Ainsley POV

He let go of me as if my skin were branded with burning coal.

I smoothed the silk of my blouse where his fingers had dug in. The fabric was wrinkled. Just like my marriage. Just like the lie we had been living for five years.

I stepped back, putting distance between us. The air in the dining room felt heavy, suffocating.

Casey was still standing there. She looked between us, her eyes wide with feigned innocence. She looked like a deer caught in headlights-if that deer were draped in stolen diamonds and plotting a coup on the hunter's lodge.

"I am not broken," Damian muttered.

He was talking to the floor. He couldn't look me in the eye. He couldn't face the woman who had dragged him to every specialist in Switzerland. The woman who had endured hundreds of needles, invasive exams, and crushing disappointments, all to protect his fragile ego.

"We spent millions, Damian," I said, forcing my voice to remain steady. "We tried everything. It wasn't me."

Casey let out a small, sharp laugh. She covered her mouth instantly, but the sound had already escaped.

"Sorry," she said. "It's just... I have the opposite problem. I just have to look at a man and I get pregnant. My boys are proof of that. 'Super fertility,' the doctors call it."

The rage that flared in my chest was white-hot. It wasn't jealousy. It was disgust. She was mocking the one thing I couldn't buy. The one thing my father's power couldn't secure.

I looked at Damian. I expected him to be angry. I expected him to defend his wife against this insult.

But he wasn't looking at me. He was looking at her.

And the look on his face wasn't anger. It was longing. It was a starving, desperate adoration. He looked at her like she was a miracle. And he looked at me like I was a barren field.

"Ainsley, please," Damian said.

He stepped toward Casey, placing himself between us. Like I was the threat. Like I was the monster.

"Be kind."

"Kindness," I repeated. The word tasted like ash. "You want kindness while you parade your mistress in my home? While you let her wear my jewelry? While you let her mock my pain?"

Damian's jaw tightened. "She is not my mistress," he lied. "She is the nanny. And she is a good mother. Something you wouldn't understand."

It wasn't a physical slap, yet his words struck harder than a fist.

He was using my infertility as a weapon. He was blaming me. After everything I had done to cover for him. After I had lied to my father, telling the Don that I was the one who couldn't conceive, just to save Damian from the shame of being less of a man in the eyes of the Family.

"Get out," I said.

My voice shook. Not with fear, but with the effort of holding back the violence that was coded into my DNA.

"Both of you. Get out of my house."

Damian laughed. It was a cold, bitter sound.

"Your house?" he sneered. "I am the man of this house, Ainsley. I earned this. I am the Chief of Surgery. You are nothing but a spoiled princess living off Daddy's blood money."

He grabbed Casey's hand. He interlaced their fingers. He squeezed tight.

"We aren't going anywhere," he said.

Casey smirked. She looked at me over his shoulder. It was a look of triumph. She thought she had won. She thought that because she could give him children, she owned him.

She didn't realize that Damian didn't own anything. Not this house. Not his job. Not even the clothes on his back.

I owned him. And I was about to foreclose.

I walked to the sideboard. There was a crystal vase there. A wedding gift from the Capo of the New York families. Heavy. Expensive. Replaceable.

I picked it up.

Damian's eyes widened. "Ainsley, don't be crazy," he said. He took a step back, pulling Casey with him.

I didn't say a word. I didn't have to.

I hurled the vase across the room.

It wasn't aimed at them. It was a warning shot. It smashed into the wall inches from Damian's head. Crystal shards exploded outward like shrapnel.

Damian yelped. He threw his arms up to cover his face. But he didn't cover himself. He turned his body. He shielded Casey.

He took the glass for her.

A shard sliced his cheek. Blood welled up, bright red against his pale skin. He didn't check his wound. He grabbed Casey's face, checking her for scratches.

"Are you okay?" he asked frantically. "Did she hurt you?"

He looked at me with pure hatred. "You are insane," he screamed. "You are just like your father. A violent animal."

I stood amidst the wreckage of the vase. I watched the blood trickle down his face.

And I felt my heart turn to stone.

Ainsley POV

He was bleeding, but he didn't care.

A distinct line of crimson ran down his cheek, dripping onto the pristine collar of his white shirt, staining the fabric like a sin.

His hands were frantic, roaming over Casey's arms, checking her for imaginary wounds with obsessive desperation.

"You could have killed her!" Damian shouted, his voice cracking under the weight of his hysteria.

"She is an innocent woman, Ainsley! She is a civilian!"

I walked right past them.

I didn't look at the blood. I didn't look at the crocodile tears Casey was forcing out of her eyes to garner sympathy.

I walked straight into his study.

This was his sanctuary. The room I had paid a designer fifty thousand dollars to curate.

Mahogany shelves. Imported leather chairs. And everywhere, signs of the boy I had married, hiding inside the man he pretended to be.

Anime figurines lined the top shelves, shamefully tucked behind heavy medical textbooks. Pillows printed with cartoon characters were stuffed in the corner, out of sight.

He was nothing but a child playing dress-up in a man's world.

I grabbed one of the pillows. It was soft, printed with some wide-eyed character he obsessed over.

I ripped it open.

Stuffing flew into the air like synthetic snow, settling on the expensive rug.

Damian ran into the room. Casey was right behind him, clutching his arm like a lifeline.

"Stop it!" he screamed. "What are you doing?"

I grabbed a heavy trophy from his desk. "Surgeon of the Year." An award my father had bought for the hospital gala to boost Damian's ego.

I threw it at the wall.

It dented the plaster with a violent crash and fell to the floor with a hollow thud.

"I am evicting you, Damian," I said, turning to face him.

"I am taking back every single thing I ever gave you."

Damian stepped forward, his chest heaving.

"You can't do that," he spat. "We are married. Half of this is mine. I will sue you. I will take you for everything you have."

I laughed. It was a dry, brittle sound.

"You think the law applies to us?" I asked softly. "You think a piece of paper protects you from the Pierce family?"

Before he could answer, Casey's phone rang.

A jarring, cheerful tune cut through the suffocating tension.

She looked at the screen, and her face crumpled.

"It's the school," she sobbed. "Jaxson is sick. He has a fever."

Damian's anger vanished instantly.

He transformed. He wasn't the cheating husband anymore. He was the concerned father.

"We have to go," he said, his voice dropping to a soothing register.

He put a protective arm around her waist. "I'll drive you. We'll take him to the hospital. I'll check him out myself."

He turned his back on me.

He turned his back on the wife he had sworn to honor. He turned his back on the woman who held the keys to his entire existence.

He walked Casey out of the room without a backward glance.

I heard the front door slam.

The sound echoed through the empty house like a gunshot.

I stood there for a long time.

I looked at the torn pillow. I looked at the dented wall.

I thought about the way he had looked at her. The way he had panicked over her son.

Jaxson.

One of the five boys. The boys he claimed weren't his.

But he acted like they were. He protected them like they were.

A cold, nauseating knot formed in my stomach.

What if they were?

What if the infertility was a lie? What if he had been stealing my money to raise a secret family while I cried over negative pregnancy tests?

My hand trembled as I reached into my pocket.

I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I knew by heart.

Graham picked up on the first ring.

"Where are you?" he asked.

His voice was a low rumble-dangerous, steady, lethal.

"I'm at home," I said. "I need a favor."

Graham paused. In the background, I could hear the rhythmic thud of a heavy bag being struck.

"Name it, Principessa."

"I need eyes on Damian," I said, my voice hardening. "And the girl. Casey Valdez."

"I want to know everything. Where she came from. Who the father of those boys is. Every text. Every bank transfer. Every lie."

The hitting sound stopped.

The silence on the line was heavy.

"Did he hurt you?" Graham asked, his voice dropping an octave.

"If he touched you, Ainsley, I will peel his skin off."

"Not yet," I said.

I looked at the blood on the floor where Damian had stood.

"I don't want him dead, Graham. Not yet."

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

"Understood," Graham said. "I'll put the soldiers on it. Give me twenty-four hours."

I hung up.

I walked to the window and watched the rain start to fall against the glass, blurring the world outside.

But inside, everything was crystal clear.

The marriage was over.

The Vendetta had begun.

Ainsley POV

Sleep was a ghost I couldn't catch.

I spent the night in the guest room, staring blindly at the ceiling.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Damian shielding her.

I saw the blood on his cheek.

I heard Casey's voice.

Super fertility.

It gnawed at me.

It was a parasite burrowing into my brain, eating away at my logic.

At 6:00 AM, my phone buzzed against the nightstand.

It was a text from Damian.

I'm staying at a hotel. Casey needed support. Her son is very ill. Don't contact me until you calm down.

The audacity was breathtaking.

He was gaslighting me via text message.

He was framing his adultery as a humanitarian mission.

I didn't reply.

I opened the banking app on my tablet with cold, steady fingers.

I froze his personal accounts.

I cancelled his credit cards.

Specifically the ones paid by the Pierce holding company.

Then I logged into the dealership portal and reported his Porsche as stolen.

Technically, the lease was in my name.

If he drove it past a police scanner, he would be pulled over at gunpoint.

A small, petty smile touched my lips.

Then I went to social media.

I had never looked at Casey's profile before.

I was above that.

But now, I was in the mud.

I found her easily.

Her profile was public.

Of course it was.

She wanted to be seen.

I scrolled past photos of greasy food and selfies with filters that made her eyes look like alien insects.

And then I saw it.

A video posted two days ago.

It was Damian.

He was in a backyard-her backyard.

He was pushing a swing.

A little boy was laughing.

The caption read: Real Dads step up. So grateful for this man.

The boy looked exactly like him.

Same dark hair.

Same soft, weak chin.

I felt sick.

I felt like I was falling through the floor.

My phone rang, shattering the silence.

It was Graham.

"Come to the office," he said.

"I have the file."

Thirty minutes later, I was walking into the boardroom of the Pierce headquarters.

It was a fortress of glass and steel in the financial district.

Graham was sitting at the head of the table.

He looked like a mountain in a suit.

He didn't smile when I walked in.

He slid a thick manila folder across the polished wood.

"It's worse than we thought," he said.

I sat down.

I opened the folder.

The first photo made my breath hitch.

It was Damian and Casey.

But they looked younger.

Much younger.

The timestamp was five years ago.

Three months before our wedding.

They were at a convention.

She was dressed in some skimpy anime costume.

He was dressed as the matching hero.

His arm was slung possessively around her waist.

"They knew each other," I whispered.

Graham nodded.

"They met online. Gaming forums. They've been together since before he met you."

I flipped the page.

Bank statements.

Transfers from our joint account to a shell company called "Valdez Heavy Industries."

It was a joke.

A sick joke.

He had been funneling money to her for years.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

My money.

My father's money.

I turned the page again.

Medical records.

I stopped breathing.

Damian Hicks.

Vasectomy.

Dated six months before we started trying for a baby.

The room spun.

He wasn't infertile.

He had sterilized himself.

He had let me undergo invasive surgeries.

He had let me take hormones that messed with my mind and body.

He had watched me cry over negative tests every single month.

And he knew.

He knew the whole time.

"He did it on purpose," Graham said softly.

"He didn't want a Pierce heir. He wanted to use your money to raise his kids with her."

I closed the folder.

My hands were shaking.

But not with sadness.

Grief was warm; this was cold.

This was lethal rage.

I stood up.

"Where is he today?" I asked.

Graham checked his watch.

"He's at the hospital. The Board Meeting is in an hour. He's the Keynote Speaker. He's presenting his research on... ethical medical practices."

I laughed.

It was a hollow, jagged sound that made Graham flinch.

Ethical medical practices.

I smoothed my skirt.

I checked my reflection in the glass wall.

I looked perfect.

I looked like a queen.

"Get the car, Graham," I said.

I picked up the folder.

"I'm going to crash the party."