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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Your car spies on you and rats you out to insurance companies

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Mar 13) in SAN FRANCISCO with ROBIN SLOAN, then Toronto, NYC, Anaheim, and more!

Another characteristically brilliant Kashmir Hill story for The New York Times reveals another characteristically terrible fact about modern life: your car secretly records fine-grained telemetry about your driving and sells it to data-brokers, who sell it to insurers, who use it as a pretext to gouge you on premiums:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html

Almost every car manufacturer does this: Hyundai, Nissan, Ford, Chrysler, etc etc:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2020/09/09/ford-state-farm-ford-metromile-honda-verisk-among-insurer-oem-telematics-connections/

This is true whether you own or lease the car, and it's separate from the "black box" your insurer might have offered to you in exchange for a discount on your premiums. In other words, even if you say no to the insurer's carrot – a surveillance-based discount – they've got a stick in reserve: buying your nonconsensually harvested data on the open market.

I've always hated that saying, "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product," the reason being that it posits decent treatment as a customer reward program, like the little ramekin warm nuts first class passengers get before takeoff. Companies don't treat you well when you pay them. Companies treat you well when they fear the consequences of treating you badly.

Take Apple. The company offers Ios users a one-tap opt-out from commercial surveillance, and more than 96% of users opted out. Presumably, the other 4% were either confused or on Facebook's payroll. Apple – and its army of cultists – insist that this proves that our world's woes can be traced to cheapskate "consumers" who expected to get something for nothing by using advertising-supported products.

But here's the kicker: right after Apple blocked all its rivals from spying on its customers, it began secretly spying on those customers! Apple has a rival surveillance ad network, and even if you opt out of commercial surveillance on your Iphone, Apple still secretly spies on you and uses the data to target you for ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product – provided the company can get away with treating you as the product. Apple can absolutely get away with treating you as the product, because it lacks the historical constraints that prevented Apple – and other companies – from treating you as the product.

As I described in my McLuhan lecture on enshittification, tech firms can be constrained by four forces:

I. Competition

II. Regulation

III. Self-help

IV. Labor

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

When companies have real competitors – when a sector is composed of dozens or hundreds of roughly evenly matched firms – they have to worry that a maltreated customer might move to a rival. 40 years of antitrust neglect means that corporations were able to buy their way to dominance with predatory mergers and pricing, producing today's inbred, Habsburg capitalism. Apple and Google are a mobile duopoly, Google is a search monopoly, etc. It's not just tech! Every sector looks like this:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Eliminating competition doesn't just deprive customers of alternatives, it also empowers corporations. Liberated from "wasteful competition," companies in concentrated industries can extract massive profits. Think of how both Apple and Google have "competitively" arrived at the same 30% app tax on app sales and transactions, a rate that's more than 1,000% higher than the transaction fees extracted by the (bloated, price-gouging) credit-card sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

But cartels' power goes beyond the size of their warchest. The real source of a cartel's power is the ease with which a small number of companies can arrive at – and stick to – a common lobbying position. That's where "regulatory capture" comes in: the mobile duopoly has an easier time of capturing its regulators because two companies have an easy time agreeing on how to spend their app-tax billions:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Apple – and Google, and Facebook, and your car company – can violate your privacy because they aren't constrained regulation, just as Uber can violate its drivers' labor rights and Amazon can violate your consumer rights. The tech cartels have captured their regulators and convinced them that the law doesn't apply if it's being broken via an app:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

In other words, Apple can spy on you because it's allowed to spy on you. America's last consumer privacy law was passed in 1988, and it bans video-store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history. Congress has taken no action on consumer privacy since the Reagan years:

https://www.eff.org/tags/video-privacy-protection-act

But tech has some special enshittification-resistant characteristics. The most important of these is interoperability: the fact that computers are universal digital machines that can run any program. HP can design a printer that rejects third-party ink and charge $10,000/gallon for its own colored water, but someone else can write a program that lets you jailbreak your printer so that it accepts any ink cartridge:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Tech companies that contemplated enshittifying their products always had to watch over their shoulders for a rival that might offer a disenshittification tool and use that as a wedge between the company and its customers. If you make your website's ads 20% more obnoxious in anticipation of a 2% increase in gross margins, you have to consider the possibility that 40% of your users will google "how do I block ads?" Because the revenue from a user who blocks ads doesn't stay at 100% of the current levels – it drops to zero, forever (no user ever googles "how do I stop blocking ads?").

The majority of web users are running an ad-blocker:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

Web operators made them an offer ("free website in exchange for unlimited surveillance and unfettered intrusions") and they made a counteroffer ("how about 'nah'?"):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Here's the thing: reverse-engineering an app – or any other IP-encumbered technology – is a legal minefield. Just decompiling an app exposes you to felony prosecution: a five year sentence and a $500k fine for violating Section 1201 of the DMCA. But it's not just the DMCA – modern products are surrounded with high-tech tripwires that allow companies to invoke IP law to prevent competitors from augmenting, recongifuring or adapting their products. When a business says it has "IP," it means that it has arranged its legal affairs to allow it to invoke the power of the state to control its customers, critics and competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

An "app" is just a web-page skinned in enough IP to make it a crime to add an ad-blocker to it. This is what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model" and it's everywhere. When companies don't have to worry about users deploying self-help measures to disenshittify their products, they are freed from the constraint that prevents them indulging the impulse to shift value from their customers to themselves.

Apple owes its existence to interoperability – its ability to clone Microsoft Office's file formats for Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which saved the company in the early 2000s – and ever since, it has devoted its existence to making sure no one ever does to Apple what Apple did to Microsoft:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Regulatory capture cuts both ways: it's not just about powerful corporations being free to flout the law, it's also about their ability to enlist the law to punish competitors that might constrain their plans for exploiting their workers, customers, suppliers or other stakeholders.

The final historical constraint on tech companies was their own workers. Tech has very low union-density, but that's in part because individual tech workers enjoyed so much bargaining power due to their scarcity. This is why their bosses pampered them with whimsical campuses filled with gourmet cafeterias, fancy gyms and free massages: it allowed tech companies to convince tech workers to work like government mules by flattering them that they were partners on a mission to bring the world to its digital future:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

For tech bosses, this gambit worked well, but failed badly. On the one hand, they were able to get otherwise powerful workers to consent to being "extremely hardcore" by invoking Fobazi Ettarh's spirit of "vocational awe":

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

On the other hand, when you motivate your workers by appealing to their sense of mission, the downside is that they feel a sense of mission. That means that when you demand that a tech worker enshittifies something they missed their mother's funeral to deliver, they will experience a profound sense of moral injury and refuse, and that worker's bargaining power means that they can make it stick.

Or at least, it did. In this era of mass tech layoffs, when Google can fire 12,000 workers after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years, tech workers are learning that the answer to "I won't do this and you can't make me" is "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out" (AKA "sharpen your blades boys"):

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/elon-musk-texts-discovery-twitter/

With competition, regulation, self-help and labor cleared away, tech firms – and firms that have wrapped their products around the pluripotently malleable core of digital tech, including automotive makers – are no longer constrained from enshittifying their products.

And that's why your car manufacturer has chosen to spy on you and sell your private information to data-brokers and anyone else who wants it. Not because you didn't pay for the product, so you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

Cars are enshittified. The dozens of chips that auto makers have shoveled into their car design are only incidentally related to delivering a better product. The primary use for those chips is autoenshittification – access to legal strictures ("IP") that allows them to block modifications and repairs that would interfere with the unfettered abuse of their own customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

The fact that it's a felony to reverse-engineer and modify a car's software opens the floodgates to all kinds of shitty scams. Remember when Bay Staters were voting on a ballot measure to impose right-to-repair obligations on automakers in Massachusetts? The only reason they needed to have the law intervene to make right-to-repair viable is that Big Car has figured out that if it encrypts its diagnostic messages, it can felonize third-party diagnosis of a car, because decrypting the messages violates the DMCA:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/drm-cars-will-drive-consumers-crazy

Big Car figured out that VIN locking – DRM for engine components and subassemblies – can felonize the production and the installation of third-party spare parts:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

The fact that you can't legally modify your car means that automakers can go back to their pre-2008 ways, when they transformed themselves into unregulated banks that incidentally manufactured the cars they sold subprime loans for. Subprime auto loans – over $1t worth! – absolutely relies on the fact that borrowers' cars can be remotely controlled by lenders. Miss a payment and your car's stereo turns itself on and blares threatening messages at top volume, which you can't turn off. Break the lease agreement that says you won't drive your car over the county line and it will immobilize itself. Try to change any of this software and you'll commit a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Tesla, naturally, has the most advanced anti-features. Long before BMW tried to rent you your seat-heater and Mercedes tried to sell you a monthly subscription to your accelerator pedal, Teslas were demon-haunted nightmare cars. Miss a Tesla payment and the car will immobilize itself and lock you out until the repo man arrives, then it will blare its horn and back itself out of its parking spot. If you "buy" the right to fully charge your car's battery or use the features it came with, you don't own them – they're repossessed when your car changes hands, meaning you get less money on the used market because your car's next owner has to buy these features all over again:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

And all this DRM allows your car maker to install spyware that you're not allowed to remove. They really tipped their hand on this when the R2R ballot measure was steaming towards an 80% victory, with wall-to-wall scare ads that revealed that your car collects so much information about you that allowing third parties to access it could lead to your murder (no, really!):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

That's why your car spies on you. Because it can. Because the company that made it lacks constraint, be it market-based, legal, technological or its own workforce's ethics.

One common critique of my enshittification hypothesis is that this is "kind of sensible and normal" because "there’s something off in the consumer mindset that we’ve come to believe that the internet should provide us with amazing products, which bring us joy and happiness and we spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return":

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-have-great-conversations/

What this criticism misses is that this isn't the companies bargaining to shift some value from us to them. Enshittification happens when a company can seize all that value, without having to bargain, exploiting law and technology and market power over buyers and sellers to unilaterally alter the way the products and services we rely on work.

A company that doesn't have to fear competitors, regulators, jailbreaking or workers' refusal to enshittify its products doesn't have to bargain, it can take. It's the first lesson they teach you in the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Your car spying on you isn't down to your belief that your carmaker "should provide you with amazing products, which brings your joy and happiness you spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return." It's not because you didn't pay for the product, so now you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

The consequences of this spying go much further than mere insurance premium hikes, too. Car telemetry sits at the top of the funnel that the unbelievably sleazy data broker industry uses to collect and sell our data. These are the same companies that sell the fact that you visited an abortion clinic to marketers, bounty hunters, advertisers, or vengeful family members pretending to be one of those:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

Decades of pro-monopoly policy led to widespread regulatory capture. Corporate cartels use the monopoly profits they extract from us to pay for regulatory inaction, allowing them to extract more profits.

But when it comes to privacy, that period of unchecked corporate power might be coming to an end. The lack of privacy regulation is at the root of so many problems that a pro-privacy movement has an unstoppable constituency working in its favor.

At EFF, we call this "privacy first." Whether you're worried about grifters targeting vulnerable people with conspiracy theories, or teens being targeted with media that harms their mental health, or Americans being spied on by foreign governments, or cops using commercial surveillance data to round up protesters, or your car selling your data to insurance companies, passing that long-overdue privacy legislation would turn off the taps for the data powering all these harms:

https://www.eff.org/wp/privacy-first-better-way-address-online-harms

Traditional economics fails because it thinks about markets without thinking about power. Monopolies lead to more than market power: they produce regulatory capture, power over workers, and state capture, which felonizes competition through IP law. The story that our problems stem from the fact that we just don't spend enough money, or buy the wrong products, only makes sense if you willfully ignore the power that corporations exert over our lives. It's nice to think that you can shop your way out of a monopoly, because that's a lot easier than voting your way out of a monopoly, but no matter how many times you vote with your wallet, the cartels that control the market will always win:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#apor-locksmith

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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freeluigihesbae · 30 days ago

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𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝒊'𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒈 (𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒚𝒐𝒖) - 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝟏

(5,534 words)

summary:

You and Luigi are coworkers for TrueCar, but you've never met in person. You've been flirting around on Slack and exchanging messages as of recent, which seems to become an invitation for him to entire your life. And body.

He accepts and soon, you do too.

𝗍𝗐: 18+ !! 𝗀𝗎𝗇𝗉𝗅𝖺𝗒, 𝖼𝗁𝗈𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗀, 𝗌𝗉𝖺𝗇𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗀, 𝖽𝗈𝗆!𝗅𝗎𝗂𝗀𝗂, 𝗌𝗎𝖻!𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋/𝗌𝗎𝖻!𝗒𝗈𝗎, 𝗌𝗍𝖺𝗅𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗀, 𝖽𝗎𝖻𝖼𝗈𝗇 𝗂𝖿 𝗎 𝗌𝗊𝗎𝗂𝗇𝗍, 𝖽𝖾𝗀𝗋𝖺𝖽𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗈𝗇, 𝗉𝗎𝗋𝖾 𝖿𝗂𝗅𝗍𝗁

TrueCar was the best thing that happened to you. You'd moved from the east to the west coast after attending both your undergrad and graduate years of schooling at Stanford and finally decided that California was the place for you. The weather was fine other than the earthquakes, wildfires, and other disasters hitting the state but you simply ignored them all. As a Computer Science major, jobs were becoming harder rather than easier to find. Your degree was no longer a scarcity but then...

then TrueCar happened. The position was hybrid - both work in-person and virtual - which would come to show how they were far ahead of their time and unknowingly prepared for the pandemic that was going to erupt in a year's time. The main form of communication was Slack, which really was a professionally themed copycat of Discord, but no mind. Everything you did and said was posted and discussed in the several channels that constantly pinged your phone as the app became your new source of corporate social media. You managed to make friends in your new team, having video-calls and occasional meet-ups at nearby bars when time-permitted. In-person was fine but working from home was really the best thing you could ask for.

A few months pass and you see the news about the pandemic. The president is waving his hands in a downward motion, saying everything will be fine, but the coming weeks seem to disprove it. The case numbers are rising and your company decides to go fully virtual, whether this becomes a serious issue or not.

Thank god because you could definitely need it. At the same time, it seems like the company was undergoing re-arrangement which meant everyone had to switch around with team members and projects that they were working on. It seemed cruel, in a way, that they were trying to compensate for the comfort they gave by dipping employees into new arenas on short notice.

But little did you know it would be the best thing that could ever happen to you.

❧

Today is the biggest meeting of the company because you just got approached by one of the biggest car retailers in the world and they want to implement a new program to make vehicles more affordable. They'd be giving away thousands of cars to be exclusively sold on Truecar's website, and you were in charge of convincing them why Truecar was the best option for it.

"Ladies and gentleman, thank you for joining us today. On behalf of TrueCar, we are incredibly honored to have your time and interest in pursuing the deal you have proposed to us. It is my understanding that our consistent increase in sales is what convinced you to approach us, is that correct?" You ask with a brightness in your voice, desperate to get this deal under your belt.

"Absolutely. We were, are, and continue to be pleased with how well your company advertises the use of second-hand and lower priced cars in order to increase the market and frankly, decrease the stigma around it. Cars are cars and as a car company, we are in the business to sell." A man's voice responds in confidence and an undertone of I'm impressed to go alone with it. It makes you smile as your bright teeth are on display for all of the stakeholders, company employees, and members of the interested party to see.

"That's wonderful. The increase in sales that you are seeing are impressive, but I believe it's our methods which are better than the results. The way we have approached sales includes elements of morality and passion. We want to give our customers the best cars for the best price, but we never forget the need to make money. We have and continue to strike a delicate balance which has benefitted our company." You pause, allowing pride to swell in your chest as you click to the next slide, which has a bunch of graphics you spent hours understanding with the help of the responsible parties who made them.

"These graphics are based heavily on the cost-benefit principle. To give a little more background, we use microeconomics to understand our customer because the fundamental exchange or our country's currency starts and continues in the hands of the people. How do we approach the company from a consumer perspective? We did several surveys and found..." You continue with your speech, going through each and every graphic while answering questions that pop-up every now and then, until you get to one specific graphic.

Luigi Mangione's.

He was one of the brightest employees at TrueCar and had a stellar reputation amongst everyone, but strangely enough, you never got the time to know him like everyone else did. But, since re-organization happened, this project was practically catapulted into your face. You found out it was being done in several parts through terrible communication and had to message nearly every single employee (200 private conversation would make a case for this statement, even if it isn't true) and one of them was Luigi Mangione. He responded in haste and detail which was exactly what you needed during such a hectic time. He had volunteered several hours of his time over the past three weeks, hopping onto Slack calls and Zoom meetings whenever you requested them. You can't find a single time when he said no which made you wonder if he was even doing his work.

Of course he was! That's why he was given his project too.

Let's not forget, you are totally into him. That was the worst part because you knew he must've had so many other girls pining after him, probably shooting him meetings and asking questions like dumb blondes would and trying to waste his time. You can't help but indulge in his features and his face every night, wondering what it would be like if...

Back to business.

You land on his graphic which was the most complex and detailed, but highlighted the best of the best points about the company which you knew would make the executives before you swoon. It was a fun experiment and session where you could prove to him that you totally got it.

"This is one of the most important points that we have here. We have a table showing you all a hypothetical scenario in which, it would seem like Option A is the best answer for our first question. But in our second questions, Option B seems more suitable. What you are seeing here is the framing effect, which several if not all companies use to dupe and cheat money out of consumers. We take that out. We cut through the bushes and give customers details that they can read with simplicity in order to make the best decision because buying a car is one of the most expensive purchases someone can make. When we treat our consumers with the respect they deserve, they'll give us the business back. They'll invest in not just the website or the cars, but in us." You speak in smooth, complex sentences which unravel simplicity with skill. You're praying that Luigi is watching, perhaps smiling and impressed, because your eyes are forced to stay trained on the screen in front of you and analyze the graphic like you haven't done so already. You add a few more details before ending and opening up the room to questions.

A few hands go up and you answer them like 1+1 was being thrown at you a hundred times. Your answers are filled with expertise and you make the best impression, getting well wishes and successfully landing a deal which is going to take your company to new heights.

The meeting ends and you let out a sigh of relief before getting flooded with congratulatory messages and hundreds of mentions in the, well, hundreds of channel that you are apart of. Everyone is cheering you on and it makes you smile, but you're really waiting for one specific message.

And it finally comes.

Luigi Mangione: Hey that was a grt presentation. You aced my graphic I'm so impressed.

The message nearly sends you over the edge as you squeal embarrassingly loud, trying to contain your excitement and surprise? Because wow, even you didn't know you were this into him.

You: omgggg thxxx ur so sweet 💘

You add the emoji for your own satisfaction, hoping cupid gets the message across to the man you're keening over right now.

Luigi Mangione: Ugh so cute. Slack call? Do you have a few?

You heart jumps. Did he just call you cute and THEN propose a call? You're rushing to the mirror to do a few fix-ups but thanks to your preparation for the meeting that just happened, you were looking smoking hot to talk business with Luigi.

And maybe, something more.

You don't answer and instead, press the video call icon at the top right, waiting for him to pick up. You turn your camera on while graciously using the time he takes to pick up to stare at his profile picture. His thick eyebrows and sharp nose draw you in like you'd seen him for the first time. His smile was disgustingly charming and-

He picks up. His face pops up on the screen as he gives a wave.

"Hey there." He does his infamous eyebrow raise before laughing out loud and you giggle back.

"Stop, oh my god. I couldn't have done nearly as well if you and so many others hadn't spent hours explaining this to me. The credit goes to you guys." You say, but your eyes and glued to the side of the screen where he's sitting back in his chair, upper torso in display as he is in a short sleeved compression t-shirt. Talk about details and noticing them at the wrong time.

"You talked to others?" Luigi folds his hands and you think you're going to have an orgasm right there. Fuck, the veins are popping up softly under his skin and you're thinking to yourself one hell of a reward would having his biceps around your neck. He seems to catch you staring.

"Hey pretty. Heard me?" Luigi smirks and you snap out of your trance before staring right into your camera.

"Y-Yeah I had to talk to like, 20 other people. You know, like Josh, Andrew, Ashley, and-" You stop, feeling yourself get stressed just having to think about the gruesome three weeks where you had to sit and listen to everyone explain while taking notes furiously. Your fingers would often hurt after these session, which wouldn't be helped by your everyday ministrations having orgasms, screaming Luigi's name and having terribly dirty fantasies that you wish he could fulfill.

Dreams.

"I wouldn't think the explained things as well as I did, did they?" There's a streak of something in his eyes, which darken when he asks his question. Is it jealousy or pride? You're trying to figure it out but he quickly replaces it with a smile.

"No Luigi. They didn't. They didn't at all." You answer back before giving him a wink, feeling bold at what you just saw in his eyes. He finds himself surprised, as his hands slowly rub his triceps and god...

He knows exactly what he's doing. Your eyes are following their movement, taking note of his long fingers which you just wished were inside of your right now.

"Oh I know." Luigi says and your eyebrows furrow.

"What do you mean?" You ask, intrigued by his statement. His eyes go wide before you chuckles out.

"Can't a man be confident in his abilities m'lady?" He asks, a seductive voice intertwined with his question. You gulp before giving him a smile.

"Yes can do my knight in shining armor." You answer cheekily and this time, he winks at you.

"I'm getting pinged by my team. Talk to you later after your pilates at 6." He states this with amusement in his voice but you feel your heart drop.

Because you do have pilates at 6.

"W-Wait how do you know that?" You ask, unable to stop the stutter that makes it's way past your lips. Your smile is at half-mast now, unable to decipher whether this man was just great at guessing or he really knew your schedule.

"Women are predictable. I'd assume you are too?" Luigi smirks before you get a chance to answer. "Does that work?" He asks, tapping his fingers across his abdomen expecting an answer. You let your eyes linger there for a second too long before giving a soft yes and that does it for him.

He puts the phone down and you're left with thinking about how time can go faster, simply waiting for him to call you back.

❧

Pilates couldn't get done any faster, as you had your weekly catch up session with your friend, Bea. She knew everything about Luigi and she was a trusted companion since her type was different.

Entirely different.

It was actually women.

"Oh my god Bea you wouldn't believe it. He told me I was fucking cute after the meeting and somehow, he knew I had pilates at 6." You're walking out of the glass doors, as Bea sighs behind you.

"You know this guy could show up at your apartment unannounced and you'd let him fuck you." Bea snorts and you giggle, letting the thought sear through your core.

"You know I think I would. I wouldn't complain at all." You emphasize the all at the end of your sentence because you have to admit, you were a less innocent than your face cared to show. You liked the idea of him thinking about you when you weren't looking and although it might've been scary, you wouldn't mind if he fucked you senseless.

You actually needed it really badly.

Bea can see how gone you are in your thoughts about him, so she gives a shake and a quick bye before you return it, walking over to your car. You start the engine, steeling yourself and clearing your thoughts so you can drive home safely and call him as soon as possible.

Finally, your car gets into the driveway and the exhaustion from your pilates session scurries away into the dark corners of the world (your car?) and you hurry inside, slamming your door shut and locking it before throwing your shoes off and making your way up the stairs.

You're about to call Luigi on Slack, maybe send a message asking for his number before an unknown number sends you a message.

Unknown: Hey there.

Something about it feel strangely familiar, like how Luigi had addressed you in your earlier Slack call. Normally, you never respond to unknown messages but this one...

this one really drew you in, making something of an obligatory pull bloom inside of you. You slowly type a hey, who's this? back and hit send. To your surprise, the response comes quicker than you'd imagined.

Unknown: Luigi

You swallow hard, pulse beating against your sensitive spot on your throat a little faster. You didn't actually think it would be Luigi, but hey, all is fine. Maybe a coworker gave your number, you think, but it still doesn't sit right because in the time you've been with the company, you only ever gave them your second work number... not your personal.

You: Funny. How'd you get this number?

Luigi: A coworker.

So far, you buy it. You ignore the gut feeling and suppose that it must've slipped and spread across your coworkers at some point since the most recent project had several overlaps with other team members you worked with in the past.

You: So..

Luigi: So...? Do you want to keep typing or can I hear that pretty voice of yours?

He did not.

You: We can call how about you call me this time? I was nice enough to ring you this morning. You end the message, hitting send and smirking.

Luigi: We don't have to call if you don't want to.

Ugh, mean. Was it really that hard to press the call symbol? You wanted to hear his voice though, so you give in and ring him yet again.

The line is going through and you put your stuff down, opening your fridge to heat up some leftovers from earlier last night. You rummage through your stuff, trying to look for that orange-lidded box but it's nowhere to be found. The line is still ringing, so you put the phone down and walk around your kitchen, wondering if you were stupid enough to leave it outside. Nowhere. You check the trash, empty. You're scratching your head at this point and you finally walk over to the sink and to your horror, it was licked clean with remanants of the food on the side with the fork still inside. Luigi's voice scares you at the same time and you jump.

"Hey there." He says, in the same tone he had this morning. You can hear his smile but your breathing is too heavy as your back is pressed against the cool fridge. You swallow the saliva before stepping forward and picking up the phone on her island.

"Jesus, you scared me Luigi." You say, half-focused on him while you're trying to figure out why your leftover tupperware is in the sink. It's making you feel unsettled.

"I don't think I'm a scary person. Is everything alright?" His voice is laced with concern now and you feel yourself calming down, explaining the situation.

"Y-Yeah I'm fine I'm just confused because my leftovers are in the sink and I'm starting to think I sleep eat now." You answer him with amusement and he gives a deep, heart laugh back. It sounds hot, you note, thinking about what it would be like if his voice was in your ear right now. You still can't help but turn around and glance at the box.

"Must be a good cook. I know I'm a sucker for some good Thai food." He breathes it out with the same amusement in your tone and this time, you feel a shiver down your back. Your leftovers were a pad see eu takeout from your favorite Thai restaurant and his answer seemed a little too close for comfort.

"Are you?" You ask, darting your eyes around the room because it's not feeling so comfortable in the house anymore.

"Yeah. Wouldn't you say we have a lot in common?" His voice a bit more stern now but he's asking her with innocence you can't tell whether is real or feigned.

"Like what?" You keep your question curt like the last, slowly walking into the living room and checking the sides and corners to make sure no-one is there. No-one is. You sit down on the couch, trying to control your heart rate.

"Like how we both like Thai food. That's a good start." Luigi answers with surety in his voice and the air feels thinner now.

"I never told you that, so how do you know?" You try to maintain your composure but your voice starts to shake.

"Now I do. Thanks for confirming." Luigi has an irritating attitude in the laugh he lets out.

"I wasn't trying to." You answer, rapid fire. Every sound outside starts to make you jump as you're looking over your shoulder.

"Now, why so jumpy? You seem scared." He teases you, mocking the hesitation in your voice. Your skin is shivering and you're 99% sure someone is watching you.

"I'm not scared Luigi. Just making conversation." You're still talking into the phone, but you slowly get up, making your way upstairs. You know you might regret this, but you have to be absolutely sure because Luigi isn't making you feel too good right now and you're trying your level best to ignore the suspicions your gut is feeding you right now.

"Conversations aren't usually this... high-strung. Are you okay?" Luigi responds, shifting his tone from something dangerous back to concern and you know he's fucking with you. You know this man is trying to screw around with you.

"Great. Great Luigi. You still haven't told me how you know I like Thai food." You snap at him, unable to contain the stress your feeling as your head is spinning.

"I wouldn't be so rude if I were you, baby." The name slips from his tongue and you freeze. Something hot blazes across your skin as you realize you like that. You want that. You've been wanting it and finally, you just got it.

It doesn't clash to well with your increasing heart rate because if anything, it makes it shoot higher. You let out a sharp exhale.

"You like that don't you?" You stepped into your study room on the top floor, checking the windows to make sure they're locked and opening the doors, squeezing your eyes shut and praying no-one is hiding there. Clear. But his question makes you nearly whimper and you find yourself nodding before you stop, stepping back out of the room and back into the foyer.

"I don't." But it's a lie and you can feel it. You can feel your conscience eating away at you, begging you to tell the truth.

"Don't fuckin' lie." Luigi growls, spite and another emotion dripping across the phone and that's when you hear a creak downstairs.

Fuck.

"I'm not lying Luigi. I don't know what you're trying to do right now." You raise your voice before checking the bathroom quickly and as you wished, nobody is in there. You finally make your way down the foyer to the very end, feeling your chest tighten as you prepare to step into your bedroom. Your fingers twist around the doorknob and you practically throw it open when you hear another creak downstairs. You shut the door and lock it, running into the closet and climbing into the attic crawlspace.

"I'm just asking questions and you are lying to me." You're terrified now because this isn't the Luigi you are quite used to.

"You're freaking me the fuck out Luigi. That's what's going on." You hear a step on the stairs and throw your hands over your mouth. Someone is in your house and you think you know who.

But you're praying this is all a trick of your mind.

"It's okay to open up, you know. You can trust m-" "Shut the fuck up Luigi." You shout into the phone before cutting the call. The relief washing over you is better than any medicine you've ever taken, you have a newfound confidence as you press your ears against the wall of the crawlspace. You can hear some sounds from outside and birds chirping which is comforting. You wait for ten minutes and when you don't hear anything and your phone, thankfully hasn't rang from Luigi again, you open it up, making your way down into the closet.

You still step into your bedroom with utmost caution, but you can't seem to take it seriously. Your strides become more confident as you open your bedroom door and nearly missing the wave of panic you feel when you see the foyer.

No-one.

You laugh, thinking Luigi was just acting like a creep but you walking to the bathroom, fixing your hair and letting your ponytail loose. Your mind keeps reeling back to the conversation with him, replaying the way he called you baby and it was just too fucking good.

Too bad he didn't call again. You almost missed his voice but the panic was worse, so mostly, you were glad. You walk back into your bedroom, sliding your sweatpants off and realizing your clothes are everywhere, running around in boxer shorts. You manage to grab a fresh pair of pajama pants which you throw onto the bed before taking your shirt off and letting it slip to the floor. You shiver a bit, just left in your bra. Another top catches your eye and you slip it on, appreciating the cropped fleece.

But something raises a red flag.

Earlier, when you entered the room, it was warm. Quite warm, actually, because you had the heater on the entire day to combat the winter weather. It took all but five minutes for that to disappear? You're staring at the window and realize.

The window was open.

Open.

The window was open.

And as if it couldn't get worse, the phone rings and you nearly trip over the clothes on the floor.

It was Luigi.

Your hands are shaking as you let a cry out, hugging yourself. You place the phone up to your ear before sobbing out a Luigi? quietly.

"Yes baby?" His voice is right next to you, behind you in the slightest and you let out a primal scream which is quickly muffled by a strong, unrelenting hand that gets pressed into your mouth, fingers threatening to choke you. You writhe and squirm against the hand but quickly, another arm grabs your neck and turns it to the side.

It's Luigi alright.

"Missed me baby?" His grips your throat tighter and you can't stop the fear driving your arousal past a previous breaking point, feeling heat spread across your body and absolutely relishing the light-headedness his hands were giving

The hand leaves your throat before a slap lands on the side of your thigh. You bend forward, ass brushing against his crotch before placing your hand on the now blooming red print.

"Fuckin' answer me slut." Luigi's voice is dripping with desire, demanding an answer of you. You slowly remove your hand from your thigh, letting it hang in the air as it shakes impossibly hard.

"Y-Yes." You mewl it out and you can hear his breath hitch before his arm is circling around your waist, pushing your head back into place as you face forward. That hand starts to feel around, teasing over your breasts and down your navel. You whimper, letting tears rush out as his cold fingers are playing cruel games with your skin. He flips, suddenly, grabbing a breast and you feel your knees nearly buckle.

"N-No." You attempt to stop him weakly but he just laughs, gripping harder. He does let go after a few choice squeezes, pushing you onto the bed and flipping you around as you face him and you see him in all his glory. His eyebrows are knitted together as you watching eyes swim with desire. His neck is strained, chest heaving as he is trying to restrain every filthy desire he's waiting to hurt and pleasure you with. His arms are flexed, veins pulsing as he waits and waits.

His eyebrows furrow deeper before his lips curve into a nasty, sly smirk.

"No? No? You fucking slut." He grips your throat and this time, takes the liberty of letting it cover the entire diameter. Your eyes go wide as you pull on his single arm, feeling your breathing get harder and harder.

"I don't know why you're lying to me. I've heard you fucking this pretty cunt with these tiny fingers, moaning my name every single night. I've watching this pretty ass," he stop to turns your lower body around and give your ass a nice slap, letting it echo in the room and watching as the pleasure makes you choke out a sound, something akin to a gurgle. He smiles, letting go to let your gasp and take air in before his hands are on your throat again. You feel yourself trying to get out of his grasp, trying to process how in the world he could know you were masturbating to him and why his hands felt so good around your neck. The deprivation was simply delicious and you wanted more.

"I've watched you ass bend over and split into two at pilates. Been watching you everyday for the past few weeks. Been watching you show my ass to everybody else in that class. I've watched men walking by ogle and just the thought of them staring at your makes me wanna-" Luigi groans, palming himself through his sweatpants. His grip on your throat as lightened up, but you dare not move.

"Makes you w-wanna what?" You gulp, wondering what he would say and he stares down at you, cooing at your glossy eyes that stare at him in fear and wonder and an impossible amount of

submission?

"So glad you asked. Makes me wanna hurt you first. Makes me wanna fuck you with my fingers and slap your ass so hard you cry my name out." Luigi fingers trail down to your shorts, sliding in between your legs as your moan, slowly rolling your hips against his fingers. The touch feel electric, sending waves into your core and you can't stop. Your eyes close until you realize his fingers aren't there anymore. You cover your face with your hands, suddenly overwhelmed with the reality of the moment.

But he has other plans.

He grabs both arms, pulling them down with one hand before slapping you across the face with another. You let out a sob, the pain stinging but still making you pulse between your legs. You can tell he knows by the small sighs he lets out, pressing his bulge against it.

"Can feel you pulsing. You little painslut. That's what you are, isn't it baby?" He starts grinding down on you faster and you can't help but let the sensations get to you, struggling to let free of his grasp because you desperately need to thread and grab his hair in yours fingers, but instead he presses down into your stomach, watching you wince at the discomfort.

"If you don't talk I'll make you bitch." God the insults are just perfect, turning on parts of your brain you didn't know exist. You keep silent, indirectly telling him to keep going. His eyes widen before he tears the top off, making you scream.

"What happened to the cunt that was aching for me, hm? What happened to that pretty voice moaned my name when work was over? Where's that pretty body that was arching off the bed every time you came huh?" Luigi slaps your breast and you moan, crying his name out in a harsh exhale which he bends down and drinks up, devouring your mouth with his tongue. You feverishly reciprocate, desperate for his validation and constant touch on you. "Please." You let out a quiet, slutty noise that makes him groan. His fingers thread into your hair which you starts pulling without mercy, adding to the pain by biting into your neck and you think he might tear it off.

"H-Hurts Luigi. It hurts." You are feeling more pain than pleasure, attempting to let him know how you feel but a part of you knows that he won't listen he won't care. He'll do whatever he wants and in the case he does slow down, it'll all be for his benefit.

"You're gonna take it anyways." He flips you around, forcing your body onto all fours and the sensations of the moment make you arch your back, sticking your ass up in the air which he adds to, pushing your neck sideways and down into the bed. You yelp as you feel another hand smoothing over the entirety of your back, going lower and lower until your stomach is nearly touching the bed and your ass is directly on his crotch. "You haven't answered any of my questions and if you don't," you here something click and shake, which you find in the corner of your eye.

A gun.

"I promise I'll make it hurt baby you want me to hurt you?" He's bent his body now, entirely draping himself over your backside and whispering into your ear, juxtaposing the absolute threat with a sweet, honey-glazed voice. You let out a slow breathing before moaning through your words.

"Don't hurt me Lu." You say this, breathing in slowly as you savor every shift in his position, taking in a slightly sharper breath when his hands start roaming around atop your ass. The lack of pressure makes you un-arch your back, taking solace in having space but a hand is back on top, pressing down.

"Move and I'll make you cry." He takes the gun, pressing the cool metal in the space between your legs, feeling yourself impossibly wet as his slow, circling motion imitate his fingers that were on you earlier. "W-What were you asking-" You wanted to be the perfect little girl and answer his questions which have flown out of your mind, but he's pulled the gusset of your underwear to the side and shoved the tip of his gun inside your cunt, watching the juices flow right down and onto the trigger.

"Oh I'll take my sweet time and make sure I get all of my answers." He keens with a soft, soothing the voice that betrays his next motion as he shoves the entire length in, forcing your to clench and sob at the pain.

He wasn't playing games. He was playing you.

part 2

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