The Day Trader Read Free

as me—my wife remains a beautiful creature. The same long-legged blonde I fell for in eleventh grade. The same girl I followed to Roanoke College and married a month after graduation with a few family members and friends looking on. To me, she’s still every bit as pretty as she was the day of our wedding. “Something came up at the last minute.” I smile mysteriously, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
    “I can’t count on you anymore, Augustus. You tell me you’re going to do one thing, but then you do something else. You told me you’d be home by six and here it is after eleven.”
    “You said you had to stay late at the office again tonight, so I thought you wouldn’t care if I went out.” My smile fades. “And you’ve been working later and later over the past few months. I wasn’t sure you’d come home tonight at all.”
    “I don’t appreciate that,” she snaps.
    Melanie is an executive assistant for a Washington, D.C., divorce attorney named Frank Taylor, and I’ve always suspected that he has more than just a professional interest in her. During the past few months she’s been wearing lots of perfume—sometimes heavier when she gets home at night than when she leaves in the morning. She’s been dressing more provocatively too and working late several nights a week, sometimes until one or two in the morning. Even a few Friday and Saturday nights recently. I finally tried talking to her about it last week, but she flew into a rage right away, then accused me of silly macho jealousy and stalked off. But it occurred to me later that she never actually denied anything.
    Melanie won’t look at me. “I have to talk to you.”
    Her eyes are puffy, as though she’s been crying. “What about, sweetheart?” I move forward to comfort her but she takes a quick step back and buries her face in her hands. “What is it, Mel?”
    “Oh, Augustus,” she murmurs sadly.
    I wrap my arms around her and hold on tightly, even as she struggles to turn away. I work out almost every day in the makeshift gym I’ve set up in our basement, and at six-four and over two hundred twenty pounds, I easily control her slender frame. “Easy, honey.”
    “Let me go, Augustus.”
    “Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”
    “Let me go!” she yells, her arms starting to flail.
    Suddenly her fingernails rake the side of my neck. I’ve never seen her like this before. “Calm down, Mel.”
    “Get your hands off of me!”
    “Stop it.”
    “You don’t understand me!”
    “Of course I do. You’ve had a long day and you’re exhausted,” I say sympathetically, controlling my anger despite the fact that my neck feels like it’s on fire where she scratched me. “And you’re sick of me telling you that we can’t afford anything.”
    “You’ve been drinking,” she says, her tantrum easing. “I smell scotch on your breath.”
    “I had a few drinks with a friend. That’s all.”
    “A female friend, I’m sure.”
    Melanie has never accused me of cheating before. In fact, I didn’t think she cared anymore. “I was with Vincent.” Vincent Carlucci and I have been friends since I was ten years old.
    “I’ve seen how women look at you, Augustus,” she says, wiping tears and smudged mascara from her face, “and how you look back.”
    “I’ve always been faithful to you, Melanie.”
    She slumps against me like a rag doll, arms dangling at her sides, face pressed to my chest. “I can’t do this anymore,” she sobs.
    “You’re right. You can’t keep up this pace,” I agree, slipping my palms against her soft, damp cheeks and tilting her head back until she’s looking up at me. I smile down at her confidently, feeling better than I have in years. I’ve scored big in the stock market and she’s going to be impressed. “I want you to stop working, Melanie. I want you to sleep late in the mornings and pamper yourself.”
    “What are you talking about?” she asks, grimacing as she glances at my neck.
    “You