Vienna Bargain Read online

  Vienna Bargain

  Vienna Trilogy: Part Two

  Lila Dubois

  Copyright

  Published by:

  Farm Boy Press,

  Sacramento, California, United States of America.

  First electronic edition: July 2020

  Copyright © 2020 by Lila Dubois, all rights reserved.

  Cover design by Lila Dubois

  Book formatted by Farm Boy Press

  ISBN: 978-1-941641-55-2

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owners and the above publisher of this book, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Publisher’s note:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Contents

  Synopsis

  Vienna Bargain

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  About the Author

  Also by Lila Dubois

  The BDSM Checklist Series

  Synopsis

  Vienna Bargain

  She betrayed him, and now she has no choice but to accept his bargain. Prison…or three weeks with him at his secluded villa.

  Three weeks not just as his sub, but as his BDSM slave.

  She’s totally at the mercy of a man whose touch is so intense she broke her own rules: she slept with him, and worse, she let her emotions get involved.

  Can she keep her secrets when his touch, and her own traitorous heart, make her want to give in and fall in love?

  Vienna Bargain

  Chapter 1

  He’d never felt anger like this before. He wanted to hurt her. Really hurt her.

  The way she’d hurt him.

  Alena—was that even her name?—was a thief, and he was a fucking fool.

  “Who are you?” Alexander was surprised how cold his voice sounded. It was the polar opposite of the white-hot rage shredding his insides, leaving gaping emotional wounds, the pain constant and relentless.

  He had Alena pinned to the wall. Her hands were on his wrist, trying to weaken his hold on her neck. There were tear tracks on her cheeks. He’d squeezed too hard, almost choked her.

  A vile, dark part of him wanted to squeeze harder. He loosened the pressure, the sane part of him horrified at what he’d just done.

  Alena’s nails dug into his wrist and hand. “Let go.” Her voice was thin and reedy.

  “Let go?” Alexander balled the hand not around her throat into a fist. “No. I think— I’m going to, to—” His teeth clicked as he clenched his jaw.

  “Alexander, I’m so sorry,” Alena wheezed. “Let go and I’ll explain the parts I can.”

  His anger was still burning inside, but instead of heat now his anger was frigid. Piercing cold, like Dante’s hell.

  “You will explain everything.” Alexander released her neck only long enough to grab her shoulders and flip her around, facing the wall. He grabbed her wrists, forcing them together behind her back. The pashmina was still around his neck. It was too thick and bulky to make a good restraint, but he looped it around her wrists, tied a knot, then grabbed the knot, twisting it as if it were a tourniquet. She sucked in air between her teeth.

  I’m hurting her. I need to loosen it.

  Alexander closed his eyes and took a deep breath, locking away his emotions. Except for the anger. That he held on to.

  With his free hand he grasped her shoulder, jerking her away from the wall and turning her towards the stairs.

  He nudged her to walk, keeping the tension on the scarf around her wrists, even lifting a little to add pressure to her shoulders. Alexander realized that he’d turned her towards the stairs up. He’d started to take her back to his apartment.

  He still wasn’t thinking clearly.

  Alexander changed course, angling her towards the down staircase. As they passed the scattered pieces that had once been the box she was holding, Alena dodged to the side, briefly breaking his hold and kicked the largest remnant. It hit the wall and split into three pieces. Alexander lunged, grabbing her even as she kicked out, but not in time to prevent her from destroying it further. When he yanked her back her center of gravity was off and she fell against him.

  He wanted to wrap his arms around her. Hold her. Take comfort in her touch and smell, even thought she was the reason he needed comfort.

  Instead he grabbed the red pashmina and yanked it up. Her elbows locked and she was forced to bend forward to take the pressure off her shoulders

  When they stepped out onto the first floor, a red light in the corner started to blink. A motion-activated camera. His security company had wanted one covering every room, hall, and stairwell, but he valued his privacy, and had said no to the cameras. Except on the ground floor—for the safety of the tenant businesses—and on the first floor, where the onsite Wagner Global offices, as well as his household staff’s offices, were. These motion-activated cameras were monitored by RTW Security. He paid for live monitoring, not just recording.

  There had never been a break-in before, so tonight would be a good test to see if the obscene amount he was paying for security was worth it.

  Alexander lowered her wrists and slid his hand from her shoulder up into her hair.

  “Smile.” He yanked on her hair, jerking her head up.

  “I assume you want me to see that blinking light?” Her voice had lost the soft, almost sorrowful note. Now it was cool and seemingly unconcerned.

  He wanted to do something to her, hurt her, until she sounded as damaged as he felt.

  “No.” Thankfully his voice didn’t shake—with either pain or rage. “It’s so the security team can start running facial recognition.”

  “Ah. I assume the authorities will be joining us soon?”

  “Hoping an audience will save you?” He forced her over to the glass door with the Wagner Global logo on it. “No, the authorities won’t be joining us.”

  He yanked her wrists up, forcing her to bend at the waist. She tossed her head, getting her hair out of the way, and watched as he keyed in the code on the pad by the door.

  “You know I could have done that for you,” Alena said. “The Fibonacci sequence, right?”

  Alexander jerked the door open so hard he was briefly worried he’d break it. Holding it with one foot he hooked a hand under her arm and hauled her into the suite.

  Lights clicked on when they entered, and another red indicator started blinking.

  Once they were in he realized he should have taken her to the other suite. She’d been doing something to the server farm, and now he was walking her in to the very place she’d been trying to access.

  He forced her wrists up until her bo
dy was bent at a ninety-degree angle, then nudged her forward.

  “I can’t walk like this.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  Alexander steered her to the conference room. Elegant but not ornate the way the floors above were, the room had the requisite conference table, elegant high-backed chairs, and a lovely view of the park across the street.

  There was a bank of electronics, as well as a small wet bar, hidden behind the paneling on the short wall.

  Alexander pressed, and a panel popped open, revealing the electronics within. He reached in and grabbed a spare cord. He had no idea what it was for, and he didn’t care. He needed a way to restrain her, and electronic cables had been the first thing that came to mind.

  Alexander guided her to his spot at the head of the table, a plush leather rolling chair with wooden arms. “Sit.”

  Alena straightened when he released her wrists, and her gaze was pinched.

  “Sit,” he said again, holding up the coil of black cable.

  She stared at his hand, and for a moment he thought she might try and run. Fight.

  If she did he’d fight back, pin her as he had before.

  Unless she’s a professional corporate spy, then she might have some training.

  He’d managed to pin her on the stairs, but what if that had just been luck?

  The silence stretched, and with each moment his muscles tensed, ready to spring on her if she attempted escape.

  She looked disheveled—half her hair was in a bun, that had slid down over one ear, the rest of it spilling around her shoulders in a messy tangle, thanks to his hands. She wore casual black leggings and a black long-sleeved top that hung down to her thighs.

  Her gaze shifted from the door to him. She dropped her hands to her sides, the pashmina that she’d freed herself from falling to the floor.

  Looking him in the eye, Alena sat in his chair, her hands resting lightly on the arms.

  “Alexander, please let me explain.”

  “No.”

  “What happened between us as Dom and sub had nothing to do with what I was doing upstairs.”

  Lying bitch. He ground his teeth. He needed to tie her to the chair, but he was afraid his hands would shake noticeably. He needed to calm down first. “What were you— What, exactly, were you doing?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Before he could reply—as he was still deciding whether to say “fuck you” or “of course you can’t” he heard a door open. Synchronized footsteps thudded through the offices.

  Alexander moved away from the door as two men—covered head to toe in black, including tactical helmets with face shields—holding taser guns swept into the room. They were quickly followed by four more men. The first two checked the whole room, then positioned themselves on either side of Alena’s chair.

  Some stupid part of him wanted to tell them to step back, away from his…

  His what? His girl? His sub?

  It didn’t matter. He’d been played for a fool.

  One of the last men to enter walked up to him, pushing his visor up.

  “Mr. Wagner,” he said in crisp German. “I’m Commander Fischer with RTW. We saw the cameras activate. We have a team on the way to sweep the building, and will discover how she got in and—”

  “I brought her in. As a guest.” Alexander made sure there was no embarrassment evident in his words or tone. He knew he was speaking more slowly than was normal, a side effect of thinking through each word before it left his mouth. “I woke up, went to check on her. She wasn’t in her room. I found her in the second floor parlor. She’d made a hole in the floor, into the server room.”

  Commander Fischer nodded. “Would you like me to contact Wagner Global’s information security team?”

  “Yes. And bring in one of your people. I want outside perspective.”

  The commander caught on fast. “You think there is an internal issue?”

  Alexander looked at Alena. “I think she’s a spy. The question is, who is she spying for?”

  He watched as two techs struggled to reassemble and then access Alena’s device.

  The lead tech—a Wagner Global employee—sat back. The device was still in pieces but he’d laid them out in what Alexander assumed was a logical order. A cable plugged in to the biggest chunk ran to a laptop the tech had brought with him. “It’s a hardware protocol analyzer.”

  The RTW tech looked from the screen to Alexander and nodded, confirming what the first man had said.

  The employee watched the exchange, and outrage pinched his features. He glanced at Alexander, mouth open as if he were about to protest.

  Alexander raised one brow. The tech closed his mouth and turned back to the laptop.

  “What is a hardware protocol analyzer?” Alexander asked quietly.

  “It captures data traffic,” the RTW tech said.

  “Explain. Further.” Alexander bit off each word.

  “Normally these are used to filter and analyze traffic between networks and computers.”

  “Normally.” Alexander was going to shake the information out of this man if he didn’t explain fully in the next thirty seconds.

  He isn’t the one you want to shake information out of.

  “From what I can tell, this was used, via wired connection, for packet sniffing. Packet analyzers that are used to sniff packets means deep data packet inspection took place.”

  The Wagner Global employee looked at the security tech, who motioned for him to take over the explanation.

  “This was plugged directly in to our cluster servers, and someone used it to intercept and log all the traffic. Data was captured—copied. All the data on there.”

  “She copied everything on our server onto that?” Alexander still didn’t fully understand what the device was, but he didn’t need to. “Destroy it.”

  Now the techs glanced at each other.

  Alexander suppressed a snarl. “What?”

  “We can, of course, destroy the mirrored information, but it looks like all the data captured was already transferred out.”

  “How?” She’d been alone in the parlor upstairs for a matter of minutes.

  “Wirelessly.” The employee tapped a small rectangle of plastic. “Via this transfer device, and using an encrypted satellite link.”

  “Who was the data sent to?”

  “We can’t trace that, not with what we have.”

  “Find it.”

  The RTW tech cleared his throat. “He’s correct, it’s not possible for us to—”

  Alexander turned away, jaw clenched. He wanted to lash out at them, but if they both said it wasn’t possible, then that wouldn’t help.

  If they couldn’t give him answers, Alena would.

  Alexander strode out of the small office. Across the hall, the door of the temperature controlled server room was open, and two other employees were carefully checking all the connections.

  Alexander strode down the hall, back towards the conference room.

  Commander Fischer had removed his helmet and tactical vest, which were sitting in one of the conference chairs. When Alexander walked in, he looked up from a small computer open on the conference table.

  Alena wasn’t there. Fischer’s men had cleared out a small storage closet—boxes of office supplies were now lining the hall—and taken Alena in there. A makeshift cell.

  “Mr. Wagner,” Commander Fischer said.

  Alexander didn’t have the time or mental space for pleasantries. “All information on the servers was copied using the—” Damn it he’d forgotten what they called it. “—that box.”

  Commander Fischer nodded. “And based on what the information security specialists retrieved, it appears that data has already been passed on. She is most likely a professional.”

  Professional what? Spy—that’s what he’d assumed, but Commander Fischer had gently noted that “spy” was a term primarily used in fiction.

  She might be a professional hacker, or a pri
vate investigator. Most corporate espionage—unless there was a disgruntled employee in the mix—utilized outside people, or involved hiring high level personnel away from a competitor and asking them to bring proprietary information with them.

  His company—his family legacy—controlled a huge percentage of the shipping and import/export in this part of Europe. They had waterway rights for the Danube that went back more than a century, knew nation tariff and tax laws sometimes better than the governments in question. They’d also rolled out state of the art hardware RFID tracking and accompanying software with user-side interfaces not long ago. The list of things his company had or knew that competitors would want was long and varied.

  No matter what kind of professional Fischer was talking about, there was no way around the fact that Alena had played him.

  He should stop thinking about her and call in his VPs. Based on what they knew so far, it seemed unlikely she was working for someone inside his organization, though he’d considered that. Wagner Global had contingencies and protocols for everything from terrorist attacks to pirates—which were a legitimate concern in this business.

  Was there a protocol for the CEO being a gullible asshole?

  “Who does she work for?” Alexander asked.

  “I don’t know, but we do know who she is.” Fischer picked up a blue passport book. “She had this hidden on her person. The information matches up with facial recognition.”

  Alexander accepted the American passport. Hidden on her person. That meant Fisher, or one of his men, had searched her. Put their hands on her. Alexander’s jaw clenched.