Above all else Pascal Van Der Braack is a gentleman. Devastatingly debonair and seductively charming. Always styled and perfected. He is also a cad, scoundrel, rogue and kink empire founder. Tutored in the highest of society, having been born of royalty only to deny it, he found his solace in a world where rules need not apply. Where he chooses to ensure rules and duty do not apply. Some call him Sir, others call him Master and no one would dare risk his wrath unless they required the punishment he favourably delivers. No one except one, who has just strapped a collar around his throat. One he asked for. Now he needs to appropriate his businesses correctly for peace to ensue. He needs to find the correct path forward for everyone concerned, so he can relax, enjoy, and finally hand over the responsibility to someone else. Simple. But where comfort and a safety of sorts once dwelt, there is now uncertainty, and a feeling of longing he no longer understands. A need unfulfilled. As problems arise and allies scheme, he finds himself searching for answers in the most unlikely of places. Lilah It’s the same every day. I found it odd at first but I’m used to it now. I was so tired and weak when I got here that it was helpful really. That small woman comes in to help me wash and get dressed. I don’t know where the clothes come from, but they’re nice enough, and at least they’re clean and dry. Not like the rags I arrived in. They were taken from me the moment I took them off to get into the shower, the first shower I’d had in god knows how long. For nearly a year, I’d been running the streets. A year without a real bed or a home of any sort. There isn’t a long and awful story to tell about an abusive family member or a broken home. I suppose I just slipped through the cracks and got lost at some point. I lost my job first, then I couldn’t afford the bills or my apartment, so the landlord threw me out. I don’t blame him, he did the right thing for himself. And then it was just a long and never-ending road to nothingness. So, now I’m here, wherever here is. And I don’t know why… Note\* This Trilogy is best read after The White Trilogy as a continuation/spin off as some of the elements to the story are part of a backstory. Although it can still be read as standalone. It begins shortly after The White Trilogy ends and involves old characters.

The cracking of thunder has begun. Pascal Van Der Braack’s world is being shifted. The once untouchable king of his empire is finding flaws within his intricately weaved web. The people he thought he could trust are scheming, and the mind he thought he knew best is beginning to confuse him. Life within Alexander White’s hands should have been so simple, there should have been nothing to come between them, but Lilah James’ arrival is causing waves of discord to rally against all of their peace. And now his past misadventures are showing themselves more clearly too, trying to tear him down but for the arrival of yet another quandary to negotiate. Pure love. “Never place yourself in the hands of someone you would not trust with your life, it will surely be your own demise.” Words he’s lived by all his life, words that are starting to ring truer than he’d ever imagined. Lilah. It’s 9am, and all I’ve been doing for the last two hours is staring blankly at the wall trying to find an explanation for the last year of my life. Sleep was minimal last night, in fact, non-existent really. I spent most of it tossing and turning, thinking and re-thinking. Visions constantly assaulted me of the streets, the terror associated with it, and then the eventual realisation that this was it... I remember the exact moment I decided to give up and just exist. It was while I was wandering along in the park one day. I’d eventually taken a seat on a park bench to just let the world go by. You know, the sort of thing all the other people do with their time when they amble along. I’d dumped my bags underneath the bench and perhaps just thought I could forget the fact that I had nowhere to sleep that night. Pretend I’d still got a life. Or maybe I just wanted to watch all the others having a good time, or maybe I just needed a rest. I don’t know, but I do remember the guy sitting down next to me. I remember him sitting there for a few moments and then inching himself away further up the bench. He didn’t look at me, he didn’t even glance. He just had that look about him that told me he was revolted by what had dared to be in his presence even though I was there first. As if I didn’t have any right to be in such a beautiful park at all. I’ll never let anyone make me feel like that again.

Everything changes in life, and Pascal Van Der Braack knows that. He knows the constant conundrum that taints and twists the rules. He’s usually the one who twirls them, effortlessly. But what he doesn’t know is how his last threads of sanity will weather this current storm brewing. Lilah has lied. Alexander has lied. And Jon Innsbrucker has stolen his daughter. All his hopes now lie with the woman who cheated him of love, a man who won’t tell him the damned truth while he smiles out his amusement, and his own sense of harboured self-reliance. Games and manipulations - the highest order of any day’s pleasure, but not this time. This time war has begun and the clock is ticking down a death watch over his precious moments. Safety is key, and it begins the journey that takes him to a place he considers sanctuary. Rome. Where will they all be at the end of the day? And who will love whom in this eternal quest for peace? Lilah Stretching my arms again, I stare out of the window and continue to watch the hotel across the road. I’m not really sure where I am, but it’s a small district on the outskirts of Berlin somewhere. An affluent one. There are only a few houses dotted around and they’re all ginormous, with ornate architecture and large gates flanking their wings. The taxi followed the limousine all the way from the airport, and eventually I stopped it when I saw them pull up and walk into the Strazborg Excelsior, Roxanne carrying Claire. It seems to be a complex of some sort, because I, too, am in the Strazborg Excelsior, but a different building on the opposite side of the road. Why it’s called Strazborg given that we’re in Berlin, I don’t know or care. I’m too tired to give a damn, frankly. All night on the plane, I watched them quietly while hiding behind my hat and trying to keep my eyes open. Then I kept my eyes firmly focused on the black limo as it travelled its way here, wherever here is. And now I’ve started my watch from this window, waiting for whatever fate befalls me because he asked me to come.