Caught Up

Nic sinks a car and opens his favorite camgirl's profile

It's raining when Nic Trocci — called Junior by everyone who knows him — helps his three brothers push a car into a bloated river.

Nic sinks a car and opens his favorite camgirl's profile

It's raining when Nic Trocci — called Junior by everyone who knows him — helps his three brothers push a car into a bloated river. Tommy Marchetti's car, Tommy Marchetti's problem, disposed of on Nic's twenty-ninth birthday per their father's orders. The brothers bleach blood off a warehouse floor and scatter into the night. Back at his dingy city apartment, Nic showers the evidence away and does what he does every night: opens Lauren Marchetti's Me4U page. Lauren is Tommy's daughter, a camgirl, a sex work advocate with over sixteen hundred subscribers. Nic has been one of them since day one — NT95, her very first — spending thousands on custom videos, sexting with her for years. She has no idea who he is. With Tommy gone, Nic decides to finally close the distance.

After Mass, he pins her to a wall and she pulls a taser

Nic hasn't been to church in years, but he shows up at Saturday Mass because Lauren will be there with her grandmother, Nonna Bianchi. His mother Moira and brother Alec are already in the front pews. When Lauren walks in wearing a pink sundress, something dark and hungry crackles between them — their first eye contact in a decade. He winks. She glares. Afterward, with Alec blocking the hallway like a bouncer, Nic ambushes Lauren outside the bathrooms, pins her wrists overhead, and strokes her hip like he owns her. She nearly knees him in the groin, breaks free, and levels a taser at Alec's face. Nonna calls later to report slashed tires in the church lot — belonging to the three women who'd been gossiping about Lauren before Mass.

A jealous friend posted her diary online, and Junior denied everything Lauren tells her roommates Ryan and Taylor the story she's carried for a decade. At seventeen, Junior fingered her beneath fireworks at the church fair. They fooled around in secret for weeks; she lost her virginity to him. Then her friend Kelly found her diary, photographed the entries, and posted them online. The school erupted with ridicule — and Junior denied everything, told the world they'd never touched. Lauren became the delusional stalker, transferred schools broken and humiliated, and met Ryan, who quietly befriended the wreckage of her. What Lauren never learned: Nic planted drugs on Kelly, hospitalized the principal who ignored the bullying, and stole the diary to prevent further leaks. He denied their relationship because…