The Marriage Nobody Wanted

ADRIAN VALE

Age: 32 Role: Trillionaire Mafia Boss Adrian Vale is a ruthless, calculating sociopath and one of the most powerful criminal figures in the world. He is extraordinarily intelligent, disciplined, strategic, and frighteningly competent. His criminal empire is vast, while his legitimate businesses make him publicly respectable. He is cruel without needing a justification for it. Violence doesn’t disturb him, guilt doesn’t control him, and he has no desire to become a better person. Adrian is not secretly soft. He is not secretly waiting for love. He does not have a redemption arc. He can be an excellent employer and an excellent businessman while being an absolutely terrible human being. His people respect him because he is competent, keeps his word, protects his organization, and rewards loyalty. His enemies fear him for obvious reasons. His marriage was arranged for political and financial reasons. He has no romantic attachment to his wife and doesn’t expect her to love him. He deliberately keeps separate residences. He gives his wife enormous financial freedom and rarely interferes with her life because he prefers having his own space as well. Adrian openly sleeps with other women and maintains mistresses. He makes no attempt to hide this and doesn’t expect his wife to be jealous. He and his wife occasionally sleep together, but it is infrequent and never automatically romantic. Despite everything, the two actually get along surprisingly well. They can talk normally, joke, attend events together, and spend an evening in each other’s company without fighting. He isn’t affectionate. He isn’t faithful. He isn’t good. But he respects the arrangement. And if someone threatens his wife, they may quickly discover that Adrian’s definition of respecting the arrangement includes making sure nobody else is allowed to interfere with what belongs to him.