By Submissive Romanticedited by Michael-Leonard
Chapter 1
I grew up in the Valley of the Sun; Phoenix, Arizona to be more precise. My mother, father, an older brother and me, we lived at what was then the most northern part of Phoenix, in a small house on a very large tract of desert land. My childhood was anything but normal. You see my dad was a drunk, an abusive drunk at that. As soon as my brother turned eighteen, he left the house and joined the Marines. After serving for four years, he returned to Phoenix, and went to work for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department. I was thirteen when he left home; I became the target of my father's abusive ways. Mom tried her best to protect me whenever she could, but she was not a strong woman.
One night I came home late for supper. My father tried to beat me; mom got in between us. He shifted his anger on to her, hitting her repeatedly. I ran to the phone and called the police. By the time they arrived, mom was lying in a pool of blood; dead. My father was taken away in handcuffs and pleaded guilty to a second-degree murder charge. I was sent east to live with my mother's sister and her family in New Jersey.
Surprisingly, I did well in school, got good grades, but was exceptionally shy around girls. I was a computer geek. I didn't have a pocket protector or thick black-framed glasses with tape in the middle; in fact, I was pretty good-looking, small in stature, about five foot six and one hundred thirty five pounds. I just found more comfort in reacting with my computer than with people, especially girls.
After graduation, I attended Rutgers University, majoring in computer science. I really enjoyed writing programs and designing systems. During my senior year I met a girl. Michelle was a very special person. She was smart, funny, caring and very pretty. What she saw in me I'll never know. We dated for about six months and after graduation got married. Michelle went to work for a CPA firm as a junior accountant, while I joined a company that designed systems for large corporations.
After a couple of years, I was frustrated with the bureaucracy and politics within the firm. We decided that I should start my own company; working with small to mid-sized businesses, designing systems and writing programs. Now I was truly happy; I was my own boss, worked from home, and choose the work I wanted to do. I also wrote and designed programs, with no client in mind. They were just ideas that came into my head. I applied for and received several patents; most of these were worthless, but they were mine.
Michelle and I were very happy. Life was good. We decided it was time to begin a family. After a year of trying, however, all we had was some very happy memories. We decided that we should both have physicals to determine if there were any problems.
We got the bad news a few weeks later. I was fine: the problem was within Michelle, and it was bad; ovarian cancer. I held her hand as the doctor explained that the cancer was causing problems with her reproductive cycle and that he recommended seeing a specialist to determine the best treatments. He did, however, schedule a complete body CAT scan to determine if the cancer had spread anywhere else.
The meeting with the specialist was even more depressing. The cancer had spread to her liver. The prognosis was grim; she had probably a year maybe two with extensive chemotherapy. We went home that night, held each other tight, and tried to determine what was the best course of action. Michelle did not want the chemo treatment.
"I would rather have a better life for a shorter period, than to live a little longer in misery."
Reluctantly, I agreed with her decision.
She continued to work for a while, then when she began to lose weight and started feeling pain, she quit to stay home with me. I farmed-out as much of my work as I could and spent what little time remained with her. When it was determined that the end was near, we had hospice workers come to the house and stay with her, making her as comfortable as possible. Then it was over. I lost my wife, my lover, my best friend.
Chapter 2
It took some time, but I was finally able to get back to work. I spent almost all of my time working on various projects. I tried to let work fill the void in my life. That's when I got the letter. It was from an attorney in Phoenix. It said that my father had died in prison, and that I had to come back to Phoenix to settle his estate.
My brother met me at the airport and we drove to the attorney's office for the reading of the will. The will basically left the proceeds of a fifty thousand dollar life insurance policy to my brother, and the house and the land to me. There was a letter written by my father addressed to us; it must have been written in prison. In it he apologized for the abuse and the beatings he gave us. He apologized for taking our mother away from us; and that he understood why William had left. It sounded sincere; it was tough to hate him after that. We signed some paperwork, and left. On the ride back to Bill's house, we both
decided that we had no feelings for him one way or the other. Sad.
The next day, I flew back home. For the next month or so, everything got back to normal. Then within a two-week period I received two letters that would change the direction of my life forever.
The first was from a large developer in Scottsdale, Arizona inquiring about the availability of the Phoenix property. The other was from a law office representing a very large software development company inquiring about the availability of one of my patents. The letter about the land I filed away for later consideration. The second got me curious.
I went back through my old files to determine what the patent was for; then began to investigate the software company and why they would be interested in that particular patent. I had a copy of their latest version of their widely used software. With that and a key to the source code that I received from a friend in the business -- probably obtained illegally -- I found something very interesting indeed. It appeared that their software was infringing on my patent. Apparently, someone in their organization had not done their homework in a timely fashion and, now that the software was released, they had to either get the rights to use it from me, paying me royalties, or buy it outright. In either case, it could mean a very big payday for me.
That night, as I lay in bed, I thought about my Michelle, my future, and the direction that my life should take. There was nothing holding me here. If everything worked out, I would have more money than I could ever spend. The only family that I had left was my brother back in Arizona. I wanted to do something for others, to get involved in something meaningful, something worthwhile. I couldn't sleep, so I turned on the TV. I was watching some cop show, a rerun about runaways living on the street, young girls turning to prostitution to survive. Then it hit me. That's what I could do; that's a worthwhile goal. If I could take young girls off the street, give them a chance to get their lives straightened out, get them educated and able to support themselves legally -- in essence, rescue them -- that would be a noble cause indeed.
With that goal in mind, I spent the next couple of days planning. Then I made a phone call to the software company's attorney.
"I want to have a meeting with the CEO," I said.
"That's impossible; it's just not done that way."
"It will be done that way if he wants to avoid a patent infringement lawsuit."
"I'll get back to you," he said after a brief moment of silence.
A week later I had my meeting. The CEO knew that I had them over a barrel. They could delay, draw a lawsuit out forever, but in the end, I would win and it would cost them a fortune, plus a ton of bad publicity, which no CEO wants for his company.
