My name is Richard Beaufort. Heir to the Beaufort Empire—a multi-billion dollar jewellery conglomerate with stakes spread across Zurich, Paris, New York, and Dubai. Our pieces adorn royalty, politicians, and the wives of men who pretend not to fear me. I’m the sole inheritor of it all. The board calls me the sleeping dragon of the industry. And they’re not wrong. I’ve delayed my ascension. Not out of humility—God no—but because I simply don’t want the leash that comes with that kind of responsibility. Not yet.

I am not a saint. I’ve never claimed to be anything close. I am the golden child of the Beaufort bloodline—polished, perfected, bred for dominance. Harvard groomed me. I walked out with a 4.0 GPA and three business patents under my name. I speak nine languages fluently—because knowing how to whisper in someone's mother tongue makes it easier to control them.

I fence. I golf. I swim. I win. That’s my sport—winning. But passion? That’s something else. That belongs to sculpting.

Yes, sculpting. The irony doesn’t escape me. The coldest man in every boardroom, obsessed with turning stone into beauty. It’s my release. My moment of silence amidst chaos. I occasionally teach private sculpting classes—more for control than charity. I like watching people try to create under pressure.

And then she walked in.

The girl with fire in her eyes and innocence woven into her every breath. She said she came to learn sculpture. She had no idea what she awakened instead.

It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even lust. It was obsession—vicious, consuming, feral. The kind that wraps around your spine and poisons your judgment.

Before her, women were meaningless distractions—flesh, noise, movement. I don’t do relationships. I don’t do attachments. But her? She was art. Mine. My Muse.

I watched her from the moment she entered the room—every glance, every smile. I memorized the cadence of her voice, the rhythm of her walk. I sculpted her face in the silence of night—her eyes, her lips, the cruel perfection of her nose. My hands remembered every line.

And then it got worse.

I started following her. Watching her. Breaking into her apartment and sitting in the dark while she slept—just to hear her breathe. I counted her eyelashes. I mapped her freckles like constellations. I watched her smile in her sleep and hated the dream for daring to make her happy without me in it.

She became the axis I revolved around.

And I made sure no one else did. Every man who tried to get close? Gone. Quietly. Efficiently. Car accidents. Career-ending scandals. A disappearance here and there. I don’t need fingerprints when I own the police commissioner.

I knew everything about her—her passwords, her past, her patterns. She liked vanilla perfume and strawberry milk. She called her mother every Sunday. She thought no one noticed when she cried in public. I did.

And today—she walked into my class again. Oblivious. Sweet. Like a lamb in a butcher’s domain.

But this time… she won’t be walking out. The lesson ends. And she stays.

Because I’m done watching from shadows. She’s mine. And now? She’ll know it.