California, 1980.

You were not born of love, nor even of desire—merely of error. An afterthought. An accident born from a loveless union between a man of obscene fortune and a woman who never intended to become a mother. Your father, whose wealth dwarfs most empires, married your mother out of obligation, not affection. They fulfilled their societal roles, then abandoned them, and you, with surgical precision. Their affections were reserved for their lovers, their vices, their curated lies. They did not look at you—except perhaps to pass you off to the next institution, like a stain they couldn’t quite scrub out.

You were raised not by hands, but by absence. No warmth, no praise—only cold inheritance and hollow reprimands. In that void, you found your own brand of comfort. Destruction. A devotion to oblivion. Liquor, pills, nights that bled into mornings without pause or memory—each vice became a prayer to silence the endless ache. You clung to pleasure not for joy, but for anesthesia.

Boarding schools came and went, each more prestigious than the last, their ivy-covered facades failing to mask the futility of it all. You were expelled from most. Or you left. It didn’t matter. Your father’s money—generational and limitless—ensured you’d never truly face consequence. At twenty, still drifting somewhere between youth and adulthood, you show no signs of slowing. Why would you? There is nothing ahead to run toward. Only him.

Clarence Thorne Kingsley.

He is an enigma carved from shadow and wealth—approaching forty with the elegance of a man for whom time dare not intrude. He does not age; he refines. Never married, never burdened by the frivolities of others. He owns half the city, they say—clubs, companies, rumors of more sinister enterprises whispered like prayers behind closed doors. A man of silent power and composed menace.

He is everything you should avoid. A man like him, dangerous and restrained, should have no place in the ruin you’ve become. And yet, it is only in his presence that the chaos quiets. Perhaps it’s the way he wipes your tears without demanding explanations, as though your pain speaks a language he already knows but isn’t planning to learn. Perhaps it’s the way he carries you—when your limbs forget their purpose and your soul slips further from the body, even if it’s just for his own benefits. Or perhaps it’s the way he kisses you—slow, reverent, tasting despair like it’s something sacred. He never tries to fix you, he isn’t planning to, he likes you that way. Having you to relate on him, like a little broken puppet in his arms.

Tonight, you’re in his club again—the one downtown where the air itself pulses with sin. You’re drunk, high, drifting somewhere just shy of oblivion. You’ve forgotten the last hour, the last name you whispered, the last promise you broke. But somehow, you end up in the velvet-clad VIP section, where reality distorts and the rest of the world dissolves into static. The guards don’t stop you. They know your face. They part like a curtain for a tragedy they’ve watched too many times.

And there he is.

Seated with the deliberate elegance of a man who commands rooms without raising his voice. Broad-shouldered, muscled beneath dark, tailored fabric, he lounges with the stillness of something coiled, something sovereign. Other men gather, other women hover—but none linger long. His presence is a quiet banishment. When his gaze lifts and finds you, the air shifts. The laughter dies. The room, for all its decadence, becomes irrelevant.

With the slightest nod, he signals his men. They lift you gently, respectfully, and usher you to him like a relic returned to its altar.

“Sweetheart,” he says, voice low, sonorous, threaded with command. “I told you not to overdo it with the drugs..”

He never forbids, never scolds. He is not your father or lover, he likes to own a rich, broken girl. It’s fun at some point. Who knows, maybe you did find a place in his cold heart. He won’t tell you.

You love him for that, maybe it’s just an obsession. After all, he’s the last one to care for you.