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The author of this story has read and accepted the rules for posting stories. They guarantee that the following story depicts none of the themes listed in the Forbidden Content section of the rules.
The following story is a work of fiction meant for entertainment purposes only. It depicts nonconsensual sexual acts between adults. It is in no way meant to be understood as an endorsement of nonconsensual sex in real life. Any similarities of the characters in the story to real people are purely coincidental.
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Title: Contract Negotiations
Author: LtBroccoli
Chapter Tags: MF, M+/F, ncon, oral, anal
Content Warnings: Crypto Bro Behavior and Overly Complicated Plans
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Author’s Notes: The following story contains graphic depictions of rape, assault, money laundering, crypto bro behavior, fantasy football, and hacking. The author does not condone any of this, except some ethical hacking. If buying isn’t owning, than pirating isn’t stealing.
This story takes place in the Harbor City Universe some time after the events of Pharma. It would help to know who the three main characters are, but it is not necessary. Red Briar is a creation of the author Bubbles and is used with the utmost admiration and respect. Any other similarities to companies or people is strictly coincidental.
Viewer Discretion is advised. This story is part of the Rube Goldberg Story Contest
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Contract Negotiations - Rube Goldberg Story Contest
Steve Wilcox sat in his office at Red Briar Security watching YouTube videos about fantasy football, killing time on a Thursday afternoon. He stopped trying to look busy sometime after lunch and before his 2PM meeting wrapped up. All he wanted to do was start his weekend, but carried a sense of foreboding as he saw yet another video talking about who to pick up and drop this weekend. But the foreboding had nothing to do with his starting lineup and how he was down to his 4th string Tight End and 9th String Wide Receiver.
As the Director of IT for Red Briar Security’s Harbor City office, he was the last point of escalation for any and all IT matters in the metropolis. That meant anytime things went belly up, he had to jump into the fire. Without fail, something broke every other Thursday. This wouldn’t be a problem except for his 9x9 schedule. Instead of working a traditional 8 hours a day, five days a week he works 9 hours a day for 8 days in a row, 8 hours on the 9th, and takes the 10th day off to get a long weekend every other week. So every other Friday he gets off. Or at least that’s the plan until something breaks and causes him to work on his day off.
The reason for his consternation this afternoon was a cryptic WhatsApp message from his friend Sam. “Got problem coming your way talk later at gym bringing friend.” Sam was his workout partner and they would spend a couple nights a week working out in his home gym. He was also a good friend and client with his company. He’s known Sam for a while after helping him and a mutual friend on a “Club Activity.” The fact that they’re both members of an exclusive club of rapists is a secret between them and a chosen few, one of whom works for Steve. It’s something that he keeps quiet about around the office for obvious reasons. Aside from the multiple felonies he’s performed as part of this Club, it would really hurt his chances at a promotion.
It was around 4PM when he heard a commotion in the office next to his. There was some muttering through the thin walls, followed by a woman yelling.
“THOSE COCK SUCKERS! FUCK!” The screaming continued for another minute as Steve wondered how fast he could pack up and leave. He dismissed that idea as it would take him longer to unplug his laptop than for his neighbor to make her way over here. He sighed, knowing that her problem was about to become his problem.
The door to his office flew open from it’s mostly shut position as a short and stock woman with a very short brown haircut and in business slacks and a button up light green blouse with “Red Briar Security” emblazoned on the left breast stormed in.
“THOSE MOTHER FUCKERS!” The woman swore as she entered and took a seat before even asking if Steve was busy. She knew he wasn’t, but it was the lack of implied curtesy that threw everything off. Steve didn’t need to read her lanyard that said “Carolyn Adams, Senior Vice President” to know that his boss sat across from him. Carolyn would have at least one freak out a month, usually because a client did something ridiculously stupid. As the person in charge of the Harbor City office, all of the major problems made their way to her.
Steve minimized his Chrome window playing YouTube, an act that he felt at least said that he’s trying to pay attention to her. Before he could ask for details, Carolyn shared them right away.
“I’m gonna fucking kill them. SecureCorp is gonna get a Molotov through their lobby window this time.” Carolyn fumed.
“What’s going on?” Steve asked, leaning his larger frame forward.
“I just got off the phone with Mapleton Realty, they can’t move forward with the transition on Carriage House, Essex, or the Greenthorne Estate condos. Long story short, SecureCorp is holding their nuts to the fire on their contract, even though they cut service. I guess it’s only breach of contract if the little guy does it.”
Steve took in a deep breath as he assessed the situation. ‘This explains the text’ he thought as Carolyn went on about how this screwed them over, how much lost revenue she’d have to explain to Corporate, and why they only had half of Mapleton’s business and not all of it.
“Look, I know you’re friends with their CEO. If you can find out anything that can help us, do it. We need to figure something out.” Carolyn said. Steve wondered how she knew that he was friends with Sam Mapleton, but stopped when he thought about it for a moment. She may be a hothead when pissed, but she’s also savvy enough to run a company that specializes in security, which means keeping and finding secrets. This led him to wonder how much she knew, but he didn’t have to wait on that. “I saw you guys hanging out one day, moving furniture around. No one your age moves furniture willingly, and you don’t get a beer while you’re up for anyone unless they’re a friend. Why he was in East Oakville was the crazy part.”
“He lived there following a pretty bad breakup before moving into his new house. I’ll see what I can find out next time I talk to him.”
“Thanks.” Carolyn said as she stood and walked out.
Steve shook his head and spoke to himself after she left. “So this is how my weekend gets fucked.”
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Steve had changed into a pair of grey workout shorts, a sleeveless red t-shirt, and beaten up Nike’s after he got home to his brick Craftsman home in Empire. He stood in the kitchen drinking a protein shake for his pre-workout. The taller man in his 40’s with the dad bod tried to wrap his mind around what happened at work when the doorbell rang.
“We’re here.” Sam’s voice came from the front door.
“It’s open.” Steve said between sips. A moment later, the door opened and two men entered. The first was his friend Sam, dressed in old workout gear. Steve didn’t recognize the second man. Steve looked to Sam, who was a little shorter than him at 5’9” but chunkier who motioned to other man. He was taller than Steve’s 6 feet by a couple inches, and dressed like money, even in workout clothes. The new man made the first move.
“Mark Matthews. Good to meet you. Sam’s told me a little about you.”
“Steve Wilcox. Want something to drink?” Steve said as they shook hands.
“No, thank you. I’m hoping not to be here too long. Sam says that you don’t have cameras down in the basement. Correct?” Mark said, his blonde hair framing his face and blue eyes as he asked that question.
“Um, yeah, that’s correct.” Steve said, a little unsure about Mark’s motives.
“Good. Please, lead the way.” Mark motioned for the other men to go first. Steve looked over his shoulder to his friend who nodded.
“He’ll explain downstairs.” Sam said.
Steve led the way to the basement via the stairs. Steve had long since converted this space into a very good home gym. There was a smart TV on one wall near a series of mirrors in front of the free weights and bench. They walked to the middle of the basement between the bike, treadmill, and Bowflex when Steve turned to face the other two.
Before Steve could say anything, Sam pulled a dollar out of his pocket. “Here’s that dollar I owe you.”
“Huh?” Before Steve could go any further, Mark grabbed the dollar bill out of Steve’s hand.
“Thanks for paying me.” Mark said.
“Ok, I’m confused. What’s going on?” Steve asked.
“Sorry for the subterfuge and all this cloak and dagger bullshit. I’m Mark Matthews, of Matthews Finnegan Associates. Sam here is one of my clients.”
“Wait, you’re-“
“An attorney. Sam’s attorney, and that of Mapleton Realty. I specialize in real estate, contract law, and other corporate ventures. Because of potential litigation that may or may not be in the works and who you are and who you work for, Sam can’t advise me to discuss any matters he’s going through with you in his presence. However, since you have paid me for a totally separate matter, I am now your legal representative for a specific matter. If you just happen to be in the same location as I am discussing both of your legal issues at once, that’s purely coincidental. Does that make sense?”
Steve shook his head for a moment. “That’s some Saul Goodman shit right there.”
“And perfectly legal. Mind talking about the very basics in my office waiting room?” Mark asked, and Sam nodded.
“So, you remember how I bought out those new properties, the apartment buildings in Center and that townhome complex, Greenthorne? Well, the fuckers I bought it from signed a deal with SecureCorp for 3 years right before closing. It’s a poison pill.” Sam said, with some frustration.
“Wait, poison pill?” Steve asked.
“The former owners, LFI Corp, decided to award a nearly unbreakable contract with SecureCorp for all of their rental properties for the next three years, and wrote the terms in such a way that Sam and his company are bound by the terms. Those terms are pretty lousy, by the way. I don’t understand all of the details on the security side of things, but they no longer respond to individual calls, cancelled their patrols of the rental properties, and have only the most rudimentary IT security in place.” Mark stated.
“Why not cancel?”
“I would, if the cancellation penalty wasn’t 2 million dollars for each calendar year they are not the official security company for these properties. Even worse, they’re trying to get us to cancel our deals with you guys because of this bullshit.” Sam said.
“I did a little digging. SecureCorp’s CEO is the brother of LFI’s former Directing Officer, the one that signed this onerous deal.” Mark stated.
Steve was silent for a moment as he climbed onto his exercise bike.
“There has to be some way out of it. Right?” Steve caught the look between Sam and Mark. Mark then walked back and forth as he spoke.
“Officially, legally, Sam’s screwed. SecureCorp won’t negotiate an early release without significant fees, and their SLA is so low that nearly no level of incompetence would force them to leave. Officially.”
“Officially. Unofficially?”
“Unofficially Mr Wilcox, it would be really bad press for a security company to suffer from a rash of break-ins, assaults, IT breaches, security failures, and the like. If there are enough documented events, or if there’s something so tragic and it comes to light that SecureCorp failed in their obligations, then they’d have no choice but to voluntarily waive their contractual rights and duties. It’s a very bad look to sue a customer who suffered from your negligence because they no longer want your service that you’ve failed to provide, and can be tied directly to their incompetence.”
“And it would be a shame if something happened that caused SecureCorp to lose face and business like that.” Sam said.
“Exactly. As far as the if’s or how’s, that I can’t nor won’t get involved with. But if you have any ideas, feel free to explore them. In the meantime, I’ve advised Sam to document every failure on their side as well as every issue, no matter how small and just generally be a pain in the ass. Once there’s enough, we’ll proceed down legal routes. As far as… less than legal goes, I understand that Sam has direct access to their systems and networks in the buildings. Is that correct Sam?”
Sam nodded. “Each of the buildings has IT equipment in place that I’m not familiar with but is accessible to those who know what they’re doing. They also have basics like secured locks and callboxes that need maintenance. We’ve logged several requests for maintenance checks but they keep giving us the runaround. We’re lucky if they show up at all for critical failures.”
“Sounds like it’d be a real shame if something happened to their equipment.” Steve said.
“Exactly. But that’s not my area of expertise. I wouldn’t know what I’m looking at. But someone who just happened to overhear parts of this conversation with one client while waiting for a consultation about another legal matter might know, and since this conversation is protected under attorney-client privilege, no one can pry the details out.”
Steve just shook his head trying to make sense of everything as Mark continued.
“Now, if, and this is a big if, something were to happen to SecureCorp’s equipment, it cannot be tied to Mapleton Realty, Sam Mapleton, Red Briar Security, or any representative bodies such as contractors or employees. I don’t need to tell you how big of a problem that would be if someone were to get caught.” Mark let that sentence hang in the air for a moment before continuing. “As far as you’re legal issue Mr. Wilcox, you could certainly create an LLC for your home based personal training business. I’ll look into any various certifications you would need to do so. I’ll be in touch with you later on. Here’s my card if you have any questions, keep this in a safe place.” Mark said, somehow pulling a pristine business card out of nowhere and handing it to Steve. “Pleasure doing business with you, and looking forward to any future endeavors that may come up. I’ll show myself out.” Mark shook Steve’s hand, then Sam’s, then walked upstairs.
It took a moment for Steve to get his bearings.
“What the fuck just happened?”
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Jonathan Crenshaw sat on his couch in his living doomscrolling on his phone while streaming something from his Plex server in the background. As he tried to get to the end of Twitter, a WhatsApp message appeared. It was a call from his friend and boss, Steve. Jonathan answered it.
“Hello?”
“Hey JC. You coming in tomorrow? To the office?” Steve asked.
“I wasn’t planning on it.” Jonathan replied, not liking where this was going.
“Neither was I, but something came up. Got a special project that we need to talk about in person. Bring a change of clothes that you don’t mind getting dirty, something extra without the logo and your network testing gear. I’ll explain all about it in the morning.” Steve sounded a little stressed over the phone, so JC didn’t press his luck too much.
“You’re buying lunch. And not shitty fast food, either.”
“Sam’s paying, so it’ll be good. Or at least not too shitty.” Steve said. There was a pause before he continued. “I’m sorry, but we need to meet in person for this. I’ll explain everything tomorrow. Gotta go. Bye.” Steve hung up before JC could complain.
“Dick.” Jonathan shook his head.
He thought about going back to doomscrolling for a bit before thinking about what Steve said. Steve used WhatsApp to contact him, so he didn’t want a text trail or phone logs. He also asked him to bring his networking tools and a change of clothes. That meant climbing around in some nasty ass areas like attics or subbasements. Most buildings were not designed with IT in mind. Hell, most of the city was built before PC’s were invented, let alone commonplace. That doesn’t include anything more modern like server rooms, WiFi, or cellular data towers. All of these pieces were hidden out of sight, and that usually meant in the asscrack of the building or so far up in the attic that it’s faster to skydive to get to it than find a ladder. And one of those changes of clothes was not to have the company logo. That told JC that this wasn’t completely above board. They were going somewhere they shouldn’t be. And Sam was involved. JC didn’t know as much about Sam as he did Steve but he knew enough that Sam was some rising property developer with a decent amount of wealth and was a client of their company, Red Briar Security. Hell, JC helped Steve wire some of Sam’s buildings with ‘advanced smoke detectors’ that were actually hidden cameras and networked those video feeds to run to the Club’s website. He also heard that Sam had recently purchased some new properties that were currently under their competitor’s protection and Sam wanted out. He didn’t like SecureCorp in the slightest since they fired him from being a contractor years ago and replaced him with a team of Indians, and their reputation as a big named bully in the field who provided piss-poor service proceeded them like a registry on Megan’s List.
Once JC laid out all of the pieces, he put 2 and 2 together and got that they were going to find a way to get Sam out of his current deal and fuck over SecureCorp at the same time.
“Why can’t my Fridays be normal?”
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The three men sat around a conference table in Red Briar HQ shortly after 11AM. Steve knew this room as the “SCIF Room”. Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility Room, though putting Room at the end of it felt rather redundant. It was RAS syndrome, or redundant acronym syndrome syndrome, which itself broke it’s own fucking rule. Like how people say “I’m going to the ATM Machine.” If they stopped to think about it for more than two seconds, they’d realize they’re saying machine twice. But aside from it’s name, Steve picked this room for this meeting for one very important purpose. It was protected. No windows, no electronics that weren’t brought in, no cell service, no listening devices, nothing. It was a Faraday cage. Red Briar uses this room for important clients that deal with classified information, or when extra paranoid customers need to discuss their upcoming projects with the utmost secrecy.
A spread of grilled chicken, salad fixings, dressing packs and taco fixings took up most of the table while Sam, Steve, and JC ate. A travel carafe of coffee from a local coffee shop sat to the side of the table, complete with sweeteners. This might look like an unimpressive layout for a corporate lunch, but Sam knew that all three men were very health conscious and pizza or pasta would go to waste with this crowd.
JC was halfway through his makeshift burrito bowl when Sam finished laying out the whole situation. JC almost choked when he realized what they planned.
“So, you want us to break their system so fucking bad they have no choice but to make it go away?”
“Yep. Is it doable?” Sam asked JC. The younger man took another bite as he thought this over, then waited to respond.
“Doable? Maybe. But they aren’t walking away from a 7 figure deal just for a proof of concept hack. We need to fuck people up, too. A couple break-ins ain’t cutting it, either. I’m talking muggings, beatings, major thefts, rapes.”
“How many rapes?” Sam asked, his interest piqued.
“Quite a few. Wanna do the math on that one, Steve? Mr. Rape Calculus.” JC said jokingly, but Steve had a penchant for running numbers in his head. He thought for a moment, putting some serious thought into JC’s question.
“It all depends. The numbers are fugly but the important factors are the amount of exposure this could get versus the amount that a settlement would cost, and how much they could pull. What’s the demographics, Sam?” Steve asked, leaning up against a plain beige wall.
Sam leaned over the back of a chair, thinking about it for a moment. “Carriage and Essex are college apartments more or less. Essex is all studios, Carriage is 1 to 2 bedroom apartments for the most part. There’s a few 3 bedrooms on each floor at specific points, and the top floor is just 4 penthouse apartments. 10 floors and a basement, 20 apartments each floor from 1 to 9, 4 penthouses on 10. Mostly young professionals and college students in Essex, grad students and the occasional close roommates or young couple. Carriage has almost every apartment with at least 2 people in it if not more. Greenthorne is a gated community with some rich fucks living there. Both have the occasional empty nester, but the buildings will be better rapebait unless we get lucky at Greenthorne.”
Steve nodded as he listened. “Unless we turn the buildings into Rapetown, not sure how that will make enough of a difference. Out of court settlements in that building would be in the 50 to 100k range at most, and that requires college students wanting to go through the trouble of suing. SecureCorp won’t walk away for less than 2 million in settlements. Given a possible 5:1 ratio of reporting and lawyering up, we’d need to rape 200 women to make sure this happens.”
“That assumes there’s 200 bitches worth fucking.” JC between bites.
“Exactly. Even if we include thefts to increase the values to 100,000 each, we’re still needing at least 20 willing to go to court. And that’s assuming any of these little cunts have renters insurance…. Insurance.” Steve’s train of thought wandered as he said that last part out loud. “Sam, what insurance do you have on your buildings?”
“Standard business insurance plus liability, why?”
“Our best bet to get you out of this contract is to make it so that the insurance company sues SecureCorp for you.” Steve said.
Sam realized where Steve was going with this. “If I had insurance that also covered the renter’s on top of the building, if there was a severe enough security breach the insurance company would sue SecureCorp to recoup their losses.”
JC joined in. “And if the losses are big enough, SecureCorp will gladly leave just to get off the hook. But that just gives us the how, not the how much… Does your insurance cover data breaches?”
“Depends, but not really. I’m not doing identity theft stuff but simple stuff like messing with smart devices and the like, or the IT side of things.” Sam said.
“Wait, how smart is this place?” JC’s voice went up a little in excitement.
“Greenthorne has a pretty good system, smart keys, RFID’s, NFC gate passes, stuff like that. Common areas are secured and monitored but inside is up to the owners. Carriage and Essex got updated across the board. Thermostats and smoke detectors are all smart and wired, cameras and heating in common areas, doors are pretty modern using RFID cards. What are you thinking?” Sam asked.
JC pushed his food away and grabbed his laptop connected to a secure wired port. A minute later he just laughed. “You have got to be fucking kidding me!”
“What’s so funny? You found our way in?” Steve asked.
“Get this. They’re using the 8930 series network extenders. Those are those little hockey puck looking things in those pics you took, Sam. The same 8930’s we retired because there was a backdoor exploit that the manufacturer claimed it couldn’t patch with a firmware update. The same ones I hacked and used to get into that data center to prove that they should have us secure their site. And these fuckers have them all over the place. I’m seeing dozens of these.”
Steve laughed into his hand as he covered his mouth.
“Wait, what just happened?” Sam asked. Steve composed himself between chuckles as JC spoke up.
“About two years ago, we worked a white hat job for a data center to break in and fuck with their shit in a nice way. They had the best setup money could buy, except for their network extenders. See, ethernet cable has a short range before the signal degrades, like 100 meters. About a football field. Sounds like a lot until that shit wraps around corners and through walls. Hell, even half of that and signals can start dropping. These signal boosters, they strengthen what comes in and out. That way you don’t have signals dropping like flies. But it turns out that if you know what you’re doing you could take one of these, inject some code, and use that to create a hole into the network for anyone to get in. Since we had a clue how their office worked and that one of their office buildings were on the same network infrastructure as their data center, I slipped under some shmoe’s desk and plugged this into the wall jack. Didn’t even need to get to the good stuff in the server room. Short while later we showed their file structure and network map in a presentation about their vulnerabilities. They immediately hired us and the first thing we did was put network monitoring in place and replaced these devices.”
“Long story short, your buildings are full of very hackable network devices. We’d need one per building, maybe even just one total to get in and wreak havoc.” Steve said. Sam’s mouth dropped open.
“How would you do it and how long would it take?” Sam asked Steve, but JC spoke up first.
“We still have some of these on hand. Give me an hour or so to piece together some code to tunnel out to a secure VPN that can’t be traced to us and set it up on the other end to receive. Replacing wouldn’t be that hard, but it all depends on how well they’re monitoring things. Knowing SecureCorp like I do, they outsourced the “routine” stuff like network monitoring. They might see part of the network go down and dispatch someone to investigate it, but more likely than not just ping it once it comes back up. But if you have scheduled maintenance or a planned power outage for this system, they won’t even think about checking it out. I could program a delay into it to wait an hour after install to make it look less suspicious just in case. That kind of work is above their pay grade anyway.” JC said the last part matter of factly.
“Wait, are you saying that all you have to do to get inside my network is plug one of these into an internet jack?”
“Not really. I’ll have to do some programming first, and just plugging it in might be sus as fuck. But if you can get me into the buildings and access to your IT equipment, I can crawl around where I need to and replace one of the devices. But that’s the easy part.”
“What’s the hard part?”
“Not getting caught.” JC said. Steve nodded before joining in.
“SecureCorp is a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. They see a device go offline and a different one come back, or even the same one but it starts acting weird, they’ll block it off right away. And they should have logging built in to look for suspicious activity.”
Sam walked around the room for a moment to digest what he heard, and help digest his lunch. “So if I can get you in the buildings, you can put one of these on the network, but they will likely see it.”
“Exactly.” JC said. “And we might get one shot at this. I might be able to pull this off at one of the apartment buildings without it being too suspicious. Doing it at the townhome by itself might work, but they’ll see this at all three. Unless…” JC navigated through some documents he had on his laptop. “Sam, how networked are your networks? Are these buildings on your main corporate network? Do your devices connect at all to their shit?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“Because I might not have to put this in three buildings. If I can set this up right, I can use your network to hack their network.” JC looked at his screen for a minute, then shook his head. “Shit. That’s not gonna work.”
“Why?”
“Long story short, their logging is good enough to trace where the glitch started. If it starts on your laptop, they can see that. If it comes from a signal booster, they could see that too.”
“So the easy part is getting you in my buildings and into my IT gear?” Sam asked. JC shrugged his shoulders.
“Yeah. Even that depends on how good their cameras are. If SecureCorp’s cams are anywhere up to snuff, they’ll see us come in from a mile away. And like I said, doing this three times isn’t an option. But what I can do is program one of these boosters to communicate with a server that can be taken to each location, plugged in, and infect their network. And when I say server, I mean your laptop.”
“Why not just say laptop?” Sam asked.
“Because that’s not how I think. The way SecureCorp works with their software is that they communicate back and forth to see if software is valid or not. When it originates from their network, they assume it’s safe. If it came only from your laptop, they’d assume that you were hacked. But it still won’t get us past their firewall unless they take it down on purpose. That we’ll need either the ISP’s help or some other bullshit.” JC said.
Steve chimed in. “So either we need a planned outage or something to go wrong at three locations at the same time.”
The three men each stood in thought until all three spoke up at the same time, talking over each other.
“Power outage.” Sam said
“I was going to say sprinkler test.” JC replied.
“I thought an ISP outage or switch update.” Steve said.
Sam spoke up. “The same thing happening at all three won’t work. If it’s coordinated, SecureCorp will want in on the work. Carriage and Essex are basically neighbors, but Greenthorne is up north in the suburbs. And Greenthorne doesn’t have sprinklers. But it’s smaller so a power outage makes more sense there.”
“So sprinkler test at Carriage and Essex. At the same time, we have a power outage on the server rack at Greenthorne. Then what?” Steve asked, looking at JC.
“We fuck shit up. Fuck with the security systems, the smart locks, all of it. Then we fuck up the residents, see about turning this into a little Club field trip.”
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
The next few weeks were spent planning. All three of the men had to be involved in one way or another with the execution. As much as they wanted this to not have them anywhere near it, the logistics required a physical presence at each building.
Upon further review, JC needed to get one of these boosters onto each network. SecureCorp had improved things since the last time he worked with them. He could get access to one network with a booster, but their new traffic monitoring service stopped him from pwning everything from one hack. He decided that the safest way to do this was to replace the boosters himself in Essex and Carriage while Steve handled Greenthorne.
Sam’s presence was easy to explain at Carriage House. He owned the place and worked with the Fire Marshal’s team to test the sprinkler system. He’d meet the Fire Marshal outside and JC would be inside the server room to shut things down just in case. In reality, JC would get the go-ahead text from Sam and do his thing. As Sam was busy making small talk with the Fire Marshal, he texted his ‘IT Guy’ to keep an eye on things. A minute later, Sam’s phone buzzed with a couple texts that he ignored as best as he could. Every minute for the next ten minutes his phone buzzed with automated alerts that he wasn’t familiar with. Eventually his phone blew up from several calls, causing Sam to angrily answer his phone.
“WHAT?!” Sam screamed into his phone on speaker.
“Sir, this is Radham from SecureCorp, how are you doing on this pleasant day? I am calling because I have a doubt about alerts that I’ve monitored on your dashboard.” The thick Indian accent was impossible to miss.
“Who are you?” Sam was quite pissed.
“Sir, I am from SecureCorp, your security monitoring company, I have-“
“Listen mother fucker, I don’t need another car warranty, I’m not falling for this scam.” Sam hung up, then looked at the Fire Marshal. “I swear, this shit gets more aggravating every day. Last week they tried to get me to log in to some website, before that it was car warranty bullshit, now they’re pretending to be my security company. I’m sorry.” Sam said as he put his phone away. The Marshal ignored this outburst for the most part.
As Sam dealt with the Marshal, JC unplugged the main router for the entire building, then climbed into the crawlspace to find a signal booster. It took a couple minutes of searching but once he found them it only took him a minute to swap one out. He then did a quick walk across the parking lot to Essex House where he repeated this process, but plugged that router back in before he left. Another quick walk back to Carriage and he plugged their router back in, paying close attention to the flea lights indicating good traffic. As he walked back, he sent a quick WhatsApp message to Steve with one word: Go.
Steve, for his part, was mostly done by the time JC texted. Steve sat in Greenthorne’s office, doomscrolling on his phone waiting for the message. Greenthorne’s server was in one of the rooms in their leasing office, and when it was wired they decided to use the long runs behind the walls and put the signal boosters in easy to reach locations. Steve unplugged the main input, moved 8 feet to the left, bent down, swapped out the booster, then reversed the process. A simple “Done” was all Steve replied with on WhatsApp.
JC sent the message to Steve when he left Essex. The parking lot was maybe 150 yards wide. In the minute it took him to traverse that distance, Steve had replied that he was done. JC muttered under his breath as he, once again, got the shit end of the stick. He rushed his way down to the server room and plugged everything back in. If everything worked right, in a little over an hour a program he had running on Sam’s laptop would receive 3 messages, waiting for commands.
As Sam traveled with the Fire Marshal, he received another call from SecureCorp that he decided to take away from the Marshal. It took him far too long to talk to “an American” and get a quick breakdown of what happened. They detected a network down message at some of his locations and tried to get a hold of him to find out what happened. Sam was pretty pissed off with how everything went down. He told SecureCorp that he had a planned outage for sprinkler testing and that they were notified earlier this week. Furthermore, he told them that he has an entire staff of people to reach out to before he gets called, and they bypassed all of that and all he had was someone calling him that sounded like a scam. “At least with Red Briar I get calls from someone who speaks English.”
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JC knew the “easy part” was done. He’d confirmed that the software was loaded and ready to go. His part of the job was done until Sam let him know that he’d had signed in to the app that controls the heating and security systems for the buildings. JC’s software included a keylogger and screen recorder so he could get Sam’s credentials to the app that controlled the smart doors and thermostats. He could’ve just asked for them, but if this ever went to trial or deposition, Sam needed to be able to get through any questioning or discovery. Instead, JC would use that software to get Sam’s credentials to remotely log in to the smart device portal from the software he installed on the SecureCorp network.
Now that JC had done the “easy part” of getting into SecureCorp’s network and gaining access to the smart devices in all three buildings, next came planning out how they’d fuck them over. For this, the three of them asked the Club for ideas. Of course, a couple dozen rapists are all going to come up with the same idea, but there was a certain creativity to how.
As the members debated on the finer points of the psychology of gang rape in the laundry room versus a home invasion, Steve put together some ground rules.
First, any and all crimes committed have to take place in one of the two main apartment complexes. Steve had a special idea for Greenthorne.
Second, they have to appear as a failure of SecureCorp’s system. It doesn’t help if the crime could’ve happened without SecureCorp trying to stop it.
Third, since the Club required that all rapes are recorded, only women who have cameras in their apartments and that can be hacked are allowed. These need to look random and nothing says planned quite like the Club’s normal setup procedures.
Fourth, this has to be around the same time and look disorganized, like a street gang just took advantage of the situation. That means that other crimes like robbery are on the table.
Finally, and this is the one that pissed off a lot of members, active Club members needed to stay far away. No one that partook in a trade in the last couple years should be involved. Steve argued that they wanted the cops involved, at least a little bit. As much fun as they could have, the odds were very good that someone would call the cops during this fiasco. While one or two members could stay under the radar, a dozen or more gang bangers would get caught, and it only takes one snitch to take everything down.
That’s when Steve revealed his plan for Greenthorne: an attack on SecureCorp’s board.
During their investigations, they discovered that one of the board members, Jack Reeves, was also a board member at Sivnee, a tech company that ran the AI SecureCorp used on their highest level personal security systems. He had a sidepiece that lived in Greenthorne named Avery. She was a tattooed ginger with a tight body and good little tits, her red hair coming down to her mid-back. She was hot as fuck and had no clue that Jack had wired every room of the condo with top of the line cameras that automatically record when they detect a person enter the room. Avery had no idea that Jack had hundreds if not thousands of hours of her lounging about naked, pleasuring herself, or fucking randos from Tinder during their “separation times.”
Steve’s plan was simple to type out but would be much harder to execute. JC would activate his program and bring down SecureCorp’s network. He’d time it just right for a shift change over in India so that the monitoring team wouldn’t be manning the desk when the network alerts kicked off. They’ll go through their scripts and standard operating procedures to restart things and hold off on telling their customers here in the states until about 30 minutes pass. Around that time, they’ll get the network back but their monitoring systems will only read a link to a ransomware scam. They’ll freak out trying to get things back up and completely ignore that the real traffic was rerouted to a server in Turkey and and then again to Iran and a couple other places before it ends up somewhere safe where the Club can get it. Meanwhile, some local gangbangers will get the news that Carriage and Essex has no security for the day and they have free reign over the place. As shit goes down there, a group of Club members will pay Avery a visit that she’ll never forget. By the time every system was back online, there would be enough shit that happened at Carriage and Essex pointing to failures at SecureCorp that they’ll have no choice but to let Mapleton Realty walk. And if they did decide to fuck with Sam, JC would have video of Avery getting gangraped in her own condo that Jack wired along with all of the rest of her footage ready to drop at a moments notice.
JC planned for everything to start at 15:30 Saturday, or 01:00 Sunday IST. Not only would the shift change take place well after Midnight in Kolkata, but it lined up with a religious holiday where the transit system and cabs would invariably be late. He knew from experience that their monitoring teams would be half out the door when he pulled the trigger and no one would be monitoring the network dashboards at that time. By the time anyone would see a problem, the festivities would be well underway.
Because of their proximity to the situation, none of those men could be involved in ravaging Avery. Steve asked for volunteers, and it took all of 10 minutes for 5 men to offer their services in making the ginger cry like a whore.
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Supriyo hated this part of the job. It was a Saturday night during Holi and instead of staying out with his friends, he had to go to work. The words “Junior AI Development Analyst” read on his Sivnee employee badge like a bad joke as he played with it in the back of the cab. All it was to him was a fancy way of calling him a glorified monkey labeling video clips and monitoring traffic alerts. And the job title mocked him still. “What company still puts job titles on a printed badge?” Supriyo said to himself in Bengali as the cab arrived at the front door of InfoTel. “At least InfoTel didn’t waste plastic each time someone got a progression.” He grabbed the receipt from the driver along with his backpack and left. The driver paid him no mind as Supriyo left, allowing two women to enter before the door closed.
He badged in to the InfoTel campus with his InfoTel ID and walked the couple minutes to the Sivnee office. Supriyo passed two of his coworkers in the halls. Aside from wishing him a Happy Holi, they didn’t say anything. He shook his head and just kept walking to his workplace as he badged in again.
At 1:04 in the morning, Supriyo was on autopilot. Open his laptop, connect to the company network, log in to the team SharePoint, check the issues log spreadsheet for anything (which was empty as usual), mark that he received a shift turnover from the previous shift (which never happened), find the lead on shift and check in (who was asleep in the break room), and check the team mailbox for alerts (which had flagged the hourly updates from the network team as spam) and log in to the network dashboard. Once everything was up and running, he set up his mouse jiggler and grabbed the spare ID badge the team kept under the file drawers in his open cabin.
If he spent even half the effort of doing his job as he did in avoiding work, he might’ve seen that the network monitoring software had detected an intrusion almost an hour ago and that three buildings had stopped communicating completely. He also might’ve seen the active feeds change from a bunch of Americans milling about an apartment building to a feed of one picture with a warning message and an address to deposit Ethereum in a crypto wallet.
And when Supriyo’s manager Akshith woke from his nap, he might’ve seen the alerts on the dashboard too if the programmers had taken the advice of the Compliance team and included text alerts instead of a simple red or green icon to indicate if there was a problem. Instead all he saw was shades of gray. As such, Akshith went to work on various management tasks for the next two hours until Supriyo returned from Holi festivities, a little drunk.
The first sign that anything was wrong was at 3:30 when Supriyo looked at his screen and asked Akshith to come over. “Sir, I have a doubt about these alerts.”
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JC couldn’t believe the level of incompetence he was seeing. Well, when he thought about it a little bit, he could. His experience working with Offshore vendors had soured him on the myth that India was filled with the best IT people in the world. They were cheap and plentiful, and that’s all that the business world cared about. They don’t want the best, they want the best they can pay the least to. It’s why SecureCorp outsourced their monitoring services to a fly-by-night AI company that outsourced their work to an Indian conglomerate that hires the leftovers of the FAANG group. He was reasonably sure that a semi-competent technician would see the network intrusion alerts within 15 minutes. He was now approaching 3 hours before he saw the slightest bit of activity from InfoTel’s end.
It was over two hours since everything went into motion on their end. If things went according to plan, then Carriage and Essex were active crime scenes and his unidentified friends were giving Avery the time of her life. But he couldn’t tell because he had to monitor InfoTel’s network. The only way he had any clue that things were happening was the occasional message on the Club’s encrypted WhatsApp channel. Even then, messages were vague. He knew that some criminals friendly to Club members had access to the buildings and were having fun on their own. He knew that the volunteers for Avery should’ve been there and done by now. But aside from that, he was in the dark. Hell, if he hadn’t tested the intrusion a dozen times he’d have thought this was broken, but instead the people that should be checking the security system’s security weren’t at their desks.
JC laughed his ass off when he finally saw some packets go across the network. Emails. The worst way to communicate in an off-hours crisis. These were easy enough to intercept and read. It was sent from someone named Akshith to an InfoTel account that routed to an IP near Harbor City. The techs monitoring the network discovered something unusual and “had a doubt” that needed to be investigated ASAP. Some back and forth messages showed that when it came to handling a disaster, the onsite manager Durai was as useless as a condom in a convent. It took him the better part of an hour to log in to the SecureCorp admin console for the site before he finally saw the Ransomware screen. It then took Durai another 20 minutes to get a hold of SecureCorp’s IT on-call who recognized the problem immediately and organized a tech bridge to work on it. They sent out a high priority message with a Teams call attached.
JC couldn’t help himself so he waited a few minutes before dialing in from a burner phone on mute. SecureCorp assumed he was from InfoTel and the InfoTel people assumed he was from SecureCorp.
It was 20:15 by the time the call organized. A well-run operation would’ve had this call up and running by 15:45.
JC had to double check that he was muted when by some amazing level of gross incompetence, Sam joined the call. Sam noticed there was a problem when the police called him after getting multiple reports of break-ins, assaults, vandalism, and even a couple home invasions and rapes at Carriage and Essex. He’s been dealing with the fallout all night when he logged in to the admin portal and saw a weird message demanding payment to a crypto wallet. After getting stonewalled by his concierge, he resorted to contacting the helpdesk and told several techs “that barely spoke English” that he needed to speak to senior management right away. One of them had the information for the call and gave it to Sam, thinking this would help. The tech bridge devolved into a screaming match with several threats of lawsuits and lawyers getting involved before one network admin noticed that “the issue resolved itself.” Of course this was JC turning off the ransomware part of his intrusion program when someone from SecureCorp’s Network Engineering team discovered a connection leaving their network to a VPN in Turkey. While they tried to figure out what happened, JC deleted the logs from an InfoTel IP, further implicating the Offshore company in a coverup.
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Jack Reeves’s weekend went from bad to worse to an unmitigated disaster in near record time.
It all started for the 59-year-old financier on the golf course. His foursome turned into a fivesome when Terry brought his granddaughter along to play. He had to be on his best behavior with this little twat hanging around. She was surely one of them woke feminists who get all pissy at words like “broad”, “chick”, and “slut.” Not to mention how much of a shitfit she’d throw at him using “slurs” like saying Terry was “swinging like a faggot today” or that the “wetback at the bar makes a fine Negroni.” And with as fine as she was to look at with that tight little ass shaking in her golf skirt, he had to keep it to himself. It was bad enough that Jack couldn’t ogle the young woman, but she was good enough to kick his ass. Here he was, golfing for the last 30 years with an 18 handicap and he’s getting pasted by this chick shooting near scratch. Jack only paid attention to her name when she told him that she was offered a scholarship for playing golf, and she gave him her Instagram ID. Even that was just so he could creep on her photos later on.
Since Terry brought that little slut to golf, that meant he couldn’t go to the 19th hole, and the other two players had prior engagements. With the 10AM tee time, his afternoon looked a little too open for his tastes. They wrapped up around 3PM, and the only thing on the calendar was a dinner date with the Henderson’s at 8. That gave him a few hours by himself, unless he could find someone to spend it with. He messaged Avery, his little fucktoy that he’s paying for to see what she was up to. They normally spent Wednesday nights together while his wife went out with her friends, but impromptu meetups weren’t off the table. They texted back and forth for a bit but she left him on read shortly before 4PM. She talked about him coming over and her jumping in the shower, but she didn’t follow up until much later, and by that point it was too late for any fun and she said she “was sick.”
Jack returned home just in time for the wife to send him back out to pick up a few items from the store. When he asked why him and not the maid or the kids, she told him that he needed to do something and not just be a lump on a log the whole night. He mumbled to himself about how this was a waste of time, but did get a couple bottles of wine to make the time pass.
Dinner was good, but not good enough to distract from Sheila Henderson running her goddamned mouth the whole time. She went on about white privilege or some similar bullshit as he offered another glass of wine to her husband Clive. He was a good man, if not completely pussywhipped. Jack couldn’t even get Clive to acknowledge how hot their neighbors’ new babysitter was, let alone spill the beans on what his wife is like in the sack. He assumes that a woman who runs her mouth that much must suck a good dick, but Clive won’t give him an inch.
Right around 9 o’clock his work phone went nuts. Jack tried to ignore the first couple dozen messages and mails, but he couldn’t ignore the third time he was called and he started getting texts on his personal phone. His assistant Kyle gave him the basics, and Jack’s jaw dropped to the floor.
Two of his ventures were fucked.
He didn’t understand the technobabble but knew enough to know that there was a data breach with SecureCorp and his AI company Sivnee. Jack served on the board for both companies and felt his stomach drop as the details came in. At some point in the afternoon Sivnee detected an unauthorized presence on their network. Shortly afterwards the security traffic was held up in an apparent ransomware scam. What made matters worse was that every detail he heard put him more and more at risk of a lawsuit or being fired from both companies. InfoTel lied repeatedly about the timeline of problems while Sivnee couldn’t explain how their systems failed to detect any threats for the last few hours, even though that part should still be working. SecureCorp freaked out when they looked at their logs and saw that this breach happened much earlier than reported. Jack nearly had a heart attack when he found out what properties were affected.
Carriage, Essex Apartments, and Greenthorne Estates.
It was less than 6 months ago when he got his brother-in-law to sign up with SecureCorp in a deal so onerous that no one in their right mind would do it, and just three months before that brother sold the properties to Sam Mapleton then fucked off down to Florida. These properties were supposed to be the crown jewel to show how SecureCorp could reduce cut their monitoring expenses by having his AI monitor sensors and cameras. Instead it’s been one false positive or false negative after another, they’re months behind their goals, and the development ground to a halt because they moved to an Indian company instead of keeping the work in the states.
He excused himself from the party and made his way to his home office. He listened in to the disaster call when the worst news possible hit him like a baseball bat to the head: Sam Mapleton joined the call and told everyone that there were several break-ins, assaults, and rapes since the system went down earlier in the day. Systems that should’ve prevented these crimes, or at least recorded them while happening, were offline and these scoundrels just got away with it.
Jack knew the numbers involved and did the math while on the call. If this went to court, it would cost SecureCorp millions in legal fees, lost business, and reputation damage. They would immediately throw Sivnee under the bus, and Sivnee would then do the same to InfoTel. Details of the breach would get out, and all confidence would be lost. Meanwhile, a small settlement with some watertight NDA’s could make this all go away. As he talked about this on a group chat with two other board members to gauge their reactions, a strange text came across his personal phone.
“It’d be a shame if any of this got out…”
Jack knew better than to just click a random link, but he felt like he had no choice. He clicked on it, and he went to some weird file sharing site filled with folders of various numbers like “C105” and “E202”. But some had location names like “ELaundry1” or “GPool”. Others had names like “Lily” and “Avery”. The last one felt like a gut punch. He opened that folder and found folders broken up by month. Further still he found folders for every day, which had several different stills and videos in them. All of his side piece Avery. They were all over the place. Avery getting dressed, Avery doing yoga, Avery fucking him, Avery fucking her neighbor, Avery fucking herself, Avery talking on the phone with her mom. Every intimate moment of her life for the last 6 months, all on a network drive.
Jack was still for a moment before his screen lit up with another text. It was a meme of a cartoon cat holding a tongue.
“What do you want? How did you get this?” Jack texted back.
“Chaos. Money. Transparency. Did you know that InfoTel knew about this breach for a while but did nothing? I watched them ignore me for hours after I took over your system. I have the logs, too. It’s bad enough to destroy all three companies. Here’s a sample.” With that, this mysterious hacker sent multiple screenshots of internal InfoTel mails showing timestamps a couple hours after the breach. He then continued texting. “There’s a crypto wallet link above. 5 million in Ethereum by end of day Monday. I know you’re good for it.”
“That’s a lot of money and not a lot of time. How?” Jack typed, hoping against hope that he could find a way out of this without going bankrupt or having to explain this to anyone.
“You’re smart, you’ll figure it out. Think of it like a business expense. One that you can go after InfoTel to reimburse you.
” It’s rather disconcerting when a ransom note contains an emoji, but it gave Jack an idea. “You said InfoTel dropped the ball? I need proof to get you your money that fast. Sivnee can move millions overnight, I need weeks.” Jack sent it, hoping this didn’t scare off the hacker.
It took longer than Jack liked for the response to come in. “Here’s three links. First is a Dropbox with all the evidence you need. Second is a little something your cameras picked up from the last time you visited Avery. Naughty boy. Third is what happened to her while InfoTel’s tech was supposed to be monitoring things. I’ll be nice and give you until Midnight your time on Monday to pay me. If I don’t get that in my wallet by 12:01AM Tuesday, that video with you goes to your wife, kids, and coworkers. That one with your little whore getting fucked by five guys will go to her mom, dad, and everyone she knows.”
Jack knew he wasn’t bluffing. All he could do was respond “ok, give me till Monday.”
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Monday was, as the kids would say, “off the hook nuts.” Not sure who’s kids say that, but someones do. It started early in the morning with Mark Matthews, Sam’s real estate attorney, arriving at SecureCorp’s offices demanding to speak to their legal department and to tell them that his client was either breaking their contract no questions asked by the end of the week, or everything that happened this past weekend gets reported on and they won’t be able to put up so much as an invisible dog fence in Harbor City. While that was going on, Sam’s company was still getting estimates for repairs and settlements and passing that info along to Mark. All of the smart locks and thermostats were tampered with, and the HVAC systems were fucked from the mixups. Meanwhile across town, Jack Reeves met with his fellow Sivnee board members to approve an “emergency consultation award” in the amount of 6 million dollars. 5 million of that was authorized as a one time expense to be paid to a yet-as-unnamed specialist while the other million was set aside for various related costs like distancing themselves from InfoTel and strengthening their network security.
When word about this reached the SecureCorp board, along with snippets of the truth of their incompetence, InfoTel went into full-blown panic mode. Supriyo and Akshith were fired right away while Durai was promoted for his “leadership during an emergency” and for being related to the CEO. Of course, that came out to bite the company in the ass when multiple team members that were included on the mail forwarded those to other managers outside of the Sivnee engagement to cover their asses. The best part was Durai telling Akshith that only he should be calling the customer, not someone from Offshore. It then took Durai another 20 minutes to call SecureCorp’s IT on-call.
SecureCorp for their part went into damage control mode. By the end of the day, both them and Sivnee agreed to formally end their relationship with InfoTel as soon as legally possible while moving the tasks that were done by Indians back to the States. It was going to be a long couple weeks for everyone in the IT departments, but they’d survive another day.
The lawyers spent most of Monday hammering out a settlement agreement. It would take until Wednesday to get everything signed, but SecureCorp would voluntarily terminate their deal with Mapleton realty at the end of the next month while he gets another company to take over for them. They’ll work out the logistics in the next few days. SecureCorp and Sivnee would agree to a settlement fund for reimbursement and any moving expenses covered by those harmed. In exchange, all three companies would sign an NDA and the language of the deal would not specifically blame SecureCorp nor Sivnee nor would they admit fault. SecureCorp covers the legal fees and lunch. Honestly, most of the legalese and contract setup was easier for them to figure out than where to get lunch. Everyone felt like they won, except the one SecureCorp lawyer who wanted barbecue but acquiesced since his assistant is a vegan and they chose Panera.
Sam was pretty satisfied with how everything was eventually handled. He was out of his deal with SecureCorp and signed with Red Briar by the end of the week. Steve had already planned out the logistics of setting up a new system for his friend. JC had “accidentally” unplugged a couple network boosters while checking out the damage. It was the same boosters he replaced earlier, and placed SecureCorp’s original back in place.
Everyone was pretty chill except for JC. He had a problem. A very good problem. He was now a millionaire crypto bro but couldn’t touch that money. His biggest problem was what made crypto work in the first place: the Blockchain. It’s a piece of technology that tracks all transactions made. It’s what makes crypto like Ethereum or BitCoin trustworthy by proving how authentic it is, but at the same time tracks every time a move is made. A halfway decent forensic accountant could track down someone based on their crypto use.
JC was faced with a dilemma. How was he going to access his money? Hell, was it even his money? Sure, he put in the work but he just blackmailed some obnoxious rich dude into paying him a shitload of money. To be honest, he hadn’t planned on this guy paying, let alone within three days. But suddenly he was richer than he ever thought he’d be by this age.
After having a mini panic attack Monday night after checking his crypto wallet, he got a hold of himself and tried to come up with a plan. He knew he’d have to launder it.
As good as he was at tech, money laundering was not in his wheelhouse. He knew enough from watching Breaking Bad that he didn’t know how to do it by himself. He booked a meeting with Sam and Steve that Friday in the SCIF to break down what happened.
JC laid out the problem for his coconspirators. They had 5 million dollars worth of crypto sitting in a wallet they couldn’t touch directly without calling down every 3 letter agency on them. With the way the blockchain tracks every transaction, what makes cryptocurrency secure also makes it impossible to completely vanish. A good forensic accountant can and will track the transactions until they either find their target or get lost in a crowd. They had three options as he saw it.
Chance working with some intermediaries to get the crypto laundered in fell swoop.
Try accessing the wallet a little at a time and hope they don’t get caught.
Wait until it all blows over.
Steve shot down the second option right away. As his mom used to say “Wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which fills up first.” Hope is a terrible strategy. All it would take is one mistake and they’re screwed for life. One day of not setting up the VPN, or trying to move too much, or the bank flagging repeated transactions of deposits without a good explanation was a recipe for disaster.
Sam nixed the patience plan as well. He knew men like Jack Reeves. They never let anything go and would hunt them down for the rest of his days until they get what they want. Shit, Sam was like that when it came to his money. If anyone stole from him, he doesn’t know what he’d do.
So that left the first option: trust someone to help them launder the money. This scared Steve and JC the most, but Sam just smiled as he stood. “I need your wallet. Give me a few minutes. Maybe an hour or so. Order lunch and I’ll have something.” The other men looked at Sam, then at each other. JC sent Sam the info to his phone as he grabbed his jacket and left the SCIF.
Steve and JC spent the next hour and a half ordering and getting lunch, leaving the SCIF to place the order and another to grab their lunch of Thai food. Sam walked in, smiling like the butcher’s dog.
“It’s taken care of. Give it a few hours for everything to clear.”
Sam went through the details while eating lunch. He has a friend that can move the Ethereum from that wallet into another wallet and into open markets where the transactions will get mixed in with other crypto assets until 7 new wallets end up with the sum of 5 million U.S. dollars. 3 wallets were one for each of them. A fourth was for the individual making this happen, and a fifth was a finder’s fee for his friend. The sixth would be used to “fund future Club activities” while the last would stay unclaimed for now but would engage in various investment schemes until the original Ethereum was sold and replaced with fresh crypto. Once clear, that wallet will get claimed by an LLC soon to be set up where the three of them will be able to use it for larger purchases. He broke down the costs involved. The friend facilitating the move would get $200k while it’ll cost $800k to launder it. “Consider it a tax” Sam said. The Club will get $200k while the leftover wallet will hold half a million plus whatever gains they made by the end of the month.
“That leaves each of us… “
“$1.1 million.” Steve said, doing the math in his head while Sam and JC confirmed the figures.
“Just about. Now, you will have to pay taxes on it one way or another. That’s the IRS for you. Crypto investing is popular enough that they have ways of getting paid. It’s a little like stocks or property. You don’t pay tax for holding it or moving from wallet to wallet, but selling it for cash or using it to buy stuff, you’ll pay. You’ll be dealing with capital gains tax. Longer you hold it, less you pay. Just don’t do anything stupid like quit your day job and become a TikTok influencer. You’re still very close to this shit with SecureCorp.”
It took a few moments for Steve to realize what Sam just said. “Wait, so in a few hours-“
“You’re a millionaire this afternoon, yeah. Though, you won’t be able to use it that much right off the bat without drawing attention. Hold onto it, let it sit, maybe take a nice trip up to Lake Hiawatha, show our friend a little appreciation by spending money at his resort. Though, you do have kids looking to go to college, so maybe don’t go too crazy.” Sam said, holding back a smile as he gave his friend the good news.
“Hold up, how the hell did you pull that off so fast?” JC asked.
“Tech is your thing, moving money is mine. I know people who know people.” Sam said.
“And one of them is Bob.” Steve said, referring to Bob Kuntzmann, the infamous owner of Lake Hiawatha Resorts and an associate of sorts of theirs. Sam’s introduction to Bob involved kidnapping, fraud,
Sam nodded. “He knows people that I know now too, and for a nominal fee he was able to put me in touch with them. For a rather significant fee we were able to get this processed, and taken care of quickly.”
Not much work was performed that afternoon. The three men kept taking turns leaving the SCIF to check their crypto wallets. Shortly after 4PM, JC returned with a smile on his face, waving his phone in the air. His new crypto wallet showed 300 Ethereum valued around $3700 each. A little quick math came out to around 1.11 million dollars. Steve checked his next and found the same thing. He nearly cried when he saw that, then said the truest thing a twice divorced man has ever uttered. “Need to keep the exes from finding out about this.”
For now, it was time to celebrate. They enjoyed themselves at a happy hour before each going home. Sam had his girlfriend waiting for him at home while JC went to his girl’s apartment. Steve went home and after making sure the kids would not disturb him, logged on to the Club’s site to watch the action that helped make him comfortable.
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It was late at night on Friday, and Steve was alone. It was the first time all week that he’s had that he could indulge and enjoy the videos on the Club due to the rigamarole of logging in and having his kids in the building. The last thing he needed his teens to do was walk in on him as he’s watching some bitch barely older than them get raped. But he was alone in his home office with his wireless headphones on and his pants off.
He found two collections available from last Saturday’s events. The first was a collage of videos from Carriage and Essex apartments called “Sloppy Seconds”. The second was about Avery titled “Avery vs. The Five Fuckers of Doom”. He decided to check out “Sloppy Seconds” first.
Steve checked out the comments as the first of the videos in the series started. The timeline of events was attached showing when things happened. Shortly before 3:30PM, the security system went down which locked the security system into standby mode, which defaults to open so people don’t get trapped inside. That meant the security doors were wide open. Some gangbangers known to the Club but not members were tipped off that this would happen. As soon as the security system was hacked, the doors popped open and a dozen men dressed in all black poured into both buildings, split evenly.
The six that attacked Essex went to the basement first, scouting the place out. They broke into several storage lockers and cleaned them out of several large pieces of furniture and electronics. The break-ins then moved upstairs to various apartments. To anyone who didn’t know that they were given a list of specific apartments to hit that had cameras recording this, they’d think this was all random. Hit 105, skip 106 and 107 but get 108 and so on. The crew made quick work of these studio apartments, going for what little high-value items can be found in a studio apartment near a college campus. Laptops, gaming systems, things like that.
Room 213 is where things get interesting. The video showed a young woman sitting on her bed watching some streaming show on her iPad. She was a pretty petite brunette, probably a little over 5 feet tall with long hair, wearing a pair of cut-off sweat shorts and a tank top, obviously pajamas of some sort. The only sign that trouble was on the way was when she heard the door unlock itself in the moment before it opened. The girl jumped up and screamed, but had nowhere to go in the studio apartment. Before she could lunge for her phone, two men were on top of her. She yelled and cried as she tried to fight off the two men, but this pretty little thing was overpowered in seconds. The first held down her hands above her head while his buddy fumbled with her shorts before sliding everything over to the side and forcing his way into her.
Most rapes are quick and brutal, and this one was no exception. The video showed this young man fumble with his pants, get into this young woman, thrust maybe a dozen or two dozen times, then shudder as came. She fought off the first man but the second one took his turn, slapping her around as he took his buddy’s place. He lasted about as long, busting his nut within a minute.
As both men were recovering from their nut, the woman freed herself and ran out of the room, screaming for help. The video showed the two men, still adjusting their pants, chasing after her.
“Amateurs.” Steve scoffed as he watched the videos unfold.
The other clips were similar. Untrained morons fumbling their way through rapes of women they caught either alone in their apartments or in communal areas. The most interesting was three men in Carriage trapping a black woman with big tits alone in the laundry room. These men, and Steve used that term loosely, had the stamina of virgins and the forethought of Epimetheus. While the third man was balls deep in the black bitch, a goody-too-shoes came in with a baseball bat and introduced Gang Banger #1 to Mr. Louisville Slugger. He dropped like a sack of potatoes as the other two tried to figure out their next move before the sound of wood hitting flesh and bones cracking filled the air.
This is why Steve didn’t want the Club involved in Carriage and Essex. It was too chaotic, too likely to end up with the cops called. Which, they showed up within an hour at both buildings. Someone tried to snitch on how they knew which rooms to go to, but all that did was point to some encrypted messages from a server in Russia. All total about 27 units were broken into, 29 storage units, half a dozen men were beaten and 5 women sexually assaulted.
The other video package was a stark contrast to the shitstorm from earlier. “Avery vs. The Five Fuckers of Doom” starts with a sexy redhead walking into the master bathroom for a few minutes while her phone is with her. She’s mindlessly playing some Candy Crush type game when the door opens. Since the security system is down, she doesn’t get an alert that there’s someone at the door. A moment later, 5 men enter, dressed as a construction crew. Their faces are obscured from the cameras by balaclavas and masks. They shed their boots and costumes within seconds as the leader looks at a phone screen. Security cam footage shows he’s watching the feed from the bathroom as Avery takes care of business. The other four men take position around the bedroom, out of view from the Master Bathroom door. Each has a purpose and a way to make that happen.
Avery opens the door, oblivious to the world. She’s too focused on freeing the Candy King or sorting the jewels or whatever to notice the men in her bedroom, but they notice her. She’s about 5’7” with long red hair, pale skin, blue eyes, and recently painted fingers and toes. She wore a set of matching pale green sports bra and yoga pants. It’s only the briefest of movements that catches her eye as one of the men moves from behind the door and something covers her face. She’s startled and tries to scream, but no words come out. Only a guttural moan of pain emerges as a fire erupts from her side and she drops to her knees, only caught by another man that approaches from behind her bedroom door.
It all happens so fast, she can’t perceive it. One moment she’s exiting the bathroom, the next she’s carried to her bed and her hands are bound above her head to some kind of handcuffs. Another blast of pain rippled through her body as a pair of hand grabbed her pants and pulled them off. The hand over her mouth moved, only to be replaced with some kind of sex toy. She was experienced with a ring gag enough to know what was happening. A moment later and a pair of scissors cut away her sports bra and panties, leaving her completely naked. Avery finally had her wits about her long enough to see what awaited her.
Five men, all with their faces covered. One of them had his phone out recording.
That’s when the first of the men asked something.
“Time.” The man closest to her asked. One in the background spoke up.
“47 seconds.”
“Damn, think that’s a new record.” A third man spoke up.
“Know what that means. All the more time to have fun with this little cunt.” The leader spoke up, pointing at the first man to his left. “You won the drawing earlier, you’re up.”
“With pleasure.” It was hard to tell much about him, but he seemed like he was older, probably in his 40’s, and had a bit of a beer belly. He stripped off everything except a white t-shirt and his mask. He sported a decent sized dick which was already at full mast. Avery tried to scream and squirm away, but two of the men grabbed her legs and spread them open.
“Don’t worry, I’ll skip the foreplay.” The man said to his friends who got a chuckle out of the 22-year-old redhead’s plight. A quick spit on his cock was all the prep needed to spear into Avery’s twat. It took a few strokes to build up a good rhythm, but soon he fucked her with abandon, shaking a couple minutes later as he came inside her.
Avery cried, but knew her torment was just getting started as the next man took his place. “All aboard!” He plunged into her as he played with her pert little tits, enjoying the linework between them.
“How many tats this whore got?” One of the men holding her left leg asked.
“About a dozen, not counting her left sleeve.” Another man said.
“Let’s cum on all of them!” The one that posed the question said, getting a laugh from all of the others. A few minutes later, the one fucking her pussy pulled out to blast her in the face with his load, making sure to get some between her tits.
On and on this went for the next hour, each man using her pussy, ass, and mouth to get themselves off, only to defile her again by leaving their load on her tattoos. Each mark on her skin meant something to her, and now these assholes painted them with their vile seed. Her back piece, her sleeve, her grandma’s favorite quote, her mother’s birthday, all of it now nothing more than a canvas for depravity. The most humiliating of the bunch was when the man calling the shots fucked her ass, then shoved his dick in her mouth, only to pull out in time to cum on her neckpiece that her best friend designed before she passed. All the while these men fucked her senseless.
The last activity before the men left was to use her completely. One man, the fattest of the bunch, fucked her asshole while the one with the thickest cock fucked her pussy. The leader fucked her face while the last two made use of her hands and feet. They were all pretty tired by that point, but they had enough stamina to generate one last cum for each.
Before they left, the one with the camera made sure to get some good footage of the carnage. The leader went through her purse, wearing gloves as he grabbed her license and made sure to show it next to her cum and tear-streaked visage. He then pulled her hair to make sure she heard him loud and clear.
“Listen here Avery. You don’t know us, but we know you. We know more than you think we know. Here’s what’s gonna happen. We’re gonna untie ya and ungag ya. We’re gonna hide your phone, then we’re gonna leave. You, you fucking ginger cunt, you’re gonna count to 100. You try any shit other than clean yourself up and pretend this was all a bad dream, we’ll come back and do a hundred times worse to you, and tell all our friends to come visit. Do you want them to visit?” Avery tried shaking her head no. “So you’re gonna be a good girl, or we’ll fuck you up so bad you’ll pray for us to kill you.”
With that, the videos end. Steve had long since exhausted himself watching, and admiring what professionals can do when they work together. He thought about paying Avery a visit one day, maybe once things calmed down, though he knew that was wishful thinking.
He wondered though, now that he had some money, how much a good sugar baby went for in this economy. Would they be more expensive or less expensive than an ex-wife?
