Chapter 1

Lisa Chapman strutted past a group of dirty, lecherous homeless men, their eyes devouring her like a piece of meat. Her skirt was tight and her blouse low-cut, emphasizing her curves for their pleasure. She could feel their hungry stares and wolf whistles piercing her skin as she clicked confidently by in her heels. “Should have worn pantyhose,” she chastised herself, knowing that only a tiny thong protected her most intimate parts from their prying eyes. These filthy creeps didn’t deserve to see the pale flesh leading up her skirt to her forbidden treasures.

At thirty-five, Lisa was working a junior hire role at McQuintile Corp in San Francisco. A DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) hire, Lisa had made the move from Ohio not just for her own career but also for her thirteen-year-old daughter, Lola. It was a chance to escape her deadbeat ex-boyfriend—Lola’s father—and to give her daughter the opportunity for a better life.

This job felt like a lifeline, and Lisa had been overjoyed when her speculative application for a systems assistant position was accepted, despite her limited experience. McQuintile Corp had been eager to diversify its workforce, offering tax-incentivized benefits like covering Lisa’s first six months of accommodation.

But this generous perk only heightened the pressure to succeed. With her probation period looming, Lisa knew she had to prove herself. Her salary barely covered the essentials in an expensive city like San Francisco, but she was determined to make it work. For Lisa, failure wasn’t an option—not for herself, and especially not for Lola.

As Lisa stepped into the office, a fleeting sense of relief washed over her—relief at escaping the chaotic streets outside and finding herself among professionals. But the feeling was short-lived. Her apprehension resurfaced as she remembered the task ahead: sitting in on a meeting with Edward Pembroke, her supervisor, to take notes for the Japanese section.

Edward Pembroke, a towering figure over six feet tall, regarded Lisa with a mixture of disdain and thinly veiled predation. His balding head gleamed under the fluorescent lights, and his thick glasses perched on a bulbous nose did little to soften the unpleasant sharpness of his gaze. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to reveal muscular forearms, though his protruding belly and sagging features meant that despite being in his early fifties, Pembroke could easily pass for a man ten years older.

Lisa, in stark contrast, was petite, delicate, and pretty. She had chosen the ridiculously short skirt Pembroke had suggested would help her “look the part.” The implication that it might compensate for her supposed professional shortcomings had left her feeling humiliated, but she couldn’t afford to lose this job.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Mr. Pembroke,” Lisa stammered, nervously clutching her notepad as she hurried to her seat. “My daughter had a school project—I had to help her finish it.”

Pembroke’s lips twisted into something that could only loosely be called a smile. “Punctuality is important, Miss Carter,” he replied, his tone dripping with condescension. His bespectacled eyes, however, were not on her face—they roamed over her legs, lingering on her thighs as she perched uneasily on the too-high swivel chair he had deliberately adjusted.

“Well,” he continued, his gaze predatory, “let’s hope you make up for lost time. The Japanese team won’t wait for us.” His eyes flicked up for a moment, meeting hers, before drifting back down, as if searching for the slightest glimpse of panties between her thighs.

Lisa shifted uncomfortably under his scrutiny, feeling exposed and trapped. She smoothed the fabric of her skirt over her lap, her trembling hands betraying her nerves. Pembroke’s presence loomed over her like a shadow. Pembroke, with his leering gaze and cruel demeanor, held her professional future in his hands. And he knew it.

“Stupid fucking whore,” Pembroke muttered under his breath, just loud enough for his irritation to seep into the air. His skills as a manager were undeniable, but his interpersonal skills left much to be desired. He knew the company was making cutbacks, but surely they couldn’t afford to lose him. Or so he told himself.

The meeting dragged on, a tedious back-and-forth with the Japanese team about their product. Lisa struggled to keep up, her notes chaotic and unfocused as she tried to make sense of the jargon-laden discussion. For Pembroke, boredom quickly turned into amusement as he fired off glib, dismissive responses to their colleagues overseas, taking far more pleasure in swiveling his chair to flash predatory smiles at Lisa.

“I’m going to test you on what you understand from this, Miss Chapman,” he said, his voice slick with malevolence. Her hands trembled as she scribbled furiously, desperate to keep up. She swallowed hard, her discomfort unmistakable.

Pembroke relished every second of it. As Lisa’s head remained down, her pen darting nervously across the page, he let his eyes wander. Her legs were crossed tightly, her skirt riding just high enough to reveal the faintest triangle of white beneath her thighs. His gaze lingered, a flicker of satisfaction crossing his face as he noted her tension.

He smiled to himself, a private, twisted smile, though it did little to mask the bitterness simmering beneath the surface. He hated her—the young, clueless bitch who had somehow landed this job. She didn’t understand a thing about the work, yet here she was, scribbling notes as if that would make up for her incompetence. At least he had the satisfaction of bossing her around, bending her to his will.

The memory of his last ordeal with a junior female colleague crossed his mind, and his jaw tightened. That situation had nearly cost him his career. He’d come dangerously close to losing it all when the company had put him on notice after she pressed charges. But his lawyers had stepped in, arguing that since the rape charges had been dropped, it should have no bearing on his employment. The company had reluctantly agreed. Pembroke had learned his lesson—or so he liked to think.

“Mr. Pembroke ... may I use the bathroom, please?” Lisa’s voice was soft, almost trembling. She had hurried to work that morning, straight into the meeting, and now her period was making her increasingly uncomfortable. She hoped for a moment of respite.

Pembroke looked up from his notes. “The meeting isn’t over yet,” he said, his tone laced with mock authority, as though denying her request was a matter of principle rather than petty malice.

“Yes, I understand,” Lisa replied meekly, lowering her gaze to avoid the sharp, almost gleeful look in his eyes.

Pembroke let the moment hang in the air, savoring her discomfort. Then, with a grandiose gesture, he said, “Okay, you can go—but leave your phone here. I don’t want you wasting time on your phone during your little break.”

Lisa hesitated for a fraction of a second, her face flushing as she fumbled to place her phone on the table. “Thank you, Mr. Pembroke,” she murmured before hurriedly leaving the room, her heels clicking against the polished floor.

Pembroke leered at her swaying behind, barely covered by the short skirt, as she walked away. He couldn’t resist the temptation and quickly snatched her phone while she was distracted. As he scrolled through her messages, a smirk crept onto his face. There were no potential suitors in sight, but he did come across a conversation with “Lola” – most likely her daughter. He hungrily devoured the pictures of Lola in her tight swimsuit, her young body on full display, and couldn’t help but imagine what she looked like without it. Pembroke’s eyes lingered on the black fabric stretched tightly over Lola’s pussy, his mind filled with wicked fantasies. She looked just like her mother - blonde hair, blue eyes, and an enticing young nubile body that promised endless pleasures.

He quickly noted down the instagram, phone numbers and other details of Lisa and Lola and put the phone back just as Lisa was returning. The rest of the day became a relentless gauntlet of petty torment. Pembroke assigned her impossible tasks, tore into her work with cutting remarks, and mocked her in front of colleagues, piling on meaningless busywork for her to prepare by tomorrow.

By the end of the day, Lisa looked utterly defeated. Pembroke caught the faint streaks of mascara smudged beneath her eyes, a telltale sign that she’d broken down in one of her hurried bathroom trips.

That evening, Lisa sat on the edge of her small apartment’s worn couch, her hands covering her face as sobs shook her shoulders. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her body trembling under the weight of the day’s humiliation and stress. From the hallway, Lola hesitated before stepping forward, her young face etched with concern. She gently placed a hand on her mother’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Mommy,” Lola said softly, her voice steady despite her own heavy heart. “I know how much this job means to you.”

Lisa looked up, her eyes red and swollen, and forced a weak smile for her daughter’s sake. “Oh, Lola, darling...” she reached out, pulling the girl into a hug. “Please, tell me you’re having a better time? I don’t want you to worry about me.”

Lola froze for a moment, unsure how to respond. The truth lodged itself in her throat, sharp and painful. She didn’t have the heart to tell her mother that she wasn’t enjoying San Francisco either. The move had been hard on both of them. The public school she attended felt rough, far worse than the one back in Delaware, Ohio.

The other kids had made it clear she didn’t belong. Being the new blonde girl in a school with mostly black kids had made her a target. She thought back to the terrible incident earlier that day—something she didn’t even want to put into words.

Three black girls had cornered her in the toilets. “Let’s see if the blond bitch’s hair between her legs is the same colour!” shouted KeSahawna, the biggest girl. Lola, who was just five feet and slender, couldn’t resist and couldn’t break free of their grip as the other girls held her down, pulled up her skirt and yanked her panties off, and throwing them into the bin, and laughing at the thin fuzz of blonde hair atop her vagina.

“Haha, she’s barely got any hair!” laughed another girl, as she held her thighs apart.

“Nooo, please leave me alone! I didn’t do anything to you!” moaned Lola, her voice shaking with humiliation. She struggled, twisting and pushing with all the strength she could muster, but it was no use. Helpless and weak, she could do nothing but endure their cruel taunts and mocking laughter.

One of the girls pulled out her phone, and Lola desperately succeeded in slipping out of their grasp. She hastily fixed her skirt and rushed out of the bathroom, relieved that she had managed to escape in time. The thought of being photographed and publicly humiliated was too much for her to bear. However, the rest of her day would now be spent with everyone knowing she wasn’t wearing any underwear, constantly adjusting her skirt while enduring glances and giggles from everyone else.

But seeing her mother’s fragile state, Lola swallowed her pain and forced a small smile. “I’m okay, Mommy,” she whispered, hugging Lisa tightly. “Don’t worry about me.”

Lisa pressed a kiss to Lola’s hair and held her close, her heart breaking at the thought of her daughter struggling too.

Edward Pembroke had never married nor formed a meaningful relationship, not out of misfortune but by design. His successful career as a software engineer had granted him the means to surround himself with women he paid for—escorts who served as objects for his control and cruelty. Over the years, he had abused many of them, leaving behind a trail of mutual loathing. The women despised him for his dehumanizing treatment, and he, in turn, regarded them with cold contempt, feeding his bitterness and misogyny.

Now, he lived in a sprawling house nestled in the countryside outside San Francisco, a testament to his ruthless ambition. The obscene wealth that enabled this luxury came from selling his two-bedroom home in Palo Alto during the height of the tech boom, a property he had acquired when the market was ripe for exploitation. It was yet another trophy of his early success as a tech genius in the 1990s.

That night, Edward Pembroke indulged his sinister curiosity. With calculated precision, he created fake profiles designed to infiltrate the Chapmans’ digital world. One of his fabricated personas was a bubbly fourteen-year-old Indonesian girl posing as a popular influencer, while another was a charismatic fifteen-year-old Korean male dancer with a carefully curated allure. Not stopping there, he added both Lola and Lisa through seemingly innocent “cute cat” accounts, exploiting their love for animals as a way to gain access to their lives.

But the Chapmans could wait for the main event of the evening. In Bogotá, Colombia, Sophia Velasquez was consumed with worry over her upcoming high school final exams. Just a few weeks ago, her path had seemed much clearer. A talented and hardworking student, Sophia had been well on her way to earning the grades needed to secure a free place at the local university, where she dreamed of studying medicine. Becoming a doctor wasn’t just her goal—it was her family’s hope for a better future. As the only daughter, much of the burden to lift her family out of poverty rested squarely on her young shoulders.

But then, a few weeks ago, everything had taken a horrifying turn. Sophia, always modest and reserved, had grown up in a strict religious household where going out with boys or indulging in anything deemed improper was strictly forbidden. Despite this, in the privacy of her room, she had timidly experimented with her body, taking a few photos and videos of herself in lingerie. It was nothing extreme—just a shy, personal exploration, meant only for her own eyes. She had never intended for anyone else to see them.

She would never know how it happened, but out of the blue, Sophia began receiving strange messages on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp from someone calling themselves “El Admirador Calentón”. At first, the messages seemed harmless, even friendly.

“Hi, Sophia! I see we have lots of friends in common. Your father, your uncle, your cousins, and even your school friends—wow! What a happy coincidence!”

Sophia was baffled but chose to ignore it. However, the messages quickly turned darker.

“You know,” the stranger wrote, “it would be so easy for me to message your friends, your family. I could tell them anything about you.”

Alarmed, Sophia replied hesitantly, “What do you mean?”

She didn’t know what to expect, but her world shattered when the next message arrived—this time with attachments. Her stomach dropped like a stone as she opened the files. There she was, in videos and photos she had taken privately. Awkwardly twerking and gyrating to pop songs in a tiny thong and bra, her slim, bronzed thighs and toned stomach exposed, her small breasts barely concealed behind the fabric. In another clip, she bent over, the camera catching her glistening buttocks parted beneath the skimpy thong. It was mortifying. The realization that some pervert had access to her most vulnerable moments filled her with dread and humiliation.

“I can’t believe you aren’t sharing these with your family and friends. Shall I do it for you?” teased El Admirador, the words cutting through the screen like a knife.

“No, please ... please, no! Who are you?” Sophia’s hands trembled as she typed, her breath hitching with panic.

“I’m just an admirer,” El Admirador replied, his tone mockingly casual. “Look, I don’t want to share this. It’s too good. I just want more of it—all to myself.”

Sophia’s heart sank as the next message came through, every word tightening the grip of fear around her chest.

“How about a deal?” he texted. “You send me more private stuff, and I keep it all to myself. That way, your family and friends don’t have to see this dirty little secret of yours.”

Pembroke took immense pleasure in his sinister hobby. He loved hacking into girls’ private emails, folders, and cloud accounts, hunting for compromising material to use against them. The thrill of finding “naughty” photos or videos was only the beginning—blackmail was where he truly savored his power.

Often, the girls would ignore his threats, paralyzed with terror. When they did, he would escalate without hesitation, sending their private pictures and videos—if he’d successfully procured them—to their friends, family, and classmates, leaving their lives in ruins. Other times, he would manipulate them further, as he had done with Sophia, persuading them to provide even more explicit material in a desperate attempt to keep the tamer content from being shared.

Pembroke loved this twisted game. To him, it wasn’t just about the photos or videos—it was about prolonging their agony. Each new piece of material he coerced was a greater triumph, a deeper invasion of their lives. And, in the end, it rarely mattered. He often released the new content anyway, ensuring the devastation was even more complete. For Pembroke, every ruined life was just another mark of his perverse success.

That evening, Sophia trudged home, her steps heavy with the weight of the day. She was stunningly pretty—her jet-black hair neatly braided, her dark eyes bright yet shadowed with worry, and her smile, framed by braces, still effortlessly charming. She wore her school uniform: a pleated skirt, knee-high white socks, polished black shoes, and a crisp white blouse. As she stepped inside, she was greeted by her mother’s warm embrace.