Addicted To His Fake Sugar Baby

The cardboard box smelled like dust and cheap cologne. Giselle Stephens pulled out a stack of old textbooks, her fingers brushing against the rough edges. The apartment was quiet, the sounds of Morningside Heights muffled by the old windowpanes. This was it. The remnants of a two-year relationship packed into a single, pathetic box.

She reached the bottom. Her fingertips hit something cold and smooth. It wasn't a book. She pushed the textbooks aside and pulled out a sleek, black smartphone. It was heavy, encased in a matte black armor that screamed money. It wasn't his usual cracked-screen iPhone.

Giselle turned it over in her hands. There was no brand name, no logo. Just a seamless slab of glass and metal. It was wedged deep in the corner, as if it had been dropped in haste or shoved there deliberately. A trap left behind. She hesitated, her thumb hovering over the power button. Curiosity won. The screen lit up, blindingly bright in the dim room.

A notification banner dropped down from the top.

Oero: I'm back in the city. Let's meet tonight. The usual spot.

Giselle's stomach dropped. Oero. The name hit her like a physical blow. She had heard it once before, slurred through tears and panic the night he left. Don't ever contact Oero. Don't even think about him. He makes people disappear from the docks. The memory of his terror was contagious. Her throat tightened, restricting her airway.

She typed in the passcode. It was a stupid guess, born of a bitter hunch. Her birthday. The lock screen dissolved.

Her eyes scrolled up the chat history. The air in the room seemed to vanish. The messages were a disaster of flirtation and greed. I need those shoes, Daddy. Miss you, Daddy. Send the bag, Daddy. The profile name attached to the outgoing messages made her vision blur: MoonCookie.

But it wasn't the words that made her blood run cold. It was the photos. Dozens of them. Selfies in lace lingerie, pouty lips, perfect blonde hair. Every single photo was of her roommate, Carleigh Ramsey. Carleigh's face. Carleigh's body. Stolen from her social media, cropped and filtered to look like private nudes.

And then she saw the numbers. Wire transfers. $10,000. $25,000. $50,000. A relentless stream of cash flowing into a linked account. Enough money to pay off a small mortgage, all extracted from a man named Oero using Carleigh's stolen face.

The phone vibrated in her hand, the buzz violent against her palm.

Oero: Don't be late. You know what happens when I'm kept waiting.

The words weren't a request. They were a sentence. Giselle dropped the phone onto the bed like it had burned her. She scrambled backward, her hip hitting the corner of her desk. Pain flared, but it was distant, muffled by the roaring in her ears.

She wasn't MoonCookie. She was Giselle Stephens, an engineering student on a full ride. She didn't know this man. But he thought he knew her. He thought he was talking to the girl in those photos. He thought he had been sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to her.

Her legs gave out. She slid down the side of the desk until she hit the floor. The linoleum was cold against her bare legs. She pulled her knees to her chest, trying to make herself as small as possible. The walls of the small bedroom seemed to be closing in, the air growing thicker, harder to breathe.

If she didn't show up tonight, he would come looking. If she showed up, he would realize she wasn't the girl in the photos. Either way, she was dead. The words echoed in her skull. Disappear from the docks.

A wave of nausea rolled over her. She clamped a hand over her mouth, swallowing down the bile that burned her throat. Her skin prickled with a sudden, violent heat, followed immediately by a shivering cold. Her teeth began to chatter, the sound loud in the silent room.

She crawled toward the bed, her limbs feeling like they were filled with wet sand. The phone sat on the rumpled blanket, the black screen reflecting the fading daylight. It looked like a black hole, waiting to swallow her whole.

A violent shudder wracked her body. She pulled the blanket over her shoulders, her fingers trembling so badly she could barely grip the fabric. Her forehead was burning to the touch, but her feet were blocks of ice. The stress, the shock, the sheer terror of the last ten minutes had short-circuited her system.

She curled into a fetal position, clutching the phone to her chest like a grenade with the pin pulled. Her eyelids grew heavy, the adrenaline crash pulling her down into a dark, feverish pit. The last thing she saw before the darkness took her was the notification light blinking on the phone. A steady, rhythmic pulse of green. A countdown.

Giselle woke up choking on her own breath. Her head was pounding, a dull, heavy throb behind her eyes that matched the rhythm of her racing heart. The room was bathed in the orange light of a setting sun. She had slept the entire day away.

She rolled over, her muscles screaming in protest. Her throat felt like sandpaper. And then she saw it. The black phone was lying on the pillow next to her, the screen a harsh, accusing glare.

Ten missed calls. All from Oero.

And one new message.

Oero: I'm getting impatient.

The fear came back, sharper and colder than before. It sliced through the fog of her fever, leaving her completely alert. She sat up, her head swimming for a moment before settling. Panic was a luxury she couldn't afford. She was an engineer. Engineers solved problems. This was a problem.

She grabbed a notebook and a pen from her nightstand, her handwriting shaky but determined.

1. I am the scapegoat.

2. Oero is dangerous.

3. I cannot expose my real identity.

She stared at the three points. The logic was sound, but it didn't tell her who she was dealing with. She picked up the phone again, her thumb hovering over the chat history. She scrolled up, past the threats, past the photos, past the sickening sweet talk. She needed data. She needed a vector.

Then she found it. A wire transfer receipt from three months ago. The sender field didn't say Oero. It said P.S.H. Holdings, LLC. The amount was $120,000.

Giselle dropped the phone on the bed and lunged for her laptop. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, typing the name into the search bar. The results were sparse, pointing to a labyrinth of shell corporations. This wasn't a company; it was a ghost, designed to be untraceable. But her engineering mind didn't give up. She cross-referenced registration data with financial databases, pulling on a thread of public records until it led her to a single majority shareholder. The blood drained from her face.

Campos Capital Partners. A hedge fund. Not just any hedge fund, but one of the most aggressive, ruthless firms on Wall Street. And the founder, Dereck Campos, was a monster in a tailored suit.

Her hands shaking, she went back to the black phone. There had to be more. In a hidden folder, marked only with a single dot, she found a handful of deleted photos. Most were nothing, but one caught her eye. It was a close-up of a man's hand on the steering wheel of a luxury car, his wrist adorned with a watch she'd never seen before-a skeletal face, all black metal and complex gears. It was unique. Unforgettable.

She opened a new tab and typed "Dereck Campos" into an image search. The third photo was from a Forbes article. The Man Who Makes Wall Street Weep. The piece detailed his rise to power, his complete lack of empathy, and his brutal takedowns of rival firms. And there, on his wrist, was the watch. The same black metal, the same skeletal face. The connection was undeniable. But it was the final paragraph of the article that made her stomach heave.

Mr. Campos is known for his private sense of justice. A former partner who attempted to embezzle funds was never seen again after a contentious dispute, last seen in the vicinity of Campos's private Hamptons estate.

The dock. The exact same detail her ex had choked out in terror. Oero was Dereck Campos. She had been catfishing one of the most powerful, dangerous men in the financial world.

Her chest tightened. She couldn't breathe. The walls of the apartment felt like they were crushing her. She was a dead girl walking. She had scammed a man who made people disappear for a living.

She looked at the phone. The message I'm getting impatient glowed on the screen. She had to reply. Silence was an admission of guilt. She had to play the part, just enough to buy herself some time.

She started typing. I'm sorry, I can't make it. No, too formal. MoonCookie was a sugar baby. She was supposed to be desperate and clingy.

She deleted it and tried again. Daddy, I'm so sorry. I caught a terrible flu, I can barely get out of bed. Can we please reschedule? I miss you so much.

The word "Daddy" made her skin crawl. It felt dirty, wrong on her tongue. But it was the language of the chat history. It was the only language he understood.

She hit send. The message delivered. She stared at the screen, her breath held, counting the seconds. One. Two. Three.

The reply came faster than a heartbeat.

Oero: Prove it.

Two words. No emojis, no warmth. Just a cold, hard command. He didn't believe her. Of course he didn't. Liars always assume everyone else is lying.

Giselle stared at the screen, her mind racing. How did you prove you were sick to a man who was thousands of miles away, without showing him your face or your apartment? How did you prove a lie with the truth?

Prove it.

The words were a death sentence. Dereck Campos wasn't a man who accepted excuses. He wanted evidence. Text messages were useless. He would see through them in a second.

Giselle's eyes darted around the room, searching for a weapon, a tool, anything. They landed on her desk. A bottle of DayQuil, still sealed in its plastic and cardboard prison. She had bought it last week, preparing for the New York winter.

A plan formed. It was desperate, but it was all she had.

She grabbed the phone and opened the voice memo app. She took a deep breath, trying to channel the weakness she felt in her bones. She let the fever do the work. She started to cough, forcing it deep from her chest until it hacked through her vocal cords.

"Daddy..." she rasped into the microphone, her voice raw and thin. "I really am sick... My head is spinning, and I feel so weak..."

She stopped the recording and played it back. It sounded fake. Too performative. She deleted it and tried again. And again. On the fourteenth take, she didn't act. She just let the exhaustion and the terror wash over her. The resulting voice was a frail, trembling whisper that sounded like a ghost.

Good. Now for the visual.

She picked up the bottle of DayQuil. The safety seal was intact. She placed the bottle in her right hand and gripped the cap. Instead of using her palm to apply pressure, she pinched the cap between her thumb and her index finger, digging her knuckles into the sharp plastic ridges.

She twisted. Hard.

The plastic bit into her skin. A sharp, burning sensation flared across her knuckles. She ignored the pain and twisted again. The cap didn't budge, but her skin did. The friction scraped away the top layer, leaving a raw, red patch that immediately began to throb.

She kept twisting for another ten seconds, grinding her bones against the plastic, until her fingers were trembling and the red patch turned an angry, blotchy purple.

She put the bottle down and looked at her hand. It looked pathetic. The skin was broken, the knuckles swollen and red. It looked exactly like the hand of a girl who was too weak to open her own medicine.

She held the phone over her hand, framing the shot carefully. The background was just a blur of white sheets, completely anonymous. She snapped the photo.

She attached the voice memo and the photo to the chat.

"Daddy, I don't know why you're scaring me," she typed, her thumbs flying across the screen. "I'm sick and alone, and now you're saying weird things. I can't even open my medicine bottle... Did I make you angry by cancelling our date? I'm sorry... I'm really sorry..."

She hit send before she could second-guess herself. She dropped the phone on the bed and slid down to the floor, her back against the frame. She pressed her injured hand against her forehead, the coolness of her skin a relief against the fever.

A minute passed. Two. Five.

Then, a chime. Not a text message notification. An email.

Giselle crawled onto the bed and opened her laptop. The email was from a generic banking address. Wire Transfer Confirmation from The Cayman Islands.

She opened it. The number on the screen made her vision blur. $150,000. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, transferred from an offshore account to the MoonCookie linked account. A line of text at the bottom read: Funds on hold pending recipient identity verification. An account she had the password to. An account that was currently empty because her ex had drained it.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Oero.

Find the best doctor in New York. I don't care what it costs. Consider this a down payment on your recovery. Don't refuse it. And I'm sending my driver to your building to deliver whatever you need.

The room tilted. The money was a trap. The driver was a firing squad. If she accepted the money by verifying her identity, she was a thief. If she let the driver in, he would see her face, see that she wasn't Carleigh, and report back to his boss.

She had to refuse. She had to reject the money from the most powerful man in New York. She logged into the linked bank account on her laptop, her hands shaking, and clicked the bold red button: DECLINE TRANSFER.

Then she picked up the encrypted phone. She couldn't let his driver or any doctor near her apartment.

"No! Absolutely not! Daddy, I appreciate you caring about me, but I don't need a doctor or your driver! I can't accept all this. It makes me feel... overwhelmed."

She was framing it as a moral objection. It was the only angle she had. A greedy sugar baby would take the cash. A girl who actually cared about the relationship might not.

"Please, I'm a big girl. I have my medicine now. Just let me rest. If you send anyone, I won't open the door. Please understand."

She hit send. She grabbed her own phone, the one with the cracked screen, and opened the CVS app. She ordered a bottle of NyQuil and a pack of Gatorade for delivery to her building. She paid the extra fee for one-hour delivery. She needed a real transaction to back up her story.

The silence from Oero's phone was deafening. She could feel him thinking, analyzing, calculating. She had just told a predator no.

Finally, the screen lit up.

Fine. Rest. We'll talk tomorrow.

Giselle let out a sob. She collapsed onto the floor, her body going limp. The cold sweat on her back soaked through her t-shirt. She had survived. For now.

She looked at her laptop screen, still showing the wire transfer. The money was a ghost-a massive sum she couldn't touch without revealing herself. The account itself, drained by her ex, was still functionally empty. The money wasn't gone; it was a trap waiting to be sprung. The debt, however, was very real.

She opened a new spreadsheet. She titled it Project Repayment. She had no money, no connections, and a million-dollar debt to a psychopath. But she had her brain. And she was going to use it to buy her life back.