Allyson had continued paying all the expenses related to the upkeep of the ranch and worked with a local rancher who operated the working portion of the ranch on their behalf. While the ranch showed a small profit, that had always been immaterial since their primary interest in the ranch was as a weekend and holiday getaway.
If Josh wanted to keep the ranch, Allyson was perfectly willing to accede to his wishes. Although she controlled most of the assets, Allyson had no desire to cheat Josh out of anything. From the moment she had married his father, she had diligently worked to be a mother to him and loved her stepson as though he were her own.
Over her husband’s objections, she had let the nanny go and took on the responsibility of raising Josh as though Josh were her own son while still acceding to her domineering husband’s many sexual demands. Her husband would have preferred to have his much younger wife all to himself.
It had been much easier at the beginning, when Josh was only nine years old. She was twelve years older than Josh and it seemed like a much bigger age difference when he was that young. But as Josh got older, instead of Allyson being his mother figure, she became more like his doting older sister.
The fact that his father Nunnally was so much older than both she and his son only confused the situation further. Nunn was twenty five years older than Allyson and thirty seven years older than his son. Josh’s father was a very busy investment banker and was a remote figure in his young son’s life. It was a void that Allyson had diligently worked hard to fill.
Allyson became distracted from her reminiscences as she transitioned to the 84 in Fremont. She looked at the clock on the dashboard and it was a few minutes after 7 a.m. Due to the heavy fog at the bottom of the bay, the drive had been slow and treacherous. At times, she hadn’t been able to see beyond the car’s hood.
Just past Fremont, she got stuck behind a severe multicar accident caused by the earlier thick fog. She would have to wait for the ambulances to clear the victims and then for the tow trucks to haul away the wrecked cars as traffic backed up all around her. She was stalled in traffic on a downgrade and she could see the wrecks more than a mile ahead as the fog eventually began to lift slowly.
While she was stuck waiting for the accident to clear, she phoned her Instacart driver, who had agreed to pick up and deliver the groceries and beverages she had ordered for their two week stay at the ranch. She wanted to make sure everything had gone well and that they were set for their stay at the ranch.
Her regular Instacart guy had driven up to the ranch the previous day and delivered everything. As an added reward, she had offered to let he and his family stay overnight and fish and swim in the pond. She paid him handsomely for the extra personal service. It was much more than he would have made on an average day delivering groceries.
Not long after she got off the phone, the accident cleared up and she was on her way again. She had lost over an hour and a half. Now she was really glad that she left early.
Under way again, Allyson resumed her reminiscences, fondly recalling those early years when Josh still embraced her as his mother. She had immersed herself in his young life, driving he and his friends to soccer and baseball practice and had even stuck around to help with the coaching.
She had taken the six boys to swimming lessons and even coached them in gymnastics, since she had been a gymnast herself, going to college on a gymnastics scholarship.
She had been a good gymnast and had done reasonably well in tournaments. But her coach didn’t provide her with much encouragement. She had bluntly told Allyson that her breasts were too big to be an effective gymnast. And Allyson knew the coach was probably right. But Allyson wasn’t about to have the breast reduction surgery the coach hinted at.
Her relationship with her coach ultimately became problematic. Not in the least because she got more attention from the fans and press than the other members of the team.
She knew it was because of her looks and the fact that her big breasts made her stand out among her flat chested teammates. Allyson knew that grated on the coach, and for Allyson that made the attention all the more gratifying.
When she broke her ankle in her junior year she quit the team to focus on her studies. Allyson was able to quit without losing her scholarship because she had injured her ankle during a competition.
Quitting was a solution that appealed to both she and her coach. This time, Allyson landed on her feet rather an on her ankle. Within months, she met her future husband and quickly transitioned from being an athlete into being a trophy wife. Gymnastics and scholarships were no longer any concern to Allyson. Her new husband was loaded.
Allyson realized her mind was wander far afield, so once again Allyson’s thoughts returned to the boys. Looking back on it now, Allyson relished the reputation of ‘super mom’ that she had fostered during those early years. She had played mother hen to Josh and his six friends, becoming their other mom as well.
Josh and his friends had been inseparable from grade school on. They all attended the same exclusive private primary, middle and high schools. Where you saw one of them, the other six wouldn’t be far behind. And always behind them, looking out for them, was Allyson.
As Allyson passed through the small town of Sunol she had a smile on her face, remembering the sports practices, the movies, the trips for ice cream or pizza, the sleep overs, and most of all, the weekends and holidays at the ranch.
It was the joy of being at the ranch with the boys that Allyson hoped she could rekindle now. Those had been special times. The boys would fish or swim in the pond or go horseback riding or hiking on the sprawling ranch. Those had been joyous, precious times.
Now Allyson hoped she could recapture some of that lightning in a bottle and smooth over her estranged relationship with Josh that his grandparents were trying hard to create.
More than anything, she wanted to reassure Josh that she was looking out for him and that eventually all of she and his father’s estate would be his when he was capable of handling it himself. She hoped that in the immediate coming years they could work together to manage and expand his fortune.
In the meantime, she would manage their business interests on his behalf. Gradually, she would cede control over various assets to Josh as he proved himself capable of handling them. That was one of the primary things she wanted to reassure him about in the coming two weeks.
Managing assets was something for which Allyson was uniquely qualified. She had been a finance major at Stanford and her husband had eventually learned to lean heavily on her in making their investment decisions after their marriage.
Her husband had quickly discovered that she was more than just a pretty face and a great piece of ass―and that she was far more on top of current trends in technology stocks than he was, as well as modern computer analytics. In no small part, that was why Nunn’s investments had skyrocketed in value after their marriage.
Allyson was a dogged researcher when it came to potential investments in cutting edge technology stocks and it was largely at her urging that Nunn had made a killing with his ground floor investments in Netflix, DexCom, Exact Sciences and Market Axess in the early 2010s, quadrupling their original investments as they approached the end of the decade.
But the real game changer for Allyson and her husband’s investment portfolio had been Bitcoin. Nunn had been skeptical of the investment and balked at investing the million dollars she had originally lobbied for, only agreeing to half that amount finally, after much cajoling and pleading from Allyson.
Eventually, Allyson was proven right, and their half a million dollar investment had mushroomed in value to nearly $150 million before reinvesting most of the money elsewhere.
Prior to their marriage, Nunn’s portfolio had been worth a handsome twenty to twenty-five millions dollars. By the time Nunn died, the fortune that Allyson now controlled had grown to $250 million dollars. In the two years since his death, under her management, it had grown to nearly $400 million.
As Allyson transitioned onto the 560, she was frowning. She realized that her in-laws didn’t want to hear that story. To them, their son was a financial genius, a financier extraordinaire. They would never accept the fact that she had earned her share of the fortune that she now controlled. To them, she was a gold digging slut who had played her cards and her husband just right.
Allyson hoped that over the next two weeks she could convince Josh otherwise, after having his mind poisoned by his grandparents during the last two years. Her husband had spent decades fostering his image as a financial guru and Allyson had no desire to denigrate his memory in her stepson’s or his grandparent’s eyes.
She hoped that by going over the investment portfolio with Josh and demonstrating to him her own finance chops, he would realize that she had his best interests at heart. He had two years of studying finance under his belt in college, so she was hopeful she could make him understand.
Allyson wanted Josh to be proud of his dad. But she also wanted him to respect her expertise as well and grow to trust her as he finished college and, hopefully, go on to get his MBA, so ultimately he could manage his own fortune.
The other darker aspects of she and her late husband’s life were best kept secret and Allyson had no intention of shattering her stepson’s memories of his father. Those secrets were best buried along with her husband’s ashes. While she had helped her husband manage his financial assets, he had exploited her physical assets, particularly those of a sexual nature.
As Allyson jogged north on the 99 to the 120 east, she began to think about the darker side of her marital relationship. Her husband Nunn had pushed Allyson’s sexual boundaries from the beginning of their marriage. The courtship had been all Champagne and roses, but once they were married, Nunn’s domineering personality immediately revealed itself.
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