From Barren Wife To The Don's Queen

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.

I turned my gaze back to Damian.

"You want to give a civilian nanny a salary that rivals my top lieutenants," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "And you want to provide full medical coverage for her entire brood through the hospital."

Damian nodded eagerly.

"It is the right thing to do," he said. "We have so much, Ainsley. Why are you always so cold?"

He stepped closer, resting his hands on the table.

"It is just money. Dirty money, at that."

The air in the room dropped ten degrees.

He had said the quiet part out loud. He was happy to spend the blood money, but he hated the source.

Casey set the coffee down. She lingered.

She placed a hand on Damian's shoulder, a casual, intimate gesture that made my stomach turn. I saw the way Damian leaned into her touch.

It was slight. Imperceptible to anyone who hadn't spent five years memorizing his body language.

But I saw it.

I looked at Casey.

"Nice earrings," I said.

She touched them, her fingers fluttering. "Oh, thank you, Mrs. Hicks. Damian gave them to me. He said they were just costume jewelry lying around."

The silence that followed was deafening.

Damian paled. He looked at me, terror flashing in his eyes.

He knew.

He knew that stealing from a Pierce was a death sentence. But he had gotten comfortable. He had forgotten that the woman sitting across from him wasn't just his wife; I was the daughter of the Don.

I stood up.

"Fire her," I said.

Damian straightened.

"No."

The word hung in the air.

He had never said no to me before. Not when it mattered.

"She stays," he said, his voice trembling with false bravado. "She needs us. I need her help with the house. You are never here, Ainsley. You are always with your father. You are always with the business."

He was projecting. He was trying to rewrite the narrative, painting me as the villain to justify his own sins.

I walked around the table. My heels clicked rhythmically on the marble floor.

I stopped inches from him.

I could smell her cheap vanilla perfume on his collar. It mixed with the expensive cologne I bought him, creating a scent that smelled like betrayal.

"Is this about her sons?" I asked.

My voice was a whisper.

Damian flinched.

"Do you want to play father to another man's bloodline because you can't give the Family an heir?"

His face drained of color.

He grabbed my arm. His grip was hard. Too hard.

"Don't you dare," he hissed. "Don't you speak of that."

He looked at Casey, terrified she would hear the truth about his broken body. About the shame that kept him awake at night.

I looked down at his hand on my arm.

Then I looked up into his eyes.

"You have five seconds to let go of me, Damian. Or I will remind you exactly whose blood runs through my veins."

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.