As I am re-editing Blackmailed Merger I wanted to talk about writing the lead male character. I think Dante was one of the first characters I wrote and I still love him.
He is rich. VERY rich. But he is not a happy man. He thinks he is. He thinks himself in control of his life. But he is driven by a past that still haunts him, and which he feels threatens his future.
His solution is to force his enemy to accept him through merging his business with his enemies only heir. His assumptions she will be like her father give him all the justification he feels he needs. That is until he meets Samantha. But even when he realises he is is wrong, the trauma of his past still dictate his decisions.
I wanted Dante to come over to the reader as manipulative, arrogant and ruthless to begin, but with hints there was more to him. By the end of the book it was important to strip all of this from him and to have him choose Samantha over everything else in his life – even the one thing that had driven him since he was a young man – his business.
Because this is what real love is and Dante has to give up everything to prove he has changed and make up for the past. He has to do this to become worthy of the woman he loves.
*Spoiler*Â He does 🙂