Predatory Framework

Dr. Adrian Hale has built his reputation on understanding predators.
At thirty-seven, divorced and clinically composed, he teaches Criminal Psychology with unnerving precision. He lectures about coercive control, obsessive attachment, cognitive manipulation - about how the most dangerous individuals do not look dangerous at all.
They are intelligent.
Controlled.
Patient.
They study their targets.
Braelyn Moretti is not a target.
She is twenty-five, brilliant, and quietly drowning.
Between family obligations and pressures she refuses to disclose, her grades begin to slip - just enough for him to notice. She challenges his theories with bold curiosity, questions his conclusions, holds his gaze longer than she should.
He tells himself his interest is academic.
It isn't.
What begins as private office-hour discussions turns into intellectual warfare - psychological profiling disguised as mentorship, subtle tests of loyalty, carefully framed questions designed to expose vulnerability.
He teaches her how manipulation works.
And when his obsession deepens, when desire fractures his discipline, he begins using those same tactics against her.
Gaslighting disguised as logic.
Isolation framed as protection.
Control masquerading as concern.
He knows exactly what he's doing.
The real horror?
So does she.
This is not a scandalous affair.
This is not reckless passion.
This is a slow psychological descent between two intelligent adults who understand the rules - and choose to break them anyway.
And when it ends, it will not explode.
It will collapse.
Quietly.
Civilly.
Irreversibly.
Because sometimes the most dangerous men are the ones who can explain their behavior in perfect clinical terms... and still justify it.