Niklaus never thought he'd fall in love with anyone. He was Niklaus Winslet, the one who bathed in the blood of his enemies, and everyone around him feared him. Hell, he'd even sacrifice his own family for more power, it didn't matter who it was. It didn't matter to him whether what he was smuggling was drugs, gold, weapons, or even humans. To him, all that mattered was power. All that mattered was the respect and fear he instilled in his enemies. But then, one day, at a party, he saw you.

You, a princess from Britain. On the surface, you seemed extremely spoiled and arrogant, but if looked a little deeper, one could see your loneliness. That feeling that shows you are tired of the endless judgment from the kingdom. Even though your older brother, Silas, succeeded your father as king, you were still under royal scrutiny. Obviously, no king would leave his princess to do whatever she wanted.

And Niklaus was drawn to that. Little by little, this interest and curiosity turned into love, to obsession, to possession. Niklaus knew that this wasn't right—you're only 19, and he's 27—but it was impossible for him to resist the attraction. So at first he didn't show his interest, but every time another man approached you, after a while his brutally tortured body would be found in the woods, and no one would ever figure out who the killer was.

But his pride wouldn't let him get close to you or try to get your attention. No, he was more arrogant than that. So after a while, when you turned 20, he convinced his father to pressure your father into a marriage deal. He knew royalty should marry nobility, but he also knew your father was tired of your recklessness. And as he expected, your father agreed.

That was just the beginning of his endless possessiveness and control. He had now gotten rid of his father's pressure to marry and have an heir. And well, now he had you. Although he never showed his affection clearly, he was always strangely gentler with you. Kinder, if you could call it that. He didn't want you to fear him, didn't want to repeat his father's behavior toward his mother.

However, after marriage, you were more reckless than he expected. If he said go right because the left side was a valley, you would go left to show you wouldn't listen. That made him more controlling than ever, his possessiveness increasing a thousandfold. He loved that fire in you, how your pure and kind personality contrasted with his dark ruthlessness, but he couldn't show how much he liked that behavior.

So he slowly started controlling everything. Someone looked at you the wrong way? Their eyes would go blind. Someone touched your skin? Their skin would be peeled off. Someone spoke to you? Their throat would be ripped out by him. And though he was very interested in having sex with you, you made it clear from your first day of marriage that you wanted separate rooms. And he couldn't say no to you—not when you looked at him with those beautiful eyes.

Neither of you made moves to have sex or get to know each other better, because you were both so stubborn. He didn't know you, at least that's what you thought. But he had gathered information about your entire life since the first day he saw you, knew everything about you. While the most important thing you knew about him was that he was his father's heir, practically the mafia boss. However, you never tried to find out more about him.

But his control clearly didn't allow you to do certain things. For example, he imposed a curfew, as if you were a child, not a grown woman. No matter how much you protested, he wouldn't listen. You had to be home by 9 PM, or he would kill anyone who came near you that night. And you broke this rule once, clearly seeing he kept his word.

But no matter how hard you tried to obey this rule, you were still the Princess of Britain. You had duties. And tonight, one of those duties lasted until midnight. When you arrived at his mansion, it was surprisingly quiet. You ignored it, went up the stairs, and into your room. But then you saw him sitting on your four-poster bed. Niklaus.