The Devil is in the Details

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Confused and misused.
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This is the second part of a trilogy. Read 'The Devil And Danielle Webster First".

I use Canadian spelling and don't have an editor. I probably need one, so if you understand why some words end in re instead of er and that other words end with our instead of or, I could use your help!

*****

Part Four

Tom held Melisa's hand as she slept, I watched the iv drip into a tube attached to Melisa's arm. Tom watched Melisa intently, like his gaze kept her from disappearing. As I watched the pair of them I felt guilt, a great smothering blanket of guilt, I sat on an uncomfortable cushion of shame.

"Tom I owe you an apology." This was going to be hard. I took a deep breath and began my mea culpa.

"When I started the research for my report you reminded me of someone I used to know and I conflated you and he in my mind. I decided that you were just like him and I formed an erroneous and truly unfair opinion of you. I really thought you were the devil. It was not a misunderstanding or anything that you did wrong, It was me that was wrong. I'm truly sorry for the awful things I've thought and said about you. I will take back every and any unkind word I have ever spoken about you to everyone who's ever heard them. I hope you can forgive me."

Tom looked at me and gave kind of an 'oh shucks' shrug, then he let me off the hook. "Danielle I can't forgive you because there's nothing to forgive, besides you did me a favour I would have been a disaster heading up the S&M department! Everything you wrote in your report was true!"

I picked my words carefully, "It wasn't what was in the report I'm sorry for, it was the inferences that people would or could draw from what I said about you. I implied that you were a sly and calculating snake. The devil"

"Don't beat yourself up about it Danielle we all make mistakes." He glanced down at Melisa, "I've made just as many or more than anyone."

Melisa's eyes fluttered open, "Me too", she croaked.

Tom held a glass of water to Melisa's lips then he looked at me with narrowed eyes, "Tell me all about this 'devil', tell me everything."

Even thinking about Roger, 'the devil', was difficult for me, he'd cost me my family, my self respect, everything I'd ever had. Nothing remained for me but pain and regret. After all of this I felt that I owed Tom an explanation. I began telling Tom, and now that she was awake, Melisa, my whole painful tale. I told them about how charming Roger was, about his disarming smile and how he always said the absolutely most perfect things to make me feel special. I told them how he'd been the love of my life, my first love, my one true love, the one who was put on earth just for me. I told them about our romance and our plans for the happily-ever-after. I told them about the gorgeous ring and the hours we spent planning for our fairy tale wedding. I told them about the happy sacrifices I'd made to save up for the dream celebration of our love. We wanted our special day to be perfect, or so I'd thought.

I had to pause, teeth clenched and lips pursed until the quivers above my chin abated. I took a ragged breath and described how he'd cast me aside the day before the wedding and moved on with my money. The bastard even went on the cruise that should have been our honeymoon, he sent me mocking postcards from the ports of call.

I took months just to begin pulling myself together and get my life back on track when a thanksgiving dinner invitation from my parents turned into the cruelest ambush imaginable, the worst betrayal possible. From me that's saying a lot! Sitting in the living room beside my little sister was Roger, he had the nerve to try to give me a hug. My sister, the little fool, was noticeably pregnant and had the good grace to look embarrassed. My parents looked at me like a pair of doctors about to deliver a terrible diagnosis to an unsuspecting patient. Roger smiled smugly.

My parents stumbled and stuttered out an explanation. Roger had broken up with me, practically at the altar, because he and my sister had fallen in love. He just couldn't be with me when he realized that my sister was his true soul mate. What bull shit! She was barely legal, practically jail bate! By the looks of her she would still be eighteen when she delivered! No mention of my missing funds was made. I stormed out before I threw up all over them, maybe I should have.

My parents kept calling, trying to persuade me that they were between a rock and a hard place, on the horns of an awful dilemma, my sister was pregnant, Roger was the father and we all had to pull together and support my sister and her baby. Rogers spawn would be their grandchild and my niece after all. My niece? They'd already had an ultrasound? Screw them all. I haven't seen or spoken to any of them since.

When I finished Tom had a grim set to his jaw and Melisa tried to sit up and give me a hug.

Part Five

The funny thing is that after recounting all of those painful memories I felt a lot better and I wondered if telling my story, for the first time, might have been therapeutic for me. I made new friends, Melisa was one of them, I stared going out and having fun again. Another funny thing is that I began thinking of and even addressing Tom as Tommy. If you can' beat them you might as well join them! It turns out that when you join something you become part of something. I'd been alone too long.

Things were going well for me at work too. Mr Vinge had some concerns about the security of Machro- Tech's intellectual property and the integrity of our manufacturer in China. There were some indications that our Chinese producer was becoming less trustworthy and might be planning to appropriate our research developments and go into competition against us. The management team decided to investigate the feasibility of moving the production of some of our most sensitive components to India and having the final assembly work done locally. This slightly more cumbersome process would ensure that no one outside party would be able to knock us off or exploit our proprietary technology and engineering.

We would need some additional staff to make this new venture a success, not only in the manufacturing process but also the warehousing and logistics in country. I was kept busy reading resumes and conducting interviews. Miss Hill seemed strangely disinterested in the whole procedure and left almost everything to me. At first I thought it was a sign of her confidence in my ability or maybe even a test of my competence. When Ravi walked in with a letter of recommendation, from none other than Tom Fairchild I realizes that the fix was in. All of the other interviews had been window dressing to satisfy rigid ISO standards. Ravi was more than qualified, he was a graduate of an Indian university and had a degree that wasn't recognized in Canada, thus his employment as a taxi driver. He also spoke several of the local languages. Ravi also had numerous local contacts that might be of assistance to us, including a cousin who worked at the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi. Ravi got the job.

I hardly saw Tommy during this time, neither did Melisa, he was off drumming up new clients on an extended sales tour, missionary work, as Mr. Heart referred to it. As the flow of orders streamed in Mr. Vinge became increasingly apprehensive about the situation in China. He decided that the Indian production program should be expedited. Ravi had only a few weeks to settle in and get up to speed before he was dispatched, post haste, to India.

Part Six

On his return from his sales trip, Tom and Melisa announced their engagement, I happily agreed to be a brides-maid. I spent a lot of time with the happy couple, but mostly with Melisa, dress shopping, venue touring and generally helping her with wedding related matters that didn't concern the groom. So it's a regular occurrence for me to be Melisa's guest in Tom's apartment, what was irregular about this visit shocked me into a state of near catatonia. As Tom ushered me in the first thing I saw was Melisa cradling a small baby. The second thing I saw, in the mirror behind her, was my sister.

Shelly sat in a wing chair, her hands white knuckling the arms, she looked like she was about to faint. Her nose was swollen and her eyes had been blacked. It appeared that patches of her hair had been ripped out by the roots. I stared at her in the mirror, I'd wanted never to see her again, even her reflection was more than I could face. I was caught between her visages, one in the front, and the other from behind . Tom led me to a chair and I sat down, tunnelling my gaze straight ahead so I could block Shelly out of view.

Melisa began to speak, at first her voice sounded faint and echoed, as if I was hearing it through a sea shell. "Tommy found her in a woman's shelter, she and little Danielle." I was startled back through the fog and looked more closely at the baby, she had auburn hair and green eyes, just like me. Melisa continued, "Shelly knew she'd made a huge mistake nearly from the beginning, she's done some growing up since the last time you saw her and she'd really like to explain and apola..."

Shelly interrupted before Melisa could finish, "Oh Danielle I am so, so, sorry!" Between tears and sobs my stupid little sister told her tale. Roger had contacted her out of the blue, I assume when my money had run out. He was able to sell Shelly on some farcical nonsense that he'd been secretly in love with her for months. Rogers excuse for jilting me was that he wanted to spare me as much pain as he possibly could, how noble of him. He'd tried, heroically, to bury his feelings for her 'deep inside his broken heart'. He dazzled the little twit with his good looks and fake charm. I could believe that, having fallen for his shtick myself. Shelly bought Rogers fairy tale of a wonderful new life as a princess, married to a handsome prince. To hear Rogers description they would live in a veritable palace, or at least Rogers tiny basement apartment. That would be the one he only kept so he could save up for a penthouse condo downtown. She would be conveyed everywhere by a gilt carriage, he must have meant his broken down amber coloured Lincoln.

Shelly woke up from her dream to a nightmare soon after the 'its not a shotgun wedding'. When Roger discovered that the terms of Shelly's trust decreed that it was for her education and that she couldn't touch it until her twenty-fifth birthday otherwise, he became nasty and violent. He even tried to get our parents to invest in 'a once in a lifetime opportunity'. My father was more than wise to Roger by this time and he refused point blank. Roger took out this rejection on my sister, violently. He didn't even bother showing up at the hospital for the birth of his daughter, I wonder if the baby was named after me because of the shared eye and hair colour or to spite Roger. He wasn't there to sign the birth certificate so he got no say in the matter. Shelly stuck it out as long as she could until fearing for her life she'd moved back to our parents house. Roger stalked her there, a baleful menace, demanding money and threatening harm to her and his daughter, I can't quite think of the baby as being Danielle, not yet anyway.

Roger stopped harassing Shelly when the police started coming around to ask questions about him, that was all well and good until a couple of goons followed suit, forcing their way into the house and terrifying everyone. Maybe they had been suckered into investing in Rogers scheme or had lent him money. At her wits end and in desperate despair Shelly fled with her baby to the woman's shelter. Roger followed here there and grabbed her when she went out to buy some diapers, delivering another beating, the most savage yet.

Shelly broke down at this point in her narrative and Melisa continued for her, "That's where Tommy found her, at the shelter. He brought them here last night and we've been trying to think of a way to tell you. There didn't seem to be a better, or even a good way to tell you, we are sorry."

Shelly forced back her tears, "I am so ashamed Danielle, I feel so stupid! I want you to be my big sister again. Mum And Dad miss you so much, we should have listened to you. We all need you, Danielle needs you! I'm begging you, please forgive me!

What could I do? She was my sister after all!

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3 Comments
lujon2019lujon2019almost 4 years ago

Um you could tell the little slut to fuck off

she made her choice, let her live with it

AnonymousAnonymousover 5 years ago

If you are planning to turn my head around with another one of your plot twists then spin away. Complex story.

johntcookseyjohntcookseyover 5 years ago
Curiouser and curiouser

A lot of threads. From Tom and Melissa to Ravi and India to Roger and Shelly and baby Danielle. I have no idea where this is going but I’m sure interested to find out. You’ve set the hook well. I look forward to more. Thanks - and happy holidays.*****

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