I brought my six-year-old daughter Sophie to my husband Brandon’s corporate gala, clutching the crumpled paper necklace she’d made him for Father’s Day, only for his icy secretary Tessa to block the door and sneer that his real fiancée, their young son, and his future in-laws were already upstairs networking as his legitimate family.

On my way to pick up my husband, his icy secretary stopped me at the door. “His wife and son are already inside.” I covered my daughter’s ears and called my third brother—the man who controls both the underworld and the law. “Burn that whole house down.”

“My goodness, Alyssa. What are you doing here?” Tessa said lazily, dragging her eyes over my off-the-rack coat with open contempt. “The gala is strictly limited to invited corporate guests and legitimate family.”

“I brought Sophie here to surprise Brandon,” I replied, holding my six-year-old daughter’s hand. She was gripping a handmade paper necklace she had made for her father.

Tessa’s laugh came out brittle and cruel.

“Surprise him? Your presence here is a serious liability. The executive vice president’s real family is already upstairs networking. His beautiful fiancée, his brilliant young son, and his future in-laws.”

The air in my chest turned to ash.

“Standing around down here is extremely distasteful,” she said loudly enough for the watching socialites to hear. “Leave before I call security.”

“Mommy, where’s Daddy?” Sophie whimpered, hiding her face in my coat.

Her shaking voice snapped me out of my frozen shock.

A sleeping, earth-deep rage began to rise inside my chest.

I knelt down to cover Sophie’s ears, then stood again, fixing my eyes on Tessa’s smirk with a coldness sharp enough to crack glass.

I took out my phone and dialed the private encrypted line of the most dangerous fixer on the eastern seaboard.

“Who are you calling?” Tessa sneered. “Your poor mother in the suburbs so you can cry about it?”

She had no idea my maiden name was Whitmore. Alyssa Whitmore.

In America, anyone involved in high finance, federal politics, or elite commercial real estate spoke the Whitmore name with quiet, absolute respect.

We were an old-money empire. I was the youngest sibling of three titans: Graham Whitmore, a powerful U.S. Senator; Nathaniel Whitmore, Executive VP of Dominion Crest Bank; and Dominic Whitmore, CEO of Whitmore Capital and the undisputed shadow king of corporate fixers.

I had hidden my bloodline from Brandon so I could know he loved me for me.

My brothers had strongly opposed the marriage, but in the end, they respected my stubbornness and secretly supported his failing company so he could pretend to be the successful provider.

The dial tone rang once. Then came a click.