I owe many thanks to 'slow_n_gentle', an excellent editor and writer extraordinaire in his own right, for his patient tutelege through this, my formative stage; and in particular for the insight and technical guidance he has graciously provided for this story. SNG, you know what else I want to say here. But, on with the story...
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I recall the day I found out, and then confirmed from multiple independent sources, that my wife had never been faithful to me - not when we were dating, the five years we lived together, the six months we were engaged, or the year since our wedding. Apparently, fidelity was a concept she just couldn't understand or didn't agree with.
It was a shame, really. Of the hundred or so women I'd dated over the years before I met Sarah, she was the only one I ever considered marrying. At the time I asked for her hand, I loved her more than anything I'd ever had or ever wanted to have.
I would have even given away my dog, my best friend for twenty years and loved like a brother, to have Sarah for my own. As you will see, it was unfortunate that I didn't. He took to her right away and she seemed to like him, or so I thought at the time.
Sarah was awesome. It wasn't that she was beautiful in the face. She was only really about average in that respect. But, she had everything else a woman, or a man, would kill for.
A true ash blond, she was 5'11" tall, about 150 tight pounds, a figure that checked in at 38Cx24x37, a heart-shaped ass and fine legs she could show off in anything she wore. I was able to get her to lactate even before she got pregnant.
And, she could cook a passable meal, including wild game when I went hunting. I ask you, what man wouldn't like to come home to a woman like that after a hard day's work?
For almost seven years, we had fucked at least once a day and often two or three times, even more on weekends. She really wasn't all that great in the sack, and those stinky pussy farts kind of turned me off when I was sucking her twat; but what the hell, you can't have everything and what I had was enough for me to overlook the little shit.
What I didn't know was that I was getting 'sloppy seconds' almost every time. She must have swamped it out before getting home, because it wasn't fishy smelling in those early days. I bet she got a laugh out of that.
When I first found out about her 'dalliances', I couldn't understand why she would have done what she did. I had told her and showed her how much I loved her every day, treated her well and often, made sure she was satisfied in bed and had all the money she needed or wanted.
As a known and sought-after software designer and engineer, not only did I make a six-figure salary (immense for those days); but I'd sold various pieces of leading-edge software over the past eight years and squirreled more than a few million dollars away in a Swiss account to be forgotten until I was ready to retire around age forty, eight or nine years in the future.
The annual royalties from that software were also going into those foreign accounts. Not having a pre-nup agreement, I would one day be very glad I never told Sarah about those deals and hidden account, and kept no records at home.
As with a woman and 'only her hairdresser knows', only my accountant knew my little secret. I thought I'd just surprise her one day.
After we married, she had insisted on us buying a house before she would consider having a baby. I did that and, to simplify things, put it under my name only.
We were married. She'd get it automatically if I was killed in an accident or something, and it would be paid off in full by the mortgage insurance. I'd covered the bases, so what difference did it make? While she shopped, I signed my old life away.
Then we found that she couldn't conceive due to an internal problem. We got that fixed and had a green light for babymaking. I thought life was good. Given what I now know, I'd been deluding myself. The first clue that all was not right in paradise was a bitter pill to swallow.
Sarah poisoned my dog, Coon, in an undiluted industrial-strength full-body flea bath. She'd worked in kennel and knew what would happen.
He went deaf and blind, and exuded asphalt-like chunks out of his skin until he died of convulsions one night. I dug his grave through snow and frozen winter ground that Christmas.
As I was sweating in the cold wind, I thought back to the war when I'd had to stuff a good friend into a body bag so he could be shipped home to his family. This was no different and it's as HARD as it gets. Turns out, there is something as bad, just in a different way.
She intentionally killed him...the heartless bitch; but my intense love for her let me get past that...for the time being. Clue number two was all too soon forthcoming.
Not long after Coon died, she cut me off for no apparent reason. No sex for weeks and then months. She simply refused. Well, that pissed me off mightily. The two clues had me certain that there was something I wasn't seeing. I began looking into what she might be doing and not telling me about.
It all happened back in the days when cell phones weighed thirty pounds and were pretty rare, so I hooked up a high-tech (for the time) voice-activated cassette tape recorder to our home phone line in my basement workshop.
She had no reason to go in there and I hid the only key to that door. I soon found out what I'd been missing and why.
I felt like that proverbial mushroom, kept in the cave and shit upon until ready to pluck and eat.
In one of her recorded telephone conversations, she told a GF she'd only married me because I could make her rich and that she intended to divorce me as soon as we had OUR first million in the joint accounts; which were at the moment very close to reaching her stated goal.
She also intended to get our house. I knew in this 'no-fault' state, the fucking courts would let her have it, and stick me with the mortgage for eighteen years before we split the equity; although she might have to be pregnant to seal that deal.
She stood to get at least 50% of everything I'd been able to build and, depending on her shyster, maybe 70%. I shelled out for a PI.
Yeah I know, why you ask, if it's 'no fault'?
Simple, family court is a 'court of equity', provided that there are no children involved. That means the bad guy doesn't get to walk away with all the bacon. And while I may not end up the winner, I wasn't going to end up the loser.