Sterne: Monica
Some bonds are chosen. Others are recognized.
In 2009, Monica Vale enters Julian Sterne’s world of precision and proximity, believing she understands power through observation and control.
Monica is a deliberate reshaping — not conquest or fantasy, but the quiet recognition of a dynamic built on consent, restraint, and the clarity of being fully seen.
Releasing February 14, 2026
Monica Vale enters Julian Sterne’s world believing she understands power — as structure, influence, and proximity to success. Intelligent, perceptive, and professionally capable, she expects to navigate his orbit through observation and control.
She is wrong.
Across Hong Kong’s skyline, Shenzhen’s factories, Macau’s private casinos, and within the quiet gravity of Julian’s cliffside home, Monica is drawn into a hierarchy where control is earned, silence carries meaning, and intimacy is inseparable from responsibility.
This is not a romance of rescue or submission, but a deliberate reshaping — one built on consent, discipline, and the unsettling clarity of being fully seen.
As fascination becomes recognition, Monica must decide what she is willing to yield — and what she will claim in return.
Monica is a psychologically rich novel about power, devotion, and transformation — and the courage to choose a life defined by structure rather than chaos.
Monica begins in 2009, when Julian Sterne is a man defined by precision, ritual, and control — and when Monica Vale enters his world with clarity rather than fear. Intelligent, observant, and self-possessed, she does not seek rescue or transformation. What unfolds between them is deliberate, chosen, and exact.
This is a love story built through intention. The novel traces a relationship shaped by consent, discipline, and the quiet discovery of what two people can become when power is neither performed nor resisted, but negotiated with care. Here, surrender is not loss but focus, and control reveals itself as a form of devotion.
All intimacy depicted is consensual, explicit, and emotionally grounded. The dynamic that forms between Julian and Monica is refined rather than theatrical, structured rather than forceful. Pleasure emerges through responsibility, and closeness through trust earned slowly, ritual by ritual.
This is a story of alignment rather than conquest —
a relationship shaped by clarity, restraint, and choice.
Intended for mature readers. Contains explicit sexual content.