My 750 Word Story

My take on the 750-word story.

All the standard disclaimers about sex, violence, etc., apply here.

All the usual restrictions apply. Copyright 2019 all rights reserved to me.

I was in my third year of college when my parents died. They were hit by a semi that had crossed the divider into their lane. It seems the driver was over on hours and drugging to keep awake and his company was complicit in it. My dad had been a successful salesman and had built a sizable stock portfolio and as the only child I inherited it all. The house and old home town meant nothing to me, so I sold the house quickly and added the proceeds to my growing pile. I also added in the insurance from their deaths and the settlement I got from the trucking company. All together it was a sizable sum of about 17 million dollars.

Now I was smart enough to know what I didn't know so I placed the full amount in a trust and used it to purchase mutual funds indexed to the markets. In the nine years since the market has tripled and due to reinvestment my net worth is now over 60 million dollars. I set it up for the trust to pay me $5,000 a month and when I was ready the trust purchased a nice home for me to live in. My only other real expenditures were the two mustang GT's I also bought in the trusts name. My salary as a high-school history teacher paid the bills and the $5,000 was fun money to spend.

I was a high-school history teacher, had summers off, a paid for house, and a separate income of fun money. Then I met Shelly. She was blond, 24, built like the proverbial brick shithouse, and a waitress at a local diner. It wasn't long before dates led to sleeping together, living together, and then marriage. I told her about the $5,000 per month, but not the rest of it, and that the trust required an air tight prenuptial, and she signed it. Shelly didn't want to stay a waitress, so she took a job at a local buy here pay here used car lot. I went there a few times, the owner, Steve, was an asshole, but she liked it, so I went with the flow.

Things were great for a couple of years until they weren't. First I noticed the sex began drying up and then one night I came home, and she wanted to talk.

"I'm pregnant John and you're not the father, Steve is. I am getting a divorce."

"Why Shelly?"

"Because Steve is going places. All you want to be is a teacher, Steve wants to be rich, and I want what he can buy me. Your just not ambitious enough for me."

So, she was a gold digger. I could have let it, and her, go at that but then she put the nail in her coffin.

"You were never really more than a way out of the restaurant. I liked you, but I deserve better, and it isn't you."

The divorce went through quickly. Most of my possessions were owned by the trust and exempt. We weren't married long enough for alimony, so she just walked away with some jewelry I had given her and her bank account balance. They married just before the child was born. But I wasn't done with them.

I did some research. The asshole didn't own the land his car lot was on, so I had my trust buy it out from under him. I also sent out some feelers and bought up all his customer loans. The deal, which was fairly standard for the type, was he collected the payments and gave them to the company that owned the paper. In return he got a line of credit to run the business on. I had the papers written so I had the right to conduct an audit at any time. It was mostly cash business and I was sure he was skimming, and she was helping him.

I gave them enough rope to hang themselves then pulled their chain one Monday morning. I showed up with a full audit team, an off-duty cop for protection, and within two days was able to prove they had skimmed $100,000 over the past year. I let them walk, in exchange for signing over everything they owned, including the jewelry.