The Bad Girl Dilemma
Chapter One
Dahlia
Not gonna lie, this is my favourite part.
Okay, maybe not my absolute favourite.
But watching pollsters on my heavily encrypted social media app lose their minds always gives me a buzz.
I watch two contenders battle it out until it hits the 85% mark, then the fickle public, as they always do, rally behind one.
Tonight’s clear winner hits 92% and I grin.
Obsidian Corp it is.
I don’t use the actual entity names beforehand of course because that would stupid. Obsidian is only known as DDD to my pollsters.
Lying on my stomach in bed, legs tangled in my sheets, chin propped on one hand, I wait for the stragglers to get on board. I like to get as close to 100% as I can.
There’s a delayed gratification to that, a sizzling in my veins that comes with righteous sinning that’s a high I like to skate as long as possible. Forget drugs, it comes as close to sex as I can get.
So while the disgruntled few whose initial picks didn’t make the cut make up their minds, I swipe lazily across the screen.
The poll numbers spike in real time. Thousands of anonymous voices, weighing in on who deserves a taste of my justice.
My fingers hover over the voting breakdown.
Each name on the list makes my blood boil.
A billionaire hedge fund vampire who crashed a housing market for sport.
A pharmaceutical exec who jacked insulin prices mid-pandemic and is still at it.
A prince with offshore accounts full of human trafficking money.
DDD, founder of “O” Corp, crypto king, rumoured sadist, silent investor in all the above.
The comments under his name are extra spicy.
"That DDD guy gives me the creeps."
"Didn’t his bio say he blackmailed a journalist into disappearing?"
“Such a shame he’s fuck-hot. Or is it??!”
“Do him and I’ll tattoo your name on my ass."
I chuckle. My followers are feral, and I love them for it.
I’m no saint. I’ve never claimed to be. But there’s something delicious about righteous vengeance dressed in latex and filtered through a voice modulator.
I steal. I expose. I redistribute. I livestream it all.
And if I get a little thrill watching corrupt assholes rage and lose their minds as they promise to hunt me down and “insert extremely unimaginative punishment of choice here”—also, dream on, fuckers—? Bonus .
When I hit 96%, I flip onto my back, flick out of the poll and swipe to another app. Just to…peek. I may be putting the proverbial cart before the horse but I’m already dreaming up ways to reward myself once I’m done notching another win under my belt.
The Club app opens in full dark mode, purring like a secret lover.
It was a joke at first—signing up. A little curiosity, a little mischief. I never expected to keep it. But somehow, logging on after a job has become a ritual, although tonight I’m doing it before not after. Which, if I believed in superstition, I would be fucked. But I don’t so…
I don’t talk much on the app. Just… watch. Explore. I’ve interacted a couple of times, but mostly I’ve created dirty little fantasies in my head I secretly hope will come true.
Dominants, subs, contracts, scenes.
Intimacy without strings.
Pain twisted into pleasure.
There’s something almost reverent about it. Like control isn’t something you seize—but something you surrender.
Maybe after this job, I’ll finally do what I’ve been too chicken to do so far and…indulge. Dip my toe in the water, so to speak. I don’t know how far I’ll get because all that surrendering sounds copasetic in theory but yeah…I’m not the surrendering type.
Maybe a clean, anonymous hookup. No feelings. Just breathless, beautiful pain. A reward for a job well done. I scan a few profiles, half-distracted. A masked man with a wicked mouth. That Dom with blood-red leather gloves. The one I keep returning to over and over.
My pulse flutters. I take a note of his name.
SinMadeFlesh. Meh, not exactly original but whatever.
Maybe I’ll message him. Later.
I shut down the app and return to the poll.
98%. That’s as good as I’m going to get.
I roll off the bed, energy spiking as the prospect of vengeance.
Showtime.
###
My gear is already laid out: matte black cargo pants, tight turtleneck, harness strapped with micro-tools, soundless boots. My gloves are fingerprint-resistant, and my mask—sleek and mirrored—covers half my face, voice modulator built into the jawline.
I secure my ponytail, zip everything up, and look at myself in the mirror.
No one would guess I’m twenty-two. That I’m very partial to cereal for dinner and cry during Pixar shorts. That I once built a server farm in my mom’s garage to DDOS a revenge porn site.
All they see is Spectre—digital thief, vigilante brat, chaos in motion.
Not Dahlia Wynn, cyber security expert and programmer.
I tap the go-live button. “Spectre, online.”
My voice comes out distorted, laced with static and steel. The screen flashes green. My viewers spike fast.
"Yessss she’s back."
"This one’s gonna be juicy, I can feel it."
"Who’s tonight’s victim, Spectre?"
“You voted. I listened. It’s Triple D,” I purr. “Let’s rob the devil.”
###
The building looms like a monolith, all obsidian glass and silent menace like it’s owner, reflecting the city like it’s daring it to come closer.
I slip inside like smoke—through a service entrance, past sleeping cameras, under the pulse of motion sensors I’ve already looped. My custom drone buzzes softly at my side, flashing green when the path is clear.
Heart rate steady. Breathing controlled. No fear. I’m in the zone.
Until the actual heist, all I’ll be charged with on the extreme off chance I’m caught is corporate trespassing. A slap on the wrist or a fine or some community service. Totally worth it. But I don’t plan on getting caught.
Obsidian has the honour of being my introduction into double-digit heisting and I’ve been doing this for two years.
Up ten floors. Through the server vault. Past biometric locks. My custom key slips into the panel and I wait for the soft chime of access granted.
Ding.
I grin under the mask. Too fucking easy.
I plug in, fingers flying, siphoning encrypted data through my proxy chains, dumping it into blockchain wallets faster than a heartbeat.
The stream’s eating it up. Comments fly.
"Holy shit, she’s in."
"That’s Triple D’s master key, isn’t it??"
“Fuck, five mil. Six! Gah, seven and a half!”
“You’re on fire, Spec! Get it, girl!”
"GET OUT GET OUT?—"
Wait. Something's wrong.
The files… they're looping. Duplicating. I blink.
INTRUSION DETECTED. TRACE IN PROGRESS.
Reverse beacon triggered.
User: SPECTRE
Location: LOGGED
Protocol: Velvet Vice Fingerprint Activated.
Cold drips into my veins. My drone flashes red.
What. The. Fuck.
No .
My breath strangles in my throat. I yank the drive, slam my laptop closed, kill the stream.
How did he?—?
I’ve barely been here five minutes. To react this fast he’d have to have known. Have to have been lying in wait.
How the fuck did he know? Every piece of equipment I use is encrypted. Designed by me because I trust no one else in this world. Life lessons learned the hard way.
A voice slides through the earpiece. Not mine. Not filtered. Smooth. Male. Lethal.
“You shouldn’t have been so sloppy, little thief.”
I freeze.
There’s no fucking way. I wasn’t sloppy. I fucking wasn’t.
The voice continues, low and wicked, right in my skull. “But I’m glad you were. I’ve been waiting for you.”
###
Dahlia
The smell hits me first.
Leather. Oil. The faintest trace of something metallic—blood? No. Don’t go there.
I come to in darkness. Cramped, my arms twisted painfully behind my back, wrists bound tight with some kind of zip cord. There’s a gag in my mouth—thick, padded, invasive. My jaw aches.
I try to scream but it’s strangled. Pathetic.
My face presses into something plush and cold. The thrum of a car engine vibrates under my cheek, and the realization slams into me like a bullet train. The shadow looming toward me, the leather clad hand holding the dark cloth.
I’m in the trunk of a car.
I’ve been kidnapped.
A garbled sound pushes against the gag. Had it escaped I’m sure it would sound a cross between a laughter and shocked tears. Hystericry.
In a way I’m glad I don’t get to hear it because…
No. No, no. No.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.
I’ve always been careful. Always five steps ahead. No paper trail. No biometric residue. Every signal bounced through so many proxies it would take a government weeks to catch up. And yet—here I am.
Tied up. Silenced. On my way to what… Being disappeared?
Who the fuck did this? Who has the tech—no, the nerve —to turn my own heist on me ?
My mind flashes through possibilities like a Rolodex on fire. The Vesper Syndicate? That slimeball senator I bankrupted last month? Maybe it’s?—
Like acid rain, everything I’ve learned of the owner of Obsidian both on and off the Dark Web, drizzles through my mind.
And with each recollection, panic claws at my throat, but I force it down.
Think, Dahlia. Think .
But the name my mind keeps circling back to pulses through me like a detonation.
Dante ‘Devil’ O’Driscoll. Triple D.
I hacked him. Livestreamed it. Laughed. I didn’t use his name but somehow the bastard knew. He was waiting. Here in New York instead of the other side of the country and apparently not where my superior surveillance said he should be. Dammit.
God, what will he do to me? Interrogation? Torture? Worse?
A wave of nausea rolls through me, fast and violent. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Don’t cry. Don’t shake. Don’t give them that.
I think of my mother—just for a second. The way her fingers used to dance over her laptop keyboard, fierce and bright and fearless. She was a truth-seeker. Until they silenced her.
The memory slices too close to bone. I shove it away.
What would Dad think if he knew where I was? That his daughter, his little digital prodigy, was bound and gagged in the back of some psycho’s trunk? Will they tell him what happened to me? Do I want them to?
Or would it be better if I simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Because one death is bad enough. Two deaths of the people he loves in one lifetime…
God. Breathe.
I inhale through my nose, slow and steady, counting heartbeats like code lines.
And then?—
The car slows.
Stops.
A door slams. Then another. Muffled voices. Footsteps.
A click. The sound of the trunk latch popping. Light spills in, blinding and surgical.
I blink, squinting through the gag, and then?—
Him .
The man himself. Dante O’Driscoll. In the flesh.
Towering. Black suit. Blacker eyes. Shadow cut jaw and cheekbones carved by God on a hate bender. There’s a rawness to him that feels barely leashed—like he could destroy something with a flick of his wrist and wouldn’t even flinch.
Even though I’d suspected, a part of me had hoped it wasn’t him. That he would be someone less…formidable. Less potent. Less…just less .
That the single image I’d found on him online would be severely photoshopped, the kind that turned troll into hunk. Sadly, he’s Online Hunk turned Hotter Hunk IRL.
His expression is unreadable. No smile. No mockery. Just controlled fury, burning behind cold black eyes. For an abstract, entirely inappropriate moment I wonder if he named his company after the colour of his eyes.
He looks down at me like I’m a piece of art he doesn’t know whether to sell or smash.
And then, he speaks—his voice smooth, low, lethal.
“You really should’ve deleted that app, little thief.”
The app…the app…The Club app?
Oh shit…
Of fucking fuckity fuck!
###
DANTE
She’s smaller than I expected.
Curled up like a snapped violin string, trying so hard not to tremble. I see it anyway. The twitch of her thigh. The flex of her bound wrists. The jagged inhale through her nose, because her mouth’s stuffed full of premium-grade silicone that muffles all her screams.
She’s scared.
Good.
She fucking should be.
I watch her carefully, silently, as she blinks against the light, trying to square the man she stole from with the one standing in front of her.
What was she expecting? Some crusty billionaire with a temper, bald combover and a security detail?
Not me.
Not the man who knew exactly what kind of deviant little secret she was hiding behind that screen.
Not the one who reverse-engineered her location using the very app she used to get off anonymously.
Not the man who studied her browsing habits on The Club app and read her filthy, aching little wishlist like it was a love letter to her own undoing.
She has no idea who she’s dealing with. How long I’ve been waiting.
For today.
For her.