Tucking my head down and pulling the hood of my sweatshirt up, I walked briskly the rest of the way to my dorm.
Back in the privacy of my room, I navigated to the Pictogram website. How did my photo become an ad? How was this possible?
And what I found shocked me. Any user who signed up for a Pictogram account gave up all rights to their uploaded photos. Pictogram had the right to sell my photo to any advertiser for what I could only imagine would be an arm and a leg. Marc Janow was a major fashion designer. He undoubtedly had the money to spare.
Taking slow deep breaths, I tried to calm myself down, but I couldn’t. How could this popular app abuse its users like this?
Livid, my fingers punched the keyboard, googling Pictogram’s CEO, Theo Wainwright. The first link that popped up was a tabloid story of him, shirtless, with a supermodel on his yacht. Although not an actual user of Pictogram, I’d still heard of Theo Wainwright. He graduated from Berkeley. In fact, he’d built the beginnings of Pictogram in his dorm room.
What I didn’t know was how ridiculously hot he was. Like a groupie, I searched for more photos of him. With his penetrating blue eyes and chiseled jaw, the man was devastatingly gorgeous. Shirtless, he had a six pack and thick muscular arms. I found a shot of him in tight jeans and nearly died. He had a fantastic ass, too. The photos of him in a full suit were what made me almost fall out of my chair. He had a sexy arrogant smile that made him look handsome, debonair, and unabashedly cocky.
I shook my head. Hot or not, Theo Wainwright was probably a brogrammer like Roger. He got to travel around the world and lounge about on his yacht with supermodels because he didn’t care about his users. He sold their images for a pretty penny and couldn’t give a shit.
Taking another long look at Theo’s gorgeous face, I decided he needed to be warned. Hacking into Pictogram’s site, I found his personal information: private email address and phone number. Under the name Anonimo, I sent him an email urging him to change Pictogram’s privacy policies.
And taking a deep breath, I pressed send. Served him right. Because how could anyone do that? How could anyone take someone’s photo off their site and sell it to a third party without a second thought?
But that’s the beauty of being a skilled hacker.
Because I know how to get to the bottom of these things.
And Theo Wainwright would have to pay, simple as that.
So what if Mr. Wainwright was gorgeous, powerful, and rich, with ladies hanging off his arm? The fact was that my rights had been violated and I was going to get revenge.
Chapter 2
Theo
Sometimes I wondered why I had such a huge house. I’d lived alone my entire life aside from the orphanage where a dozen boys were practically stacked up on top of each other in one barracks style room. As weird as it sounds, I liked living with so many kids and never running out of friends to play with.
When I’d become a billionaire, I felt obligated to buy a shamelessly lavish house. Before then, my living conditions were modest. So when Pictogram blew up, my seven-bedroom seven-bathroom house in the Los Altos Hills was my first extravagant purchase, even though I’d be the only person living there.
Yep, I rattled around like loose teeth, all alone in this monstrosity.
But that was the billionaire way of doing things, and who am I to say no to it?
I renovated the place completely – adding a lighted tennis court, swimming pool, six-car garage, a theater, a gym, and a sauna. But my favorite place in the entire house was my office.
I spent most of my time when at home in my office. Huge floor to ceiling windows overlooked my pool and garden. The landscape architect had done a remarkable job with the outdoor space in the backyard. The deck and patio were masterfully designed to be a complete outdoor entertainment area with a fiberglass swimming pool with a waterslide, a covered outdoor kitchen, a fire pit, and a dining area.
Back when I first got this pad, I’d thrown many wild parties, but as I got older, those kinds of parties didn’t entice me anymore. Naked pool party orgies with the most beautiful women had been my thing, but I was bored with it now.
The women were boring too.
Because believe it or not, having sex with beautiful but boring women lost its charm. A woman could be gorgeous, but if I didn’t have anything in common with her, the relationship fell flat. The models and actresses I’d gone out with in the past knew absolutely nothing about computers, software, hardware, or internet entrepreneurship. Some barely knew basic computer terminology like what a browser was.
Seriously?
To be honest, I don’t think some of them knew what a mouse was, other than a rodent.
It was incredibly difficult to have a relationship with someone that I couldn’t talk to about my day to day life. The press loved to paint me as this womanizing playboy, and yes, I’d run through a fair share of beauties in my youth, but lately, my failed relationships weren’t because of a constant search for a new woman.
It was because I couldn’t find the right woman for me.
The media had a difficult time forgetting. I’d changed my ways, but no one bought it. Theodore Wainwright was still and always would be, a playboy to them.
The disconnect between how the public saw me and how I saw myself prompted me to examine my past. Was it a midlife crisis? Maybe. But some of my self-doubt happened because my birth parents were still a mystery to me. So, I constantly asked myself, Who am I really?