Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
“Naz, I get it’s fucking horrifying, okay? I get it.”
“No, you really don’t. Do you know what she told Roz?”
“God, don’t make me ask. I don’t want—”
“Just because it is not in your home, affecting your life does not mean you have the right to ignore it happening to someone else.”
Luca’s gaze handed as he looked back at Naz. “What did she tell Roz?”
“She was four—her virginity was auctioned off by her father. Three quarters of a million. She was flown to Hong Kong to deliver for the buyer. Four, Luca.”
Luca was quiet for longer than Naz cared to admit. As his friend chewed on those words, and decided what he wanted to do with it, Naz turned back to the screen. Without warning, the username he wanted to use on the forum came to his mind, and before he could think better of it, he created an account.
At the doorway, Luca still hadn’t moved to leave.
“You can’t hunt them all down, it’ll be impossible,” Luca muttered.
Naz didn’t need to be told, although it hurt his chest like nothing else. “I know.”
“You’re going to chase a rabbit hole, Naz.”
“What if ...”
“What?”
“What if I made a program, Luca, that traced every picture, and every person in these forums. It’d have to be advanced ... crazy advanced, right? I can code it to run information through other databases.”
“Hack, databases, you mean,” Luca countered.
Naz shrugged. “But I’ve done that before—I’ve been in government databases and back out with no one knowing I was even there. It’s not impossible. I could do it again ... if I could match information from profiles or pictures to real kids with real parents or the people doing this to them ... it could be anonymously delivered to police across the globe. Everything is on the internet now. Everything has security cameras with facial recognition. I could make a fucking program—I could do it.”
“A program like that, one that could actually grab information when everything from IPs to ... shit, everything and everyone on the dark web use proxy servers and VPNs, Naz. That’s before the fail safes put into place by the people running the forums and ... You know it’s not that easy, we use it for gunrunning.”
“I know how they work, I made one, remember?”
A whole online, deep web network for the gun trafficking side of his father’s business. Yeah, Naz knew how it worked.
“But nothing is perfect and all I need is the right program to get past those safe guards,” Naz said. “I could do that—I could make it.”
Luca made a noise under his breath. “... fuck, Naz, that could take—”
“Years, I know.” Naz frowned at the screen in front of him as he scrolled through a forum topic that described the grooming and sale of a child from Alabama. Holy fucking shit. “But I don’t have years, Luca. I have nine months.”
“What?”
“I have seven or so months before my baby is born. I don’t have years to do this.”
Because he couldn’t imagine his child coming into the world when this was all around them. And if he didn’t do something, then what good was he?
“Is Roz—”
“Dinner tomorrow,” Naz interjected. “You should come and hear the news like everyone else.”
“Shit.”
“And these kids ... they don’t have years, either. Once was one too many. I can’t hunt them all, but I can get rid of a lot of them.”
“Except they keep coming back,” Luca replied, “it’s not something you can eradicate like a diseased animal, or something. When these ones are gone, someone else will take their place. Just like with anything else. All you can do is protect your kids from it the best you can, Naz.”
He didn’t need the reminder, but he still had to do something. For now, he would settle on doing this until he figure something else out.
But the ones at the very top? Ones like Penny’s father?
Naz would save those as a lesson—a lesson that would really hurt when he drove it home—for the rest that somehow managed to escape his notice. Someone was watching them, and someone was coming for them. Every fucking one of them.
New York: Part 3
Naz POV
The chatter at the table continued on despite the fact Roz had looked to Naz with an arched brow as if to silently ask, Now? He shrugged, letting the choice be up to her. They had spent the first hour of this family dinner explaining to the important people from both their families that a teenage girl would be living with them, and very little else. The whys wasn’t important, not was it their business to share the things that Penny had gone through over the years. They answered as many questions as they were asked, but when it came right down to it, they actually said very little about it.