The morning began, as it often did for Adrian Montague Godfrey IV, with the whisper of Egyptian cotton bedsheets and the mechanical hum of imported blackout blinds lifting at a pre-programmed hour—set not by him, but by a former assistant he had fired in a fit of boredom. Sunlight, filtered through tempered glass and refracted by the skyline of Mayfair's elite, painted long golden bars across a room that was more museum than bedroom. Gilded moulding crowned the ceiling. A Klimt—an original—hung with studied neglect above a fireplace that hadn't been used since his arrival.
It was the suite of a man accustomed to a life where not even the air dared offend him.
Adrian stirred beneath the duvets, not because he had to rise, but because the scent of breakfast had begun to waft in: truffled eggs, brioche French toast soaked in saffron, hand-squeezed blood orange juice chilled to precisely four degrees Celsius. His personal chef, a former Le Meurice prodigy, understood that Adrian didn't ask for things—he simply tolerated or dismissed them. It was a performance of aristocratic indulgence so perfected it bordered on self-parody.
And yet, beneath the folds of imported linen and bloated entitlement, the man himself stirred not with urgency but with the faint, almost imperceptible resistance of someone dragging himself awake from a dreamless, bloated night.
Adrian Montague Godfrey IV was twenty-three years old and already ancient in his decay.
The Montague Godfreys were not just rich—they were wealth incarnate, their surname more potent than any royal crest. For centuries, their holdings had slithered into every vital industry on earth—energy, arms, biotechnology, rare-earth mining, global finance, and the invisible data networks that watched more than any government could. But their power remained private, subterranean, passed through blood and marriage, whispered about but never publicly dissected. The conglomerate, known formally as Montague Holdings Sovereign Trust, was a closed fortress of capital. Every share belonged to Cedric Montague Godfrey III—Adrian's father—a man who played markets like chess and people like cards.
Adrian was, in the official corporate documentation, a director of the board. A title handed to him like an expensive rattle, meant to amuse and placate. He had a corner office in the London headquarters—an obsidian and steel tower carved into the financial skyline like a blade—but he hadn't stepped foot in it in six months. Not that it mattered. The board meetings proceeded with or without him, executive decisions were made with his proxy signatures, and any query from a high-ranking official was swiftly silenced by the simple reminder: He is the heir. Leave him be.
So he lived like a man unmoored from time and consequence.
After a perfunctory bath in a stone tub flown in from a Sardinian quarry, he dressed—not for work, but for leisure masquerading as obligation. A cashmere blend turtleneck stretched unflatteringly across his midsection, the beginnings of his second chin sinking into the folds like a white flag of surrender. He wore silk socks with Italian loafers and a gold Patek Philippe he never wound. He looked like a man who had read a great deal about power and decided to cosplay it, without ever bothering to wield it.
By ten, he was nestled into the rear seat of his Rolls-Royce Phantom, driven by Olivier—his third chauffeur this year, the previous two having quit for reasons left unsaid but understood. They cruised through London like a ghost ship through fog, tinted windows separating Adrian from the city's grime and reality.
His destination: not the headquarters, not a foundation or an opening or even an investment lunch.
Instead, Claridge's.
He held court from his usual corner seat in the lounge, ordering a double of Dalmore 62 at an hour when most city workers were still nursing coffees and deadlines. Across from him sat two women he could no longer name—blonde, glossy, untroubled. They laughed too often, too loudly. He responded with smiles stretched like dying embers, his wit mechanical and crumbling under its own laziness.
They were here not for love or amusement, but for orbit. To sit beside a Montague Godfrey was, in certain circles, the equivalent of social knighthood. Adrian understood this. He exploited it. But he no longer derived pleasure from it.
"What do you even do?" one of them asked at last, eyes twinkling with faux mischief.
Adrian blinked, slow as molasses. Then: "I'm a director. Which is to say, I'm rich enough not to be asked that question."
They laughed again, and he leaned back, swirling the whiskey like it might reveal an answer in its depths.
He didn't tell them that he hadn't read the quarterly reports in over a year. That he didn't even know who the acting COO was anymore. That the only board meeting he had attended in person had ended with him pretending to receive an urgent call just to escape the boredom of actual governance. He had once tried, briefly, to sit with his father and understand the conglomerate's sprawl, but Cedric's voice was clinical, his expectations unspoken but crushing. Adrian had nodded, made notes, asked questions—and then promptly forgotten all of it.
It was easier to be useless.
Easier to be a disappointment on purpose, rather than risk the terror of failing while trying.
He lounged through days like this, layered in champagne and soft fabrics, a parade of indulgences meant to numb a truth he never admitted aloud: he was terrified.
Terrified of his own name.
Terrified of becoming Cedric's shadow.
Terrified that everyone, including himself, had already given up on his potential.
He was clever, yes. Brilliant, even. Tutors had once whispered of his intellect like a rare breed of hawk—sharp, fast, and unpredictable. But brilliance was a burden in a house where legacy was law and softness was sin. Cedric did not congratulate; he assessed. Genevieve did not mother; she curated. And so Adrian learned that the only rebellion available was stillness. Laziness. A quiet refusal to try.
As long as he remained in stasis, he couldn't fail. And the world, obligingly, allowed it. Because he was rich. Because he was untouchable. Because in a world that measured worth in digits and surnames, Adrian Montague Godfrey IV was a titan even while asleep.
But beneath the silken veneer, the cracks had begun to form.
He slept longer. Ate more. Moved less. Avoided mirrors. Avoided family. Avoided his own reflection in every way it came—be it literal, philosophical, or financial.
And the worst part?
No one stopped him.
Because the world around him was not designed to correct him—it was designed to forgive him. Indulgence was not a flaw in his realm; it was a lifestyle. His every mistake was cushioned by wealth, every failure reframed as eccentricity. He had become a caricature of the man he might have been.
A puppet in a gilded display case, too pampered to realise the strings were rotting.
And so, on that day like so many before, he left Claridge's drunk by noon, returned to his penthouse cocoon, and sank into a massage chair worth more than most people's yearly income. He pressed a button without thinking. The news flickered to life on a 95-inch screen.
Markets surged. War raged. Billionaires postured.
And Adrian, heir to an empire, watched it all with the vacant, bloated detachment of a man who had inherited a throne but never worn the crown.
Outside, the sky darkened.
Inside, he continued to live like the world would never touch him.
He was wrong.
And soon, his heart—forgotten, fattened, and quietly failing—would remind him just how wrong.