Crazy Duke Fakes Frailty, Craving My Domination

Arya, daughter of Earl Westerlo, was betrayed in her childhood by her stepsister and the Marquis of the North, who forced her to swallow forbidden church medicine. Branded insane and a stain on noble bloodlines, she was stripped of her inheritance and exiled to a frigid abbey. Fifteen years later, she returns to the capital for vengeance, only to find her stepsister has seized her earldom, and her former fiancé has become the stepsister’s lapdog. Dragging her tormentors down to ruin, Arya sets her sights on Leon, the duke’s chronically ailing son. Using a tattered half-scroll of the forbidden drug’s formula she chanced upon as leverage, she confines the seemingly invalid duke to her side, coercing him to act as her devoted lover for a charade. Wielding the duke household’s power as her blade, she lays trap after trap to uproot every shred of her stepsister’s influence. She fancies herself the master player controlling every piece, unaware Leon’s frail sickness is nothing but a disguise—he had long seen through every one of her schemes. He craves the possessive affection she forces upon him, willingly acting as her weapon. Secretly, he annihilates the Marquis of the North’s assassins and blocks royal interference standing in her way. When the desperate Marquis tries to bend Arya to his will with the other half of the antidote, Leon tosses the man’s severed head and a complete antidote scroll straight at her feet. Her stepsister is stripped of her noble title and locked in a death cell. With her revenge complete, Arya tears up their engagement papers to walk away. But the heavy manor gates slam shut and lock behind her. The man who once gasped just to stand pins her firmly against the bed frame, cutting off every escape route. Savage possession swirls in his eyes as his rough, low voice rumbles, “My lady. You used my power to slay your enemies and now you think you can run? Now it is my turn to be on top.”