Rumors ruin reputations. For a maid, they can be maddening.The sharp-tongued Professor Campbell, your employer, is dead. Insinuations about your "nightly duties" make finding a new position impossible. Just as you exhaust the last of your options, an unexpected offer of employment comes from a man you've never met: Sicarius Estrova - shipping magnate, eligible bachelor, and an old friend of the professor.

His household, Gravelorne Manor, is far from the picture-perfect image it projects. The staff are rowdy, the mansion is bizarrely furnished, and your beguiling master seems to delight in playing calculating mind games. Too old for the nonsense, you meet his perverse teasing with biting wit and pernicious poise. However, when his endless taunts turn into a sudden proposal, you cannot help but feel something is amiss.

Seduced by his amorous attentions and the promise of financial security, you enter into a marriage where the only certainty is Sicarius's obsessive desire to mold you into his world. As your husband flip-flops between hopeless romantic and shameless devil, you begin to wonder what wicked schemes hide behind that charming smile.

(A reader insert horror romance where you play the main character.)

Reader Character Description: She/her pronouns, AFAB anatomy, approx age late twenties to mid-forties.