Alleged Real-Life '50 Shades Of Grey' Ends In Arrest

They say that life imitates art ... or something like it, and that's exactly what happened with alleged New York sadomasochistic couple Edward Sonderling, 53, and Frankie Santiago, 27, who were playing out a real-life Fifty Shades of Grey fantasy sex life a la E.L. James' now famous characters, Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, when things got violent — and not in a sexy way.

Santiago had reportedly been in a live-in slave / master relationship with Sonderling, a Brown graduate and CEO of his own investment banking firm, for three years when she snapped, allegedly due to Sonderling's philandering ways, as a series of Santiago's texts to her master later revealed, reports the New York Post.

"If I ever see you with her I will not hold back," Santiago reportedly texted Sonderling. "I have nothing to lose" and "I hope she has a disease you catch" were some of the other texts that led Sonderling to press stalking, criminal mischief and aggravated harassment charges against his former sex slave.

Santiago also reportedly appeared one night at her lover's home on East 57th Street to confront him, and an altercation broke out which ended with her allegedly breaking one of Sonderling's car windows. "Ok, we got into an argument," Santiago later told the paper. "A car window broke. Who cares? It broke."

Santiago also said that the couple's life was nothing like E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey. "I'm sure people want so badly to believe that that book is real," she said, but her life was much more complicated. "We actually [had] a real life together. We're friends. We like to wear costumes. We party together."

An insider, who said that Sonderling allegedly spoke of himself as a "whipping aficionado" and bragged that he whipped Santiago "every morning before breakfast," had a different story. "Basically, she was there to serve his sexual needs," the source said. "She's his toy, his fetish slave."