Chapter 1
One year ago, a corporate father forced his daughter to marry the young new CEO of Marx Pharmaceuticals to secure his position and future rights to the company. As a shareholder, he convinced the board that the marriage was strategically advantageous and would grow their stock value by merging their companies under the same umbrella. Adrian Marx, CEO and owner of Marx Pharmaceuticals, knew what Victor Delaine was up to. He knew a devil when he saw one. To him, his daughter was equally corrupt.
It was a business arrangement. Nothing too fancy. Immediately after his master's program, Adrian inherited a multi-billion-dollar company, but being a nepo baby didn’t mean he knew how to run one. They wanted their interests elsewhere. Victor Delaine. A man who had climbed the corporate ladder swiftly. A handful of loyal directors still supported Adrian, keeping the vote just firmly enough in his favor to preserve his position, but it was becoming increasingly clear that his hold over the company was weakening.
Victor Delaine was the kind of businessman whose name appeared regularly in the pages of Fortune. He had climbed the corporate ladder with astonishing speed, becoming one of the most powerful and respected figures in the industry. Investors trusted him. Boards listened to him. And his companies continued to expand. No one knew exactly how he had amassed such influence so quickly.
Scarlet Delaine walked into the Justice of the Peace’s office, one arm linked through her father’s, and flinched when she looked up to see Adrian regarding her coldly. His eyes were cold as ice, and for a moment, Scarlet wished she'd never looked up. He looked at her as though she was the last person he wanted standing beside him.
“What an expression to have on your wedding day,” Victor said to Adrian. “I entrust my beloved daughter to you.”
His smile didn’t reach his eyes, and Adrian knew all too well what he was up to. He had to know how Adrian was going to treat her. Why force this marriage on his daughter if he loved her so much? Didn’t he want her to be happy?
Victor hugged his daughter tightly and whispered something in her ear before she pulled away.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll be okay.”
She touched the side of his arm before pulling away and joining Adrian at the judge’s desk. Weeks prior, he had made her sign a prenuptial agreement laying out the odds and ends of what she would be left with if they were to separate. She signed it quickly and without counsel.
“Let’s get this over with,” Adrian said under his breath.
Scarlet knew he didn’t want this. She didn’t want this either. But she didn’t have a choice.
He stared into her eyes as the JP read off the marriage vows. They were her father’s for sure. Emerald green. Lighter on the inside with a dark ring around the edges. The longer they stood there, the more he searched her for any kind of emotion. Was she happy? Sad? Annoyed? She only stood there, staring up at him. The JP pulled his attention away when he asked for the exchange of rings.
Adrian pulled out a box with a set of rings inside from his pocket. His band was white gold with a diamond set on the inside of the ring. Hers was a simple white gold band with vines around the center diamond. She thought to herself, He probably thinks I’ll hate it since it’s nothing fancy, but she truly adored it.
They each placed their rings on each other’s hands and signed their names on the marriage certificate. It was done. They were wed. Heat rose to her cheeks, thinking they were about to kiss for the first time. Instead, Adrian walked out, leaving her standing there with her father. His coldness toward her was already shedding light on what her new relationship was going to be like. She was never one for fairy tales, but it would’ve been nice to have felt wanted.
“Let’s celebrate, shall we?”
Victor led his daughter out of the office, and the JP called for the next couple to go in. Scarlet did not want to celebrate becoming a tool for her father in stealing Marx Pharmaceuticals, nor was she happy being forced into a loveless marriage. But she never got what she wanted, so what did it matter?
By the time they finished their lunch and she was dropped off at Adrian’s estate, she was left standing in his entryway with only a single suitcase and her pride. The house staff eventually helped her to her room and informed her that Adrian would not be joining her for dinner. He was attending to some business in his office. They wouldn’t even share a bed. Scarlet didn’t know whether to be comforted by this or hurt.
She sat at the long dinner table alone with a few maids at her back, waiting until she was finished. Her eyes burned a hole in the empty chair that sat opposite her, where Adrian was supposed to be seated. The chicken roast was getting cold, and her vegetables were becoming soggy. Scarlet accepted that he wasn’t showing and began picking at her food. It was her fault for letting it get to such an inedible state.
“I can’t believe he didn’t show,” one of the maids whispered.
“I can’t believe she’s still sitting here. It’s been an hour.”
“It’s so sad.”
“It’s pathetic.”
Scarlet scooted her chair away from the table, startling the maids, and stood.
“You know I can hear you.”
Their faces went white, and they began apologizing immediately. Scarlet rolled her eyes and threw down her napkin in her chair before storming off down the hall. Another servant tried to stop her from entering Adrian’s office.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but he does not want to be disturbed.”
“I’m his wife. If I want to see my husband, I will.”
She looked the maid dead in the eyes before continuing down the hall and entering his office unannounced.
“What is this?” Adrian asked, caught off guard.
A man with glasses and curly hair stood behind him and looked up from the papers in his hands.
“You didn’t come to dinner.”
“I wasn’t hungry.”
There was tension between them.
“Can I speak to you for a second? Alone?”
He pondered it for a moment. The man behind him cleared his throat and laid a paper on his desk.
“This is the quarterly report for Blackwell Risk Management.”
Adrian examined the paper, completely ignoring Scarlet’s request. She stood there impatiently, waiting until she realized he was giving her his answer. They resumed their discussion on profit and stocks, letting her stand there like she wasn't even in the room. She left, angered, but she knew there was nothing she could do to change his mind about her tonight.
She overheard different house staff talking to themselves, and she stopped to eavesdrop.
“Can you believe her?”
“Like father, like daughter.”
“I heard she forced him into this marriage for his money.”
“What? Daddy didn’t have enough?”
Scarlet kept hidden and waited until they were gone before heading back to her room, defeated. How wrong they all were. They judged her by her name, not by who she was. They knew nothing about her.
Just shy of midnight, while Scarlet brushed her hair before bed, there was a knock at her door. It was Adrian, and he finally came to talk. His icy demeanor was nothing new at this point. She knew he wasn’t there to show her newfound affection.
He pushed his way into her room, and she shut the door behind him, ensuring there were no prying ears out in the hall. The muscles in his jaw tightened, and he crossed his arms.
“I want to make something clear,” he began. “This is strictly contractual. We are not a real couple, and you won’t get anything from me. Do you know how much I loathe your family?”
“Yes, I’m aware,” she said, sitting in a chair.
“Do you?” he said, more as a statement than a question. “So you understand how far I’d go to make your entire family disappear?”
He leaned down to her, his arms trapping her in the chair.
“Are you capable?”
She leaned up toward him. Their faces were inches apart.
He scoffed. “Hmph.”
He straightened up. How brazen of her, he thought.
“Would it really be so bad to acknowledge this marriage and have children with me? I know it would get my father off our backs, even if we have one child together.”
“Ha. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Even if we don’t have any children, could you not pretend in front of others to like me?”
She looked down at the floor.
“I don’t ever expect your love. I’m not an idiot,” she said softly.
His fists clenched at his sides. Her words infuriated him, fueling his hatred even further as his eyes darkened.
“My, you are bold. Just like your father.”
She looked up at him.
“This marriage is what I say it is. If I catch you meddling in my business or sabotaging me in any way, I’ll put a bullet between those pretty little eyebrows.”
“Please,” she started to say.
“You may be my wife,” he said, turning to leave, “but you have no claim over my company, my shares, or what I do and who I do it with.”
The door slammed shut behind him.
Over the next few weeks, the rumors surrounding Adrian’s dislike for Scarlet made headlines. Everyone knew. It gained so much traction that a trashy tabloid wrote a column calling Adrian Marx a soulless monster. It was also rumored that Victor Delaine had pushed for the article himself.
“What the hell is this?”
Adrian dropped a tablet with the article open on the table next to Scarlet’s morning breakfast plate. He pointed to it as he took the chair next to hers. She glanced down to read it and shrugged.
“Is that all you have to say about it?”
He waited for her response.
“Your father published this garbage, and it’s hurting my image.”
“If you didn’t want people talking poorly about you, then you should’ve thought of that before treating me the way you do.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s no secret.”
She put down her napkin and looked at him.
“You have the chance to change this.”
“No more phone calls to Daddy,” he warned. “I know you’ve been telling him about us. I won’t give you attention, so you go and cry to Daddy, is that it? Did you really think this would work?”
“What will it take?”
“For what?”
“For you to treat me like your wife.”
He went silent.
“No more talking to your father about us. If I find out that you’ve been visiting him in secret, you’re done,” he said, pointing a finger at her.
She nodded her head while biting her lip and then stared out the window. Scarlet always felt like a bird in a cage with her father, but now, she truly felt like a prisoner. A miserable marriage with no clean escape except death. She wasn’t ready to give up, though. No. She still had some fight left in her.
Adrian stood from the table, and Scarlet turned to look up at him while reaching her hand out for his. He quickly snatched it away in disgust.
She sighed. “All I ask is for you to give me a child. Please. It will please my father and give us a better image to the public. Don’t you want that?”
He avoided her when he replied, “I do... just not with you.”
His footsteps echoed in her mind as he left the dining room.
There was nothing more that she could do, and changing Adrian’s mind was harder than she expected. Victor hated how Adrian was treating her, but not for her sake—for his own. He needed an heir to secure his standing with the board and sway the remaining board members to his side.
For an entire year, the relationship between Scarlet and Adrian dwindled to nothing. No communication. No time together. No affection. Nothing. It was beyond humiliating for Scarlet, and Adrian dismissed his own ridicule.
Before they knew it, their anniversary was fast approaching, which got everyone talking about their potential divorce. What else was a supposedly hated couple supposed to do? Those in the corporate world understood that it was just a contract between two powerful families. People in the blue-collar world believed that it was nothing but a money-hungry scheme.
They weren’t wrong.
