The First to Know

Part One. As told by Raff Tomis

In the selfish, deceitful and manipulative wife handbook, right there in bold lettering on page one, it says that the husband has to be the last person to find out that she has decided to leave him. In my case, I'd say that was one hundred percent true. I was still deeply in love with the bitch and I was totally blindsided. My ex had given herself so much time to prepare that I never really caught up and, in the settlement, I was totally screwed over as a result. But that's ancient history now, and it's actually not what this story is about. In this story we look at what can be done when, by pure chance, you are the first to know that some poor bloke's wife is preparing to destroy his life.

My name is Raff Tomis. Yes, that is my real name not a nickname, and I design, set up and monitor home and small business security systems. I run my own show, along with my two full time employees, a couple of carefully vetted engineering students from the local university when we need them, and a sub-contracting commercial call centre. The call centre vets alarms from the monitored sites and alerts the owner, a private security firm, the police, or occasionally me, depending on what has happened and the action that the customer has specified for that situation. I work at the higher end of the market so pretty much everything we do these days is state of the art with remote monitoring and secure data storage either locally or on the cloud.

If this story was in the romance section, it's about now that I'd tell you some lies about my incredibly muscular stature, my piercing blue eyes and a fancy special forces history that meant that, if I wanted to, I could kill you blindfolded from a hundred metres away with just a kangaroo's foreskin. Yeah, I'm an Aussie, so you'll have to put up with the occasional outburst of metric measurement and down under slang. Shit happens and that's just the way I am. Anyway, what I look like has no bearing on this story, so I'll just take on the role of the faceless narrator here, OK? Bonza mate.

So, anyway, I was doing one of my regular six-monthly system health checks on an alarm setup in a luxury home belonging to Sam and Sasha Fitzgerald. To avoid embarrassment, I always send a text and an email a week in advance warning the owners that for routine maintenance I will be remotely checking the cameras in their house on a specific date. Even though I do that, you'd be very surprised at some of the things I see when I do the checks. People doing drugs or running around naked is quite common. Sometimes they are even fucking. I once checked a 'party room' camera and right there, at eleven AM on a workday, I found out that the Swindon Bell model four wide angle indoor monitoring camera can clearly capture an orgy with seventeen couples, six threesomes and one girl with five cocks in her at the same time, all in a single frame. Sadly, they don't make them anymore, and here I'm talking about the camera, not the girl. If you have enough money you don't have to look for her, she'll find you and, of course, your money. Yeah, I'm pretty fucking cynical, but I have about one and a half million good reasons for that.

Right, back to the story. My first step is to run a system check on the controller. I look at all the maintenance and trip logs to make sure that everything is running OK and then I check that all the cameras are clear and working. You'd be amazed at how many fuckwits there are who put a house plant or an ornament directly in front of a security camera and are then surprised when I tell them that it has obstructed the camera's view. You don't have to be broke to be an idiot, that's for sure. At Sam and Sasha's place I saw that there had been a full system reboot the day before and all the history had been wiped. I had a quick look at the stored data (their system used local on-site storage) and everything seemed to be right so I just did the camera check and made a note to check the system again the following week when there would hopefully be a full week of uninterrupted operational history.

I logged in again the following Friday and, once again, the history had been wiped on the Thursday afternoon. It was really quite odd, because the wiped files were actually all intact, and if people are deliberately trying to hide something they normally just delete the offending files and be done with it.

Because this was a really unusual situation, I opened the files and had a good look at them. The first thing I noticed was that the vision from the previous day showed a nice mildly sunny day. That was odd because it had actually been overcast and had rained pretty much all day.

I spent a bit more time and I found out that the previous three Thursdays (they had a six-week rolling storage setup) all had exactly the same files. The same weather, Sam and Sasha had both left home at exactly the same time and a courier dropped off an unusually shaped parcel at exactly the same time.

At this stage I could have asked Sam, who had the contract with us, if he knew what was going on. The problem with that was if someone had gained access to their security system and was manipulating it, then it was my job to find out who and why. So, I set their system to also back up live to my secure off-site servers for the next seven days and again I set myself a reminder to follow up on the next Friday. This simple regular check had turned into a shit load of unexpected work, but we take our customer's security very seriously.

Come Friday, I hooked into their system and found there had been another data wipe and the actual Thursday files had again been replaced and, once again, they were the same as the previous Thursdays. It was weird.

I accessed the original files on my server and I went back to the time of the reset. We always make sure that the security system controller is in camera shot and what I saw was Sasha accessing the system and making the changes. Normally this would have been enough for me to drop my enquiries and leave well enough alone. If the customer wants to fiddle with their system they are perfectly entitled to. But in this case the account owner was Sam and according to the paperwork nobody else had authority to fuck around with the system.

So, I went back to early Thursday morning and scrolled through the real images of the day. Both Sam and Sasha had left their house heading off to work at their usual time, but Sasha had returned home at around midday. Less than half an hour later a man who Sasha called Terry turned up at the door and within moments of his arrival they were tearing each other's clothes off.

They spent the following hour and a half energetically fucking in multiple positions in multiple rooms. Even when they were not in a camera shot, I could still hear them clearly. Sasha was definitely a screamer. Now I'm not claiming to be the next Sherlock Holmes, but it wasn't too hard, even for me, to work out that this was why Sasha was deleting the camera records. I had no idea about the state of Sam and Sasha's relationship, but I wouldn't reckon there are too many men who'd take kindly to some buffed up would be stud pounding their wife into oblivion. Bareback. Of course, if Sam was on board with it there would be no reason to wipe the files either. I had collected enough footage from their place to make a pretty good amateur 'hidden cam' porno, but of course there was fuck all chance of me doing that. Confidentiality is paramount in my business.

Because of the way my own marriage had finished, it was pretty damn disturbing for me to watch Sasha cheating so brazenly, so I mostly skimmed through it at high speed. When they finally finished, they showered together, got dressed and sat down with a coffee.

Strangely enough, that was when the really shocking part occurred.

"Hey," Terry said casually, "you decided what you're gonna do 'bout Sammy boy yet?"

Sasha nodded.

"I'm going to set him up at his awards night next week. I'll leave early due to a headache and a friend is going to slip a mickey into his drink. She will get some of the guys there to take him to one of the motel rooms to sleep it off, but then she'll let an escort in and film him and her together. That should take care of our stupid pre-nuptial agreement."

"Don't get how that works," Terry said. I'm pretty damn sure she hadn't chosen him for his intelligence.

"We have a strange pre-nup, it is an eighty-twenty, fifty-fifty or twenty-eighty split," Sasha replied.

Terry didn't say anything, he just looked at her blankly.

"If neither of us cheats and we divorce we have a fifty-fifty split of everything," Sasha explained in a voice you'd use to talk to a pre-schooler, "but if either of us can prove the other cheated then the cheater only gets twenty percent. Including the house, we are worth a couple of million now so, if can prove he cheated, I'll get about six hundred thousand extra."

I was growling to myself as I watched and listened and I decided that, confidentiality be damned, I was going to let Sam know what was going down. Ever since my own divorce I absolutely hated cheating, manipulating bitches.

"Wow," Terry sounded impressed, "so then you hit him with the papers and we can do this every day?"

"No, I'll have to wait few extra weeks for that. I have a three hundred and sixty thousand dollar inheritance coming and I have to get the timing right. To get it I have to be happily married on my twenty fifth birthday, which is on the eighteenth of next month, and then I can claim it. Once the lawyers approve it, I'll have it paid into an account that he doesn't know about and once I've got it, then I'll divorce him. He'll never know about it so the inheritance won't be part of the settlement."

"What if he finds out about us?"

"I'll know if he gets even slightly suspicious. I put a bugging app on his phone so I can hear everything he says and I know exactly where he is all the time. If he does get suspicious, we just stop seeing each other until my birthday." Terry looked shocked at that thought.

"He has no idea about the inheritance," she continued, "so I can delay until then if I need to. If there's problems, we can look for other options, but this should work. He is completely oblivious."

Terry coked his head to the side and Sasha sighed.

"He has no idea," she explained, and Terry nodded slowly.

"But, can't he see us on these cameras?" he asked, pointing at the one I was watching through while he arrogantly squeezed her tit. I almost ducked, but then just grinned at my own foolishness.

"No," she replied smugly, "I've disabled his remote access to the cameras and I replace any footage with you in it with clean film from previous weeks."

"Clever," Terry said, while staring at her chest and grinning.

If I had been there, I would have smacked that smug smile right off his fucking face. If there's one thing that I hate just as much as a cheating married woman it's a man that knowingly goes after another man's wife. Especially a dumb, musclebound parasite like Terry.

Their conversation turned to more mundane topics and after the coffee was finished Terry gave Sasha a quick kiss and a thorough fondle and then, still grinning, he left. She went and wiped the film for the day and replaced it with previous footage. Then she too left.

I found myself in a very fucking difficult position. I wanted to give Sam the heads up, but as soon as I did Sasha would hear it, and then she would just change her plans. I considered just sending him the real footage. He'd have the evidence he needed to prove adultery and she'd have nothing on him, so he would get eighty percent of their assets. But that would also mean that she didn't get her inheritance, and if she didn't then neither would he. I was pissed off enough that I wanted her to see him getting most of their assets and most of her inheritance and for her to know there was bugger all that she could do about it. Yeah, suffer bitch.

Over the next few days, I pondered over the situation for hours. Anything I did would warn her, and if she was warned then I wasn't going to have the benefit of knowing what her plans were.

A couple of days before Sam's awards night I finally decided what I'd do, and that was pretty much nothing. As far as I could see I had to let things run as she had planned, but I also had to find a way to show that her evidence of adultery was actually bullshit. Hoping like hell that I wasn't going to get a police visit or end up on a potential sexual offenders list, I got on the net and looked up as much as I could on spiking drinks. There isn't much to find on men's drinks being spiked and I had no way of knowing what drug was going to be used. But, what seemed to be pretty likely was Sam would probably be very relaxed and tired. That meant there'd be a fair chance that he wouldn't manage to get it up when they wanted him to. They obviously wouldn't care about that, it just had to look like he was fucking the hooker.

Sam and Sasha arrived at the awards night together, dressed to the nines and looking for all the world like a happy power couple. My invitation had arrived as the result of a last-minute corporate sponsorship and I had turned up with Barry, one of my part time uni students, who had a few extra talents that I was going to need. Soon after they got there, Sasha and her friend Ruby said they were going to the toilet. Instead, they ducked down to the reception and Ruby booked a room for the night which Sasha paid for in cash. Barry was behind them at reception and he booked a room opposite and a couple down from theirs.

Barry messaged me, and we went to work. I asked him how he got an access card for Ruby's room, but he just grinned and shook his head. We're all entitled to some secrets I suppose, and he'd said all along he would look after that. We let ourselves in and we quickly set up four miniature high-definition surveillance cameras where they wouldn't be easily spotted. Once we had them sorted went back to our room to check the feed. We fired up the laptop and saw it was clear as a bell, so I went back to the event to schmooze, which is the expected behaviour for a sponsor, and Barry waited and monitored the cameras.

Sasha stayed for the awards, cheering just like a good wife should when Sam's team got one, and then, as the bitch had planned, she begged off and got an Uber home. Ruby stepped right in and around about two beers, a whisky, and an hour and a half later I saw her drop something into Sam's next drink.

He was already pretty pissed, and whatever it was that she put in his drink it worked quickly. Half an hour later a guy called Nate and I were pretty much carrying Sam up to the room while staring at Ruby's tight little arse as she led the way. Hey, I can look, can't I? I wouldn't have touched that toxic bitch with a dead dingo's donger, but that sure as fuck didn't stop her from having a great arse.

We got Sam out of his tux and put him in the bed in his shirt and underwear. Ruby said she'd stay for a while and make sure he didn't throw up. Nate and I headed back towards the party, but I said I'd just head home and split away as we got out of the lift. As soon as he had gone, I headed back to my room and I let myself in. There was a cop sitting there at the desk, looking curiously at the feed from our illegal hidden cameras.

"Well, well, well," he said. "Just what do we have here?"

I damn near wet myself laughing, and it was a couple of minutes before I could say anything.

"Fuck Barry," I gasped, "when you said it was realistic police uniform, I didn't think it would be that good. It looks completely genuine." Barry grinned.

"It's pretty much the real deal," he said, "except that when I pull in the right place it comes straight off."

"Can't keep the shielas waiting," I said laughing. One of the reasons that I got Barry involved in this project was that he also moonlights as a male stripper, and he was the one who came in dressed as a copper.

"Nah," he agreed, "they're usually in a big hurry to get to the truncheon swinging bit."

"TMI" I said, mock blocking my ears, and we sat down watching the feed and waited.

"She's been texting a bit," Barry told me, "but she hasn't made any calls."

"Makes sense," I said, "if she did Sam could hear her and be warned."

For the next forty minutes fuck all happened. Sam was out of it in the bed while Ruby just sat there playing on her phone. Finally, there was a quiet knock at the door in Ruby's room and she got up and opened it.

The girl who walked in was young, and probably pretty enough under the layers of makeup, but she was also high on something. She looked at Ruby for a moment, blinking.

"Fifty extra fo' a chick." She said hopefully.

"Not me," Ruby replied, "him." She pointed at Sam.

"Oh." The hooker looked disappointed.

"But I'll pay an extra hundred if I can film it." The hooker looked hopeful.

"Too hunred," she said.

"One fifty."

"'K. Money first."

Ruby counted out some money and handed it to the hooker.

"If he don wake up thes no refun," the hooker said.

"Fine," Ruby replied, "it just has to look like he is fucking you on the film."

"Oh. One uh them scen... scen... deals."

The hooker peeled her clothes of and went over to Sam. In our room Barry got up and checked his gear. We were relying on the alcohol and drugs to stop Sam from getting a hard on, but if he did and it looked like he was actually going to fuck the hooker Barry would dart across, hammer on the door dressed as a cop and say that someone had reported a disturbance. Barry is built like a brick shithouse and just his presence would be plenty enough to stop their plan in its tracks. I had decided that we couldn't let sex actually happen because then Sam would have technically committed adultery, even if he had been drugged. We had to keep him totally blameless.

The hooker pulled Sam's underwear aside and played with his flaccid cock for a few minutes. There was no response.

"Suck it?" Ruby suggested, but the hooker just shook her head.

"No' gonna work," she said. Then she put Sam's underwear back and climbed over him, and for the next five minutes or so she pretended to ride him cowgirl.

"Whas his name?"

"Sam."

"Oh yeah," the hooker moaned, "fuck me Sam, stick that big cock in me."

She might have been half ripped, but she did put on a really good show. She was bouncing hard enough on Sam that his body was moving with her and his closed eyes just made it look like he was lying back and enjoying the sensations.

Ruby ran around looking for suitable angles as the hooker cried out in mock ecstasy and the sound of slapping flesh filled in the gaps.

Finally, Ruby called a halt to the proceedings.

"That'll do," she said, "I'm sure Sasha will get what she wants from this."

The hooker nodded, climbed off, dressed quickly and then slipped out the door without another word.

Ruby looked around the room and smiled.

"You've got no idea how much this night is going to cost you," she said to Sam's sleeping form, but it's going to be the most expensive night that you ever slept through."

Giggling she did a quick clean up and then she too left the room.

I waited for ten minutes and then I went over and retrieved our cameras. Sam just snored softly through the whole thing. Barry was back in his street clothes when I got back to our room. I gave him the envelope with the money I'd promised and we left, dropping three access cards in the early departure slot and we each went to our homes.

I watched for the next couple of Thursdays, and Sasha seemed to be convinced that she had everything ready. Eventually I sealed a package and put it in the mail. My task was complete.

Part 2. As told by Adrian LeClerk

I've been involved with more divorces than I can count, but that's no surprise. I am, after all, a divorce lawyer. This last one I got involved in was depressingly familiar to begin with. Sam Fitzgerald was a referral from a colleague of mine who does business law, and Sam's company is one of his clients. Sam's wife Sasha had decided she wanted a divorce. Sam was more than a little bit surprised, he thought they were doing well. He came to me effectively still in shock and so much still in love that he was prepared to roll over and just give her what she wanted. I can't tell you the number of clients that I have had who say 'If it's that important to her just give it to her.'

Then her lawyer demanded a meeting to ensure that their pre-nuptial agreement was adhered to. They wanted an agreement between the two parties prior to us going to court. This confused Sam, and when he showed me the document it confused me as well. Sam assured me that he not been unfaithful, and the only way the pre-nuptial agreement would be relevant was if either one of them had been. She was obviously not going to volunteer the information if she had been, so that just left the expectation that she would claim he had been. We just had to wait and see what her legal team would present.

The whole situation changed when the package arrived. It was addressed to me, with a reference to Sam Fitzgerald and it was marked confidential. Amongst other things, the covering letter explained that Sam's wife had bugged his phone and that anything we discussed would get back to her. So this material was to be kept for me to use at the right time. The contents of the package were astounding, and everything that I could do to check for authenticity came up as being good. I believed what was in the message one hundred percent. Sam and I went into the meeting with him completely unprepared for what was about to happen. I, on the other hand, had what I thought would be everything I needed to obtain a favourable outcome for my client.

Sam and I met Sasha and Miles Boon in a meeting room at Boon and Fresh. B&F are well known in the industry, and they are a respectable company. If what I expected was going to happen did, then I also expected that Miles was going to be very uncomfortable before the end of the meeting. Sam sat at the table, just staring at Sasha, looking confused and saying nothing. She on the other hand would not meet his gaze and she looked like she was trying to pretend he wasn't there.

"What's your claim?" I asked, after the small talk had been made.

"Your client had sex with another woman," Miles said.

"No," Sam said, in barely a whisper.

"Support?" I asked, and Miles nodded and then turned on the big screen in the room. He brought up the file on his laptop, and there it was. Sam was lying in bed with his eyes closed while a naked woman rode him, crying out loud for him to fuck her. It looked authentic. Sam was staring at the screen in shock, mumbling incoherently.

"Fake," I said simply when the video ended. "There was no evidence there of penetration."

"The Clinton defence?" Miles asked wryly. "Is a magistrate going to believe what they see or what they don't see?" I smiled, nodded, and then held my hand out for the dongle. Miles handed it to me and I plugged in and quickly downloaded the app.

My video showed the same scene from a number of angles, and it quickly established that Sam had been unconscious during the event and that his underwear was on so penetration was impossible. It finished with Ruby saying,

"That'll do, I'm sure Sasha will get what she wants from this."

Sasha was as white as a sheet by the end of it, and the first crack appeared in Sam's dedication to her.

"Bitch," he said quietly.

"Sexual assault and fraud," I said.

"Is it real?" Miles asked nervously.

"If it isn't then neither is yours. They match absolutely."

"Is it legal?"

"Same answer."

"Excuse us," Miles said, and he just about dragged Sasha out of the room.

They came back a couple of minutes later.

"Our claim is withdrawn," Miles said. Now Sasha wouldn't meet my eyes either.

"Shall we get on to the assets?" he asked, and I just shook my head and hit play on the next video.

"Fuck no," Sasha screamed as the vision of her and Terry fucking on their couch came up, "that's private, you must have broken into our house to get that." Miles looked hopeful.

"Fucking cheating bitch," Sam said, a little louder, and his shoulders squared up.

"Provenance?" Miles asked me.

"Sam is the only signatory on the security camera contract and we have proof that Sasha knows they are in place."

"Excuse us," Miles said again, and he and Sasha left the room again.

"Where did you..." Sam started to ask but I interrupted him.

"Later," I said, and I pointed to his phone and mouthed the word 'bugged'.

"Fucking..." Sam ran out of words as he sat there taking deep breaths and trying to control himself.

We could hear Sasha's shrill screaming in another room. Sam looked at me.

"Thankyou," he said and I grinned.

"It's not over yet."

Miles and Sasha returned.

"My client accepts the twenty percent as long as the tape isn't used to prosecute."

I looked at Sam and cocked an eyebrow. He looked at Sasha, who was bright red and just staring at the ground.

"No games." he said, "She moves out as of now. I'll ship her things to any local address that she nominates." I smiled; I had an active client at last. I nodded to Miles. He looked to Sasha who gave a microscopic nod.

"Agreed."

Miles slid a piece of paper across to me, listing their combined assets.

"Do you agree with the assets list?" He asked hopefully.

"Where is the inheritance she received after she turned twenty-five?" I asked.

Sasha screamed, got up and ran from the room. Miles stood up to follow, but turned to look at me.

"I believe inheritances are exempt in these cases," he said.

"Is the house there on the list?" Sam asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"I inherited that from my grandmother."

I took out a pen and crossed it off the asset list.

Miles shook his head sadly.

"I had no idea," he said to me.

"I know," I reassured him.

He left to go and find Sasha and Sam and I got up and returned to my office.

Sam turned his phone off and left it in another office before we went into mine.

"How the fuck did you get all of that?" he asked in awe. I just smiled and handed him a letter that had been included in the package.

It read:

Dear Sam,

You don't know me and I don't know you. I stumbled across your wife's evil plan and I just couldn't let it happen because I've been there and I know the pain.

I couldn't say anything to you because she has your phone bugged and as soon as she realised you were onto her she would have changed her plan and we would no longer have had the advantage. I was lucky enough to be able to prepare your defence for you, and sent this all to your lawyer to use when he saw fit. I hope it helped.

There were some costs involved, but I will proudly cover them knowing it was the right thing to do. All I ask of you is to treat this as a 'pay it forward' experience so, if you find out that some poor guy is about to be screwed over by his wife, don't leave him to deal with it alone. Support him as well as you can and do everything that you can to prevent it happening.

Who knows? We might start a movement for change. A brotherhood.

From an unknown brother who cares.

Sam put down the letter and looked at me with grim determination.

"I can do that," he said.