Chapter 23 Whole-Cocked
whole-cocked
Cian
“What did I miss?”
I look from Liam to Sariah. Her mouth falls open, but nothing comes out. She gasps like a fish for breath when Liam’s huge palm flattens along the back of her head and pushes her between her knees.
“What the fuck, Liam?”
“She’s hyperventilating.” With that, he turns his device to me.
On the screen is the biggest cock I’ve ever seen… the biggest cock I’ve never wanted to see.
“The fuck.” I stare at Liam.
“Brother.” It’s a warning
He pulls the image back and right there in technicolor, in Sariah’s living room, is Renée tucked in the corner of the sofa, phone in hand, eyes blown wide.
“I…” Trying to form words escapes me, and I leave the thought hanging. Where did she get porn? How did she get it? And why? “How?”
“I have to go.” Sariah stands so quickly she nearly springs from her chair. “I have to go.” She starts running before she returns for her purse and flies from the room.
Liam looks at me, boring holes through me.
If I could clench my jaw, I would. “Go.”
He does, bending to grab her shoes by the bed, and taking off after the terrified woman.
I round the bed for my phone.
Me: Don’t let her drive.
I get a mere thumbs-up in return.
Sariah
Porn?
Porn.
Fucking porn.
My daughter understands biology. We talk plainly. But I’m not interested in her getting her education from an industry with a fucking soundtrack.
I’m at the elevator bank, slapping at the metal doors when a presence materializes at my side.
That’s not exactly true, but it feels like it.
I hear two loud smacks and look down to see my shoes on the ground in front of me.
I hadn’t even noticed I wasn’t wearing them.
Hot pink socks slide inside just as the doors open and I fly through, shooing along the visitors and whomever else dares to be here.
The clunk of boots enters with my pitter patter, and a tatted finger presses the button for the garage breezeway level.
“Keys.” Liam extends his palm and waits.
No. Why? I’m not going anywhere with him. I’m the mom. I’ve got this.
“Sariah. Keys.”
“No.”
“You are in no condition to drive.”
He’s right, but I don’t care. The doors part and I take off at full speed only to be clotheslined by an arm at my gut. “Try again.”
“Push button. Let’s go.” I take off at a full-on sprint.
He’s behind me step for step, his strides eating up the distance effortlessly, as if my running was of no use. Moving to the passenger’s side, it takes me three clicks on the handle to get the doors open.
He slides behind the wheel and looks in command of my small SUV just as if he’d always driven it. He extends a twenty and the timed receipt to the gate attendant. “Keep the change.”
“Turn left.” At my direction he merely looks at me and raises a pierced eyebrow.
“Been to your house. Know how to get there.”
Oh yeah.
“Now… you need to think of how you want to handle this.”
“I plan to rip the phone from her hand and shove it down the garbage disposal. After that, I’ll run over it with my car in a gravel lot.”
“Remind me not to piss you off.”
“Exactly.” My leg bounces as he drives, and I cross and uncross my arms like a wannabe Olympian before a high stakes relay.
“Calm.” His wrist is folded over the steering wheel like this is a mere cruise through the city.
“Don’t you dare.”
“You’re in tech. You know apps.”
Where is he going with this?
“Instead of the garbage disposal thing—great idea, by the way—what if you took them down from the inside?”
“There’s no time for that.”
“But if there was… How would you do it?”
“Off the top of my head, I’d find the backdoor and shut it.
I’d highlight every user who has sent messages with flesh-colored images—the whole spectrum, not just mine.
I’d lock their profiles from deletion and pull all identifying data including IP addresses and carriers.
Then I’d hijack the app and put their faces, names, and phone numbers—not their addresses, that’s too risky—with the number of images and how many under-age recipients they sent those to and provide that to the CBI with the receipts.
Cell carriers too because I think that’s interstate something or other. If it isn’t, it should be.”
“Seriously, remind me never to get on your bad side.”
I smile a maniacal smile with too many teeth.
“How long would it take you?”
“Full time? Two days.”
“You could bankrupt the app owners who did nothing to prevent this or are at the heart of it, wrap up an entire ring that targeted children with slimy dick pics, and you’d rather not what? Go through all the trouble?”
“I—”
“You gonna leave all the other kids out there helpless and protect Renée when you could protect them all?”
I’m eviscerated and I’m livid. My voice rises on every word as I shout, “Don’t tell me what I should do to save my daughter. You have not one fucking clue what I’m saving her from.”
“Nope.” The man is fucking unflappable. “But I can’t imagine you’d let those others drown and save only one when you could save them all. Save her first, but don’t leave the rest when you can help.”
I grit my teeth and seethe. “How then?”
“Ground her from her phone, take two days off of work, and nail the fuckers.”
“As if it’s that easy.”
“Why make it more complicated?” He puts the car in park and throws out a hand. “Don’t go in half-cocked when you could go in whole-cocked. She doesn’t know you know. You only get one chance at this moment.”
He turns the car off and exits the vehicle, walking to the street to a waiting rideshare. He disappears as he appeared, leaving me reeling and incensed and… emboldened.
How does one person say so little yet say so much?
Me: Your brother is a lunatic and I’m home.
Cian: What the fuck did he do?
Me: I’ll call you tonight before bed. Suffice to say, I’m on a warpath and he just cleared the trail with a machete.
Cian: Why does that sound so accurate?
I let myself into the house to find things eerily similar to what I saw at the hospital.
Rosie is at the kitchen table with a romance novel and a Diet Coke.
My daughter is in the same shape she was thirty minutes ago with her face glued to her phone.
“Hey, Rosie.” I tap and squeeze her shoulder before rounding her and heading to the living room. Renée shuffles her phone in a new and certainly unwelcome way. “Hey, Née. How was school?”
Her face is flushed as she shrugs. “Fine.”
“Are you ready for dinner?”
“I guess.”
“Come sit with us as I put something together.”
She follows me back to the kitchen, discreetly tucking her phone into her hoodie front pocket, and drops into the chair at the table with Rosie.
“How did surgery go?”
“Good.” I look over the refrigerator door. “He looks rough, and I think he’s hurting, but they were able to make everything right. Leftovers okay?”
“Sure,” Rosie puts in. “I’ll make a salad.”
My daughter gives another shrug. Words. One day we’ll get back to words. That will be a great day.
I pull out the leftover marinara and throw some water on to boil for pasta as Rosie rummages through the fridge for salad fixings.
“Did anything good happen at work or school today?” My voice is a little too high and my words are a bit too rushed. So I temper everything so as not to seem amped.
“Same old, same old for me.” That’s Rosie. She’s so steady, day-in, day-out.
“We got a new science teacher. The old one got arrested for breaking bad.”
“What?”
“That’s just what I heard. I’m guessing he got a TV show.”
My daughter isn’t innocent, but she’s not worldly enough to know her science teacher was cooking meth.
Meth and porn in one day. I see why people homeschool and get antisocial. Oh, hell no. When my brain gets to why my childhood makes sense, it’s time for redirection. Time for hard truths.
“Née? Breaking Bad was a show where a science teacher made and sold drugs.”
Her gaze whips to mine. “Oh. You think Mr. Rogers was selling drugs?”
His last name is Rogers. My whole world wants to crumble.
“I think your science teacher was making them, yes. I don’t know about selling and I’ve never heard anyone use the TV show’s name as a verb, but an educated guess would be that’s what people mean.
” I pause, really, really not wanting any more bullshit reality today. “Did he ever offer you anything?”
She shrugs. “I dunno.”
My life is a soap opera but the Russian kind if such things exist. I can only imagine they’re more dramatic than their American counterparts.
I’m letting it go. For now, anyway… “Sounds like a crazy day at school.” I drop the spaghetti in the boiling water and let my brain spin out where no one can see.
“I guess.”
“Did you get your homework finished?”
“All but history. It’s so boring.”
The evening continues just like this. Typical teenage talk when eye rolls and shrugs won’t suffice. Rosie heads home after dinner with her kilted hero. And I wait for the house to go quiet, so I can grab my phone to decipher how to reverse engineer the damn app.
Liam is right. I won’t let the others drown just to save Renée first. I would save her first, but I can save them all with one fell swoop.
I won’t have another mama worrying about it if I can help it.