Featured image by DarkmoonArt_de from Pixabay

The illegitimate side of her business started right after Bobby graduated. It took her that long to come up with software which could parse and catalog the dream data. Not detailed, at least not yet. At first she could only identify the intense dreams. This became her first site on the Dark Web, IntenseDreams. Visitors could purchase a dream based on intensity level for $5. An updated version of her idiot phone app would then monitor the buyer’s sleep pattern. When they started to drift off it would download and play back the dream.

Her second Dark Web site was called RichDreams. There a person could buy a dream guaranteed to have come from a wealthy person. Prices ranged from $2 for an ordinary dream to $7 for an intense dream. Given all of the wealthy patrons her legitimate business had, this database was large. She then created a spin-off called DreamRoulette. Much the same but the dream database was from everyone. Prices ranged from $1 to $5 based on intensity level.

Once she had learned enough to categorize the dreams based on type, sites popped up all over the Dark Web offering various dream categories. PleasureMind offered erotic dreams. AnotherLife offered warm beautiful fantasy dreams of perfect lives. MentalMayhem offered violent sick and twisted dreams so intense people woke up believing they had actually murdered someone in the most horrible of ways.

It was the perfect drug and the Dark Web was addicted. She started off selling only a few hundred dollars worth of dreams per night. By the time her last site when online she was generating north of $1 million per day. All of it ran through her off-shore entities and off-shore brokerage accounts.

She used LinkedIn to identify which of her legitimate customers were the officers and board members of publicly traded companies. Those were the dreams she chose to partake of. She knew well in advance when the next earth shattering product was about to be announced and when a company was about to get caught cooking the books. She shorted those about to fail and bought those about to win. There was nothing to tie her to any of the companies so no insider trading investigation could ever stick. Most of her really shady trades she did anonymously through her off-shore brokerage accounts. True, most of her profit came from shorting because the heads of companies about to go to prison needed sleep therapy the most, but any time you can short a stock for $80 or more per share and cover that short a few weeks later for under $10/share you were making serious money.

At 26 her legitimate business was making tens of millions, her illegitimate business making hundreds of millions and her stock trading was pulling down over a billion dollars per year. She couldn’t even remember all of the properties she owned in all of the countries. Most she bought through shell companies and had never been to see. She even owned some high end hotels, yet she drove an old Camry hybrid and didn’t wear expensive clothes. Nobody would think she was a billionaire. Few would even notice her walking down the street. Oh, she did have legs. She could rock a skirt and heels if she really wanted, it’s just that she never wanted.

“26 and a virgin” she whispered. Okay, she knew it was a lie. The same lie she’d been telling herself since the first time. There were lots of hard bodied pretty boy actors out here who sold themselves through escort services. That was the other reason she owned the condos. Someone you might know could be at a hotel. People in the condos were used to out of town people staying their for a few nights to a few months. They ignored them. The escort showed up, provided services and maid service cleaned up some time later in the week. No guest registration or security cameras.

She had certainly never had a boyfriend or been in love. All she had known is what she did and what she did made her one of the richest people in Silicon Valley though nobody knew it. She could be the richest person in the world if she could solve one more problem. Inserting her dream recording app into the game apps her company sold was child’s play. The problem was they still needed to wear those skull pads.

It was a hardware problem. How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb? None. It’s a hardware problem. Hardware had been Bobby’s world.

Asking Bobby to solve the problem wasn’t the hard part. Getting Bobby alone to discuss it, that was the problem. She swore he put a trap door in the lab downstairs. Every time she could see him logged in from down there she would get off the elevator to find he was not there. His key card would say he was in the building but she could never find him.

Gina couldn’t remember the name of the woman currently residing in Bobby’s mansion. She never bothered to learn their names because they weren’t there very long. This one had made it a month. Something of a record for a woman in Bobby’s life. If she didn’t mind sharing Bobby with every other woman he found worth doing this one just might last.

Gina had wondered what would happen if Bobby got married? How much the little wife would want to know about where he worked and what the company did? Would he settle down with one that just wanted to be a rich mom, oblivious to where the money came from? Would someone try to use Bobby’s kids to get to her?

Of course that last question seemed somewhat moot. Bobby was already paying to support five kids that she knew of, probably a couple more that she didn’t.  One fateful phone call would provide more answers than she wanted. She dialed Bobby’s house phone.

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