PROLOGUE
The thick silence stretched out in the long, dark hallway. The only sign indicating to Mia Hawke that she was somewhere underground were the drops of water trickling down the stone wall. Her lungs screamed in pain as rough breaths were forced out, while her bare feet scraped against the pebbled ground. Sconces were set a few feet apart and provided a yellowish light, but not enough to bring any comfort. Mia tried desperately to piece together how she’d gotten there. Everything was scrambled in her head, a heavy fog holding back her memories.
A quick look down revealed her black lace lingerie, and she recalled waking up in a small room with a bed. She had picked the lock with a bobby pin from her messy updo and then escaped through the door, but after that, her mind went blank. Her legs trembled with weakness, an obvious effect of a drug given to her.
Though as the seconds drew on, and with each stumble forward down the long underground hallway, her thoughts began to break through in little fragments. A date. Yes, she was meeting someone for a date earlier, a guy she’d met through SiR, an app that connected high-powered Dominants with submissives. But she hadn’t made it…the moment she opened her car door and stepped out, everything went blank.
She pushed on, needing to make sense of all this, when a woman screamed on her right, “Help!”
Mia turned to the wall and blinked rapidly until her vision cleared enough to make out a dark wooden door.
“Please,” the woman cried. “Help me. Don’t leave me in here.”
Mia reached for the handle but found it locked.
Dread turned her blood to ice as she slipped when she swiveled away from the door, her legs collapsing underneath her. “I’ll come back for you,” she promised.
First, she needed to get help. Fast.
Determined to stop whatever psychopath had abducted them, Mia pushed off the ground, aware of the blood trickling down her legs. A quick look at her hands revealed her bleeding fingers. And yet…and yet…there was no pain. She scrambled forward, fighting past the haze of the drugs, wishing she hurt everywhere, then at least she’d be at her full strength to fight back.
The end of the hallway was right there.
But she never made it.
A firm hand suddenly grabbed her nape, sending her face-first to the ground. A scream ripped from her throat when she felt the prick in her arm, and she thrashed against the man who easily pinned her to the cool stone floor. He straddled her and the hardness of his erection pressed against her bottom, making her stomach roil.
“Mia. Mia. Mia,” he drawled in a voice both muffled and altered by a voice changer. It sounded robotic. “Now, my darling, is that how a slave is to behave?” He flipped her over, and she stared at a Baphomet goat mask.
She tried to scream again, to run, to do anything, but her eyelids fluttered, and the coldness inside was now the fear running alongside the drug he’d given her.
“Sleep,” her captor murmured in her ear as darkness crept over her. “Sleep, beautiful. You are mine now.”
CHAPTER 1
“That dirty, fucking psychopath,” Alex McCoy grumbled beneath her breath as FBI Director, Carl Lewis, exited NYPD police headquarters. The street was bustling with cars and congestion, horns blaring through the dark night, while Alex sat in the driver’s seat of her rented SUV. Lewis strode with purpose toward the limo waiting at the curb, with all the arrogance and entitlement that he’d been handed. In the public’s eye, Lewis was the face of the investigation of New York City’s latest serial killer whom the media had coined the Casanova Sadist. Only thing: Carl Lewis was the Casanova Sadist—the man responsible for killing six women he’d stalked on the BDSM dating app SiR for his sadistic games. Typically, the app was used by sane people looking to keep their kinky interludes private, but it also gave Lewis the perfect hunting ground. Two more women were still missing. And the FBI had no suspects, no DNA evidence…nothing.
The dark night had crept on Alex at some point while she’d waited for Lewis to exit the police station. On the outside, Lewis was like any other businessman in a suit. His dark hair was styled with gel. His round face clean-shaven. His suit, crisp and clean, and fitting him perfectly. On the inside, Lewis was a disgusting human that needed to be put down. And as the best hacker in North America, Alex was going to catch him.