Chapter 4

After the police dropped Max off at his house, Cody Slonaker sat in the back of the police car wondering how he was going to break the news of his daughter’s career to his wife. The only reason he knew about it was because of an unusual email he received at work. It had a subject line of ‘Your Daughter.’ The message was short, “Cody, Liz has opened a sex site. You should know about it. A friend.” There was a link to a website.

His first action after glancing over it was to delete it thinking it was spam that managed to make it through the company’s spam filter. Fortunately, his email program didn’t really delete the email. It was a little later that one minor detail about that email occured to him. The sender knew both his name and his daughter’s name. He went to the email trash folder and searched for the email.

A careful examination of the email didn’t give him a clue concerning the sender’s identity. The return address was just a user name consisting of a random mix of characters and letters with a widely used internet email service. He would have to get a court order to find out the identity of the sender.

Wondering what he would find, he clicked on the link hoping that he’d find a picture or two of his daughter drunk at some college party. A few seconds later a webpage opened in his browser. As the images loaded, his stomach lurched. It was filled with pictures of his daughter, in full naked glory, engaged in a variety of sex acts with men and women. This was a commercial sex website.

The pictures were very explicit. Only a gynecologist could get a closer view of her private parts. There were men of all shapes and sizes entering every orifice she had. Not only one orifice at a time, but in a few of the pictures it was all of them at once.

His hand shook while he went through the preview pages intended to capture a customer’s interests. He wasn’t interested in becoming a customer. He wanted to find the individual responsible for it and torture them to death. She had to be on drugs, that was the only explanation he was willing to consider.

With each page, his disappointment in his daughter grew. It was when he reached the picture of a man pissing into his daughter’s mouth that he lost it. He closed the browser and marched out of the office for the nearest bar.

The events at the bar had taken a little of the edge off of his anger. Now he had to explain to his wife about his daughter’s website. He’d rather go to the dentist for a root canal. The alcohol he had consumed seemed to have no effect on him.

When the police car arrived at his house, he walked up to the front door. Dreading what was to come, he opened the door and stepped into the living room while calling out, “I’m home!”

His wife, Angie, entered the living room from the kitchen. In a cheerful voice, she asked, “How was your day?”

“Not good,” Cody answered. “In fact, it was the worst day of my life.”

“What’s the matter?” Angie asked suddenly concerned by the serious tone in his voice.

He looked at his wife thinking that he was about to crush her comfortable little world. He hoped she didn’t faint. Thinking it would be better if she were seated, he pointed to a chair.

“I think you need to sit down.”

She smiled hoping to alleviate some of the seriousness. Things couldn’t be so bad. Making light of the situation, she said, “You’re so serious.”

“I’ve got some really bad news,” he said.

Frowning, she took a seat and looked up at him expectantly. She watched him take a seat in a chair across the room. He moved in a stiff manner reminiscent of a much older man. He looked very tired and upset. It dawned on her that he might have a serious illness and she began to worry. She had no idea what they would do if he got and was unable to work. Well, she did have one idea, but that was a last resort.

“Our daughter has a sex website,” Cody said after deciding that coming straight out with the news was probably the best way to break it to her.

“When did you find out about it?” she asked visibly relieved that it wasn’t anything really serious.

Puzzled, Cody stared at his wife. She didn’t seem to be the least bit surprised. Maybe she was thinking of some other website - like one from college.

“Today, I got an anonymous email,” Cody answered.

“Okay,” she said.

Confused by her response, Cody said, “You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’m not. She opened it about six month ago,” Angie replied. “I kind of like it.”

“What?”

“I think it is tastefully done,” she said.

“What did you say?”

“She is a really pretty girl,” Angie said.

“Excuse me?”

Seeing that his face was turning red, she asked, “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t think we’re talking about the same website,” Cody said.

He wondered if this was some sort of delirium brought on by excessive alcohol consumption. He had to be hallucinating this entire conversation. Real mothers didn’t react like this to the news that their daughter was in the sex business.

“Her sex site, right?” Angie asked.

“Yes,” Cody said.

“I’ve seen it,” she said.

Wondering if they were talking about the same website, Cody said, “The website with all kinds of pictures of her engaged in sex with men, women, and masturbating with toys.”

“Yes,” she said. “That one.”

“You knew about it?” Code asked.

“She told me all about it when she opened it. I thought it was rather ambitious of her,” Angie said proudly.

“You thought turning into a whore was ambitious?” he asked incredulously.

He wondered if he really knew his wife. He couldn’t believe she knew about this and didn’t tell him. Even worse, she didn’t seem to have a problem with what his daughter was doing. The pictures on that website had turned his stomach in disgust. He had never been so ashamed of his daughter.

“Don’t call her a whore,” she said. “She’s an internet entrepreneur running an entertainment website.”

“She’s getting paid by people so that they can watch her have sex. That makes her a fucking whore,” Cody said getting angry.

“She’s a business woman and a very successful one. She’ll make over a million dollars this year,” she said.

“She’s a fucking whore,” Cody shouted.

“Calm down,” Angie said, “I knew you’d get all bent out of shape over this. Don’t worry. She’ll make her money and then retire.”

“Don’t worry? Our daughter has turned into a whore and you tell me not worry? What kind of fucking mother are you?” Cody asked incredulously.

“I’m a good mother who supports her daughter.”

Cody said, “I’ve got to know. Who is the lowlife scum who talked her into this?”

“No one. It was her own idea. Brilliant, wasn’t it?”

Cody stared at his wife speechless. He didn’t know what was worse, the fact that it was his daughter’s idea and that there wasn’t a skanky asshole boyfriend behind it all or his wife thinking it was brilliant. He had looked forward to killing the boyfriend.

“Who gave her the money to do this?”

“She used the tuition money you sent her last fall,” Angie said.

He would have felt less pain in his stomach if someone had stabbed him with a blunt knife. The idea that she had used her tuition money to become a whore was almost too much to bear. He could feel his blood pressure shooting up a couple more points.

“How is she paying for her tuition?” Cody asked suspecting he knew the answer.

“She dropped out of college. Her business is taking all of her time,” Angie answered.

“Kill me now, God. I beg of you, take me now,” Cody said staring up at the ceiling.

“It is just a little website,” Angie said.