Redialing for Dollars

I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Joel's ex business partners were the ones responsible for their deaths. I know their names and their 'friends' and their own peculiar inclinations towards revenge. I could see it in the cold gleam in their eyes when they offered their condolences to me for my loss.

I hadn't expected Terri to run and join her fate to Joel's. That wasn't at all part of my plan.

If she had just stayed home there would have beensometrouble, but nothing that couldn't be handled. She could have dumped most of the blame on Joel and her pregnancy should have protected her from most of the rough stuff. She'd have had to have answered some hard questions for the partners and would have been at worst, deeply in debt to them, but she should have escaped with nothing worse than financial ruin and divorce. Maybe I would have later picked her back up from the gutter ... I hadn't considered that far yet. But when she ran with him, her guilt was confirmed in their eyes as an equal accessory to all of Joel's crimes. Maybe he confessed to try and protect her before he died, absolving her from much of the guilt, but in reality, Joel was a weasel... and maybe he even tried to put all of the blame on her! That wouldn't surprise me at all. Maybe their captors just didn't care any longer by then and they were both expendable. In any case they died together, messily and without a whole lot of dignity.

I really can't say that was entirely what I had in mind when I set up my revenge, but it's too late to cry over spilt milk now. I set a few snowballs into motion and it was my fault that it turned into a huge avalanche instead.

The company eventually reopened but it was never profitable again. With the life insurance settlement I received from Terri's murder I made an offer to buy out the existing inventory of the business, for pennies on the dollar. I frankly didn't much care if they accepted it or not and was a little surprised when the Philadelphia gangsters accepted it. I think now that they wanted to hide back into the shadows and assume a lower profile after their murder of Joel and Terri. Selling out to the poor widower also made for good PR and maybe gave them a way to save some face within their criminal organization.

Now that it's my own company, things are a bit better run now, and we definitely have better financial audits and controls over things. Sales and support folks also definitely get their commissions and bonuses now. Business is pretty good and it keeps me usually too busy to think about the past very much, but I will say this - that my revenge didn't taste nearly as sweet as I had hoped it would be.

I have no regrets for what happened to Joel ... he had hurt too many other people and his fate was deserved, but he should not have taken Terri to join his destruction.

Someday I think I will have to do something to avenge Terri. I don't know how, when, where or even really why, but someday I'll find a way. My wife was a lying cheating slut and a whore ... but she didn't deserve to die the way she did, like a butchered and mutilated animal at the hands of psychopaths. I still have Joel's bank and brokerage money stashed away completely untouched — millions of dollars - and I'd pay every cent of it to be able to stand over Terri's grave and be able to say "I'm sorry this happened to you babe, but I've hunted down and killed every single one of the bastards who did this to you."

Until that day, I burn slowly inside with the need for revenge ... and this time it shall be served up hot!