THE PROPOSAL PLAN
The Blackwood estate sat on forty acres of manicured wilderness, but Damien had always preferred the workshop. Tucked behind the carriage house, the stone building had once served as his grandfather's engineering studio—a place of calipers and blueprints, of models built to test impossible ideas. Now it housed something far more precious than machinery: a jeweler's bench, a microscope, and a sketchbook filled with architectural geometries that would become a ring.
Damien sat under the single pendant light, a rough diamond held between his tweezers, turning it slowly against the beam. The stone caught fire—pure, colorless, ethically sourced from a Canadian mine where workers earned living wages. He'd rejected three suppliers before finding one that met his standards, and
