“You gotta know, Zach—Nora’s not just some smut writer with a wild sex life. She’s the motherfucking queen of the Underground. And Kingsley Edge is, obviously, our king.”

“And him? What is he?” Zach didn’t even want to say Søren’s name.

“He’s whatever’s higher than a king and queen.”

“An emperor?” Zach guessed.

Griffin smirked. “A god.”

“A god,” Zach repeated and looked down at the worshippers beneath them. The FBI agent Griffin spoke about was now being dragged from his cross and the woman in leather wrapped a collar around his neck and attached a leash to it. She led him on his hands and knees across the floor.

“I can’t believe you put collars on human beings,” Zach said with renewed disgust.

“The collar is everything down here. Subs love their collars.”

“Do all submissives wear collars?”

“Not all of them. House submissives, those are subs that work here at the Circle, wear house collars to show they’re on the payroll. They look like this,” Griffin said, pointing at the collar he wore as part of his punishment. Where a dog tag usually would be hung a small silver number eight inside a circle. “But in private a Dom will use a collar either for utility, for love or both. A collar can be as meaningful as a wedding ring to some couples.” Griffin laughed. “Holy shit…you should have seen Nora and Søren back when they were still together. I’d only been coming here a year before she left him. But I got to see them in their glory days. Collars are leather usually, black or brown, right? Guess what color her collar was?”

“I don’t know. Red?”

“White,” came a voice from behind them. Zach and Griffin turned around and found Søren watching them in a white collar of his own. “What else would it have been?”

* * *

The halls and stairways of the 8th Circle were a labyrinth to most, but Nora knew them better than her own home. She could have found her way around blindfolded. A few times in the past she’d had to. She turned corner after corner and descended a small staircase to the lowest level of the building. At the end of the quiet hallway stood a door identical to all the others except this door and its knob were painted completely white.

Nora stood before the door and took slow, deep breaths. She couldn’t even imagine who or what waited behind the door. The White Room was reserved only for the highest-level Dominants—not even Griffin had earned White Room privileges yet.