It would have been just too dangerous to have another baby.

I was perfectly happy with myself and my family. My professional life, my career as a law enforcement officer, was going well. I was respected by my superiors and subordinates alike. When I got home, I had a wife I loved and who loved me and she took pains to show it. There were two happy, bubbly little girls who made life that much more worth living. My life was extraordinary and I loved every minute of it.

Finally, at the beginning of our third year together, Allison caught on with one of her father's competitors, Holcomb Industries. Allison and I were sure she'd been hired simply to tweak her father's nose a little, but she wasn't content to be nothing more than a tool to irritate her almost-estranged father. Shortly after being hired, Allison found a way to combine two separate divisions into one, slightly smaller entity, under the Holcomb umbrella. Along the way, the merger eliminated some waste in a couple more areas and did away with inefficiencies that weren't apparent at first.

A year later, Holcomb Industries were on a much sounder financial footing and were visibly eating into the market share formerly enjoyed by Allison's father's company. It got Allison promoted past more than a few more senior personnel and Allison's career rocketed off the launch pad.

CHAPTER ONE

The brushed steel doors to the executive elevator opened quietly and Allison McMasters walked out at the head of what could only be called an entourage. About the time my wife was promoted to a mid-level executive position in Holcomb Industries, she'd gone to court to change her name from "Chambers" back to her maiden name. She told me it was because one of her focus groups decided "McMasters" had more gravitas than "Chambers" did.

Okay. What was done was done. I didn't like it one little bit. I did try to be understanding—it was for her professional life—but I never got there. Perhaps if she'd come to me beforehand, discussed it with me, and asked for my opinion, I might have been able to adjust easier. Maybe....

She was the CEO of Phillips Manufacturing, a subsidiary of Holcomb Industries, and she'd held that position for the last two years. There was no one higher on the food chain than she was, save for the President and super-majority stockholder of Holcomb Industries, Mr. Quinton Holcomb III himself. There was a board of directors, but they existed only to rubberstamp Mr. Holcomb's suggestions—more and more of those came to Mr. Holcomb from the mind of Allison McMasters.

I watched the woman who was only technically my wife as she strode confidently by. A queen in her court couldn't have been more lordly. A hush fell over the vast space that was her outer office as she passed. A commotion broke out in the far corner—nothing more than some laughter and a little moving around. Queen Allison glanced that way, frowned, and gestured one of her assistant's to her side. After a murmured, but pointed, conversation, the assistant scurried off toward that corner of the room. The laughter ceased abruptly and the reverent silence resumed.

At forty-six, Allison was still an attractive woman, with her luxuriant brunette hair caught up in a bun at the back of her head. Soft, lustrous brown eyes that used to smile at me, shot darts at most everyone these days. The business pant suit she wore hid a lithe body still slim after two children. She had long, wonderfully shaped legs, and nice breasts. She was often depressed she didn't have anything more than B-cups, but what she had was beautifully rounded. I knew—I'd held them in my hands often enough.

She was the most beautiful woman in my world and I knew every curve of her body. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to sample those curves much any more. She was always too exhausted, too busy, too much away, too ... whatever ... these days.

Allison loved all this. She basked in the fawning attention. Her subordinates practically shouldered each other aside so they could get to her and perform some task for her. Everyone focused on her because she had the power to terminate their employment at a whim.

She'd told me the glass ceiling didn't worry her. She was walking ON the glass ceiling looking down at all the little people below. She'd chortled delightedly when she said it.

I was in the building for several reasons. One, I wanted to take her to lunch if she could find a moment, and, two, I was there to speak to the head of Holcomb Industries Chief of Security, who'd invited me in for a consultation. I was leaning comfortably against the wall chatting with Martin Sanders about how he could better protect the building against terrorist activity, random burglary, industrial espionage, and a host of other issues.

Allison didn't see me as she swept by; her eyes were fastened on the doorway into her glassed-in office directly in front of her. I knew the walls and doors were made of polarized glass which could be set with a rheostat control from transparent to impenetrably opaque—clear so Allison could keep watch over all the personnel who owed her fealty, and a blank wall when she wanted other eyes off her.

Stopping just short of her office, Allison dismissed most of her minions to other duties. Some were sent on errands in other parts of the cavernous whole floor the business occupied, and several went to the bank of ordinary elevators to head somewhere else. Two of them, a tall, well built man and a slender, redheaded woman accompanied Allison inside her office. The doors closed and the walls turned a milky shade of blank immediately afterward.

I sighed inwardly. It was looking like I wasn't going to be able to take Allison to lunch; she wouldn't have time for me again. That was becoming the norm, rather than the exception. She no longer had the time to be a wife to me, or a mother to our two daughters either. I'd come to talk to her about both—a last ditch effort the salvage what had been a great marriage. These days, it wasn't even what one could call a good working relationship.

It took me another twenty minutes to answer all the questions the Chief of Security had. When he finally excused himself, I headed toward Allison's office, intending to check in with her personal secretary out front to make sure I wouldn't be bursting in on a confidential meeting of some sort.

Twenty feet short of Allison's office doors, I heard a loud scream from my wife's office. Someone was in big trouble.

I was a cop, the most junior Deputy Chief in the department, but still a policeman at heart. I hadn't been a patrol officer for many years, but I still carried a big Glock .45 caliber holstered in the small of my back. When I heard the scream, I pulled the weapon out and then I did what all cops, except those in Broward county, do—I ran toward the trouble.

Ignoring Allison's secretary, and doing my best to keep my momentum up, I planted a size eleven Wellington boot squarely between the two ornate door handles. The door was designed to give the occupants inside privacy; it wasn't designed to withstand a physical assault.

The doors slammed open and the inside of the handles smashed against the interior walls to which they were attached. The glass in the doors splintered with the impact. The walls themselves crazed a heartbeat later, then dissolved into tiny pebble-like fragments. A second after my boot propelled the doors inward, the whole interior of my wife's office was exposed to everyone's view.

I had my weapon extended in front of me as I glanced all around, seeking the source of the screams. "LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS!" I roared. Hands are what get cops killed—hands can hold guns or knives, or rocket launchers—so police routinely demand to see a subject's hands as the first order of business.

"LEMME SEE YOUR HANDS!"

I don't know if my bellowing got their attention first or whether it was the sight of me, clearly ready to open fire with the big Glock. Whatever it was, all three occupants dropped whatever they were holding and their arms shot upward. In my wife's case, that meant dropping her panties she was holding in her hands as her face blanched pasty white. She stood there, naked from the waist down.

The man I'd taken for one of Allison's minions had the woman I'd seen earlier bent over Allison's desk and was ramming into her from the rear. There didn't seem to be anything wrong. Maybe he'd managed to slam his cock into her ass rather than her cunt, because the scream had been one of intense pain. That's something that can't be faked.

There were only the three of them and no weapons were in sight. There wasn't any threat I could find. The unknown woman shrieked again, this time in shock and fear.

I looked at my half-naked wife. The two members of her staff were having sex and Allison was preparing to join them. It was patently obvious what was going on.

"YOU GODDAM WHORE!" I shouted at my wife. Glaring at her the whole time, I lowered my weapon and thrust it behind me into its holster. I turned around and stalked out, daring anyone to get in my way.

I had a ton of things to do and I walked determinedly out of the building when the elevator deposited me on the ground floor. The little tragedy in the office behind me made it just that much easier to make a lot of decisions that had been a long time coming.

* * *

I'd hoped to have a nice lunch with Allison and at least lay the groundwork for a discussion of where we were headed as a couple and a family. I couldn't remember the last time Allison and I had made love, and it'd been months since we just had sex. At the same time, Megan and Evelyn hadn't had much mother-daughter time from Allison either. In many respects we were a family of only three—a Dad and two daughters—with a part-time presence whose sole focus in life was her position in the Holcomb hierarchy.

I'd been inching closer to a major career and life decision for a long time now. Professionally, I was a Deputy Chief in the Police Department, senior to every Commander and Captain on the force, and junior to all the other three Deputy Chiefs. Other than gradually getting older and more senior as attrition dealt with the other Deputies, this was as far as I was going. If I wanted to be the Chief of Police, I'd have to start playing hardcore politics, both interdepartmental and in the city government. I just didn't want to do that. The thought of it bored and disgusted me.

I was effectively at the end of my career, and ... I was content. I'd done what I set out to do so many years ago and I thought I should move off into another direction. What I really wanted to do for the next stage in my life, was resign and start my own business. What I had in mind was a one-stop "store" for routine security, private investigation, executive protection, and whatever else I thought I could gather under one roof.

Back in my office, I pulled the document up that was my resignation letter on my computer, printed and endorsed it, then put it in an envelope for delivery to the personnel branch. I signed out on vacation an hour later, paying no attention to the normal rules and procedures. I was done, finished.

* * *

I was moving fast, refusing to think things through. Choices and judgments had already been made—by others and myself.

My next stop was the apartment Allison and I maintained in the city. If one of us needed to work so late that going home was a poor choice, one stayed in the apartment overnight and went home the next evening. To avoid conflict with Allison at home, I'd been staying at the apartment continuously for a little more than three weeks. I didn't know whether she'd even been going to our home in the Stony River subdivision or not. On second thought, I figured she had been—the girls would have told me if she hadn't. Allison surely hadn't missed me though—never said a word.

At any rate, Megan and Evelyn were at the apartment, visiting. School was out this afternoon because of some internal seminar/team-building exercise/whatever was going on. The girls liked the big pool in the apartment complex and they were there to swim and work on their tans. I was surprised when they met me at the door to our apartment, concerned and unhappy.

"Daddy, what happened to Mom?" Megan demanded before I even put down the box of personal belongings I'd brought from an office that was no longer mine.

"Oh ... something I'd rather not talk about right now, please girls," I countered. Megan was fifteen, going on twenty-three, and Evelyn wasn't far behind her at fourteen, but I wasn't sure I wanted to tell them what I'd encountered at Allison's office.

"She said you WILL call her when you got home!," Evelyn told me, mimicking the autocratic tone her mother used more and more often these days. "I think that's called an 'order'," Megan remarked.

I sighed and sat on one of the barstools at the breakfast bar between kitchen and dining room. I looked at the girls pensively, wondering how much to say. Because they were both very emotionally mature for their ages, I decided to give them the plain unvarnished truth. It was going to come out anyway, eventually.

"I went to your mother's office today—caught her half-naked in there with a guy and another girl having sex," I said baldly. "Well ... the guy and the other girl were having sex ... your mother wasn't—yet," I clarified.

The girls threw each other an appalled glance, then each picked one of my shoulders and began to sob on it, hugging me tightly. I wrapped my arms around them and held on to them as I'd been doing all their lives.

"Are we gonna live with you?" Evelyn asked, skipping to the bottom line.

"Depends on what you want," I answered after taking a couple of seconds to catch up. "As old as you girls are, family court will generally let you pick which parent you want to stay with." None of us mentioned the "D" word. I suppose we were all assuming from the beginning a divorce was going to happen. I know I was.