For a moment, the speed of the attack paralyzed Shaw. Then Brueckmann’s hips connected with the desk, and the top half of his body lunged forward, hinging at the waist, the knife lancing toward Shaw. Shaw darted back. The blade caught him—his brain sent up a panicked flare: how bad, how bad?—but all Shaw felt was the tug on the Lululemon shirt.

Brueckmann’s attack had been driven by a hell of a lot of speed, and now, as the knife reached its terminus, the rest of that force carried Brueckmann’s upper body forward, still folding at the waist, until the hand with the knife skewed to his right and his forehead clipped the top of the desk, as though he were performing some sort of bizarre bow to Shaw.

Then Brueckmann started to gather himself again. He put both hands on the desk, raising himself, readying himself to push off and over the desk to stick the blade in Shaw’s throat.

Shaw located the fountain pen and grabbed it. Brueckmann jerked a nasty little swipe with the blade, catching the inside of Shaw’s wrist. Shaw drove the fountain pen straight down through the back of Brueckmann’s knife hand, pinning it to the desk.

Brueckmann screamed. This close, Shaw could see the raw red skin and painful swelling where the coffee had scalded him. This close, Shaw could see spinach caught in Brueckmann’s back molars. This close, Shaw could see Brueckmann’s injured hand bloody and open and fluttering and tacked to the desk like some sort of butchery of a butterfly.

Wresting the switchblade from Brueckmann, Shaw collared Brueckmann’s free hand and set the knife to the edge of Brueckmann’s throat. The dom sobbed, but he stopped screaming.

That was when North appeared in the doorway. At the perimeter of one of North’s perpetual black eyes, the skin had split, and blood trickled down North’s pale cheek. Even from a distance, Shaw could see the goose egg rising on North’s forehead. The two men locked eyes for a moment, and then North circled around Brueckmann’s desk and looked at the dom’s bloody hand pinned to the desk. Then he looked at Shaw.

“Don’t say it.”

“Just once.”

“Shaw, don’t say it.”

Waggling the switchblade, Shaw said, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

“Jesus.”

“Where’s Jeremy?”

“Out cold in the supply closet. I jammed a chair under the door to keep him busy in case he wakes up.”

“Smart.”

Brueckmann was taking those rapid, hissing breaths between his teeth that Shaw associated with people in extreme pain. Now, he screeched, “My hand, get that thing out of my fucking hand.”

“Please,” North said.

Shaw jabbed with the switchblade, opening a pinprick on the fleshy underpart of Brueckmann’s jaw. “All North’s boys learn how to say please.”

“Please, please, oh Christ, my hand.”

“You stick people in dog crates,” North said. “You slap them around. You spank them. You whip them. You watch them.” He glanced at the bank of screens, where camera after camera observed a variety of sex acts. “And I’m sure they don’t know they’re being watched. Maybe even being recorded. But you can’t handle a little bit of pain yourself. Is that right? That makes you a pretty poor fucking dom.”