The Monster

With a broad smile, Nancy said, "sure, Alex. This story—Gina and Denham and their sordid little plot—will be the biggest story on cable news for some time to come. It's got everything: money, adultery, attempted murder, an extremely attractive woman, a man's betrayal of his best friend, you name it. It will be bigger than Paris Hilton, bigger than the saga of Anna Nicole Smith.

"Gina will be the harlot of the month for a while, and Apex will get more publicity than it's had for the entire life of the company—more publicity than $500 million of advertising could buy, all for free. Alex will find himself on Larry King, on the Today show, you name it. He'll be the honest, hard-working businessman victimized by the unscrupulous slut and her puppet.

"By the time the trial is over and Gina and Denham are in jail, Apex will have been profiled in Business Week and The Wall Street Journal. Somebody will have given Alex an "Entrepreneur of the Year" award. The company will have maybe a hundred million dollars in new business, and Alex will have gotten ten thousand letters from women just dying to be the next Mrs. Macmillan. Some of them will send photos.

"This is a Godsend for Apex. Not much fun for your husband, Gina—at least right now—but you're about to make a rich, successful man even more rich and successful. As his PR representative I couldn't have dreamed of coming up with anything this good!"

Nancy winked at me, then stood and left the room. Gina sagged back in her chair, her eyes a little unfocused, her mouth drooping in a deep frown. For perhaps the first time in all the years I had known her, she looked utterly defeated.

I picked up the telephone. "Meredith, you can send in the police now."

************

The next fourteen months may or may not have made up for what came before—that's a tough call—but they provided their fair share of entertainment.

The police charged Gina and Denham with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, grand larceny, and six or seven other things. Apex's attorneys also immediately filed a civil suit demanding the return of the stolen money, which we knew the location of thanks to Denham's confession. And, of course, I immediately filed for divorce on the grounds of adultery.

Happily, because of the criminal and civil complaints, all Denham's accounts and all accounts of Gina's and mine that she had access to were frozen. By the time the two of them made bail, they didn't have the money to hire high-priced attorneys to defend them, and had to make do for a while with public defenders—quite a comedown!

I threw Gina out of the house and had no trouble getting a judge to place a restraining order on her—the video of her and Denham discussing a second try at murdering me was pretty persuasive. She got Susan, one of her tennis buddies, to put her up in Susan's guest house temporarily. Gina never made any attempt to contact me, not that I expected it or wanted it. She must have realized there wasn't a thing she could say that would make any difference.

On the Monday after Gina's "day of reckoning", I called Josh and Eddie in and fired each of them. Neither was terribly surprised. Eddie asked only that, in the event a prospective future employer called me for a reference, I'd be willing to say that his work for Apex was good. I had no problem agreeing to that.

Josh tried to make a deal with me: if I'd help him find a decent job, he'd be willing to testify against Gina at her trial. I laughed him out of my office. I reminded him that I already had his confession of the affair, and her attempt to get him to steal from the company, on tape. If he didn't agree to testify the prosecutors would simply issue him a subpoena.

I promoted Bernie Eisenhart to Josh's position as Chief Financial Officer, with every confidence he'll do a first-rate job. I've asked him to take on the job of interviewing for his own replacement as Treasurer and for Eddie's position.

Gina and Denham's trial began after about seven months, and it was a hoot. It lasted nearly three weeks. I went to court a few times, but felt no need to be there every day. Not surprisingly, they were in no position to deny what they'd done, and each lawyer's defense concentrated on making the other one look like the main bad guy.

Gina's big assets were her beauty and her ability to act—make that lie—on the witness stand. The men on the jury ate her up. The trouble, of course, is that there was video that clearly showed her pushing a reluctant Dowdle to make another attempt on my life, and even Gina couldn't overcome that.

They were both found guilty of about eight counts, including all the big ones. By the end of the trial all the publicity had enabled Gina to sign some deals for magazine and TV interviews, enough to pay for some expensive legal talent. The new lawyers have filed appeals and managed to delay sentencing so far, but Gina and Dowdle both appear to be looking at 10-15 years or so. All the money they stole has been returned to Apex, minus $72 thousand.

With Denham's security firm out of business, I needed somebody to take over that role for Apex. When I flew down to Los Angeles to settle my account with Barry Asimove—and to thank him for all he had done—he suggested that I hire David Carlyss.

"David's been looking to move up to the Bay area, and you've seen how good his work is. I don't think you'll regret offering him a contract, and with you as his main client he can build a business up there."

So I offered Carlyss the work, and it seems to be going very well so far.

While I was visiting Asimove's office he surprised me with one more bit of video I hadn't know about; there hadn't been time earlier to talk to me about it, and it wasn't germane to the threat from Gina and Denham.

"Come into the screening room for a minute, Alex—I think you'll get a kick out of this."

To my surprise and amusement, there in bed with Gina, his flabby, paunchy body bouncing up and down on top of her, was Charlie Pemberton, my attorney! He was nearly 60, and it didn't look like he was giving Gina much pleasure, though he was certainly enjoying the ride himself.

After they finished fucking—which didn't last all that long—they chatted in bed. It seems Gina had seduced him a couple of months earlier, and set him to work trying to find a way around our pre-nuptial agreement. Not surprisingly, since Charlie was an excellent lawyer and he'd drafted it himself, he wasn't having much success. But that didn't stop him from enjoying Gina's favors whenever she gave him the chance.

I particularly enjoyed burning Charlie's ass. I charged him, as publicly and loudly as I could, with unethical conduct, and the California Legal Ethics Board had no choice but to disbar him. I also sued him and took about $240,000 of his life savings, which I donated to charity. The whole thing gave me great pleasure.

As for me, and Apex, things have gone just as Nancy Leggett predicted. There was a firestorm of publicity, above all on the cable TV news stations and in the tabloid press. There I was on CNN, on the cover of Fortune magazine, on the front page of the National Enquirer, and just about everywhere in between.

Nancy had to hire three new staff people just to deal with the workload, and she and I met nearly every day to plan strategy and decide which interviews and other offers to accept. The boon to Apex's business was a nearly 20% increase in the first six months after the story broke.

Nancy was right about the letters from women, too. More than eight thousand so far, and they keep coming. After reading the first couple of hundred—a few with provocative or even downright obscene photos enclosed—I turned the job of answering them over to one of her interns. For all I know, that guy is getting laid on a regular basis!

The local divorcées and single women came out of the woodwork, too. I had more pussy offered to me than I knew existed in the world; but surprisingly, I found I wasn't all that interested. Gina had kept me very happy sexually, right up until it all fell apart, and I didn't feel the need to sow any wild oats. I went out on dates with four women who attracted me, and screwed two of them (though I could have had the other two if I'd wanted), but I quicly confirmed that the promiscuous lifestyle really didn't tempt me.

After a few weeks of working closely with Nancy, I found that she was the one I wanted to date. We've been going out for nearly a year. Neither of us is any hurry to get married, but it might happen after a while.

Last Sunday was my birthday, and Nancy got me something special as a gift. We'd spent Saturday night at her place, watching an old Humphrey Bogart movie and then making love. Sex with Nancy is wonderful—sweeter and more relaxed than with Gina, who liked it hard, sweaty, and athletic. With Nancy it's not just about the sensations, it's about the feeling of intimacy, and it's great.

On Sunday morning she let me sleep while she made breakfast for us and brought it up to the bedroom. I opened my eyes to see her standing there in her robe, holding breakfast on a big tray.

We ate together and then she said, "ready for your present? I'm wearing it, actually, under the robe."

I raised my eyebrows questioningly and she just grinned at me.

"Ready?" she said. Then she slipped off the robe and stood posing in front of me.

She was wearing only a white tee-shirt that covered her just past her hips, showing off her long legs. The shirt had a scanned image of a glowering Gina, no doubt taken from a photo of her that Nancy had found at my house. Below the photo, in big block letters, the shirt said, "I Survived the Monster".

I laughed and laughed; then I said, "come here, you". I pulled Nancy down onto the bed with me, and after a few minutes we took the shirt off.