The Silent Auction

A reclusive billionaire hosts an invitation-only auction in an abandoned Alpine monastery where the lots are not paintings or jewels, but living people—world leaders, scientists, and whistleblowers—who have been kidnapped and fitted with neural implants. Bids are placed in cryptocurrency; the highest bidder gains total remote control of the victim’s body and memories for 24 hours. When undercover MI6 agent Mara Kane infiltrates the event as a buyer, she discovers the final lot is her own missing sister. As the bidding climbs into the hundreds of millions, Mara must decide whether to expose the auction and risk immediate execution by the monastery’s automated defense grid, or win the lot and become the very monster she’s hunting.