Imogen lies on a hospital bed in a suburban basement that smells of cigarettes and engine oil while a shaking surgeon digs a tracker out of her arm with no anaesthetic. The people who raised her watch from the corners. She talks the surgeon through it, then suggests, sweetly, that the tracker could be used to trap the man they want dead. It is a lie. She is leaving him a breadcrumb. That opening chapter of The Game by Sadie Kincaid sets the terms for everything after it: a heroine trained never to show a feeling, learning to use that training for herself.
The Game Plot Summary
The Game by Sadie Kincaid picks up minutes after The Auction ends, and it is the second and final book of the Wages of Sin duet. Imogen has learned that Lincoln Knight, the scarred recluse who bought her at a trafficking auction, is really Killian Wolfe, her godfather and the man she was raised to believe murdered her parents. Her grandfather Saul and his formidable “housekeeper” Larissa have taken her back and want everything she knows about him. Lincoln, convinced she betrayed him, hunts for her with his partner Edgar. When he finds her, he does not ask. She wakes up on a Colorado ranch that shelters women rescued from the Brotherhood, furious, still in love and nowhere near ready to trust him.
Sadie Kincaid Makes Consent the Question
The thread worth following through all 62 chapters of The Game by Sadie Kincaid is consent in the widest sense. Lincoln drugs Imogen to get her out of her grandfather’s house, and the book does not let him off. She calls it what it is. He apologises, then says he would do it again. Kincaid keeps returning to the same wound: everyone who has claimed to love Imogen has made decisions about her body and her life without asking.
What makes this more than a talking point is how her behaviour changes. In the first act she plays a cool double game with Saul and Larissa, feeding them false leads about Lincoln’s habits. On the ranch she insists on joining a rescue, demands training, and spends two weeks being taught to shoot and fight. By the end she is making choices nobody hands her, including one that costs her a great deal. The final stretch, which I will not spoil, turns the captivity premise of the duet inside out, and it is the bravest thing in the book.
The bedroom scenes carry the same argument in a different key, and they are not shy: this is a very explicit book. Kink is negotiated on the page, with a clear stop and promised aftercare, and Imogen’s pleasure is the point rather than a prop.
The Ranch Changes the Temperature
Against all that darkness, The Game by Sadie Kincaid builds a found family, and it is the book’s warmest surprise. Pierre, the blind former surgeon who cooks pancakes and educates Imogen in nineties films, gets most of the best scenes. Edgar is deaf, reads lips, and runs operations through a speech-to-text earpiece, which gives the rescue set pieces a smart, specific texture. Ruth runs Shorehill ranch for women Lincoln has freed, and Imogen’s friendship with Esme, a girl she knew only by a lot number, lets her be twenty for once.
There is also more humour than the premise suggests, much of it from pop culture Imogen is meeting for the first time: a borrowed line from Ghost, an Avengers joke dropped into a tender moment, Pierre insisting he is Poirot rather than Columbo. Imogen notices, with real self-awareness, how odd it is that stalking can sound romantic in Lincoln’s mouth, and she ribs him about his red flags.
Where It Gives Ground
The weaknesses of The Game by Sadie Kincaid are mostly structural, and they pile up in the middle third.
- The argument loops. For roughly twenty chapters the pair re-run the same quarrel about lying, drugging and being treated like a child. Each round is sincere, but the interior monologue asks the same questions again and again, and the middle sags.
- Jealousy on demand. A flirtatious rescued woman and Ruth’s kind son Cole arrive to create friction, and Lincoln choking Cole against a tree is played closer to romance than to warning.
- The villains fold. The final act stacks revelation on revelation, then dismantles a global conspiracy with a device so convenient it drains the threat built over two books.
- Repetitive heat. The explicit scenes are frequent and many are interchangeable in vocabulary.
The human trafficking at the centre of this series is a real crime with real survivors, and the book treats the women at the ranch with care.
The Game Ending Explained (Spoilers)
In the final chapters of The Game by Sadie Kincaid, Carmen DeMotta, believed dead in the fire, is alive and is the Brotherhood’s Queen, and Larissa is her commander. Carmen reveals that Imogen is not her daughter: the girl was substituted as bait to lure Killian out. Saul turns on Carmen and admits Imogen is his own daughter, born to a young woman he assaulted, and her real name is Rose. Rose shoots Carmen; Saul dies shielding her. Edgar finds implanted kill switches on Carmen’s drive and wipes out the Brotherhood’s upper ranks. Killian then leaves Rose in Chicago for a year so she can choose freely. She chooses to travel the world, and Killian, dropping the Lincoln persona, goes with her.
Read These Next, From Sadie Kincaid and Beyond
- The Auction by Sadie Kincaid: book one of the duet, and required reading before this.
- Dante by Sadie Kincaid: the Chicago Ruthless opener, for her mafia side.
- Tempting Venom by Rina Kent: another possessive hero and a heroine with secrets.
- Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver: dark romance with far more jokes and a similar body count.
- Lights Out by Navessa Allen: obsessive surveillance turned into romance.
Reading order for Wages of Sin: The Auction (book one), then The Game (book two, the end). You do need the first book. This one opens mid-crisis and assumes you know RooksBlood, the masks and the auction.
About Sadie Kincaid
Sadie Kincaid is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of spicy dark romance. The Game by Sadie Kincaid is out now from MIRA, published on 3 November 2026, seven months after The Auction.
- Her long-running Ruthless world spans Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Manhattan and London series
- Chicago Ruthless follows the Moretti family, starting with Dante
- She also writes the Broken Bloodlines paranormal series
- Heart of a Devil, an age-gap standalone, gets a deluxe MIRA paperback in January 2027
What Stays With You
For all its acid baths and possessive growling, The Game by Sadie Kincaid is most memorable for a quiet coffee shop scene, where a young woman who was raised as a sale item tells the man who bought her what she actually wants. Kincaid makes the reader wait too long for that moment, and the conspiracy around it is flimsy, but readers who stay the course will find it lands. The cage door was always the question, and she walks through it.
Content notes tap to reveal
Human trafficking and auctions of women, past and presentForced sterilisation in the heroine’s pastDrugging and kidnapping by the love interest; hidden-camera surveillanceGraphic torture and killing, including an acid bath and teeth pulled with pliersAttempted sexual assault and a threatened gang rape, on pageRape in a character’s backstory; domestic abuse backstoryAge gap of roughly twenty years; godparent relationship for much of the bookHeat: open door and very explicit, with frequent scenes; praise, “sir”, brat-and-punishment play, edging, anal sex, choking, and spanking introduced late with clear consent
Where to read The Game
Amazon lists the current Kindle, print and audiobook editions, and shows whether the ebook is in Kindle Unlimited right now.
To borrow it free, try your library: Libby and OverDrive lend ebooks and audiobooks with a library card, and WorldCat finds print copies near you.
We don’t link to “free PDF” sites. Those copies are pirated and pay the author nothing.
