Page 8 of The Bounty (Redemption Inc.)

Seven

“Four-point-seven-five,” the auctioneer repeated from the pulpit, and as Wags lowered his paddle for the umpteenth time in less than ten minutes, he worried his pounding heart would beat out of his chest.

Phil was an interior designer. Wags had accompanied his ex to estate auctions before, but no bid for staging furniture had ever come close to the amounts being offered for Claudia Anthony’s diary.

And no estate sale they’d attended had ever been this dangerous.

Wags sat alone on a pew in one of Vienna’s oldest churches, a small Romanesque structure in Old Town.

Scattered among the other pews were mobsters, mercs, and dirty politicians.

Associates of Charles’s that Wags recognized from case files.

One of Catherine’s minions, a snooty French woman he’d questioned last year.

An abhorrent American television news personality who, Wags assumed, was there on Stewart’s behalf.

High-ranking officials in the Austrian government.

Representatives from the triads, the Yakuza, and the Sicilian Mafia.

And on the pew across the aisle from Wags, the two Bratva soldiers from Friday night sat on either side of an older gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair and a younger woman in a form-fitting black dress, her knee-high leather boots as shiny as her fall of glossy black hair.

All of them knew who he was, Wags was certain, and the inherent danger fueled the adrenaline coursing through his veins. It had been years since he’d felt this alive, and as Catherine’s stand-in raised her paddle again—4.8 million—the stakes ratcheted higher.

And higher again, the Russians bidding 4.9.

Before Wags could even lift his paddle, the American beat him to Blaine’s max—five million.

Which was eclipsed the next second by the Russians going to 5.5.

“Fuck,” Wags cursed under his breath. He yanked the burner out of his pocket, preparing to text Blaine, when the phone vibrated in his hand, a message appearing in the chat they’d started earlier.

10mil end this now

He shot his paddle into the air before he could second-guess himself or Blaine. “Ten million.”

Gasps echoed around the room, and the elder Russian leaned forward, glancing around his guard, his dark-blue eyes narrowed.

Wags held his stare, meeting the challenge, blood whooshing in his ears, until the older man conceded with a nod.

Smiling, the Russian straightened and laid a hand over the woman’s, holding her paddle down.

They were out. And so was everyone else. Thank fuck.

“Going once, going twice,” said the auctioneer, before announcing, “Sold to Mr. Barrow.”

Wags’s sigh of relief was interrupted by the auctioneer’s assistant appearing at the end of his pew. “Will you be bidding on anything else, sir?”

Wags shook his head. “Think I’ve spent enough,” he told the assistant, affecting the Texas drawl to match his ID.

The frazzled assistant cracked a smile. Another win. “Follow me, please.”

As they moved toward the front of the nave, to the antechamber door where each prior winner had been led, Wags walked with the swagger of his confident Texan friend, playing the part, while curious and hostile stares drilled into his back.

They knew who he was, but not whom he worked for.

Did they suspect? The Bratva surely did after what they’d witnessed the other night.

Would they follow him once he stepped outside?

Would any of the other bidders? Where was he even supposed to go?

Blaine hadn’t covered next steps in his texts.

Because he hadn’t expected him to win? Or because he’d left him to the wolves?

Except the funds were there—ten million—when Wags went to transfer them, meaning Blaine hadn’t abandoned him completely.

He kept waiting for the burner to vibrate as he finished the transaction and collected Claudia’s diary, but it remained obnoxiously silent.

He texted Blaine as he navigated the church’s narrow hallways.

I’m headed to the penthouse unless you tell me otherwise.

A hand shot out of an open doorway, grabbing him by the biceps and yanking him inside a shadowed room. The door slammed shut behind him, and Wags drew back his right arm, ready to swing.

“It’s me, Teddy.” Hands up, palms out, Blaine shifted into the colorful prism cast by the room’s stained-glass windows.

He was dressed the same as the other night—jeans, T-shirt, hoodie—and his eyes shone with the same gleam they had then.

The thrill of the game, of the win, and shining even brighter now as they alighted on the diary in Wags’s other hand. “Is that it?”

He handed the diary to Blaine, who held it reverently, thumbs skimming over the soft leather cover embossed with a chrysanthemum.

A hard swallow later, he crossed the room to the cluttered desk, where a backpack lay in the halo of the lamp there.

He examined the diary more clinically, checking its cover and spine and fanning the pages.

Seemingly satisfied, he tucked the diary inside the bag, then rested back against the edge of the desk.

When he lifted his gaze to Wags, it was dark and hooded, heated, and his usually sharp voice gravelly. “Come here.”

“We need?—”

He crooked a finger. “Come here, Teddy.”

As if drawn by a magnet, Wags closed the distance, moving into the space between Blaine’s spread legs. Blaine grabbed his belt buckle and yanked him closer. So close that Wags could feel the heat of his breath through the thin material of his dress shirt.

“That was so fucking hot.” Blaine glided his hands over Wags’s hips to his behind, clasping his cheeks and hauling him closer still, molding them together. His lips brushed the underside of Wags’s chin, making Wags tremble with want. “I’m gonna blow you right here in this church office.”

Wags’s cock stiffened. All that adrenaline from earlier was spinning his libido higher and higher, but here wasn’t safe. “We need to get out of here.”

“It won’t take long.” Blaine deftly unbuckled his belt while torturing Wags with his lips and tongue, kissing a path from behind his ear to his collar. “How do you want me to do it, Teddy? Easy or rough?”

Blaine slipped a hand inside his pants, cupping him through his boxers, and Wags melted. “Rough,” he confessed on a groan. “Sloppy.” He didn’t want perfect. He wanted passionate, alive, too needy to be neat.

“Fuck, I knew you were hung, but this…” He stroked him, rough and hard, exactly the way Wags ached for it. “I can’t wait to get my lips around you. Make a complete mess of your cock, your balls, your hole.”

“Bloody hell, I need…” All those things. He tunneled his fingers through Blaine’s top strands, eager to push him down and hold on tight. But the last sliver of his rational brain tried to convince him otherwise, to protect the man promising to take him apart. “Blaine, we need to?—”

The rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire rattled the stained-glass windows, and on its heels, an explosion shook the walls.

Wags ripped himself out of Blaine’s arms and wrenched up his pants. “We need to go!” He grabbed Blaine’s bag with one hand, Blaine’s hand with the other, and bolted for the door, listening for a break in the commotion outside, for an opening to escape.

Blaine’s hand clenched around his, and Wags glanced over his shoulder, taking in the younger man’s wide eyes and paler-than-usual complexion. He was terrified. Wags tugged him closer, handed him his bag, and brushed a kiss across his forehead. “I’ve got you. Trust me.”

Dark eyes gazed up at him with the kind of faith Wags had long forgotten. “I do.”

Footsteps thundered past their door, headed toward the main part of the church. Followed by silence. He cracked open the door.

“Careful,” Blaine hissed behind him, his grip on Wags’s hand nearly cutting off his circulation.

Wags waited another couple of seconds before poking his head out the door and glancing both ways. Shouts from the left, the direction of the chapel. To the right, an open door under the blue-and-white Ausfahrt sign.

“Follow me,” he told Blaine, then without giving him time to object, tugged him out into the hallway and toward the exit.

They were a foot away from freedom when one of the Sicilians appeared in the doorway.

Wags didn’t think, just acted, grabbing the open glass door and slamming it into the man’s face.

The mobster got his hands up in time to protect his face, but the shattering glass around him froze him in place long enough for Wags and Blaine to slip by.

And come face-to-face with his partner.

The second Sicilian lifted a pistol, and Wags dove for his side, shoving him back and his gun arm up, the shot going awry as they stumbled backward.

Enough of a window for Blaine to escape. “Run!” Wags shouted. “Get out of here!”

“I’m not leaving you!”

Now we wanted to be caught. Wanted to help too, scrambling behind the mobster and kicking his knees out from under him, upsetting everyone’s balance and sending them all down together.

“You can’t run,” the Sicilian said in accented English, letting go of his pistol and grabbing Blaine’s ankle. “Give me the diary, and you can go.”

“We’re not gonna do that,” Wags said, getting his feet back under him and his hands under the mobster’s collar, hauling him back and wrestling him to the side.

Righting himself, Wags grabbed Blaine’s hand, yanked him up, and turned—into Mr. Shattered Glass. He was bloody, and angry, judging by his hardened dark eyes, and more shouts and footsteps were approaching from inside. Wags worried for a moment how he was going to get them out of this.

Worry that ratcheted higher when gunfire popped behind them. He curved over Blaine, bending them at the waist, anticipating impact.

Only for the Sicilian to fall at their feet.

Wags whipped his gaze over Blaine’s head.

“Get out of here,” the elder Russian said from where he stood behind the woman with a still smoking gun. “We’ll cover you.”

As much as the detective in Wags wanted to ask why, the protector in him demanded otherwise. He nodded his thanks to their unlikely saviors, and then, arm still around Blaine, got them the hell out of there.