Dr. Celeste Morano is a celebrated sex therapist in the heart of New York City — poised, brilliant, and professionally untouchable. In her late thirties, she helps others explore their deepest desires, guiding them through shame, dysfunction, and longing. But in her own life, passion is dead. Her marriage is a quiet grave — cold sheets, lifeless conversations, and a husband who looks at her like she's a stranger.

Enter Lucien Moreau — late twenties, French-American, a ruthless mafia kingpin with a lethal charm. Sharp suits, sharper instincts, and an obsession with power — until he sees her. Not the polished professional the world reveres, but the woman behind the mask: aching, restrained, and starved for something real.

He doesn't touch her — not at first. He plays a slow game of seduction, slipping into her world like smoke under a door. Anonymous roses at her clinic. Donations under a false name. A client who never speaks but stares too long. He wants her hooked — and he wants her to want it.

Celeste tries to stay in control, analyzing her own reactions like a case study. But while she counsels clients through their fantasies — bondage, forbidden affairs, domination — she finds herself sinking into one of her own. And every fantasy has his face.

When she discovers Lucien's identity, it's too late. Her world is already unraveling. He drags her into his underworld — a realm of raw sex, violence, secrets, and possession. He's not gentle. He doesn't ask. He claims. And Celeste? She finally feels alive.

Velvet Chains is a twisted tale of obsession, taboo lust, and the hunger that threatens to burn them both alive.

Not just in that curated little office of hers, where I sit like a statue while she tries to dissect silence.


At the corner café she visits after sessions — almond milk latte, no sugar, always at 4:15.


At the florist she pretends not to linger in, fingers grazing the white peonies.


On Wednesdays, she walks home instead of taking a car. That's when she removes the mask. Just a little. Enough for the truth to show.


There's something about the way she moves when she thinks no one is watching — shoulders relaxed, jaw unclenched. Her elegance remains, but it's unguarded. Real.


The woman beneath the crown she never learned to wear.


I finally see him in the flesh — tall, attractive in a practiced way. The kind of man who learned charm from textbooks and social dinners. But there's nothing behind the smile. No hunger. No instinct.


They're walking into a benefit gala at The Met. She wears a black velvet gown, sleek and royal — the same material I imagined wrapped around her wrists.


She smiles on cue for the cameras. He says something. She laughs — delayed. Disconnected.


I wonder if she even knows how good she is at acting.


My fingers tighten around the glass in my hand, but I don't crack it.


Because I don't need to interrupt her life.


The next morning, a package is delivered to her office under another alias. No signature. No note.


Inside is a rare first-edition print of La Petite Mort, an out-of-print psychoanalytic volume about the intersection of desire and ego death — the same one she quoted in an obscure academic journal nearly a decade ago. The passage she cited was underlined in gold ink.


Back at my penthouse, Adrien, my right-hand man, waits in my study, shifting uncomfortably as I walk in.


"He's not as clean as he looks," he says, holding out a dossier. "The husband. Damien  Morano. Not deep in, but close enough to be useful. Fund managers with dirty fingers. Off-books transfers. Shell companies in Liechtenstein."


This isn't about jealousy. It's about leverage.


If I decide to crush him, it won't be because I need to remove the competition.


It'll be because she deserves a kingdom free of rot.


I return to her building three nights later. Late. After dark. I don't enter.


I just stand across the street, watching her window — the faint flicker of light behind closed curtains.


The streetlamp glints off the band around my wrist. Not a bracelet — but a cuff. Gold, like hers. Mine's older. Worn. A relic of the man I used to be before I learned how to control empires.


Chapter 8 - GLASS AND FLAME