Page 150 of Morally Gray Daddies

Her Ignoble Daddy

By Emily Tilton

Chapter One

Emily

I hadn't ever really thought about what desperate circumstances meant until I found myself in them. I had never found any signs, in my mind or — much more urgently — in my body, of the kind of desperation I now experienced, sitting at my desk in the customer service department of Crescent Solutions.

It was late on a Friday afternoon — so late, in fact, that my supervisor had already left for the day. The office hummed with low fluorescent light, and outside the rain drizzled down onto the outskirts of London, making the air even more stiflingly warm than usual.

A cold wind blew in my heart, though. It seemed like I could feel the chill all the way in the pit of my stomach.

My fingers hovered over the Enter key.

I glanced around nervously. No one else seemed interested in me or my screen. My pulse pounded in my temples.

I pressed the key.

The software asked if I wished to proceed. Did I want to transfer five hundred thousand pounds from the corporate account that had been created in error to my personal checking account?

Yes. All I had to do was press Enter again. That account didn’t exist: the money wouldn’t be noticed by anyone but me. I could say… I could say my finger slipped.

With a soft click from the keyboard, the transfer completed and, somewhere in the cybernetic ether, my account balance surged. I felt a strange mix of relief and guilt, my fingers trembling as I minimized the browser window. The weight of my actions settled on my shoulders, a heavy burden it seemed unlikely I would ever shake off.

The office suddenly felt suffocating, as if the air were full of what seemed the almost-detectable scent of my transgression. My heart raced, each beat a reminder of what I had done. I glanced around furtively, half-expecting alarms to blare or security guards to burst through the doors. But the monotonous hum of computers and the distant chatter of my coworkers continued undisturbed.

I stood up abruptly, my chair squeaking against the linoleum floor. A few heads turned my way, and I forced a weak smile, mumbling something about needing fresh air. As I made my way to the exit, every step felt like wading through quicksand.

Outside, the London drizzle had intensified into a steady rain. I had forgotten my umbrella, but I didn't care. I let the cool droplets soak into my hair and clothes. The water mingled with the sweat on my brow, washing away the physical evidence of my nervousness, if not the emotional turmoil.

I walked aimlessly, my mind a whirlwind of justifications and fears. I couldn’t just run away to a tropical island, now, obviously: that would indicate guilt much more surely even than someone detecting the transfer.

As I wandered through the rain-slicked streets my mind drifted back to the circumstances that had brought me here. The irony of my situation wasn't lost on me. I had come to England to escape the oppressive corporate laws of America, only to find myself embroiled in a new web of corporate deceit.

I remembered the day I decided to leave, the day the punishing weight of the American corporate state had pressed down on me just an inch too far. The words on the drugstore receipt remained burned into my memory: Selecta scientists recommend oral contraception for sexually active young women.

I had only lost my virginity the night before, to a worthless, forgettable guy. I had made him use a condom, but that morning, I had searched the net for information about Plan B, just as something I should know about — especially because the conversation about the condom had felt so difficult.

At the sight of the words — the “recommendation” — on the receipt, heat had filled my face up to the roots of my hair. The laws taking away pretty much all privacy protection, that had once seemed like a distant concern, had become an inescapable reality, their tendrils reaching into every aspect of our lives. And at the center of it all lay Selecta Corporation, the prime mover behind the adoption of those draconian measures — and the home of the scientists who had known that I had just become sexually active.

A bitter laugh escaped my lips, muffled by the patter of rain. How clever I had thought myself, using Selecta — the very architect of my oppression — as my ticket to freedom. I had worked for Crescent, a minor Selecta subsidiary, for one week in New York before I had applied for a position with their UK branch, leveraging my skills and experience to secure the transfer.

Transfer. Like the fund transfer I had just made, a stupid idea in hindsight. What had I done, in either case? Three months in London, barely making ends meet. No corporate laws, but also none of the corporate subsidies Selecta gave their American employees. Freedom — but freedom to live a life of poverty and isolation.

The streets of London blurred around me, the gray buildings and muted colors a stark contrast to the vibrant, neon-lit corporate district I had left behind. Here, the influence of the megacorps — of Selecta, above all, world’s largest corporation — felt more subtle, but no less pervasive. I had traded an overt form of corporate oppression for a more cryptic one, thinking myself so smart, so cunning.

Then, an hour ago, in frustration, I had… not stolen, really, because money that didn’t exist couldn’t be stolen, right? Not embezzled, either, because that was a kind of stealing. Hadn’t I actually created that money, from a certain perspective, when I transferred it from the phantom account to my own?

I bit my lip as I turned my footsteps towards the tube station and began my long commute home. From one dreary outskirt of London to another, back to the spartan studio apartment that Crescent human resources had grudgingly helped me find.

Monday morning found me back at my desk at Crescent, working on the logistics for a construction project in Dover. I hadn’t touched the money in my checking account, even to pay the credit card bill that came due tomorrow. I told myself I would wait until the last moment, as if I had no idea the enormous deposit had been made.

I hit send on an email, and I heard someone clear their throat behind me. My heart pounded in my chest as I looked over my shoulder and saw Sarah Pierce standing there. She was looking for me, of course: she said my name before I could even complete the pivot of my head and shoulders.

"Emily," Miss Pierce said, her eyes narrowing. "Could you come into my office for a moment?"

It took all my willpower to rise from my desk, and then to follow her towards her office door. Somehow I managed it, though, and when I stepped through the doorway I found myself actually smiling feebly — trying to disarm the beautiful woman frowning at me, not even thinking about how weak and foolish my face must look to her.

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