Wicked and True (Wicked & Devoted 4)

“Wha… I don’t… Someone almost killed you? This morning?”

“What the fuck do you think I do for a living? I take down bad guys. Every. Single. Day. And you’ve been enabling them for a buck. But not anymore. I’m stopping it. They also kidnapped my girlfriend’s daughter. They put a gun to her head. She’s an infant. And it was all coordinated on your fucking app. Won’t that look good in the press, especially after you banned people so publicly for merely talking about government overreach because you thought they might get violent? These people are violent—and they’re criminals. Give me a fucking break.”

“Son…”

The emotional appeal in that one word pissed him off. “Don’t call me that.”

“But you are.”

“In blood only. If you don’t want me to go to the press with everything I have—accounts, screenshots, secret groups that clearly violate your terms of service—you ban every one of those motherfuckers and you live up to your promise of a safe platform. If you don’t, in twenty-four hours everything I have will be public. And since it resulted in three deaths just this morning, not to mention another man’s torture a few months back and a woman’s abduction—who’s still missing, by the way—won’t that make you look good?”

“Don’t do that. Please. If I ban them and cut off their communication, they’ll come after me. They’ll kill me.”

Zy shook his head. His father probably hadn’t seen self-risk in taking money from criminals. Now he was about to get a harsh lesson in reality, and Zy couldn’t feel sorry for him at all. “If you didn’t understand who you were getting into bed with, that’s your stupidity. But you can afford to hire bodyguards. My job is to protect people who can’t, and I’m going to fucking do it. Twenty-four hours or I talk.”

“Wait!” his father jumped in, sounding desperate. “I’ll give you ten million dollars to keep this quiet. Cash. In a Swiss bank account. Today.”

That was a lot of fucking money, but money didn’t motivate Zy. He had enough to be happy and take care of Tessa—if she would have him. He didn’t need more. “Ten million isn’t enough to buy my principles.”

“Fifteen.”

“You can’t buy me off. No amount of money will ever be enough to make me look the other way.”

“You don’t know what that much money could do for you…”

Yeah, he did. Make a shitload of problems he didn’t need. “Pass. I’m serious. You have twenty-four hours.”

“What if I sold the company?”

And divested himself of his fiefdom and Theo’s inheritance? “Elaborate.”

“Your mother and I are going public with the divorce day after tomorrow. It would be the logical time to announce that I’m selling the business, too.”

So he could supposedly give her half. The fact he hadn’t needed to do that in order to settle with his mother said he had another plan…but the public didn’t know that.

“Who would you sell it to?” Because they might be as bad or worse.

“I had an offer last week from an investment group. I haven’t actually replied yet. I wasn’t interested at the time, but I wanted to see how high I could drive them.”

Of course the asshole had. Zy wasn’t even surprised that he’d toyed with people for an ego stroke.

“But I could take them up on it…and let them know there are some security problems on the platform,” Phillip rushed to add.

“The sale needs to get announced by five p.m. Pacific.”

“That’s awfully fast. These things take weeks, sometimes months.

“Get it done today. Or else.”

His father hesitated, and Zy could feel him fuming. Finally, he huffed. “Fine.”

That was one hurdle down, but Zy had other provisions. Even if his father and the investment group agreed to a deal today, the actual close of the sale would take a while. “Two more things: first, you have an ‘outage’ or a ‘glitch’ or whatever you need to have to not piss off these cartels, but disable, throttle, or delete their accounts until the company changes hands. Be all apologies for the technical problems, but get it done.”

His dad sighed. “All right.”

“And you give ten percent of the sale of the business to helping others. Women’s shelters, food banks, halfway houses. Not through your buddies and their tax shelters or pet projects. And not to your investment guy to line your pockets later. Actual people in need. Don’t buy another fucking Lamborghini or whatever overpriced phallic symbol you drive these days. Be a human being.”

Phillip turned very quiet. “You’re right.”

Zy didn’t kid himself. His dad’s sudden change of heart and self-enlightenment wouldn’t last, but if it protected the people he loved for now, he’d done what he could. “And one more thing. I know you’re going to dive back into the tech pool, and I’d be an idiot to think you don’t already have something working, but you don’t do business with these criminals again. Ever.”