She cheated.

I found out.

I put up with it for several months, hoping she would come clean or get tired of it.

She never did, so last night I confronted her.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Karen O’Dell asked after I had said good night to my kids.

“Please tell me something about it that at least sounds like the truth.” I asked.

“Mick, it started out as just a little harmless fun kissing and naughty touching. I guess I let it grow into something a little more. I don’t love him; I just use him for his dick, and he uses me for my ass. His wife won’t let him have her ass. Actually, his wife won’t have sex with him at all. I guess at the start it felt like a mercy fuck.”

“Fun? You couldn’t take up bingo or join a bowling league or go out with the girls from work to have a little fun? A mercy fuck!? Are you sure that I wasn’t the one getting the mercy fucks? You gave him your ass!”

“No! You were never a mercy fuck, ever! So, what are you going to do?” Now she was sounding concerned.

“I have no idea. I’m still debating the possibility of you and him having a fatal accident,” I said.

“Don’t try to be funny, Mick,” Karen said.

“I’m sorry, Karen,” my voice as serious as I could make it. “Did anything I say sound funny in any way? It was meant to be a very serious concept. But I also know that if I did that, I’d lose access to my kids. Those four are just as big a victim as I am.”

She seemed nonplussed by my threat.

“What do you mean victim? This isn’t going to affect any of you. You haven’t missed any nights in our bed, and the kids haven’t missed me at any school functions. I have followed through on all of my wifely and motherly duties.”

“Duties? Doesn’t sound like a loving wife or mother to me. Sounds like someone doing what they have to do before they get to fuck their real lover.”

“Don’t pull that bullshit on me. I love those children more than anything.”

“Anything except our family. Have you already introduced the kids to your lovers?”

She looked at me like I had two heads.

“First, there are not lovers, plural. Second, no they have not met him. That would have made keeping our affair secret very difficult. But now that you know, maybe I will.”

“I’ll kill him ... and you ... if you ever do that until after the divorce is completely over and done.”

“You aren’t going to divorce me. You love me and besides, you would lose the kids,” Karen said defiantly.

“I couldn’t lose the kids to a corpse.”

I looked at her and the anger and hate must have been palpable because she suddenly changed her expression and began to look like she was understanding that I was seriously on the edge.

“So back to the same question. What are you going to do now?” She asked unsure.

“For now, I’m going to keep on doing what I’ve been doing. I don’t think clearly when I have to make fast decisions. Especially when I’m angry enough to commit murder. I’m going to have to look at this problem from all angles before I act. Until then I am going to take care of my kids. I’m going to take a shower and go to bed.”

I stood and walked out of the living room and up the stairs to our bedroom’s bathroom. I stripped and stepped into the shower, closing the glass door and turning on the instant warm water. When I was done soaping up, I looked around the shower and noticed the sex toys that we used to use on each other occasionally. I picked them all up and walked out of the shower, dripping wet, and put them in the waste basket. It was a small start, but significant to me.

Stepping back into the shower, I closed the glass door again and soaped up again and rinsed. After drying off, I walked out into the bedroom and set the alarm clock for the morning and got into bed, nude, like I normally would do.

A few minutes later, she came in and stopped to look at me before going into the bathroom. I heard the shower turn on and the glass door close. After a few minutes there was some rustling around. Then there was the sound of the shower door close and the bathroom door opened.

“Throwing away our toys was a little childish. I put them back. At some point you will want us to use them again.”

She set the alarm clock on her side of the bed and slipped under the sheets, her bare ass touching mine. She reached back behind her to verify that I was indeed naked. When she did that she turned and cuddled to me. I didn’t react negatively, so she reached down and took hold of my penis and slowly shook and stroked it to full hardness.

“I guess you aren’t that mad at me.”

She moved around on her hands and knees to take me into her mouth and I grabbed her head like I would normally do but then I began to drive my cock hard, fast, and deeply into her throat, very unlike I had ever done. She tried to pull back, but I had a death grip on her head. I pounded my dick down her throat until I could hear that she was starting to gag.

At that point I pulled out and quickly moved behind her, since she was still on her knees while she was trying to catch her breath and swallow all the spit she had generated while I had fucked her face. I pushed my wet cock into her unprepared pussy and doggie fucked her as fast and hard as I could, slapping her ass as hard as I could. When I felt myself getting ready to cum, I pulled out and stroked myself as I moved to her face.

She looked up like she didn’t want my cock in her mouth again, so I stroked myself a few more times and shot cum all over her just washed face. With one hand holding her face in place and the other stroking my dick to full completion, I proceeded to wipe my softening dick clean on her hair. She was pissed.

“What the hell kind of a way was that to make love to your wife?” Karen asked still a little in shock from the way I treated her.

“Make love? Karen, I guess you haven’t figured it out yet, those days are over. All that is going to happen between us is fucking. Whether you start it, or I do, I will fuck you and use you like the cheating whore you are. And, I threw away the toys because we won’t need them. They were love making toys.”

“If you think that I’m going to go along with what you just did, you are out of your fucking mind.”

“It’s that or no sex between us.” I said.

“Fine then, no sex! It’s not like I’ll be going without,” she said in a rather snotty manner.

“Good choice. I was afraid that I was going to have to fight you off every time you wanted me to fuck that pre-owned, potentially diseased, pussy of yours.”

“Diseased? And what the fuck does pre-owned mean?”

“It means, Karen, that you are now used goods, like an old used car. It might look good on the surface, but underneath it is just an old, used, piece of junk,” I said with as much distaste as I could muster.

“If that is how you really feel, then when I need to get laid here at home, I’ll bring him here.”

I looked at her in cold silence. I walked over to the nightstand on my side of the bed and placed my hand on the fingerprint activated lock of the gun safe and pulled out my grandfather’s old 1911A.

“That will be the day you and he have that accident. Unless, of course, you are going to be telling a lot of people that you are fucking another man, or if the kids find out. If I can’t be tied to the act, it will just be a case of me coming home and thinking that you are being raped. Boom, boom, out go the lights. The rapist is dead, and you get accidentally killed.”

She looked at me and finally understood just how serious I was. She thought about the pistol that I had to protect my family from any threats, and I’m pretty sure that she started to understand that I now thought of her as that threat.

“OK,” she spoke carefully and quietly. “I’ve never brought him here and I never will. I’ll never let the kids, or our friends know.”

“That’s good. Does anyone at work know? Have you been bragging to your girlfriends about your big dick stud? Has he been bragging about fucking a new slut to any of his buds that might know us?”

“No one at work knows. I haven’t said a word to my friends. I’ll make sure he knows to keep quiet too.”

“Let him know that the day the word gets out is the day he, at least, dies.”

I looked at her as seriously and coldly as I could, then I put the safety back on, which drew a gasp from her. She hadn’t known that I had taken off the safety on the old .45 and was ready to use it.

When I closed the safe, I crawled back into bed and turned my back to her. She quietly got out of bed and took another shower to wash her hair and face and pussy. When she came back, she got into bed and stayed on her side of the bed, not allowing her ass to touch me.

My alarm went off and I got up, showered, and dressed for work. I was in the kitchen starting the coffee when she came in.

“You’re moving a little slow bitch. The kids will be down and expecting breakfast. You should get your ass in gear, so they don’t think something is wrong with you.”

“Don’t talk to me like that.”

“When it is just the two of us, I’ll speak to your cheating slut ass any way that I feel like.”

She was just about to raise her voice when our two sons came into the kitchen.

“Hi Dad. Hi Mom. What’s for breakfast today?” our seventeen-year-old, David, asked.

“I just got up, honey. Would you mind just getting yourself some cereal this morning?” she asked sweetly.

“No problem,” he said and the two of them took down bowls and glasses for themselves and their sisters and set the table. When the girls came in, they gave their mother and me a big hug and kisses on the cheek.

“So, kids what’s on the calendar for today?” I asked.

“We don’t have concert band rehearsal tonight. They just texted all of us, and the rumor mill has it that Mr. Smith’s wife caught him cheating on her and he is a bit indisposed,” David said.

“Yeah, the rumor mill has it that his wife took a lamp to him and put him in the hospital,” our sixteen-year-old daughter, KJ (short for Karen Junior, an inside joke) added.

“Where did you find this out?” their mother asked carefully.

“It was blowing up our phones this morning. Their daughter is in the band, and she put out the word on the school network. By the time school starts everyone will know about it,” the fifteen-year-old, Jason, filled in the rest of the story.

Their mother took a seat at the table and looked like her life had just deflated.

“Dear, you do a lot of volunteer work with the band, did you see any hints that Mr. Smith was cheating?” I asked her, raising my eyebrows as I spoke.

“Um ... no ... I never saw or heard a thing about him cheating.”

“Kids, does the rumor mill know who he was cheating on his wife with?” I asked, purposely digging for more info in front of my wife.

“No Dad. But I’m sure that their daughter will begin to let that out once we’re at school. The rumor mill has it that it was one of the band members’ moms though,” that was our fourteen-year-old daughter, Barb.

The four kids and I ate our cereal as their mother drank her coffee in silence. I finished and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. As I was finishing, she came into the room.

“Remember what I said about keeping your affair quiet,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Karen asked.

“I mean that if you were fucking Mr. Smith, and his wife or daughter start spreading your name around, then he, at least, is dead ... accidentally. See you tonight,” I acted like I was going to kiss her on the cheek, but at the last moment, I turned my head and harrumphed before heading for the garage.

When I got home that evening, I was greeted by four very upset kids.

“Daddy!” KJ ran to me and wrapped me in a tearful hug.

“What’s wrong, KJ?”

“Everyone at school knows,” David told me calmly as I walked into the kitchen through the door to the garage. “We walked in the school doors and Mr. Smith’s daughter, Sasha, was standing there. She yelled out, ‘There are the kids of the slut fucking my father to everyone who could see us and hear her.”

“Where is your mother?” I said flatly.

“Dad, she is in your room. When Mom came home after work, KJ bitch slapped her and almost knocked her over,” David said.

“You slapped your mother?” I asked my daughter as she still held me tight.

“I don’t think there was anything around that she could hit Mom with, so she went with her open hand,” Barb added.

I pried KJ off of me, the look on her face a mixture of fear and hate.

“All of you ... sit!” I commanded as I pointed to the living room couch.

When they were all parked, I spoke as calmly as I could.

“I know that she was cheating on us. I found out the other day. My plan was to stay here because, in a divorce, the chances were really good that she would get the house and that meant that she would get custody of you four, and I would have to move out. I wasn’t willing to lose you.”

“Yeah, we kind of figured that one out when we talked about the possibility that mom cheated on the way home. Jason is still really shaking up. He was thinking of asking Sasha out, I think they had a thing started. At lunch she threw her milk at him, in the carton, and yelled that he really was the son of a bitch,” KJ said.

I looked at Jason. He was sitting away from the rest of his siblings.

“Jason, I’m so sorry. But what your mother and Sasha’s father did should have no impact between you and Sasha.”

“She told me that our parents were cheaters, and that meant that we would probably cheat on each other too someday,” he looked me, hopelessness in his eye as well as tears. “Will I be a cheater because mom is?”

I heard a loud gasp behind me and turned to see that Karen was standing near the bottom of the stairs and she had heard her son’s question. I think that she finally figured out what her cheating had done to the kids she supposedly loved. I walked to the stairs.

“Karen, come in here,” I said quietly.

She shook her head no. I yelled at her.

“I said come down here. DO IT ... NOW!”

She jerked back from the volume of my voice and began to step down the stairs. As she got closer to me, I could see the bright red hand print on the side of her face. The hand-shaped welt was raised and looked angry. I took hold of her by her upper arm and pulled her to the living room and pushed her down in my recliner.

“Well Karen, does this look like ‘just a little harmless fun’? DOES IT?”

She shook her head.

“You cheated on us, you fucking bitch,” KJ moaned out.

I let her cuss at her mom and get it out of her system as much as she could.

“When Sasha came to school, she pointed us all out in front of everyone that we were the kids of the slut fucking her dad.”

Karen just shrank into the chair. I looked at my kids and paused long enough that if any of them wanted to say or do anything they could. Finally, I broke the sounds of silence and sobbing.

“Kids, your mom and I talked about this the other night. She is going to take you away from me if I divorce her. I can’t lose you. I also told her what would happen if anyone found out.” I paused and looked at the faces covered in pain. “I’ll be right back.”

I began to walk towards the staircase as Karen’s head spun around to look at me in horror. In my bedroom, I retrieved my 1911 from the gun safe and put it in a holster that I clipped to my belt. When I came downstairs, Karen screamed.

“Mick! NO!” She snapped to her feet and ran towards me.

“Kids keep her here and don’t be evil to her. She fucked up and she knows it. I should be back in a little while. If I’m not, then take care of each other and do what you can for your mother,” I turned to go to the garage.

“Mick! NO! DON’T!” Karen pleaded, trying to stand but couldn’t and ended up on her knees.

“What’s he going to do?” David asked.

“He said that if anyone found out and it got back to you kids, that he was going to kill the guy I was having an affair with.”

“You mean fucking, don’t you? Affair sounds so cute and clean,” KJ spat the words at her mother before she spit on her, not having heard my intention through her rage.

“Dad!” David yelled, and those were the last words I heard as I closed my car door and pulled out through the open garage door.

I peeled out and spun tires up the street towards the Smith house. As I drove closer, I saw a bunch of police cars. Pulling up as close as possible and stuffing my holster and gun under the front seat before getting out. I walked towards the house and as I got closer, I began to recognize some of the people standing around. I walked up to one man that I knew fairly well.

“Hi Pete, what’s going on?” I asked.

“Oh shit! Mick,” Pete looked at me like I just asked the dumbest question in the world. “I guess you know what’s going on.”

“No, I don’t, that’s why I asked,” I said as I was looking over the scene before me.

“You don’t know about Mr. Smith?” Pete asked.

“I know that he was fucking my wife. I just found out and was coming over to have a few words with him,” I said as I was watching the police moving around.

“Well, you’re too late for that. He’s dead from what I’m hearing.”

“Dead? How?” He had my full attention now.

“It looks like someone killed him. Maybe your wife wasn’t his only lover,” Pete said quietly.

I walked towards the nearest police officer as the buzz increased between the people I passed. When I approached the police tape, an officer stopped me and I explained that I needed to speak to the officer in charge, and that I might have information that could help. I was taken to a sergeant.

“Excuse me Sarge. This man says that he may have information on the case,” the escorting officer said.

“And you are?” the sergeant asked me.

“My name is Mick O’Dell.” I handed him my driver’s license. He examined it, wrote down the information on it, and handed it back.

“What information do you have, Mr. O’Dell?”

“I found out a few nights ago that my wife was having an affair with Mr. Smith. Today my kids came home telling me that Sasha Smith greeted them at the high school door yelling out to anyone in the area that my four children were the kids of the slut her dad had been fucking.”

“Really?” He asked in astonishment.

“Yes. The kids were very upset when I got home from work and my wife had locked herself in her bedroom. I came over here to take a strip out of Smith’s hide.”

“Well, I’m afraid that you won’t get to do that. Mr. Ryan, Smith is dead. Are you armed sir?”

“No Sergeant, I’m not carrying a gun. I own one, but it isn’t on me.”

“So, you were not coming over here to shoot Mr. Smith?”

“I’m not going to tell you that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind after what happened to my kids at school today. But since I’m not carrying, I guess I couldn’t very well do that.”

“Well, Mr. O’Dell, thank you for the information. It does shed some light on a few issues.”

“Sergeant, I’m a bit concerned about Sasha. She and my son were getting close to dating. Is she OK? And his wife, is she OK?”

“Both of them are OK. Right now, it looks like a suicide.”

“Oh. OK.”

I stared off past the Sergeant causing him to ask me, “What?”

“I was wondering if a jealous husband had done it. I’m going to have to confront my wife over the whole thing, and I was wondering if he had more wives than her that he was sleeping with.”

“I don’t know anything about that. You’ll have to wait like us. An officer may come by to speak to your wife.”

“That’s fine. I’ll make sure that she is available.”

I offered my hand and thanked him before returning to my car. I checked that my gun was still there and drove home. I pulled into the garage and walked into a scene of total chaos. Stuff was strewn all over the house and David was trying to control KJ.

“Dad! Help me. KJ has lost it.” My eldest son lost his grip on her as he yelled at me, and KJ blew out of the room and up the stairs. There was a loud pounding and screaming as she beat on my bedroom door. I ran upstairs and grabbed her, spinning her to face me and wrapping her up in a tight hug.

“It’s OK, baby. Calm down,” I spoke in as quiet and calming a tone as I could muster.

“She killed him! She killed him!” KJ kept screaming until she sank into sobs in my arms. I helped her downstairs and had the kids watch her. Well David watched her. Jason and Barb were sitting on the couch holding each other.

“Everybody calm down. I’ll be right back.” I ran upstairs to my bedroom door and knocked softly.

“Karen? Karen, please open the door. We have some very important things to talk about. Please open the door.”

After a few seconds the lock on the door began to turn and the door opened to reveal a completely disheveled and distraught Karen O’Dell. It was apparent that she had been in a fight and had been crying a lot.

I walked into the room, closed the door, and led Karen to the bed. We sat and I tried to smooth her hair away from her eyes and face, but she flinched back.

“You killed him?” She said quietly.

“No, Karen. When I got there, he was already dead. The police officer I spoke with told me that it looked like a suicide.”

“Oh God!” and with that Karen broke down in tears and rolled into a ball as I lowered her to the floor.

I stood, made sure the 1911A was secured, and returned it to the safe. I knelt beside my wife.

“Karen, I’m going downstairs to talk to the kids. I’m going to order some pizza for us. If you feel up to it, please join us. We all have a lot to talk about.” I stood and left the room.

As I approached the living room, KJ and the others were picking up the living room, putting the unbroken things back in their place and placing the broken items on the dining room table. I walked in, took out my phone and used the pizzeria app to order pizza delivery. We had a standing family order, so it only took a few seconds. When that was done, I returned to the living room where the kids were still picking up the mess KJ had made.

“Kids, that’s good enough for now. Please come and sit on the couch.” The four of them complied and when they sat on the couch, I sat in my recliner. “Kids, Mr. Smith is dead. I’m assuming that you already know that from what KJ was screaming and from the condition of the house. Please fill me in as to what happened while I was gone.”

“Dad, a little while after you left, we all got a mass text from Sasha Smith. It just said, “My dad is dead. Damn Karen O’Dell.” Well, when KJ saw that, she went a little nuts, and just started breaking things. Mom came downstairs to see what was going on and KJ attacked her. There was a lot of hair pulling and scratching and when I pulled her off mom, mom took off for the bedroom and locked the door. Then you came home.”

“Jason? Barb?” I looked at my youngest. “Are you two OK?” They both looked shocked but nodded their heads. “David? You?”

“I’m OK, Dad. A little shook up, between Mom and KJ fighting and all the stuff getting broken and Mr. Smith being dead. What happened to him?”

“The cop I talked to said he committed suicide.”

“So, you didn’t shoot him?”

“No David. Is that what started all this?”

“I guess. KJ was screaming about how Mom had killed both of you while she was breaking shit ... sorry Dad, while she was breaking stuff.”

“David, under the circumstances, I think shit is the correct word.” I looked at all of the kids. “When I got there, he was already dead. I never even got into the house because it was surrounded by police tape. We’ll have to wait and see what the police say. They will have someone coming to the house to talk to your mother since she was having an affair with him.”

“Daddy, you really didn’t shoot him?” KJ said in a sobbing whisper.

“No baby, I didn’t. I might have, but I didn’t.”

“Dad, did you see Sasha?” Jason asked hesitantly.

“No Jason, I didn’t. The house was blocked off by the police.”

“What are we going to do, Daddy?” Barb asked in a tiny voice.

“What do you mean, Barb?”

“Sasha is going to make everyone think that we had something to do with her daddy getting killed.”

“Well, we didn’t have anything to do with it,” I said trying to sooth my youngest child’s nerves.

“But I did,” Karen said from behind me at the foot of the stairs. “If I hadn’t been screwing around, it would have never happened. It’s all my fault.”

I stood and quickly stepped to my wife, leading her to the recliner. Karen looked at her eldest daughter with apprehension.

“KJ? Are you cool?” I asked her.

KJ stared at her mother and I could see the rage building.

“KJ!!” I yelled and her head snapped around to look at me. “Calm down. I don’t want any more outrageous actions. As a matter of fact ... David, would you please take Barb and Jason into the kitchen and set the table for the pizza I have coming. I want to talk with KJ and your mom alone.”

“Yes sir. Come on kids, you heard Dad.” David stood and offered hands to his siblings and led them to the kitchen as I returned my attention to the two oldest females in the house.

“KJ, no more hitting your mother. OK?... OK!!??” I raised my voice, trying to penetrate the hateful gaze KJ had affixed to Karen. “KJ?”

“Yes, Daddy,” KJ took a deep breath and relaxed back into her seat. “I’m sorry for all the damage. I thought Mom had gotten you killed, by making you kill Mr. Smith and then getting arrested for murder.”

“Well that might have happened, but it didn’t. Karen, the police are going to want to talk to you. It might be tonight, it might not. If they come here, I’ll make sure that you are in an area where the kids can’t hear anything.”

“Thank you. I’ve done enough damage for one lifetime. I ruined our marriage. I ruined his marriage. I got him killed.” Her head dropped into her hands and she began to cry again.

“KJ, are you OK? Are you together enough right now?”

“Yeah, Daddy. You’re home and safe. I’m OK. But I’ll never love her again. She is as dead to me as Mr. Smith.” She spoke without any emotion. Her voice was calm certainty.

“Don’t do or say something that you won’t be able to take back later, KJ. Hate is a destructive emotion and it usually takes down the sender as well as the receiver. If you have that much anger, go in the back yard with a softball bat and beat on the ground. It helps, I know.”

The doorbell rang and David came running through the house and answered the front door. He came back with the three pizzas and the two big bottles of root beer, passed us in the other direction, and returned to the kitchen.

“Let’s go eat. We need to talk as a family before it’s too late.”

Karen lifted her head and looked at me, then at KJ. I stood and they joined me in the kitchen. The table was set up as usual with Karen and me at each end of the table and the boys on one side and the girls on the other. KJ made a point of asking Barb to sit next to her mother, which she did. David and Jason had poured the root beer into glasses, and when everyone was set, I gave the signal and the kids reached for pizza.

I waited as normal and Karen waited until I had taken some, but still sat there. I put a slice of her favorite on her plate.

“Karen you need to eat. This is going to be a crazy night by all accounts, and I don’t want you passing out because you haven’t eaten.”

Karen O’Dell looked at the pizza and then around the table and began to cry again. She began to repeat over and over, “What have I done?” At that point I had to do something unemotional.

“OK everyone. Here is the story as far as I know it. If you have anything to add, that is not name calling or accusatory, please chime in. The other night I confronted your mother about the affair I caught her in. She was more defiant than I would have liked, and implied that she was going to take you four away from me if I divorced her. After some time to think, I decided that I wouldn’t push the issue, but I let her know in no uncertain terms that our marriage and our loving relationship was over. I told her that if what she had done came out or if you kids found out that her lovers were dead men.”

“Lovers? Mother, you had more than one?” KJ spit out.

“NO! No. It was only him, no one else.”

“I reminded her of that this morning, and when I came home, you kids told me what Sasha Smith had done. That is when I got my gun and headed out to the Smith’s house. I had every intent to shoot him. Seeing the police there kind of got my attention. When I got there some of the people we know were there and they knew about the affair.”

“Oh no,” Karen said in a defeated tone.

“I figured that he had gotten shot by another husband, or his wife, or even Sasha.”

“No Dad!” Jason said quickly. “Sasha would never do that. When she was yelling today at school, there was no hate in her voice, only sadness and fear. I know her, she wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Well, we know that she didn’t shoot him. The officer I spoke to said it looked like a suicide. So maybe his family confronted him, and he couldn’t take the humiliation that was coming as a schoolteacher having an affair with the mother of a student. That is a fact that is yet to be revealed.”