Unhappily Ever After B. 02

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

As was the case with Book One, Book Two of Unhappily Ever After

is a long, novel-length story that recounts the trials and tribulations experienced by a veteran who returns to civilian life and pursues a career path begun before joining the Australian Defence Force. He is forced to resurrect his 'stay alive' skills when he is betrayed by his wife, whose lover puts a hit order out on him.

Book Two picks up Stoney Bourke's life after he had been ambushed and critically wounded during what he hopes will be the final assassination attempt. Despite having witnessed the demise of his would-be killer, he knows there are others out there who want to hang his scalp on their belts.

---oooBJSooo---

I apologise for the time it has taken to get the second book in this duology finished but life and near death have a way of interfering with the best of our intentions. As so much time had elapsed between Book One and Book Two by the time I got back to it, I decided to do a full rewrite.

Although many of the points raised in the readers' comments from Book One had already been addressed in Book Two, a few additional things were brought to my attention that I thought were valid. Hopefully, I have addressed those points in the rewrite.

In an attempt to please as many readers as possible, I have left a few typos and technical and procedural errors in Book Two of Unhappily Ever After to satisfy the nit-pickers.

As each book tells its own story, I'd recommend reading Book One first to familiarise yourself with the backstory and the characters. Despite Book Two containing chapters that could be posted under different category headings, I have posted all ten chapters under Loving Wives for the sake of continuity.

Like Book One, Book Two will be posted in seven parts, all of which have been submitted simultaneously, with a request to the moderator that they be published on consecutive days.

I trust you will enjoy my offering, but I will be happy to receive your comments either way. It should be noted, however, that I have blocked anonymous comments. I know that might inconvenience a few readers, but my philosophy is that 'better one commenter be inconvenienced than ten trolls be allowed to spew their vitriol'.

---oooBJSooo---

Please Note:

The right of Black Jack Steele to be identified as the author of this work - Unhappily Ever After - Book Two - is asserted under worldwide copyright laws. All rights are reserved.

---oooBJSooo---

UNHAPPILY EVER AFTER

BOOK TWO

Copyright © Black Jack Steele 2024

CHAPTER SIX

April 07 - May 01, 2021

Et Tu Brute?

"Bad news, I'm afraid," Kate announced over dinner the night before she was due to start her next four-day weekend. "I've got a couple of people off sick, so I will have to work through my rostered weekend. I'm sorry, but it's unavoidable."

What made her announcement interesting was that this particular rostered long weekend - Thursday, April eighth to Sunday the eleventh - was going to be one of those rare breaks that didn't include a Monday, and I was wondering how she was going to get around having to spend that time with me. I knew, though, that with the ever-widening gap that had developed between us during the week since she and Hamlin had consummated their affair, she would come up with something.

"So what else is new?" I asked, pretending to care. "You're probably working them too hard. The body and brain can only be stressed so far before they start breaking down. You'll be next if you don't slow down. You can't continue to work the hours you are doing and then go partying and dancing with your drunken, equally irresponsible workmates until the early hours before you hit the wall."

"I told you I can't help it!" she shouted, throwing her napkin over her half-eaten meal before standing and storming off to our bedroom.

I finished my dinner before taking the plates to the kitchen. After cleaning up, I followed her to the bedroom, where I found her packing clothes into a suitcase.

"That might be a bit of an overreaction to a few heated words," I said while leaning up against the door jamb. "I was only offering a bit of husbandly advice. But I don't believe I said anything that would cause you to leave home. Maybe I'm right to be concerned. Perhaps the stress is starting to tell, after all."

"It has nothing to do with stress," Kate replied. "I just thought I might sleep in at the apartment until things settle down. You've said you worry about me driving home late at night. Well, my apartment is closer to work, and you won't have to worry about me travelling on these backroads in the dark."

"And you were going to tell me about this when?" I enquired.

"I was going to tell you about it over dinner. But then you climbed up on your high horse and started shoving your half-baked homilies down my throat."

Her slight hesitation told me that what she was telling me was another lie. I suspected that had I not caught her in the middle of packing, she would have ferreted her suitcase away in her walk-in wardrobe. The first thing I would have known about her plan to spend the next four days in town would have been as she was heading out the door the following morning.

"Fine," I said, welcoming the opening she had provided. "You'll get no more homilies from me; not par-boiled, not barbecued nor half-baked.

"In fact, as you aren't planning on being home to spend your four-day break with me, I think I'll do without you what I was planning to do with you. I was going to suggest that we spend a few days away from the city relaxing and doing a bit of fishing. One of the blokes I was talking to down on the Coast told me about a great spot to wet a line, so as you've already made plans, I think I'll head out and check it out by myself. It's got to be better than hanging about out here like a fruit bat in a mango tree for four days.

"Or is it only for four days?

"Anyway, I'll be back on Sunday night. If you're here, well and good. If you're not, call me or text me to let me know when you plan on coming home.

"Oh, that's right. Calling and texting are not your strong suits. Never mind. Just turn up when you feel like it. But try to be sober when you do. I'd hate to offend you with another of my banal sermons on the evils of the demon, drink."

'Hopefully,'

I thought as I headed to the kitchen to get a drink,

'that will have stirred her up enough to want to get a bit of her own back on me. If I've played my cards right, once she tells lover boy about my disrespect of her and her coworkers - which includes him - he will want to exact a bit of his own revenge.'

'And what better way to do that than to encourage her to bring him to my home and allow him to fuck her in our marital bed?'

Which is exactly how it went down.

---oooBJSooo---

"I'm sorry, Aaron," Kate said as she rolled her portable office and suitcase out through the mudroom the following morning. "I wouldn't be going in to work if we weren't so short-staffed. I hope you'll forgive me for ruining your plans."

"You haven't ruined

my

plans," I responded, not bothering to rise from my seat at the breakfast bar. "I planned on going fishing, and I'm going fishing. I would have preferred it if you were coming with me. But them's the breaks. I've become increasingly accustomed to doing things on my own lately. Maybe, one day, you'll reflect on the past six months or so and realise just what you have missed.

"Still.

Que sera sera

.

"I'll be back on Sunday afternoon... or maybe Monday, if the fish are biting. Perhaps I'll see you then." I didn't accompany my goodbye message with anything approaching a term of endearment; which was a first for me. Whether she noticed it or not, she didn't indicate. But then, I didn't give a flying fuck.

After giving her a few moments to load her gear into her car, I walked up the hallway to the front door and stood on the verandah to watch her leave.

"Goodbye, Kate," I said to whoever might be listening - but mainly to myself - as I watched her car disappear over the hill at the top of the driveway.

Before returning to the kitchen to clean up our breakfast things, I diverted into my office, where I switched on the internal surveillance system. I hadn't told Kate that I had reinstalled the system after the house had been renovated, so neither she nor her lover would be aware that if they did decide to come out to the farm during my absence, everything they did or said would be recorded for posterity. The CCTV signage had been in place since well before the fit-up raid back in 2017, so they couldn't say they weren't aware of the cameras.

With the kitchen cleaned, I went into my - our - bedroom to pack the clothes I would need for my trip. Half an hour later - after hooking the larger of my two boats onto the rear of the F 250 - I followed Kate's car up the driveway before setting course for Lake Jellingo, a little over three hours' drive away.

I was guiding the first Murray Cod into the net four hours after leaving home.

---oooBJSooo---

Before leaving, I called Tommy to let him know that I'd be out of town for a few days. I also told him about activating the surveillance system and asked him to keep an eye on things as I didn't know how good the phone signal would be when I got to where I was going.

Of course, as soon as I told him I was going fishing and that I'd be alone, he knew where I was heading. He was among the few people who knew about my cabin out on Lake Jellingo. Brad Stokes was another, as he and I had spent a bit of time together out there.

After ending my call with Tommy, I called Brad to let him know where I'd be, asking him to keep that knowledge to himself. He held my power of attorney, and I didn't want him to think I'd disappeared again. I also wanted to tease him. I knew how much he loved fishing and spending brother time with me out at the lake.

I had bought the two-hundred-acre parcel the cabin was on from the estate of a mate of my father's when he'd died and, since then, had spent a bit of time and money on renovating what was essentially a fishing shack to make it livable. I had also installed an off-grid solar power system. The work had occupied my time while Sam had been off on her so-called seminars.

Very few people knew about the cabin, and no one other than Brad knew about the size of the block it sat on. Sam certainly never knew; she was a city-dweller and was never keen on spending time in the bush.

The fact that I'd never shared its existence with Kate wasn't because I was trying to hide it from her, but I'd been thinking about us spending at least part of the next stage of our half-completed honeymoon getaway out on the lake and had wanted to surprise her. Where better to spend a honeymoon than somewhere off the grid where you could, as the Master's Apprentices song says, 'Do what you want to do and be what you want to be, yeah'.

Of course, thoughts of marriage to Kate and spending any more honeymoon time with her, I now knew, were finished.

Among the other improvements I'd made to the place was the installation of a boat ramp and a small floating dock, replicating the set-up I'd installed at home. That meant I didn't have to tow the boat around to the public ramp on the other side of the lake to launch it. Instead, I could now simply drop it into the water and leave it tied up to the dock, ready for immediate use.

---oooBJSooo---

Waiting for the human prey to take the bait was more like deepsea fishing than the type of fishing I was doing on the lake. The method I was using on the inland waterway could be best described as tactical fishing, where a lure was cast towards a likely hiding place to draw the fish to a disturbance in the water. In the case of Kate and her partner-in-betrayal, however, I was dangling an irresistibly succulent, attractant-laced food morsel right in front of their noses. It wasn't a matter of

whether

they'd take it but more a matter of

when

they'd take it.

In their case, it didn't happen until Saturday night... or early Sunday morning, to be precise.

But I only learned how successful my betraying-slut fishing expedition had been after acquiring a phone signal while returning to Moreton City on Sunday afternoon. It was only when nearing the first town on my homeward journey and finding a place to pull off the highway that I could check my missed calls and messages. That's when I learned that my trap had been sprung.

Bingo!

That news had been transmitted to me by Tommy, which was all I needed to know at that point. His message told me that the external cameras had captured their arrival, and the internal spyware had recorded their entry into the house and everything that followed. That was enough.

Rather than watching the evidence of Kate's infidelity unfold while sitting beside the highway, I decided to wait until I was settled in at home with my hand wrapped around a glass of single malt before viewing the whole thing in Technicolour.

After giving the boat a washdown and loading the results of my fishing trip into the freezer - except for the fillet I would be having for dinner that night - I showered and changed before pouring myself a glass of fifteen-year-old Glenfiddich. I then carried it and my laptop case and camera bag to my office and, after hooking the computer up to the power and wide-screen monitor, began viewing the incontrovertible evidence needed to end my marriage.

---oooBJSooo---

As Tommy had told me they would, the videos showed Kate's new Toyota C-HR Sport pulling into the property just after one o'clock on Sunday morning. From what I could see from the gate camera's viewpoint, she was sitting in the passenger seat. Someone else was driving. She must have instructed her driver to activate the garage door opener while driving down to the house because, rather than parking in the driveway, he - and I had no doubt it was her lover behind the wheel - drove straight into her parking bay.

I paused the external video at that point and switched to the internal camera recordings.

With the garage door closed and locked, Kate and her companion exited the car and entered the house through the mudroom, where, after punching in the security code, she turned to embrace him. It was only a matter of seconds before their lips were joined.

The HD cameras picked up every nuance of their passion. When they broke away from their liplock, I received my first clear view of my wife's playmate. It was the same man I'd encountered in the foyer of police headquarters a couple of weeks earlier. The same man who'd taken her to lunch that day. The same man who had helped her pick out the dress she'd worn the night she'd given him a blowjob.

The quick appraisal I'd made of him on that day had shown him to be a good-looking man about two or three years younger than me. He stood about one-hundred-and-eighty centimetres (six-foot) tall and was well-built. He looked like he probably worked out to stay fit.

He carried himself well and exuded confidence. He wore no rings, and there was no sign that he ever had done. Many women would see him as a chick magnet. And I was in no doubt that he'd have no trouble finding a woman to share his bed. I wondered whether the combination of all those things had attracted Kate to him or whether there was something else?

As they parted, I saw he was wearing a well-tailored steel-grey suit. Something closer to an Armani than anything he would pick up in a regular menswear store. It was certainly not something I would have expected to see being worn by a cop.

But it wasn't his suit that interested me. I was more interested in what Kate was wearing. 'Sluttish' was a very appropriate term for it.

The skirt wasn't overly short - falling to mid-thigh - but it was almost non-existent. It consisted of a series of semi-opaque strips of material that fell from the waistline. It would have parted whenever she moved, exposing everything she owned to the world.

When she sat, a few strips of fabric would have fallen between her legs, affording her a modicum of modesty. But the other folds would have fallen behind her, fully exposing her legs from her hips to her toes. It was more like a shredded loincloth than a skirt. I couldn't see how she would get away with wearing anything beneath it.

Like the red dress she'd worn for her earlier escapade, this one was backless, with two narrow strips that barely covered her nipples. It started as a pale silver colour at the neck and gradually morphed to aqua as it progressed down towards the waistline. It gradually darkened as it moved lower, transitioning through the colour of a deep ocean to a gun-metal blue when it reached the hemline. I had to admit that it was striking and would have turned the head of any man - and perhaps even a few women - who saw her in it.

The blue-green colour in the dress almost exactly matched the Gulf Aqua I'd selected for the Mustang. I wondered if that thought had crossed her mind while she'd been dressing the previous evening? It gave me an idea for the colour scheme for my recently purchased F100. It also gave a name for it. I'd call it 'The Cheating Slut'.

As they kissed, I saw his hands snake between the petals of her dress, and gripping the globes of her buttocks, he forced her mound tightly against his groin. They both moaned as they humped against each other.

After breaking their embrace, Kate grabbed his hand and led him towards the private section of the house.

"Quickly,"

she'd said as they entered the master bedroom,

"I need you inside me. You've been teasing me all night. I almost had to tell you to stop on the way out here so I could jump on that homeless man we passed while driving through the village."

Switching to the bedroom camera's view, I watched as Kate pushed her lover backwards until his legs were against the bed; our marital bed. After removing his jacket and bow tie, she pushed him down into a sitting position. She then knelt to remove his shoes and socks before reaching up to his waist to undo his belt and buttons and unzipping his fly before pulling his trousers off. Next, she stood, removing his shirt before pushing him backwards.

With her lover lying flat across the bed, she began teasing him. She sashayed across the room and into my closet to retrieve a hanger before hanging his trousers, shirt and jacket and placing his sock in his shoes. When everything was done to her satisfaction, she transferred his clothes to my walk-in robe.

"Come on, you bitch of a woman,"

Hamlin had yelled from the bed,

"I thought you were in a hurry to get me inside you. I'm about ready to burst here."

"Oh, I do need you inside me,"

Kate said.

"I want it so bad that I'm about ready to come just thinking about it. But you deserve a little payback for the teasing you had me going through tonight.

"If I'd been wearing any underwear, it would have been soaked. As it was, I've had my juices running down my legs all night long. One of your jobs is going to be cleaning me up.

"I can't imagine why you'd be sitting playing with my pussy and asking me if I'd like this man or that one to fuck me. You had me so worked up that I would have taken them all on. And why would you ask me if I'd like to try a couple of the women sitting at the other tables? I've never been with a woman, but I believe I would have been up for it by the time we left. If only so I could get some relief.