STIGMA

Genevra POV:

"The alliance cannot be broken, Genevra. But you are no longer marrying Kingston. Brinley is taking your place as his bride."

Brinley was my stepsister.

My father, Darrell Daugherty, did not even look up from his mahogany desk. He leaned back into his leather chair, the state senator seal on his gold signet ring catching the dim lamp light. Heavy cigar smoke hung thick between us in the second-floor study of the Daugherty estate.

"And to keep our alliance with the Marshall bloodline alive," Darrell continued coldly, flicking ash into a crystal tray, "you are leaving for California before sunrise. You will marry his cousin, Erik."

"So you're handing my fiancé to your stepdaughter," I said, tilting my head with a razor-thin, venomous smile, "and shipping me off to marry a paralyzed warlord rotting in an outlaw clubhouse?"

My voice was calm, mocking, and completely devoid of the trembling obedience he was used to.

Darrell slammed his open palm onto the polished wood. The crystal tumbler beside him rattled violently.

"Drop the insolent attitude, Genevra!" Darrell roared, veins bulging along his neck. "Three days ago, the paramedics had to drag you out of a pool of your own blood in the master bath! You locked yourself in, swallowed half a bottle of sedatives, and slit your wrists like a hysterical madwoman—all because Kingston told you he was choosing Brinley! The ER team shocked your chest three times to drag your pathetic pulse back from the dead! The entire southern syndicate was laughing at us!"

He leaned forward, glaring at me with raw disgust.

"You disgraced this family over a broken heart! And now you stand here acting like you have a say? Our pact is sworn to the Marshall family, not just Kingston. Kingston needs Brinley to anchor our political power here in the South, but the old blood pact still demands a Daugherty bride. You are going to California to fulfill that debt with the Iron Skulls MC. End of discussion."

The Iron Skulls MC was the most ruthless one-percenter outlaw motorcycle club on the West Coast. Their President, Erik "Grim" Marshall—Kingston’s estranged cousin and the true, feared warlord of the Marshall clan—was a legendary killer who had reportedly taken a blast during a turf war last month. Word on the underground wire was clear: shattered spine, complete paralysis, rotting away in his own compound.

"You want me to play the dutiful widow to a dying cripple so Kingston can keep his hands clean?" I asked, my voice flat as ice.

A figure shifted in the shadows near the leather couch. Kingston Marshall stepped into the light. He wore a tailored charcoal suit, the small gold skull stud in his left earlobe gleaming.

"Genevra... please, don't do this to yourself," Kingston murmured, stepping forward with that familiar, sickening patronizing pity in his eyes. He genuinely believed I was acting out of sheer heartbreak, that my suicide attempt had been the ultimate proof of my desperate devotion to him. "When they called me from the ICU... when they told me you flatlined on the table clutching my memory... it broke me. But the family comes first. With Erik incapacitated, I have to secure the South. You know my hands were tied."

He took two slow steps toward me, sighing with theatrical regret as he raised his hand, reaching to touch my face.

I took half a step back.

His manicured fingers caught nothing but empty air, freezing awkwardly between us.

"Clutching your memory?" I looked him up and down with the clinical detachment one might reserve for a dissecting specimen. "Kingston, when someone takes out the trash, they don't mourn the garbage bag. If my heart stopped on that operating table, it was from pure disgust at the thought of having ever let a bottom-feeder like you touch me."

Kingston’s handsome face flushed a violent, mottled crimson. "Genevra, watch your mouth—"

"Look at yourself," I cut him off, stepping into his personal space, my eyes locking onto his like twin gun barrels. "You wear a bespoke suit bought with dirty kickbacks, strutting around like a king, yet the moment your cousin Erik is taken out, you scramble to carve up his table with a second-rate stepdaughter. You're not an outlaw, Kingston. You're just an insecure errand boy who spent his entire life trembling in Erik's shadow, playing dress-up in cuff links."

Kingston choked on his own breath, his polished facade cracking into humiliated rage. In all the years he had strung me along, I had never spoken a harsh word to him. Now, standing right in front of him, I had stripped his ego raw in three sentences.