by Alice Toby
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Rick would rather be anywhere else than here. He rushes to his tiny, windowless office and closes the door. He shuts the blinds and sits behind his overstuffed desk. The editor pulls up his laptop and takes a deep breath. Rick really doesn’t want to do this but he has no choice.
When Tor ordered the editors to hack into The North Face computer systems, Rick hired every hacker he knew -- except for the black hat operator he is about to contact now. That’s because the Russian hacker known as “Bad Boris” is expensive - very, stupidly expensive. Bad Boris gets the job done. He always gets the job done. But Rick knows it’s going to cost him.
“I’ve been waiting for you to contact me,” Bar Boris types as soon as Rick instant messages him through an encrypted hackers posting board.
“How did you know I needed you?”
“Because all the hackers have been bitching about ‘The North Face’ project. None of them could get through. They are all fucking amateurs.”
“I know. I should have contacted you.”
“You should have contacted me first!”
“Alright, Bad Boris. How much is this going to cost me?”
“First you have to tell me what you want.”
“Alright, I need all the camera surveillance footage from The North Face store in their Palo Alto location on Stevens Creek Boulevard during the month of April. And I need a record of all transactions during that month. Can you do that?”
“Of course I can.”
“Excellent. How much?”
“100,000 U.S. Dollars.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?!”
“Goodbye.”
“Wait! Wait! Gimme a minute, here.”
There is no answer on the other side of the chat. Rick begins to sweat. He knows that if Bad Boris goes away, he will be out of luck. He only hopes Tor will simply fire him. He has seen his boss at his worst. The worried editor stares at the blinking cursor on the screen for what seems like an eternity.
“You have exactly sixty seconds,” Bad Boris types.
Rick slams his head on his desk. $100,000. That is essentially his budget for the rest of the year. For the next six months, Rick will be unable to hire freelancers. He will have to make his team of bloggers work every weekend. He will have to work every weekend. He will not be able to see his kid’s baseball games. His wife will have it out for him. Rick looks at his watch. Thirty seconds have passed. Rick begins to consider his other career options. “Start my own blog?” That didn’t work the first five times he tried it. He could try getting a job at a real company in Silicon Valley. No, that would be an impossibility. Once you disappoint Tor, he makes it a point to “freeze out” ex-employees from finding employment in town. Fifteen seconds left. Rick could move out of town. He can’t do that. His wife won’t stand for it. Ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Rick looks at the screen. Five. Four. Three. Two.
“Alright. $100,000. I will send the money within the hour.”
“I will get to work once I receive payment.”
Rick is relieved and sick to his stomach at the same time. Before he can have any second thoughts, he quickly takes the money from his segregated fund and transfers it into an untraceable digital currency known as Bitcoins. The funds are transferred to Bad Boris within minutes.
The editor waits for confirmation from Bad Boris. It doesn’t come right away. Now Rick is in a white hot panic. “Did this guy just fuck me? I just sent $100,000 to some Russian hacker in untraceable funds. What am I thinking?! No. No. Think about this for a minute, Rick. You have worked with Bad Boris several times before. He has always delivered,” Rick tells himself as he gets up from his desk and paces around his jail cell like office. “But you have never sent him $100,000 before. He could just run off with it,” Rick tells himself as he sits down on the floor of his office. He buries his head in his hands. He wants to cry. He can’t. He is a 33-year old man with a wife and a five year old child. He needs to act like a man. Rick gets up from his near fetal position. He walks back to his desk and sits down. Then he stares at his laptop. Onscreen is a simple message from Bad Boris.
“Have received payment. Will get right to work.”
Rick smiles. He cries. He goes home and drinks a half a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.
****
“I don’t think I’ve ever gone two straight days without any clothes on!” Karin remarks as the couple share a cool pitcher of Ice Tea on the patio.”
“Naked time is the best time,” Ryan remarks as he takes a small cube of ice from his glass. He takes the ice and playfully teases Karin’s right nipple until it gets hard. He leans in and slowly licks and sucks on it. Karin leans back and runs her hands down between his legs. The couple has lost count as to how many times they have had sex in the past forty-eight hours. Just when the couple think they are “sexed-out,” they get started again. It’s as though the four months of sexual tension has boiled over with no end in sight.
A little lick turns into a rabid bout of breast licking, sucking and fondling. Karin returns the favor by stimulating her man with her talented hands and fingers. The couple falls to the ground, taking turns pleasuring each other with their mouths. Karin enjoys the look on Ryan’s face when she deep-throats her man. She loves to push him right to the edge of climax and then quickly bring him back.
“I don’t know how I am going to get back to California!” Ryan remarks as he tries to catch his breath. Karin smiles and runs her tongue all over her man’s strong body. The couple continues to sexually gratify each other until they are too tired to move. By the late evening, they decide to spend their final Maui night on the beach. Ryan and Karin bring their blankets and pillows out onto the sand. They look up at the full moon and spoon as they drift off to sleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Rick has been up for two straight days. His wife wonders what is wrong with him. He doesn’t answer her. She knows it is something work related. Sometimes she thinks about leaving him. She would have if it weren’t for the child. Rick’s wife has seen her man change. The confident young go-getter has become haggard, irritable and defeated at far too young of an age.
The editor looks at the clock. It’s four in the morning. He doesn’t have to be in the office until 8 a.m. But he leaves for the office anyway. He doesn’t want to be home right now. He doesn’t like it that his wife wakes up every two hours to check on him.
Rick gets into the office at a little after 4:30 with gas station coffee in his hands. He walks into his office and turns on his laptop. Onscreen is a message from Bad Boris.
“Have acquired the info you have requested. Contact me to retrieve the information.”
Rick is wide-awake now. He quickly drops the coffee and pulls the laptop up close to him.
“You got it?!” Rick types manically.
“Hello Rick. Yes, it was not that hard to acquire. All I had to do was go through the company’s cybersecurity service provider.”
For a moment, Rick is aggravated that he paid Bad Boris $100,000 for what is essentially two day’s work. However, now he just wants the hacked information. “You can send it at anytime,” Rick types.
“There is over a terabyte of video and financial information coming your way.”
Rick looks around his office for a portable storage drive. He runs out of his office and grabs one from a nearby desk. Then the editor runs back to his office and hooks the storage disk to his laptop. “Alright, let ‘er rip!” Rick types.
“Here you go,” Bad Boris responds.
A link appears. Rick clicks on it. Over one terabyte of 30 days worth of surveillance footage and over 10,000 store transactions begin to download onto the laptop and the storage disk.
“Thanks, Bad Boris. You have saved my ass.”
“I always deliver.”
****
“I’m back,” Ryan types on an instant message to his second-in-command. Michelle Ackman looks at her tablet computer and types back.
; “I know you’ve had an eventful honeymoon so I don’t need to ask.”
“Of course. I can’t do anything without making news.”
“That’s what you get for being Ryan Wilde.”
“I’ll be coming into the office this afternoon.”
Ryan and Karin are driven from the airport back to the billionaire’s Palo Alto estate. For the first time, Karin gets a sense of this place as home. Though there is a voice in the back of her head that constantly reminds her that this is only temporary. “Remember, the marriage contract stipulates that this will only last for a year.”
Karin doesn’t think about the vast sum of money that is coming to her at the end of that year. She wonders if she will be able to go on without Ryan. She has fallen in love with him. And while Ryan has been nothing but affectionate and passionate, she doesn’t know if his love will end with the contract. He is known as a playboy. Will he seek someone else when the year ends? Karin wonders to herself. Don’t worry about it. Enjoy what you have right now, the young woman rationalizes as the car pulls onto the estate.
****
After seven hours of downloading 30 days worth of video from three cameras, Rick has everything he needs. Now he needs to find something on that video. The editor takes a couple of minutes to grab a sandwich and a drink, then he goes right back to his desk and turns on the flat screen TV on his office wall. He begins to play the security camera video on the screen. “How am I going to get through all of this?!” Rick thinks to himself. He splits the screen into three so he can view all three camera angles at the same time.
While Rick watches three screens with one eye, he checks the financial transactions with his other eye. He looks for any familiar names from Emperor. Having not slept in over two days, Rick’s eyes are heavy, salty and tired. The fear of Tor Janz wrath is the only thing keeping him awake.
“Rick, we have stories that need to be approved before they can be posted,” the editor’s assistant tells him.
That’s right, Rick remembers. In addition to looking through all this hacked information, he still must attend to his day job of reading, editing and approving all the postings for the Barbarian Blog website. Rick takes one eye off of the flat screen TV and begins to quickly read the stories submitted to him. For a moment, Rick feels a pain in his chest. The pain subsides. And for a fleeting moment, he curses the fact that he wasn’t having a heart attack.
****
Ryan and Karin arrive back at the Emperor offices. Each one of the employees offer a smile as they see their boss, fresh and tan from his honeymoon. The employees even appear to be warming up to Karin. The couple makes their way up to the fourth floor where Ryan is inundated with department heads looking to meet with him.
“Looks like my vacation is officially over,” Ryan remarks as he looks at the small crowd gathered in front of his office. Karin tries her best not to “be in the way” as the senior managers of Emperor jostle for the opportunity to meet with their boss.
“Alright everyone. I’m going to meet with Michelle first and then I will come down to your offices. I can’t have a madhouse up here,” Ryan tells his managers. The department heads appear somewhat flustered but they don’t second guess their boss. In fact, many of them are happy to see him back.
Ryan’s second-in-command escorts him into his office. Karin takes a seat at one of the sofas as the President of the company talks to her CEO.
“The FTC has set up a regulatory meeting for June 6,” Michelle tells Ryan.
“Alright. What about the IBS shareholders? Does it look like we have majority support?”
“According to Goldman, it looks like you have 75% of the votes.”
“Wow. I wish we could vote on it right now. By the way, how much is Goldman Sachs making from handling this merger?”
“I would have to check with our CFO but I think they are making about two billion in fees.”
“Damn, I got into the wrong business!” Ryan jokes.
Michelle laughs as she grabs a drink from Ryan’s mini-fridge. “Everything is going great. We are going to meet with the regulators in D.C. next month. After that, we have about three months before the shareholder meeting and the final vote.”
“All I think about is what could possibly stand in our way.”
“The only thing that could hurt us is something unexpected. Something out of left field.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rick wants to blow his brains out. He has already sat through eight straight hours of watching security video from three different angles. His eyes are bloodshot. His body is tired. He has started watching the film at triple speed in order to speed up the process to catch footage of Karin during her shift at The North Face. So far, he has found nothing that would constitute a scandal. He looks at his watch. It is 10 p.m. He knows his wife has called five times. He hasn’t answered. Just as Rick is about to get up and leave for the evening, Tor comes storming into his office. “So, whattaya got?” Tor demands to know.
“I don’t have anything yet.”
“What are you doing, it looks like you are about to get up to leave.”
Rick hesitates. He doesn’t know what to say or do. Finally, he just comes out and tells his boss, “I have been up for two days. My wife is worried.”
Tor walks right up to Rick, invading his personal space. The six foot, five inch behemoth brings his nose within an inch of Rick’s nose. “You don’t go home. You don’t see your wife. You don’t see your kid until you find me something on that footage. Is that understood?”
Rick doesn’t answer. He sits back down at his desk. Like a zombie, he continues to stare at the screen in front of him. Tor leaves the office and takes off for the night. Rick looks down at his phone. It is ringing again. He knows it’s his wife. He doesn’t answer. Rick looks back up at the screen. He will spend this evening with Karin’s security footage.
****
“We should take off for the night,” Ryan suggests to his new wife as well as his second-in-command. Since the CEO came into work at 4 p.m., he decided to work late into the evening and meet with each and every one of his department heads. Much to his surprise, he saw that his President Michelle decided to stay late as well. Knowing that Michelle has most likely been working late in his absence, Ryan encourages his company President to get out of the office.
“You look like you could use some time off,” Ryan tells Michelle.
“Oh, I don’t want to take any time off while the merger is happening.”
“Well, at least allow yourself to sleep in. I’ll feel bad if you don’t get a little time out of the office.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
Ryan turns his attention to Karin. “Let’s go have some fun.”
The young wife is intrigued by this suggestion. She would have assumed that her husband would want to go home and get some sleep. However, the tireless energy within the Emperor CEO will not allow him to retire for the day this quickly. The couple makes their way down to the first level. They get into Ryan’s Audi R8 and speed out of the Emperor campus.
“Where are we going?” Karin asks.
“San Fran.”
“Really? You aren’t tired.”
“I don’t allow myself to get tired.”
“I need to know where you get your energy.”
“I tell you where I get it. I get my energy from being enthusiastic about my dreams and ideas. When you have big dream and ideas, they keep you awake until you fulfill them.”
“What’s your big idea now?”
“To make you blush.”
Now Karin is really intrigued.
The Audi makes its way to San Francisco. The young woman looks out of the car as they see the various nightlife of the city navigate the dark sidewalks. She sees the junkies, runaways, street-walkers, trouble-makers and lost souls go about their nocturnal business. She has no idea what is in store for her.
The Audi pulls up to a dark warehouse. For a moment, Karin gets a little
nervous.
“Why are you stopping?” she asks.
“We’re here.”
“Where is this?”
“This is the place.”
“The warehouse?”
“It’s what’s inside that counts,” Ryan remarks slyly. The couple gets out of the vehicle. Karin turns around and sees her husband leaving the six figure exotic vehicle unattended. “Is the car okay here?”
“Oh yeah. No one is going to touch it.”
The couple walks up to a pair of non-descript double steel doors. Ryan presses the button on the door. “We’re closed,” a deep threatening voice answers through the speaker.
“The dragon sent me,” Ryan answers.
There are a few seconds of silence. Then the door opens. A sharply dressed man with a shaved head and a mustache opens the door.
“Oh, good evening, Mr. Wilde,” the man answers. The couple walks inside. Karin is shocked to find the interior decorated with fine wood and leather furnishings. Above her is a chandelier that would be at home at the finest estates in Europe. The couple is escorted to an old style elevator. The lift operator helps them onto the elevator car. The gate is closed. The couple is lifted up several levels to the top floor of the warehouse. Karin is shocked to find the area buzzing with activities.
“Welcome to ‘The Top Floor,’” the elevator operator tells the couple. As soon as the gate is opened, the young woman realizes that she is not in an ordinary club. She sees a young blonde on her knees, restrained by a chain. Karin turns her head and finds two men slowly caressing a topless woman on a red velvet couch. Karin blushes. Everywhere she looks, Karin finds herself around people in various states of undress, pleasuring and being pleasured by finely sculpted men and women.
Karin and Ryan are escorted to a VIP section that rises slightly above the rest of the club. From this vantage-point, the couple is able to see every carnal activity taking place. Karin can’t believe her eyes. Like a curious house cat, she turns her head at every moan, slap and orgasmic curse erupting from each corner of the club. The young woman looks to her side and sees a tall dominatrix with short blonde hair slowly whipping a naked man. She locks eyes on the dominatrix. Her body begins to tingle. Ryan slowly kisses Karin’s turned neck. He runs his hands around the young woman’s body and slowly feels her up. As Ryan begins to rub Karin’s breasts, he slowly nibbles on her ear.