Blind Faith

"You win! You win! Do you hear me?"

Her voice had grown loud.

"What's this?" he asked, looking at the envelope.

"That's your early Christmas present. I wasn't going to give it to you until after Christmas, but when I saw your eyes all over Raven last night, you destroyed the last of any feelings I ever had for you, and this morning I decided I couldn't wait any longer.

"The kids don't need to know until after Christmas, but this will actually make it easier for me to fake it a few more days. It's a relief to know that it's finished."

"I don't get it," he said as he pulled a wad of papers out of the envelope. "What is this? It says petition?"

"You know exactly what it is. I was going to have you served at your office. I know you won't give me any trouble when you read it. You're the winner, and I'm the loser."

He looked up at her quizzically, and then his expression changed to a nervous smile.

"This is one of your situations?" he asked tentatively.

"You're mocking me," she said, and suddenly her voice grew angry. "I'd like to slap the smirk off your face. I could have buried you. I did bury you, but then I dug you up out of your grave."

"Uh, I don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything. You win -- because of the kids. I realized that if I destroyed you, it would destroy them, too, because they still idolize you. I'm not going to tell them anything except we just can't live together anymore.

"When they find out from their friends, I'm not going to attack the evil daddy. It will be hard enough for them as it is. They'll understand some day how the same father who was so wonderful with them was a, a -- a different person at other times.

"So all the money is back, and you'll see the agreement splits the assets and, after the divorce, you get to have the kids whenever you want."

Balek was listening hard but still looked confused behind his dopey smile.

"Kids, money, divorce -- this one's complicated. Can you tell me more, maybe give me some hints."

"You're enjoying this, aren't you? You like to see me squirm. You're provoking me, I never saw this side of you before. It's amazing how much I never understood about you."

"I can see you're waiting for me to say something," he said. "But I still don't have a clue as to what I'm supposed to do. Can you explain this situation a little more slowly, one step at a time. Why don't we start with money? You mentioned money. Tell me about it."

She laughed. It was a bitter laugh.

"Sure, I'll tell you about the money. That's the one you don't know anything about.

"It's not complicated. Morris helped me steal every cent we have. All the pieces were set to fall into place after Christmas, and by January, you were going to wake up and find the kids and me gone, along with all your assets. You would be left with a few thousand dollars in the bank and many millions in debt.

"But that won't happen now, because a few days ago I told him to close all the offshore accounts, stop the loans and title transfers and put everything back the way it was."

"Who's Morris?"

"Does it matter? Are you really going to make me go through the whole thing?"

"I can see you're exasperated, Hon, and I'm sorry I still haven't caught on, but I can't do what you want until I understand. Maybe it would be better if you explain everything from the beginning."

She looked at him and her eyes grew wide.

"You can't do what I want? Are you trying to twist everything? Or are you thinking of fighting me? Don't you understand that you'll destroy your life and devastate the kids?"

"I don't want to do that," he said, with the smile still on his face. "So just help me out a little."

She thought a moment before she answered.

"All right. I can't really trust a word you say anymore, but I'm going to let you promise me something."

"What?"

"If I go through all the dirty details for your enjoyment, you won't drag our family through the mud. Do you swear?"

"I swear!"

She took a deep breath while she looked at him.

"Can you at least pretend you're not gloating while I do this. I look at your smile and I want to shoot you."

He sucked in his lips and kept them pressed together as she began.

"I found out when Val called me at my training retreat and told me to fly home immediately because you were going to fuck Raven all weekend on our bed.

"I told her she was crazy, but she said she had wormed it out of Jerry, and she was pretty sure he wasn't lying."

Balek sucked harder at his lips.

"Val finally convinced me to fly back the next day. Remember, that was the day I snuck into the house hoping to catch you and Raven. It was the first of many times you frustrated me. No matter how sneaky I was, you were sneakier. I still can't believe how little I knew about how your mind worked.

"The next day I went over and spoke to Val. I wanted to talk to Jerry, but she talked me out of it. She said that she had never seen him as drunk as he had been the night before. He had even needed help getting from the taxi into the house.

"While he was babbling, she heard him say something about you and Raven. She didn't question him but worked on him and managed to get enough out of him to learn that you were having an affair with Raven and slept here with her whenever I was away.

"You know the first thing I thought of when she told me? I thought, what if the kids happened to come home for something they forgot and found her there? I didn't even think of me at first.

"Val said she could try to get more information out of Jerry, but if she did, he would probably realize that she knew and tell you about it. So I never talked to her again. Jerry still doesn't know he ratted you out.

"Wait!" said Balek. The smile had disappeared from his face. "Just a second."

"Yes?"

"You've been talking to Val about me and Raven?"

"Just that one time. She brought it up a couple of times after that, but I didn't want her to have any idea of what I was doing because it could have put her at risk as an accomplice."

"Did you speak to anyone else about Raven?"

"Yes."

"You did? Who?"

Balek sounded concerned.

"Linda, Carl and Morris."

"Who are they?"

"I was about to get to that, but you interrupted me."

"Before you go on..."

"Are you all right? You're shaking. Let's stop for a second."

She got up and got him a glass of water. He sipped it and swallowed slowly before he spoke again.

"Did Linda and -- and whoever else you said -- did they tell anyone?"

"No, they're professionals and discrete, although I don't think Morris has much of a code of ethics.

"Listen, Balek, I can understand why you're worried about Gavin. Unless you fight me, he'll never find out. You're safe, although you deserve to have him beat you to a bloody pulp."

"Let's go back to your three professionals," he said. "They are the only ones who know about this situation besides you and Val. Did I understand that right?"

"And your friends at O'Blivion's. Maybe they'll spill the beans."

Balek relaxed and took another sip of water and shook his head. A smile began to creep onto his face again until he remembered to pull in his lips. He looked at her, shook his head again and asked her to go on.

"This is the money part that you wanted to know about. It started when I met with Linda. My research all pointed to her as the most vicious, successful shark of a divorce lawyer in town.

"Linda told me there wasn't much I could do, because of the no-fault laws. She said that if it turned out I made a few dollars more than you did, I might even have to pay alimony.

"I told her that wouldn't do. I needed to destroy you for what you were doing to me. Not just the disrespect for our marriage, but the humiliation of sharing the details of your sordid affair with your drinking buddies.

"I told her I handled all the family finances and needed to find out how I could get all of our money and hide it where you couldn't find it. Then I would line up a job in another city, leave secretly and take the kids.

"You wouldn't have the money to trace me, so it would take you years, and by the time you found me, the kids would be grown and on their own. I knew the worst thing I could do to you was to keep you from the children.

"Linda said all of that was illegal and as an officer of the court, she had to warn me that she would turn me in if I said anything more to her about anything similar or if she found out that I was implementing any of my ideas.

"She gave me the card of a private investigator and told me that if I calmed down and decided to pursue a divorce, I should hire him to get the goods on you, because that might affect custody, especially if it could be shown you were fucking Raven while the kids were in the house or had a good chance of coming home and discovering you.

"When I met with Carl and explained about you, I tried to hold back, but I couldn't, and I told him what I told Linda. He also warned me about committing any crimes and explained what he could and couldn't do for me. I wrote him a check, and he wrote me out a receipt.

"Carl walked me to my car, and then told me he had forgotten to give me the receipt. I told him I didn't need it, but he told me to wait and ran back into his office. When he handed me the receipt through the car window, a piece of paper fell into my lap. By the time I picked it up, he was back in the building. It was a phone number.

"Morris was very cagey when I called, and also when I met with him. The first thing he said was to never say anything about my plans for revenge to anyone ever again -- anyone except him. Then he said he'd do some research and get back to me.

"I began to meet with Morris and Carl regularly. I tried to schedule both of them on the same night. That was my project that took so much out of me. The project was sticking it to you.

"Carl started recording everything at O'Blivion's and putting a tail on you. That's when I found out what a sneak you really were. Carl said he had never seen anything like it in all his years as a PI. He could never catch you.

"He installed a key logger on your computer at home and at work, hacked into your phone and tracked your car. At one meeting, he asked me seriously whether it would be all right with me if, after it was all over, he paid you for sharing how you got around everything he did.

"He said the recordings at O'Blivion's couldn't be used in court because no one had agreed to them, but there were some tricks Linda could use to bring the information to light so that you might get almost no custody and it would always be supervised. But the only way to make sure of that was with video or photos.

"I remembered the home security guy, and Carl said it was worth a shot. But you must have gotten suspicious when you saw that electrician leaving. You weren't supposed to know about the override switch he installed behind the mops and brooms in the mud room. I turned it on so you couldn't turn the cameras off with the other switch, but I know you found it and turned it off when you were fucking her and turned it back on before I got home.

"Morris was more successful. He showed me how to transfer all our assets to offshore accounts. I took out a big new mortgage on the house and a second and put that money offshore, too, and then I took out a huge loan on your business. After that, I removed myself from both, so you owned the house and company by yourself.

"I was surprised. I had no idea your business was worth more than three million. You signed everything where I showed you as usual without looking at anything. Almost everything was done with out-of-town lenders. The only thing I was worried about was old Mr. Murchison at the bank when I was moving money out of the accounts there. I thought he might say something to you."

"He did," Balek said.

The interruption startled Hon. She looked hard at Balek.

"I don't believe you. You would have stopped me."

"I told him that when it comes to renting equipment, I was the expert, but when it comes to financial dealings, you were the mastermind and I knew to never question any move you made. He tried a couple of times to warn me, but I told him that I knew you would never do anything deceitful or dishonest."

"So you helped me out, Balek," she said and laughed. "How nice of you."

"Say," he said, sounding a little concerned.

"Uh-oh," she said. "What's the problem now?"

"I just remembered Mr. Murchison asked me not to tell you that he was suspicious of you. I thought it was funny, but I promised him. You're not going to hold it against him, I hope."

She laughed again.

"Of course not. He was doing his job. It shows we can trust him.

"Where was I? Yes, the money. I buried you.

"Morris showed me how within days after I left, you'd have almost nothing. Since you had no money to make payments on the huge loans, you'd lose the house and the business. The people who took the business as their collateral would probably hire you to run it, but all you'd get would be a manager's salary.

"You'd be bankrupt, with no money to look for me. Once the kids graduated from college, I'd contact the creditors and make a deal to pay them back with interest as long as they didn't prosecute. Since they wouldn't know where the cash was, they'd have a choice between the money or pressing charges.

"If you got a low-price lawyer to go against my expensive one, I'd drag the lawsuit on for years. All your money would be sucked up by your lawyer. I would settle when you were close to retiring so you could live out your golden years in financial security -- your reward for screwing up the rest of your life.

"After Morris painted this picture, I was so thrilled that I hugged him. He arranged for new identification and papers for me and the kids and a low-visibility job as a broker for me. I was worried about how they'd take to the move, but he told me it would be easy and how to do it.

"It wasn't easy. It was going to be the hardest part of all. It almost drove me mad thinking about it. That's when you and the kids saw me falling apart. But in the end, I knew he was right.

"All I had to do was play a few minutes of you talking to your pals at O'Blivion's, and it would destroy you in their eyes. They'd want to go with me as far from you as they could get. I knew they'd pay a price, and I was starting to check out therapists in the city we were moving to."

As she spoke, Hon's voice moved from defiant to depressed and as she finished, she was looking down at the table. She looked up and saw that Balek still had his teeth pulled in to keep from smiling. She glared at him.

"You have nothing to say?" she asked.

He carefully opened his mouth trying not to smile, but not succeeding.

"So the kids are in on this situation, but they don't know it. Is that the whole story?"

"Yes, except that Carl finally outsmarted you and got the evidence I needed. I saw it on Thursday. You saw how ecstatic I was when I got home. It was the final piece of the puzzle I had been waiting for. I was beginning to get frustrated that I would never get concrete proof that confirmed what I knew about you and Raven.

"When I got the goods on you, it was like a weight was lifted from my shoulders. That's when I got the idea for the revenge fucks. I didn't need to be careful, because I didn't care who knew I was screwing Rip. I knew you wouldn't believe anyone because you were sure I would never cheat on you, like you told your buddies all the time at O'Blivion's.

"I decided that wasn't good enough. I needed to rub your nose into it. You smelled it on my panties that night, didn't you?"

"What?"

"You're so good," she said. "Look at your face. But I know when you picked up my clothes and put them in the hamper, you smelled something and looked at my panties.

"I was waiting for you to ask me whose come it was. You must have guessed it was Rip's. I knew it was tearing you apart so much that you were scared to question me. It felt great.

"And I made you listen on your cell phone to me talking to Rip about his cock and what he was doing to me on our so-called business trip."

Balek once again couldn't control his lips, and he almost laughed as Hon's eyes shot daggers at him.

"You mean the butt call?" he asked. "I'm sorry. I didn't know I was supposed to hear anything, so I hung up."

"No you didn't. I got you on that lie. Your phone and my phone both prove you listened to me making you a cuckold for more than an hour before I sent him to his room and went to sleep. How are you going to get out of that one? Come on. What's your comeback?"

He laughed.

"You're right. I put the phone down, but I didn't hang up until I noticed it was still connected. You didn't hang up either."

"What does that prove?"

"I think you forgot about your phone, too."

"So what."

"You told me you sent Rip to bed after an hour but I didn't see the call was still on until I went to bed two hours later. According to you, that means I kept on listening to more than an hour of you sleeping."

"Whatever," she said. "I know you heard us. And I know you smelled the proof on my panties. Maybe you even touched it. I don't care how much you smile. You'll never forget that smell."

"I think I'm starting to get this," he said. "Is it my turn again?"

"Sure. Knock yourself out."

"I told you I tossed all your clothes into the hamper. I didn't know I was supposed to smell the panties.

"Also, I probably never mentioned this before, but I never listen to butt calls, no matter who they're from. The first couple of times I got one, I was curious. But they were such a waste of time that I've never done it again. But all this doesn't matter anyway."

"What do you mean?"

She looked at him with disgust. He was grinning from ear to ear.

"I mean, this situation sounds good, but it doesn't work because it's you. If it was someone else, maybe it would, but you can't help being you, and I can't help being me. No matter what anyone says or thinks or --"

"Or proves!" she interjected.

"Or thinks they can prove. It doesn't matter because if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that you would never cheat on me in a million years. It's a fact of life, like the sun going up every morning."

He could tell she was furious. She sputtered for a few seconds before she could retort.

"You may be a smart businessman, but you've got the morals of an alleycat and the brains of a dodo."

He laughed loudly.

"I think I hit a nerve there. Can I go on?"

She refused to answer, so after a minute, he said, "Stop me if you want to say something. As I was saying, I know for a fact that you would never betray me. I know that as surely as I know I would never cheat on you."

"You can't be serious!" she yelled. "Are you going to fight me in court? You are conceited beyond anything I ever imagined. I've watched you while I was talking. You tried to hide it, but I could tell you were humoring me the whole time. You still think you can beat this thing? Cheaters are stupid, but you're positively delusional."

That got an even bigger laugh from him. He tried to put on a serious face, but it was a strain.

"I want to apologize for O'Blivion's. Jerry was never supposed to tell Val. He must have been really out of it, because all of us know better than to tell the wives anything."

He gave up being serious and started smiling again as he continued.

"All right, I'm delusional and stupid. But you told me that your friend Carl never caught me, uh, in bed with Raven. He had me followed, and you made sure your security cameras were on."

"You turned them off!" she shouted.

"Yes, that's right. I saw an electrician leaving the house so I knew right away that he had installed your special switch behind the mops, and I remembered to turn it off each time I brought Raven over here. Did you do like the spies in the movies? Was there a string over the mops so you could tell when I moved them?