The first part of an ongoing story. The story and the characters are entirely fictional. Any comments or communications very welcome.
Family Debt - Part One
What I thought was the end of the good life came to me one wet Tuesday evening, with the visit from my father-in- law Tom. He was also my boss, and that was the problem. Or rather the problem was that I had been robbing him blind for most of the eleven years I had worked for him.
John Ames is my name, and I had married his older daughter Claire soon after we had both left university. We had two children - Steve and Dawn, by the time of that wet Tuesday evening 16 and 14 respectively. After we married, Claire's father lent us some money so that I could start up my own business. It went well enough at the beginning, but some bad decisions and some bad breaks eventually brought it down. Tom bailed us out, and gave me a job. I know that stealing from him on a regular basis was a pretty low thing to do after all that, but I've never pretended to be the strong willed type and it was just so damn easy. For those eleven years the life all four of us lived was very good, but the time came to pay the price. We started paying on that wet Tuesday evening, and all of us paid.
He discovered what I'd been doing with his firm's money by getting his other daughter, Samantha, to do a bit of hacking for him. First at the office and then at my home. She was something of an expert at it, being in the internet security line and one of the best at her game. The office computer revealed my thefts, and my home machine gave him further evidence of my crime and a great deal more. Information about me that I had never thought would see the light of day, but that would now be revealed to my entire family.
That Tuesday night he had told me he was coming, and that he wanted a word with me, but not what it was about. And was already there when I got home, sitting talking to Claire with them both looking very serious. And Claire flushed and a little frightened. I had some sort of premonition at that point, but it didn't go anywhere near warning me of what was to befall me and my family that night and for many nights to come.
"Sit down, John," Tom said. "Over there next to Claire."
The command in his voice I thought well out of order in my home, but when I saw what was laid out on the table between them I was no longer inclined to argue. I sat down beside Claire on the sofa, facing him across those incriminating documents.
"You've been stealing from me, John," he said in a very level voice. "A lot of money over a long time. And Claire knew all about it, as she's just admitted to me." He looked across at his daughter, and the contempt there in his eyes was worse than when he had been looking at me.
I tried to bluster, but he simply ignored me.
"You, Claire and the kids have been living high on the hog at my expense," he went on. "If you'd wanted more money and asked for it, then I'd have given it to you. But you had to steal from me. And for that you're going to pay."
I glanced at Claire, but she was avoiding my gaze.
"We'll pay you back, Tom," I said desperately. "I promise you that."
He laughed, a harsh sound without any humour in it that made Claire jump. "Even if I trusted the two of you to do that," he said. "Which I definitely don't. But even if, the only way you could hope to do that is sell practically everything you've got. And still it wouldn't be enough. Are you really ready to give all this up, John? To live like the pauper you should be?"
He had me there. I wasn't. But my mind was already scheming, to no avail at all.
"What's here would put you in jail for several years, John," he said, gesturing to the papers on the table with a sweep of his hand. "Maybe Claire as well. And then what would happen to Steve and Dawn? Put in care, I should imagine. Or a home."
"You'd do that to your own grandchildren?" Claire asked in disbelief, speaking for the first time.
He looked at her and slowly nodded. "My grandchildren?" he asked. "The grandchildren who have visited me exactly once in the last year, and then couldn't get away fast enough and weren't shy about showing it? Yes, Claire, I would. Might even do them good."
He reached into his copious briefcase and pulled out a large brown envelope, the same as the one from which the documents on the table were spilled. He laid it on top of them.
"And then there's this," he said. "What's in here, John, will make you a laughing stock with everybody you know. Photos, mpegs, mails, chat transcripts. Samantha found it all on when she hacked into your home computer, John."
Claire's mouth curled at the mention of her sister, the two of them having never got on. "What's Samantha got to do with this?" she asked her father. "And what is in that envelope."
Tom looked between us, realising that Claire knew nothing of this. Nothing of my secret life, even if was only a fantasy life.
"We'll come to that," Tom said, smiling as he enjoyed my discomfort. "First we're going to talk about how you, and Steve and Dawn if they so choose, are going to repay me for the years of stealing my money and betraying my trust."
Then he told us the deal. He had led, he said, the dullest of lives, and now he wanted to experience some excitement before he died. And the excitement he wanted was sexual excitement. Not just sex itself, which he could get from any prostitute down in the city, but the excitement of the forbidden. Any and every perversity that he could imagine, and we were going to supply it or suffer the consequences of our dishonesty and our ingratitude to him for what he had done for us. His rested on Claire, watching her squirm, as he spoke of his wife, her mother, who had died a few years before. Sex once a month of he was lucky, and with the light off and any suggestion of anything but the missionary position met with disgust and a long drought. Like mother like daughter, I thought to myself, with some sympathy for him. Claire's own attitude to sex, obviously learnt from her mother, was part of the reason for what lay in that second envelope.
"The alternative for you, John, is prison," he finished. "For you, Claire, maybe prison but certainly penury."
"And Steve and Dawn?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Their choice," he said. "They can keep all this, or if they wish I will pay for them to attend a residential school until they are eighteen, when they will have to fend for themselves. But if they choose that option, they leave all the rewards they've garnered from your thieving behind them."
We argued. Of course we argued. But I don't think I put as much effort into as I could, and I'm sure Claire noticed that. Somewhere inside me there was a yearning for the same sort of excitement that Tom had been describing. And I did not want to go to prison.
"Enough!" Tom said at last. "Nothing either of you can say is going to change my mind. So make up your minds now. What's it to be?"
I looked at Claire, but she still refused to meet my gaze. Then I made the only decision I could when I looked back at my father-in-law and nodded. Claire snorted contemptuously, but said nothing. Tom looked at her, and then back at me.
"You seal the deal by crawling over here on your knees," he said. "And you, Claire, can show your agreement for now by sitting and watching your husband suck your Daddy's cock."
He reached down and undid his zip. Putting his hand inside his trousers, he pulled out his semi-erect cock. It was an old man's cock, heavily veined and dark. I stared at it incredulously, and realised that Claire was doing the same.
"The kids will be home soon," I blurted out, putting off the moment.
He looked at his watch. "In about three minutes," he said. "Samantha has picked them up from and will be bringing them. And unless your lips are around my cock by the time they walk through that door, then I walk out of here and go straight to the police. Your choice, you two."