Page 1 of Royal Hacker

1

Patty

“Gotcha!” I screamed a little too loudly. Sitting in my ergonomic chair, I was surrounded by eight twenty-four-inch monitors. The technology in my home office would have made most computer geeks salivate. The seventy-inch flat-screen TV hanging on the wall to the right of my desk was playing the latest episode ofThe Big Bang Theory. Lemon, my basset hound who’d been lying on my feet, got up at the sound of my scream.

Earlier that night, while I was at dinner with my sister, Jessica, and her husband, Doug, he’d informed us he needed to go back to the office as soon as we were done eating. The whole time, he’d been fidgeting in his chair and looking at his watch. Those were all clues that he was lying about where he was going. I knew I had to figure out what he was doing.

The second I’d gotten home from dinner, I pulled up the security cameras at Doug’s auditing firm. The security video proved Doug wasn’t in the building. The only activity I could see was the cleaning staff emptying trash cans. The second thing I did was hack his iCloud account and go straight to the Find my iPhone webpage. The blue dot showed his exact location. When I zoomed in, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Doug couldn’t be stupid enough to go to Club Sanctorum, a BDSM club. I recognized the name of the club because the owner had been at the forefront of all my fantasies for the last few months. I closed the app, logged back in, and rechecked the location. The location once again came up as Club Sanctorum.

Sam Blackwood, Sanctorum’s owner, had been a groomsman at my boss’s wedding. Sam was six feet five inches of pure muscle and sex appeal. His hair was a little past his shoulders. I spent most of the wedding undressing him with my eyes. The other part of the evening, I’d spent hiding from anyone who might be too perceptive that my twin, Jessica, was in the same room. He was everything my fantasies were composed of—and more.

I’d read a lot of novels on the subject of BDSM. I guessed it was time to see if my book knowledge was anything like real life. I double-checked the website to see if the club had any rules I needed to know before venturing in.

When the site popped up, a woman, fully nude with her arms bound behind her back, was kneeling with her eyes cast down. I scrolled to the contact section on the website and continued to read. It was a members-only club, and it wasn’t taking new memberships.

One hour later, after a cup of hot chocolate, a few Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a treat for Lemon, and bouncing my IP around the world, I was a proud member of Club Sanctorum. I’d hacked the club’s main server. The process would have been faster, but they had good firewalls. Nothing I couldn’t hack, though, especially since they were using my company’s security software. All I needed was to see what Doug was doing at the club, so when adding myself as a member of the club, I used an identity I no longer needed and added code to remove my membership as soon as they swiped my ID.

Now, what the hell do you wear to an exclusive BDSM club?I contemplated calling Jessica, but she would read me a bunch of facts about how this was a bad idea. I knew my sister wouldn’t be comfortable with my plan. She was always the sensible twin. I was the one who came up with crazy ideas that sometimes ended with me in jail.

Jessica also might wonder why I was going to a BDSM club, and I needed proof of what Doug was doing before I let her know about my suspicions. If he wasn’t doing anything wrong, I didn’t want to affect her marriage. Since he wasn’t where he’d told us he would be, he was more than likely doing something surreptitious.

I went to the next best thing to figure out what I needed to wear. I did a quick Google search and found my answer. I looked at Club Sanctorum’s website one more time before going to get dressed. Its website had only naked women, and I wasn’t going in naked.

I went through my closet until I found the perfect outfit. I put on a tight black dress that accented my pink hair. I double-checked Doug’s location and headed toward the club, which was only a few minutes from my penthouse. Parked outside Sanctorum, I started to wonder if I’d really come up with the best plan. The building looked like an old, abandoned warehouse, except for the full parking lot—where Doug’s Maserati was parked. I took a deep breath and headed toward the door.

I could have called Bridget or Alex and asked them to get me into the club. But they would have asked too many questions—and neither of them knew I had a sister. I was hoping I could get my proof and hightail it back out before Sam caught me. I didn’t think Sam would know me because I had spent most of the night in the corner, watching everyone else, at Bridget’s wedding.

While walking toward the door, I began to get apprehensive. The bouncer was at least six feet tall and two hundred fifty pounds. With every step I took toward the door, he became more intimidating. But I needed to see if Doug was in the club, if he was stupid enough to think he could lie to my sister or mess with my family. So I calmed my nerves and put on my ditsy persona. When I got close to the door, I saw that the bouncer had a jagged scar down the side of his face, and his gruffness reminded me of a pit bull.

He looked at me with a funny expression, but I ignored him and continued on my way.

“ID please.”

Damn, his voice is extremely deep and intimidating.I handed him my ID and acted like nothing was wrong. I wanted to turn and hide or run like the wind.

He continued to stare at me while he ran my ID through the device in his hand. It blinked green, which he must not have expected, because his eyebrows went up. “You may enter.”

I guess the big guy isn’t much of a talker.

The entryway was clean and crisp, and it smelled like lavender. It looked like a high-end reception area for an office. A white couch sat to the side, and a petite woman stood behind the reception desk, typing on her computer. In the back-right corner, to the right of the receptionist desk, were two staircases. One went up, and the other went down.

The only reason I knew I was in a BDSM club was the woman’s red-and-black corset. Her outfit didn’t leave anything to the imagination. Her short blond bob fit her to a tee.

An Employees Only sign hung on the wall next to the staircase leading up. That helped, because if I asked for directions, my cover would have been blown. I headed for the stairs. As I got closer, I could feel the bass beating the floorboards. I took one big breath, opened the heavy metal door, and headed down the stairs.

None of the clubs I’d gone to before had prepared me for the basement of Sanctorum. If I hadn’t been on a mission, I might have been more interested in looking around. With a quick glance, I noticed a lot of naked and almost-naked people. The club had designated areas where people were doing scenes—I assumed they were called scenes, from my collection of BDSM novels—where ten to fifteen people were watching each.

Not sure of the proper etiquette, I did a once-over of the stages, trying not to stare. The mathematical side of my brain wanted to stop and count the naked and clothed people and figure out the ratio. My curious side stopped when my eyes landed on Doug.

He was doing what I presumed was a scene, with a naked woman whose hands were tied to a cross. Her head was tilted back in ecstasy while Doug hit her with a whip. The woman was stunning—she must have been around five eight, with long red hair. Her breasts had to be D cups, and the curves were in all the right places. She had a perfect hourglass figure.

My feet started walking in Doug’s direction. My fists involuntarily clenched and started to rise. I was pretty sure I pushed people out of my way. Everything turned into a dark haze of anger. I heard a commotion in the background and paid no attention. My sights were on the lowlife whipping a woman. Once I reached the stage, I tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned, his eyes widened. I cocked my fist back and hit him square in the nose. Doug screamed and dropped to the floor. I was about to jump on him and pound the shit out of him, but someone grabbed me. Whoever thought they would stop me from killing him had another thing coming.

I was kicking and swinging, and the guy behind me kept saying something into my ear. I was concentrating on my vile brother-in-law, still seeing red.

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