“Yeah.” A syllable that held a world of resentment. “The business isn’t something you turn over to someone. It’s a thing you have to take.”
“And she took it.”
“She was ready the minute he went into hospice, a week before he died. A couple of people died, and a couple of others came to sign contracts instead. She sat by my grandfather’s bedside, held his hand, and then whispered to him that all he owned was hers now. So he died pissed off and threatening to slit her throat, but he was gone.”
“Jesus, Logan.”
“Yeah, he overlooked Aunt Mary because she was a woman. He was old-fashioned like that, so he never saw her coming. Like, who did he tell all his how-to-crime stories to and loan seed money to? Four young white guys. Did he loan money to my female cousins? No. Did he pay for them to go to Le Rosey and make connections? No. So my Aunt Mary did it on her own, and she did it very well. And then she took everything from him. How do you know about her?”
And there was the reason Tristan hadn’t talked to any of the other guys about the letter: because they would start asking questions. “I read a news article about her. Saw her last name was Bell. Thought of you.”
“Yeah. Sure. Okay. Well, don’t poke that bear with a stick, Tristan. It’s not worth it.”
21
Merry People of Sherwood Forest
Colleen
While Colleen and Tristan worked their butts off writing an Anonymity program for her, even though Colleen was sure they should have been working on figuring out how to get all that GameShack stock for the crazy people in the letter, she found time to occasionally pop onto the Sherwood Forest stock market forum.
Dear Merry People of Sherwood Forest:
This is just a quick post to reassure everybody that I have been neither murdered nor kidnapped by aliens nor been removed as a moderator from Sherwood Forest. While getting abducted by aliens might be pretty awesome, I am currently just really busy at work. Some people quit at our store, and they scheduled me for some crazy hours in retaliation.
Don’t get too comfortable, though, because I’m still lurking around here, and I am seeing what everybody is posting. It’s probably just going to be another few days or so until I am back all over your butts and not letting anybody get away with anything. So enjoy your reprieve from my moderating for another week or so because then it’s back to normal.
I mean, jeez, folks. I know that I spend too much time on the internet and tend to post and moderate several times a day, but I’ve only been incommunicado for four days.
Love,
QueenMod
A few hours later, the comments on her post topped a thousand replies, with everything from commiserations for overwork to noting that what she’d written was exactly what somebody who’d been kidnapped by aliens would say.
But everybody seemed glad that she wasn’t dead or hadn’t been relieved of her duties as a moderator.
It was kind of gratifying, how much they’d missed her and the things they said.
Sherwood Forest was a tight-knit community that had been established as a safe haven for stock investors for many years. They had good people there as members, and Colleen was honored to be a part of it.
22
Pink
Tristan
That afternoon, Tristan took dozens of pictures of Colleen from all angles, even walking around her with his phone held at various heights for composite views. They got a little silly at times with him instructing her to “Work it, work it,” as she strolled five steps across the apartment in differing types of light: overhead from her lamp, stripes through the window’s horizontal blinds, and dim light in the evening. The images’ digital data went into the program, and it began to take shape.
As Tristan made the keyboard clatter whilst writing the code because he could type about a hundred words a minute and Colleen was evaluating the outcome of his work on another screen, she piped up and asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be working on getting stock for Mary Varvara Bell?”
Hell, yes, he was, and his deadline of next week was racing toward him like the shock wave from a mushroom cloud on the horizon. “It’s fine. We need to get this done first.”
“I thought your deadline was six weeks or so from now? If it’s that soon, shouldn’t we be making plans or executing some strategies by now?”
“It’s fine,” Tristan repeated, his teeth grinding together. “We have plenty of time.”
When they compiled and ran the program to see how it was working, they’d both missed a few bugs, which was normal and to be expected. Tristan exported the error file and sent it to her printer.
But Colleen was not so calm about it when she saw the pages listing the bugs rattling out of the printer. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry. I should’ve caught those. Those are basic mistakes, and I should’ve caught those a long time ago. I’m such an idiot. I’m such an idiot for making those dumbass mistakes. See that one right there?” She pointed at the screen. “I wrote that section a few hours ago. That one is all my fault. I’m such a dumbshit for making such a piss-poor error.” Her voice rose with anger and distress. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I won’t do it again. I’ll clean this up. I’ll go over all this code again and again until it’s perfect. I’m so sorry for being such a screw-up that I couldn’t even write some easy code without screwing it up like a stupid dumbass.”
Tristan was standing by this point, and he stroked his hands over her soft shoulders and down her arms. “Stop.”
“But I screwed it up again—”
He did not like it when she did this to herself. “Debugging is a normal part of writing code, and you need to stop speaking about yourself that way. You’re not an idiot. You are not stupid or a dumbass. I’ve told you before that you are to stop saying these things about yourself.”
Under his hands, her shoulders trembled. “I’m sorry. I’ll fix it. I’m just so stupid. I’m so sorry.”
“Colleen,” he said and raised her chin to look at him. “I told you that you will speak well of yourself in my presence. You will now be punished for disobeying me.”
Her soft brown eyes widened, startled, but she didn’t argue. Her shoulders stilled under his hands.
Tristan told her, “A spanking, a hard one, and then I will use you however I please for the rest of the night, but no orgasms for you.”
She blinked, and her attention shifted to processing the punishment instead of spinning around her despair. Good.
He said, “In addition, the only words you are allowed to say are yes, sir, or yes, please.”
She nodded and then whispered, “But safe words?”
“Oh, of course. Always. Your safewords are always available to you.”
She nodded, and her breathing steadied.
“Now, clothes off, all of them, and across my knee.”
Tristan sprawled in her computer chair like it was a throne and watched her undress. She was wearing just skimpy shorts and a tee-shirt, but her bra and panties were pink lace underneath.