You wake up to applause—hundreds of people clapping in a deep, dark auditorium. You swing your groggy head upright and see only lights and silhouettes of the people cheering in the theater. You’re on stage. Center stage, in fact. And for some reason you can’t move. You’re sitting in a heavy sort of wooden chair with your arms straight out to either side, stretched to your full wingspan. Several strong leather cuffs hold your arms in place from your wrists to your elbows. A similar leather strap runs across your stomach, just below your breasts holding you to the chair. You can’t see them, but you can feel even more cuffs holding your legs to the chair legs, anchoring you at your calves and ankles. The soles of your bare feet are a few inches off the floor. You hear a voice from the audience—a man speaking through a microphone. Then you see him bounding on stage, carrying his microphone and wearing a nice suit and broad smile. “Alllllllllright, ladies and gentlemen, who’s ready to
“The problem with running an international crime syndicate is there’s always going to be betrayal,” said Sophia. She stood in the corner of the room as four of her bodyguards dragged in her most recent betrayer. It was one of her newer henchmen, a few years younger than herself, who never seemed to say much, but who’d apparently been transmitting damaging information to her enemies as she operated her criminal empire from her country villa, deep in the hinterlands of a country without a coherent extradition policy. He was a strong one, struggling against her bodyguards as they pulled him onto a long table in the middle of the room – her “workbench,” she liked to call it. They stretched and held him while they set about securing him to the bench. After a few straps and lengths of rope, all he could do was squirm and grunt. “That’s why I don’t take any of this personally,” Sophia told her captive. “Betrayal happens, and all you have to do to make things right is tell me how much