Their Bad Girl (The Institute: Bad Girls #11)

Chapter 1

Pam

I looked down at Leo’s lap, his erection obvious through his pants as he sat in the tired office chair he had pulled up to ‘look at my work.’ I hated this part.

I always hated this part. He had no idea what I was actually doing, but he would ask stupid questions until I gave him what he truly wanted, though would never admit to wanting.

And I needed him distracted, compliant, and too satisfied to interfere with my hacking of the Houseworks server architecture. So I slid off my chair and moved between his knees, keeping my face carefully neutral.

“You’re tense,” I said, reaching for his belt. “Let me help.”

Leo’s hand came to rest on top of my head, fingers threading through my hair in that possessive way he thought was affectionate. “You’re so good to me, Pam.”

I wasn’t good to him. I was using him. But he was too stupid and too arrogant to see it, which made him perfect.

I pulled his cock free and wrapped my fingers around the base.

At least a blowjob was better than actual sex—less invasive, less vulnerable, less of myself given away.

I could control the pace, control the angle, control when it ended.

There was a kind of power in that, even if it came at the cost of having his dick in my mouth.

I took him in, letting my tongue work along the underside while my mind wandered to the code waiting on my screen.

Three more hours. That’s all I needed. Three more hours to finish the final authentication bypass, and the ransomware would be ready to deploy.

Leo thought we were launching it together next week, following his careful timeline, his risk assessments, his need to feel like the mastermind.

He had no idea I was going to activate it tonight; that I had decided I couldn’t risk him fucking it up, so I would move things ahead and make Leo feel like this was what he had planned all along.

His breathing quickened above me, and I increased the suction, hollowing my cheeks. Get him there faster. Get back to work.

“Fuck, Pam,” he groaned, his hips jerking slightly. “Just like that.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Men were so predictable. A few well-practiced movements and they thought you were a goddess. I kept working him, my hand moving in rhythm with my mouth, watching for the telltale signs—the tension in his thighs, the way his fingers tightened in my hair.

He came with a low grunt, and I grabbed the towel I’d strategically placed on his desk earlier, pulling back just in time and directing his semen into the terrycloth.

At least he had the decency not to demand to be allowed to make a mess I’d have to deal with.

He slumped back in his chair, eyes closed, that satisfied smirk on his face that made me want to punch him.

“Jesus,” he breathed. “You’re incredible.”

I wiped my mouth and stood, already turning back toward my workstation. “I know.”

“Come here.” His hand reached for me, but I was already moving away.

“Can’t. Need to finish the subnet routing before the security sweep at midnight.

” I dropped back into my chair and pulled up the terminal window, my fingers flying across the keyboard.

The authentication bypass was downright elegant in its simplicity—three nested functions that would give me root access to every Houseworks facility in the world.

Selecta’s little experiment in dominating the domestic services sector would pay off big time—for me…

and for Leo, I guessed, grudgingly. He’d footed the bill for my insane computer needs, after all.

Behind me, Leo was zipping up, post-orgasm contentment making him docile. Perfect. I had maybe twenty minutes before his brain started working again and he’d want to ‘collaborate’ on something, which really meant looking over my shoulder and suggesting idiotic changes.

“You work too hard,” he said, his voice lazy.

“Someone has to.” I kept my eyes on the screen, watching the progress bar creep forward as my script compiled. Seventy-three percent. “Besides, I thought you wanted this done right.”

“I do. I just—” His phone buzzed on the desk. He picked it up, and I heard him swipe to answer. “Hey, Marcus. Yeah, man, what’s up?”

My shoulders tensed, but I didn’t turn around. Marcus was one of Leo’s college buddies, another wannabe player who thought he was smarter than he was. Just keep it short, I thought. Just keep it short and hang up.

“Oh, you know,” Leo said, and I could hear the smile in his voice, that pride that came before the fall. “Just putting the finishing touches on something big. Really big.”

No. Don’t.

“Can’t say much, but let’s just say Houseworks is about to learn what happens when they—”

I spun in my chair. “Leo.”

He glanced at me, held up one finger. Wait. “Yeah, ransomware. Custom job. Pam’s a fucking genius with—”

I was out of my chair and crossing to him in three strides. “Hang up. Now.”

He frowned at me, covering the phone with his hand. “What the hell, Pam?”

“Hang. Up.” I kept my voice low, but there was steel in it. “Right fucking now.”

He stared at me for another second, then spoke into the phone. “Hey, Marcus, I gotta go. Yeah. Talk later.” He ended the call and tossed the phone onto the desk. “What’s your problem?”

My problem? My problem? I wanted to scream at him, to grab him by his expensive collar and shake him until his brain rattled. Instead, I forced myself to speak slowly, clearly, like I was explaining basic arithmetic to a child.

“Selecta owns the telecom infrastructure of the entire planet, Leo. They monitor everything. Voice calls, data packets, encrypted messages—all of it. And you just told your idiot friend, over an open line, that we’re about to launch a ransomware attack on one of their subsidiaries.”

The color drained from his face, but his jaw set in that stubborn way that meant he was about to double down on his stupidity. “Marcus wouldn’t—”

“It doesn’t matter what Marcus would or wouldn’t do. Selecta’s AI flags keywords automatically. Ransomware. Houseworks. Custom job. You might as well have filed a fucking incident report.”

“You’re being paranoid.” But his voice wavered. “They can’t monitor everything. There’s too much traffic—”

“They can and they do. That’s literally their business model. Jesus Christ, Leo, how did you think they built their empire? By respecting people’s privacy?”

He stood up, trying to reclaim some authority through height. “Look, even if they did catch it, which they didn’t, we’re fine. We’re careful. There’s no way to trace it back to—”

The door exploded inward.

At least they separated Leo and me once they’d gotten us outside to where they had an entire squad of Selecta security goons—empowered by the Corporate Laws to act in a paramilitary capacity—waiting.

They put Leo in one car and me in another, and thank God I never saw him again because I would probably have killed him, given the slightest opportunity.

At the time, though, it seemed like a troubling sign.

“Where are you taking me?” I demanded, when I noticed that the car with Leo in it had gone in a different direction from the one in which mine was headed.

One of the goons in the front seat turned to look at me through the metal grille that separated the driver’s seat from the passenger seat, where they had shoved me with my wrists cuffed behind my back. My shoulders already ached.

“Girls like you get special treatment,” he told me, with a leer that made my belly lurch. “Your friend is going to the regular courthouse. You’re on your way to Selecta court.”

I tried to keep my face blank, but my mind was racing through implications.

Selecta court. I’d heard rumors about Selecta’s parallel legal system—everyone had.

It wasn’t like regular criminal proceedings with public defenders and due process.

Selecta handled their own justice for crimes against their interests, and they didn’t fuck around.

“What’s the difference?” I asked, hating how small my voice sounded.

The goon’s leer widened. “You’ll find out.”

The rest of the drive passed in silence. I watched the city lights blur past the tinted windows, trying to calculate angles, possibilities, escape routes. But with my hands cuffed and two armed officers in the front seat, my options were exactly zero.

We pulled up to a sleek corporate building that could have been any Selecta office complex. No signs indicating it was a courthouse. No press waiting outside. Just another anonymous tower in their empire.

They hauled me out of the car and marched me through a side entrance, down a corridor that smelled of industrial cleaner and some disturbing human element—fear, maybe, or despair. We stopped at a set of double doors, and one of the guards pressed his palm to a biometric scanner.

The doors slid open to reveal a courtroom that looked nothing like the ones I’d seen on screens.

No jury box. No gallery for spectators. Just a raised platform with a single table and two chairs, one on either side—nothing like a proper judge’s bench.

They shoved me into the chair closest to the door where I’d entered.

A woman in a dark suit entered from a side door. Mid-forties, perfectly coiffed blonde hair, the kind of face that suggested she’d never had a moment of doubt in her entire life. She sat down across from me without sparing me a single glance.

“Pamela Nelson,” she said, consulting a tablet. Not a question. “Conspiracy to commit corporate sabotage, attempted deployment of ransomware against Selecta infrastructure, violation of the Computer Crimes Act.” She looked up at me. “How do you plead?”

“I want a lawyer.”

“This is Selecta court, Ms. Nelson. Corporate criminal proceedings. You lost your right to outside legal counsel when you committed crimes against Selecta interests on Selecta-monitored communications infrastructure. How do you plead?”

My throat felt tight. “Not guilty.”

She smiled, thin and cold. “We have your search history, your code repository, your communications with black market contacts. We have biometric data from your arrest that suggests possible forms of rehabilitation for you.” Her eyes flicked down to the tablet.

“We know for example that you probably performed fellatio a few minutes before your arrest.”

My face burned. “That’s an invasion of—”

“You’re in Selecta’s America, Ms. Nelson.

Selecta is empowered by the Corporate Laws to dispose of you as we see fit.

By definition, we don’t invade privacy, because you don’t have privacy when you break the law.

We monitor our infrastructure for threats.

You are a threat.” She set down the tablet.

“I find you guilty on all counts. Sentencing is immediate. Non-Violent Offenders Program, assignment to be determined by Selecta assessors based on psychobiometric profile.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I demanded, but she was already standing, already leaving through the side door.

The guards grabbed me before I could even process what had happened.

No appeal. No defense. Just guilty, sentenced, done.

They dragged me out of the courtroom and down another corridor, this one narrower, more institutional.

The corporate veneer was gone now. These were the guts of the building, the parts they didn’t show in promotional materials.

We stopped at a door marked only with a number: 7. One of the guards pressed his palm to another scanner, and the door opened to reveal what looked like a medical examination room. Sterile white walls, bright overhead lights, a padded table in the center with stirrups at one end.

My stomach dropped.

“Strip,” the taller of the two guards said. Older and harder, too, with eyes that had seen this a thousand times before.

“No.”

“You can strip yourself or we can strip you. Your choice.”

I looked at the door, at the guards, at the examination table. Every cell in my body was screaming to fight, to run, but there was nowhere to go. My hands were still cuffed behind my back.

“Un-cuff me,” I said, hating how my voice shook.

The other guard moved behind me, and I heard the click of the cuffs releasing. My shoulders ached as I brought my arms forward, rubbing at the red marks on my wrists.

“Strip. Now.”

My fingers fumbled with the buttons of my shirt. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. I was Pam Nelson. I was the smartest person in any room. I didn’t end up on examination tables with fucking stirrups.

But my shirt came off anyway. Then my bra. My jeans. My underwear. Until I was standing naked under those harsh fluorescent lights, every instinct telling me to cover myself while knowing it was pointless.

“On the table. On your back.”

I climbed onto the padded surface, the vinyl cold against my bare skin. The taller guard moved to my right leg, lifting it and positioning it in the stirrup. Then the left. I felt the restraints close around my knees, heard the soft clink of buckles as he tightened the webbing.

I was spread open, exposed, completely vulnerable. Everything I’d spent my entire life avoiding.

“What are you doing?” My voice came out higher than I wanted. “What is this?”