Rumours began as they always did in circles of obscene wealth—not with journalists, but with staff. And not with staff who dared speak aloud, but with those who whispered behind doors carved from imported Brazilian mahogany and polished with the silent reverence of class distinction. At first, it was the doorman at 56 Park Row who noticed it: Adrian Montague Godfrey IV had not returned to the penthouse in nearly a week. Then it was the chauffeur's logbook, with the Bentley untouched in the garage, keys gathering dust in the safe. Then it was the chef, baffled by the absence of his daily requests—the truffled poached eggs left unpoached, the wagyu untouched, the bespoke lemon tarts uncatered for.
But no alarms were raised.
Why would they be?
He was a Godfrey.
And if a Godfrey disappeared, it wasn't cause for concern. It was cause for discretion.
The whispers took shape as the obvious lie: He must have gone to Switzerland again.
The name became code among his staff. Switzerland was where he'd once retreated for a month during what he had theatrically called a "spiritual recalibration"—a debauched escape to a lakeside estate outside Zurich with two French actresses and enough Dom Pérignon to anesthetize a bull elephant. It was also where many of the ultra-elite quietly disappeared to for cosmetic stem cell therapy, oxygen tanks infused with gold ions, and private clinics that never issued death certificates without a consultation from three lawyers.
Switzerland, the maids nodded, as they folded the same sheets untouched for days.
Switzerland, the concierge agreed, politely refusing entry to a Godfrey cousin who had arrived without a scheduled visit.
Switzerland, even his mother said, when Cassandra called her in rare concern and asked, "Have you heard from Adrian lately?"
Genevieve, always composed, always powdered and perfect in a way that betrayed her aristocratic lineage, merely sipped her Darjeeling and said, "Darling, he's fine. You know Adrian—he vanishes and resurfaces like an indecently expensive comet."
Cassandra wasn't convinced. But she didn't push. Not yet.
And so, the fiction held.
But Adrian was not in Switzerland.
He was in London.
Trapped in a war bunker of his own making.
—
The penthouse, now emptied of its usual coterie of staff and sycophants, had become something closer to a monastery or a bunker—depending on how you squinted. The opulent velvet drapes remained drawn. The chandeliers dark. The kitchen, once a playground of decadence, had been stripped of all sugar, salt, dairy, fat, and indulgence. In their place: meal packs measured to the milligram, rows of vitamin infusions, pharmaceutical injectables, needles, gloves, thermometers, and a biometric reader mounted on the fridge door.
Even the music had changed. No more string quartets. No jazz, no lo-fi, no opera.
Now it was silence, or the metronomic beat of an ancient rowing machine echoing off the Carrara marble floors.
The doctors came and went in shifts, each one more aghast than the last. They had been summoned under layers of NDA and shadowy retainer contracts, but none of them were prepared for what they found.
Dr. Leticia Morton was the first to confront him again.
"You're not preparing for death," she snapped, watching as he collapsed after another brutal set of stair climbs. "You're accelerating it."
Adrian, pale and drenched in sweat, waved her off as if she were a fly buzzing near a wound.
"I've been accelerating it for twenty-three years," he panted. "At least now I'm doing it on my feet."
"You're treating your body like a mutinous employee you can threaten into submission—"
"It is," he said hoarsely. "And if it fails, it deserves to be fired."
Another doctor, a hematologist from Munich, nearly walked out mid-procedure when Adrian refused an anesthetic. "You're not a martyr," she spat in her heavy accent. "You are a stubborn little prince with a death wish."
"I had a death sentence," Adrian corrected, eyes bloodshot but clear. "Now I'm just bargaining with the executioner."
Even the in-home nurses began to splinter. One quit after a week, citing "psychological pressure." Another wept openly after he passed out on the rowing machine and refused to be taken to hospital. "You want to die," she sobbed. "Why am I here?"
Adrian hadn't answered.
Not because she was wrong.
But because she was only partially right.
He didn't want to die.
He wanted to be worthy of surviving.
Even if the survival never came.
—
Then came the family's reach.
Cassandra sent flowers to the clinic in Zurich, not knowing it was a dead end.
Julian sent a snarky voice message: "Hope the Alps are scenic enough for your newest pity party, brother."
Genevieve called his assistant and left a cool message: "Tell Adrian that if he's done playing dead, he's expected at Lord Hawthorne's gala next Friday."
And Cedric?
Cedric sent nothing.
Because Adrian's father was not a man who chased his son's ghosts. He was a patriarch, a monarch in grey suits and zero words wasted. His silence was a blade. And it cut deeper than any insult.
Adrian expected no rescue. No summons.
Because in the Godfrey dynasty, if you fell behind, you weren't saved.
You were buried.
—
Still, Adrian trained. Still, he fought.
There were days where he couldn't even walk to the study without assistance, his breath laboured, his vision edged in black. Days where he crawled to the freezer for ice packs to soothe the burns of injectable peptides surging through his bloodstream. Days where his legs gave out mid-squat and he toppled to the ground, too weak to rise, too stubborn to call for help.
And there were nights—long, cold, infinite nights—where he lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling, heart thumping like a misfiring piston.
He'd whisper to the shadows:
"I'm still here."
Not with pride.
But with defiance.
He could feel his body trying to betray him. Every cell screamed mutiny. The treatments weren't working—not the way they were meant to. His biomarkers were erratic. His pulse unstable. His left ventricle had lost even more function, something the doctor gently told him through a half-whisper while he was gulping oxygen from a canister.
But Adrian didn't care.
He was no longer trying to live forever.
He was trying to make death work for it.
If he had to go, it would not be as the punchline of his family's legacy.
It would be as the Godfrey they feared he might become.
The one who did too much too late.
The one who changed the terms of his own demise.
The one who made the silence scream.
—
And so, the world continued to believe the fiction.
That he was in Switzerland, drinking from a crystal fountain of youth.
That he was, as always, being pampered.
Untouched.
Untroubled.
But beneath the marble and the silence, Adrian Montague Godfrey IV was breaking his own body open in the name of redemption.
He had no transplant.
No backup plan.
No family behind him.
Only one thing remained:
Spite.
Spite toward the old self.
Toward the body that had betrayed him.
Toward the name that had crushed him.
Toward death, who dared knock too early.
And in that spite, Adrian had finally found what no amount of legacy had ever given him.
A reason to fight.