STIGMA

I was reviewing the laundering accounts when my husband asked for a hundred thousand dollars for the nanny.

It took three seconds for me to realize the woman he was trying to pay off was wearing my missing vintage Chanel earrings.

Damian looked me in the eye, using his best doctor's voice.

"She is struggling, Ainsley. She has five boys to feed."

When Casey walked in, she wasn't wearing a uniform. She was wearing my jewelry and looking at my husband with intimate familiarity.

Instead of apologizing when I confronted them, Damian protected her. He looked at me with a mixture of pity and disgust.

"She is a good mother," he sneered. "Something you wouldn't understand."

He used the infertility I had spent millions trying to cure as a weapon against me.

He didn't know that I had just received the investigator's file.

The file that proved those five boys were his.

The file that proved he had gotten a secret vasectomy six months before we started trying for a baby.

He had let me endure years of painful procedures, hormones, and shame, all while funding his secret family with my father's money.

I looked at the man I had shielded from the violence of my world so he could play god in a white coat.

I didn't scream. I am a Pierce. We execute.

I picked up my phone and dialed my enforcer.

"I want him ruined. I want him to have nothing. I want him to wish he was dead."

Chapter 1

Ainsley POV

I was reviewing the laundering accounts for the West Coast operations when my husband asked for a hundred thousand dollars to secure the loyalty of a woman who was already wearing my missing Chanel earrings.

It took three seconds for the request to register in my brain.

Three seconds where the only sound in the dining room was the aggressive scratching of my pen against the heavy bond paper of a ledger that didn't technically exist.

I looked up.

Damian stood at the head of the table.

He looked every inch the Chief of Surgery I had paid millions to create. His suit was tailored Italian wool; his hands were scrubbed clean-the hands of a healer.

But his eyes were shifting, darting nervously toward the kitchen door where Casey was undoubtedly listening.

I set my pen down. It made a sharp click against the mahogany.

"You want to double the nanny's salary," I said.

My voice was flat. It was the precise tone my father used moments before he ordered a hit.

Damian adjusted his tie, a nervous tic he developed whenever he had to ask me for money from the Family accounts.

"She is struggling, Ainsley," he said.

He put on his best bedside manner voice-the solemn, practiced tone he used to tell families their loved ones wouldn't make it through the night. "She has five boys to feed."

I leaned back in my chair. The leather creaked beneath me.

I looked at him. I really studied him.

I saw the man I had defied the Capos for. The man I had shielded from the blood and the violence of my world so he could play god in a sterile white coat.

And then I looked at the kitchen door.

Casey pushed it open with her hip.

She was carrying a tray of coffee. She wasn't wearing a uniform. Instead, she wore a tight cashmere sweater that strained against her chest and jeans that looked painted on.

And there, dangling from her ears, were the vintage Chanel drops my father had given me for my twenty-first birthday.

I didn't blink.

I didn't scream.

I am a Pierce. We don't scream. We execute.