Remembering events from three years before . . . .
" Ella , Ella wake up. ELLA " my mum snapped. She was getting impatient. I blinked, my eyes open, squinting against the light she had turned on, it was blinding me as I slowly tried to open my eyes . My mother was hovering over my bed, a massive grin on her face. " Mum, seriously the light " I groaned, grabbing one of my teddies that I kept on my bed to cover my eyes, I smashed it on my face, blocking out the light. " Ella stop ruining the moment. For heaven's sake listen to me " my mother said , snatching the teddy off of my face. I looked up at her and she looked almost like a small child on Christmas morning , she was buzzing with excitement.
That peaked my interest. My mother only ever got this excited about certain things. Like when dad bought her a super pricey designer handbag , or when he got a raise at work or a huge bonus. My mum was lovely , she loved me endlessly , I was my mum and dad's only child. Mum laughed once when I asked why I didn't have any siblings. She said " Ella Bella , I took a risk with my figure once when we had you. And I snapped back easily. Why would I test fate again? Plus, we got you. You were perfect. Any other child we had would never compare to how beautiful you are". Mum was a little vein , materialistic and spoiled. But she was also so loving , it was weird.
Sitting up, I gave her a bored glance. " Come on spit it out ", I said with a yawn. She stepped back and literally started bouncing. " Do you know how daddy launched that app thingy he was doing ? " she said and I frowned at her and nodded. Mum didn't like what it was Daddy had launched. There for she had never paid it any interest. When Daddy had pressed the launch button, I had been the one by his side for his big moment. She had been shopping or maybe getting her hair done. Who knows ?
She didn't agree with that either. I was a respectable young woman, so she said. I shouldn't be involved with such things. I was twenty. Fair enough, I wasn't experienced in some things that she was correct about. But I wasn't hiding under a rock , I knew what those things were and what they entailed, I had done some stuff before. Just not the whole thing. I wanted to save that for when I was in a relationship that lasted longer than a few months, it was how I knew if the boy was worth it , was he willing to wait ? Daddy worked as a website designer for a marketing company. This project had been his little side hustle for two years. He made a website and an app , and he was funding it all himself , which is why it took longer to do. Mum hated it because it meant less money for her , or money would come out of a bonus for it, instead of a holiday or a new kitchen or something . Like I said, she was very money-orientated.
Daddy had built a safe place for people to meet up for s*x , whatever your kink was or whatever you wanted. There was a section for you. And it was the safest app out there. To sign up you needed to upload ID , you needed to be vetted and at the moment just Daddy was doing it. So he had been working super late over the last two weeks since he launched it. Daddy had approached a local authority to see if there was a way he could run these people through their data base to make sure he wasn't accepting criminals to the site or people with any sort of offense on their records. There had been a lot of negotiating , at first it was a straight no. But Daddy had produced facts and figures of all the crimes that happen by people meeting people off of sites that don't have as high of a security protocol as he could provide.
Eventually, they agreed to the fact he could softly search them as they call it through one of there programs , it wouldn't tell him a lot but it would flag up if they had any criminal records at all. If they did, Daddy wouldn't let them on to his site. He also asked if he had all of their details and they passed the soft search. They would do a completely confidential video conference with him , to check if the ID matched the face. And all their details would be kept confidential. They could then use a screen name. But daddy would have everything else if needed. Because one more cool feature was , if anyone was meeting up , they could log in to where they were meeting and attach who they were actually meeting. The app would then ask them to report when they were finished and to rate the person they had met and leave a review. Any bad reviews will get that person a warning , if they were a valid review, not just something petty or silly like she was rubbish at giving a blow job. No, it was more like they were too rough , or didn't adhere to a safe word. See, I knew a little bit, not a lot , but just the basic stuff from listening to Daddy. Some would say it was weird my dad talking to me about stuff like that , but it wasn't he was just so animated about what he was doing, it was just general conversation.
Anyway , if they didn't check in after the meeting had happened within twenty-four hours , the system would alert my dad, who would give them a welfare call. If they failed to answer three welfare calls, daddy would report it, for the police to give them a welfare check and daddy would have all the correct details and locations at the ready to hand over if needed. It was made clear in the site rules that if it was just laziness not checking in or answering the phone, you would be banned for wasting police time. It, of course, wasn't one hundred percent safe. Anyone meeting a stranger was in some sort of danger. But daddy's site did a lot more to try and make them feel safer.Which made it a little pricier than your usual app. Daddy was doing all of it all by himself , and he had designed it all by himself. Well, nearly all by himself, he had little bits of help . Crazy. Daddy had said when he had this idea, " s*x sells and if you want safe s*x you will pay a higher price for it. Cheap s*x is dangerous s*x. But this isn't all about s*x, Tanya. It can just be for people looking for someone to talk to , or meet up for coffee with , they can tailor it to whatever it is they are looking for ". I hadn't meant to over hear that , he had been talking to mum trying to convince her this would be big.
" Yes mum " I said, answering her. " Well, it has taken off , like seriously off. Daddy says there are over two hundred thousand applicants waiting to be accepted in. Some site has rated it , or someone blogged about it. I don't know which but they said it is the safest thing out there and it went crazy overnight. Over two hundred thousand applicants at the price of first month subscription and the admission fee. Oh my gosh Ella. Daddy said we would not just be rich, we would be set for life because more and more are signing up every hour from all over the world. Daddy is quitting his job today and his friend Thomas, he is too. Daddy is hiring him. He needs to hire lots of people " she screeched and walked out of my bedroom, leaving me confused.
Hopping out of bed, I went down into the basement. Daddy had made it into his workspace, and he and my dad's best friend, Thomas, were both there. Heads buried in laptops. Walking down the steps, Daddy looked up and grinned at me. He looked tired but he looked happy. " Ella, you said you wanted a part-time job around your studies, does that still stand ? " Daddy asked and I grinned. " Good get over here. Let me show you how to do this " he laughed. Walking over, I kissed Uncle Tommy's head on my way past. He has been in my life since I was a baby. I always called him uncle Tommy. He helped my dad with some of the software for this from time to time. Dad said if it took off he would make sure Uncle Tommy was right by his side and it looked like he was going to be." Morning Ella Bella " he said, not looking up as I passed by him to my dad.
Daddy showed me a few things to do. He also showed me the applicant's awaiting number. It was now over three hundred thousand. It only grew over the day. Daddy broke off from vetting applicants half way through the day to put out a post to hire more people. He just couldn't keep up, even with mine and Uncle Tommy's help. That was how it all started. It grew like a monster, growing legs and arms like crazy and as that grew. Everything else changed. We moved from our modest four-bedroom home in a nice neighbourhood near nice schools where all my friends were from just outside of the city. To move into the city , to a big eight-bedroom home that had a pool and a dining hall the size of the hall at school. It didn't just stop at that when the wealthy saw what daddy had created , and how perfect the design and software was. They wanted his help with their own stuff. He made uncle Tommy his vice president , and he had to register as an official company because he burst through all of the income thresholds. He now had over two hundred people working for him. Including an HR department. It went CRAZY. Daddy had lots more plans for other ventures too.
But even if the popularity dwindled on the s*x app , the amount other wealthy men were paying daddy now would be more than enough to live on. He was redesigning entire programs they used in their offices , not just their websites. Daddy had recruited a team of software analysts and designers for their projects too. He also made sure he was giving graduating people a chance of apprenticeships too. By my request, admittedly. But those projects he over saw himself also. They were worth too much to mess up.
In a nut shell we were now minted , ridiculously so. Our faces were splashed everywhere , the new up and coming wealthy family of New York they had called us. It was as soon as the gossip magazines posted that , that we then started being thrust into rich social events.It was one of those events where I first met Caleb Kingsman. It was where everything had started and that was when I realized just how out of my depth I really was. Sometimes I wish my father had never pushed that launch button. At twenty-three, I was now working fully for my father at his company. Mother said I shouldn't be , but I had been studying to be just like my father and I was not giving up that dream. Even if I had given up my friends and my life back then when we had moved away , they fell away too. It was like some were intimidated and others were just after what I now had. So , I have ended up lonely now most of the time. Except Jade , she sometimes still visits. She didn't care what I had now , but I had also known her since I was born and she was Uncle Tommy's daughter, so she was more like family and she had money now too. Her life had changed like mine had. . She was traveling, though for a few years she would be gone with brief visits home. Now she had graduated , she wanted me to go. But I didn't want to let Dad down , he needed my help.
I was now a part of the just graduated team that helped my father with top clients , another disapproval of mother. That fact, I insisted I started at the bottom with them. And I wasn't some executive of boss of a department or something. She didn't know I also helped Dad with other projects that were pricey ones , just me and him. I loved it , it was how we kept close. But he kept my name off of those , those types of clients with such pricey bills to pay for and the projects we actually worked on didn't want a young person who just graduated at twenty-three years old on their projects. They thought it was just dad. A one on one service. Anyway, that night, the night I met Caleb six months ago , errrghhh who knew ?