In the Wakemont family, it’s tradition to arrange a marriage before the ink is dry on your birth certificate. I was five hours old when my father promised me to the son of a man with “more money than God.”

As we grew older, my future groom and I were encouraged to exchange “love letters” to get better acquainted—except the correspondence he sent read more like hate mail.

Slade Delacorte hated the arrangement. But more than that, he hated me.

He was moody, intense, arrogant, and darkly gorgeous. A villain—not a prince. The last man on earth I’d ever marry (if I had the choice).

On my 24th birthday, we exchanged vows in front of six hundred guests who had no idea we weren’t every bit the blissful couple we pretended to be.

But as we began our new life together, I soon learned there was only one thing worse than marrying the man I’d hated my entire life: falling in love with him.