The Last 24 Hours

Prologue

I just felt sick at first. I mean I just found out that the love of my life, the mother of my twin daughters; my wife didn't love me and never had. To make matters worse she had trained our twin daughters to feel the same and I had the proof of it on video tape in front of me. To top it off the girls might not even be mine...

My wife had filed for divorce nine months ago and we were still in the process in court and I still didn't know what was happening. If not for an "accidental" encounter I would have let Lisa have everything...

Chapter 1

I was supposed to finalize my divorce today. I was on my way out of the rented two bedroom apartment where I was staying, I had moved out when Lisa had asked me for the divorce, when Joshel "Josh" Taylor my old college roommate and his sister Beth, who incidentally is my best friend, showed up on my doorstep...

As I turned from locking the door I saw Josh coming up my front walk with a medium sized cardboard box in his hands. "Joshel! Hell man it's great to see you. What are doing here? Where's Heather?" I looked around and saw Beth still in the car but no Heather.

"That's part of why I'm here. I heard you are getting divorced, is that true?" "Yeah, in fact I'm due in court soon. I was just leaving." I replied turning to close my door.

Joshel shoved the box he was holding into my hands and asked "Is that your car out front?" I nodded my head, puzzled, as he waved at his sister who slid over to the driver's seat and proceeded to hit my Caddy with a resounding crash damaging the left side!

"What the hell do you think your doing?" I cried as Beth ran up to me and held out her cell phone and Josh said

"Call your lawyer, tell him you've been in an accident and are waiting on the police but are uninjured. Tell him you'll get to the court as soon as you can and to ask the judge to delay the hearing for a couple of hours while you get this sorted out. It will be alright to postpone it for another day if that's what it takes. I... We have things you need to know before you go into court and sign away anything to that BITCH!"

As I had never heard Joshel refer to any woman in that fashion I decided to comply with his request. My lawyer wasn't happy to hear I couldn't make it but got the judge to agree that I needed to wait for the police and that we would meet in court the next morning at ten a.m.

I agreed to cover the accident with the police by saying a German Shepard had run into the street and Beth had swerved into my car to avoid it. We called the cops and while we waited Joshel began to tell me his story.

"Heather and I began to have problems when she found out she couldn't get pregnant last year. It seems that a severe infection she had as a child left scars that they didn't know about. She will never conceive." I nodded my head in sympathy. "As it turns out that was a good thing. When she got the news she went to stay with her mother." "That was ten months ago. I was going out of my mind sitting at home alone that first month when water started pouring down the stairs. A pipe had burst. I went to the basement and found the main shut off valve. Under it was a box I didn't recognize. You are holding copies of the contents made by the court." Josh said.

"These date back some fifteen years. They are the plans to seduce and fleece us and several of our friends," his eyes darkened "and in your case much worse." Josh said all of this with sadness in his eyes warring with an anger I'd never believed him capable of.

"What do you mean in my case much worse?" I asked. The feeling of dread I got was increasing and tying my stomach up in knots. I looked at Beth who just shook her head.

Josh just took me by the arm and led me back into my place saying "I might bring the evidence but I won't tell you what's on it. You need to see for yourself and then decide what to do. Just watch the tapes and while you are doing that let me use your computer. I need to draft something for you to take to your lawyer in the morning. I'll even do it Pro Bono." He said with a sly grin. Did I mention that Josh is a very, very, good attorney?

While he was talking the police had arrived. They filed the reports and took statements. After about twenty minutes they were willing to call it an unfortunate fender bender and leave. We went back into the apartment and Josh began reading the documents Beth had printed from a CD-R disk she took from the box. Meanwhile I had sat down and began watching the tapes that were in the box. Josh had used post it notes to label them. There were about twenty tapes all together. Some labeled in green, some in yellow, and some in blue or purple. Each color had a different name on it.

The blue ones, with Alex hand printed on them, were mine and labeled one through seven. Several of the tapes had multiple stickers on them. I sat and watched the last fifteen years of my life be shredded. The first tape was a recording of a "war council" of my wife's sorority fifteen years ago. They detailed how they had identified the "eligible candidates" i.e. trust fund holders, and what their plans to marry and separate them from those funds would be. It was three hours of strategy. Then it was three hours of a lesbian orgy. Strap-ons were produced as well as vibrators and bottles of lube. The sex was intense and at times almost violent. Perhaps primal is a better choice of word. In fifteen years I had never gotten that kind of response from Lisa. If I hadn't seen the first part of the tape I'd have been quite turned on. As it was I just felt sick.

The next tape was the "ladies" getting their assigned victims. I knew everyone of the girls and their victims. Most of the men had married the women that had targeted them. Several were divorced and others were having problems and still others seemed happy in their marriages.

I watched all of the tapes and on the fifth one was the information that my daughters may not be mine. There they were on the tapes being told I wasn't their real father and that when the "divorce came through" they would be living with mommy and "Aunt" Jacquie. My daughters were about ten years old in the videos. My daughters were ecstatic at the news. That was four years ago. They had known for four years and said nothing. My world had been a family that did not exist. Sorrow crashed over me and the pain of it caused me to gasp. A single tear trickled down my left cheek.

Wiping away the tear I got up and walked over to the bar and took a long Island Ice tea glass and began filling it with very potent rum. When the glass was half full of the potent liquid I put the bottle on the counter and raised the glass to my lips.

Beth smacked the glass from my hands and raged at me "What the hell do you think you are doing, Alex? You know that you are allergic to alcohol! That's not the way to handle this. I won't stand by and let you commit suicide!"

Josh had jumped to his feet and come running from the computer chair he had been in. Beth took me by the shoulders and held me. I sagged to the floor and sobbed as Beth sat and rocked me back and forth. I held on as a drowning man clings to the life preserver. After a time, I don't know how long, I pulled myself together and went back to the couch and picked up the last tape and the remote. I started the tape and there in living color was my wife and Joshes sister in-law Jacquie and his wife Heather. This tape seemed a little different, very recent.

Josh told me that this tape had been made by the P.I. he had hired. Also that this tape detailed my divorce and it was nine months old. It showed our wives engaged in some serious sex. I can't call it love making because I don't think any of the women knew what love was. On the tape Jacquie also told how my lawyer was on "her" team and would be happy to tank my case and get Lisa the huge payout that she had "suffered for" all these years.

My first thought was "When I see that little bastard tomorrow I'm gonna pop his head off of his shoulders like a dandelion button."

At this point Josh handed me a document and said "Read this and if you like it sign it. It makes ME your attorney of record effective immediately. That means any deals he's made have to come by me. We'll file it with the court in the morning along with the charges of legal malpractice on the bastard."

The document he had handed me was very simple and straight forward. It stated that he would be taking over as legal council and that any and all agreements were nullified subject to his review and approval. It also stated that the fee for his services was to be one penny to be paid before the court in the event that I was satisfied with his performance. I read it and signed it and Beth ran next door and asked Harvey, my neighbor to act as witness, which he did gladly.

After Harvey left Josh began to relate his strategy for court tomorrow. The CD-R had proof in the form of records and account numbers and access routing numbers that Lisa and Jacquie had been siphoning off money to a private account in the Bahamas. These funds were not declared in the discovery of marital assets. He had changed the access numbers while I had been watching the tapes. In short we were going to strip Jacquie and Lisa of their little nest egg and all other resources.