Luxuries & Lies

A Platinum Chocolate Psychological Saga

Luxuries & Lies - A Platinum Chocolate Psychological Saga
By LongTemple

Power doesn’t always announce itself.
Sometimes it erases you quietly—and waits to see if you object.

Mercedes has mastered the art of professional calm. She knows how silence moves through rooms, how decisions are made without names attached, how labor disappears while outcomes remain. She has learned how to be indispensable without being seen—and how much that usefulness costs.

When a quiet erasure forces her into visibility, Mercedes does not respond with confrontation or spectacle. Instead, she watches. She waits. She refuses what is offered with conditions attached. And in doing so, she exposes the invisible architecture of institutions built on restraint, absorption, and unacknowledged labor.

Luxuries & Lies is a psychologically rich exploration of power, legacy, and the hidden toll of being “the steady one.” Told with precision and restraint, this novel follows a woman navigating elite professional spaces where recognition arrives late, refusal carries consequence, and survival is often mistaken for grace.

This is not a story about ambition fulfilled or luxury attained.
It is a story about what happens when a woman stops performing usefulness—and chooses, instead, to remain exact.

For readers who appreciate psychological depth, literary tension, and stories about women who reclaim themselves without spectacle.