Not a Trophy Wife, but a Mafia Queen Chapter 10

Not a Trophy Wife, but a Mafia Queen Chapter 10

Until the day it all collapsed.

It was the largest industry gala and bidding event of the year.

The moment I stepped into the venue, I ran straight into Massimo and Liliana.

Massimo was sharp in a tailored suit, looking utterly triumphant, acting as if the absolute disaster of our divorce had never even happened.

Liliana kept her arm tightly looped through his, her pregnant belly slightly protruding.

She stared at me with a sickening mix of defensiveness and arrogance.

She spoke up, her voice just loud enough to cut through the surrounding conversations.

“Poor Donna. Can’t even keep a man.”

She let out a nasty, mocking giggle.

“And now she can’t even hold onto her family business. Must be exhausting trying to be a badass corporate single mom, huh?”

I looked at her.

I offered a polite, hollow smile, completely ignoring her words, and walked straight past them to greet the other executives.

Liliana gnawed on her lower lip, her face flushing with pure humiliation at being entirely dismissed.

Massimo, however, kept his eyes glued to me, his gaze twisted with a complex storm of emotions.

During a brief intermission, he intercepted me near the bar.

“Ophelia,” he muttered, dropping his voice. “You see how things are now. You can’t survive this market alone.”

He paused, attempting to soften his tone into something resembling affection.

“If you regret your choice… I might actually consider taking you back.”

I didn’t say a word.

He kept pushing, mistaking my silence for submission.

“I can stabilize the company for you. All you have to do—”

He glanced over at Liliana, who was watching from a short distance away.

“—is accept them. Let them into the family. Stop making her life a living hell.”

“We can still go back to how things used to be.”

He stared down at me as if he were granting a divine pardon.

I let out a soft, effortless chuckle.

But before the first word could leave my mouth—

Bang!

The heavy double doors of the grand ballroom were violently thrown open.

A squad of armed police officers marched straight into the venue.

The crowd erupted into chaotic murmurs.

The lead detective locked his eyes directly onto Massimo, his voice booming with cold authority.

“Massimo.”

“You are under arrest for corporate embezzlement, grand larceny, and the theft of trade secrets.”

“Step away from the crowd and come with us.”

Massimo froze entirely, the color draining from his face.

“That’s impossible!”

He took a frantic step back, his voice cracking into a high pitch.

“You’ve got the wrong guy! You have to be mistaken!”

The detective remained entirely expressionless, flashing an official federal warrant.

“Massimo.”

“You unauthorizedly accessed unpublished project data from the Moreau Group server, used it to launch your rival firm, and rushed the product to market. This constitutes federal intellectual property theft.”

“Every shred of evidence—including the source code, server access logs, and your personal digital footprint—has already been seized and locked down.”

Every single syllable landed like a sledgehammer against his chest.

His skin turned a sickly, translucent white.

Liliana let out a blood-curdling shriek.

“Lies! That’s a goddamn lie!”

She clutched Massimo’s arm with a desperate, white-knuckled grip, her voice shaking uncontrollably. “Massimo! Say something! Tell them they’re wrong! Speak up!”

The detective shifted his piercing gaze over to her, his voice dropping into a freezing register.

“Liliana Costa.”

“You are under arrest for the illegal interference of medical resources and the intentional transfer of a critical ICU patient, which directly placed a life in imminent jeopardy.”

“You are being taken into custody under suspicion of attempted murder.”

Liliana completely lost her mind.

“It wasn’t me! I didn’t do anything! I just moved her to a different room! She didn’t even die!”

She screamed hysterically, her screeching voice echoing off the high ceilings, entirely out of control.

The grand ballroom fell into a deathly, suffocating silence.

The looks directed at her from the elite crowd were filled with nothing but absolute disgust and revulsion.

Massimo whipped his head around to stare at me, his eyes wide with utter disbelief.

“You?!”

“You did this to me?”

I looked at him, my expression entirely relaxed.

I gave a casual, elegant shrug.

“Massimo.”

“Did you honestly forget?”

“Every single project in the Moreau Group—from the initial pitch, to the proprietary data, to the backend code—belongs strictly to the Moreau Family Trust.”

I paused for a beat, watching his entire reality fracture and collapse in real-time.

My smile widened.

“Honestly, even I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to use the Moreau family’s own assets to build your little rival firm.”

At that exact moment, the fight completely left his body. He couldn’t form a single word.

The officers stepped forward.

One on each side, they slammed the heavy steel handcuffs around his wrists.

The cold bite of the metal seemed to snap something in him, and he went completely wild, thrashing toward me.

“Ophelia!”

His voice was raw, shredded with panic.

“You can’t do this to me!”

“We’re a family! We have a child together!”

His eyes were completely bloodshot, his tone disintegrating into pathetic, desperate begging.

“I messed up… I swear to God I know I messed up…”

“I shouldn’t have let my greed get the better of me. I shouldn’t have turned my back on you…”

“I’ll give the company back… I don’t want any of it anymore…”

“Just give me a break, please? Cut me some slack…”

“Ophelia… I am begging you…”

I stared back at him as if he were nothing more than a complete stranger on the street.

“Too late,” I said softly.

The officers aggressively dragged him toward the exit.

Liliana was still shrieking, thrashing against her restraints, sobbing and crying as her heels dragged across the polished marble floor.

The chaotic noise faded into the distance.

Later, the federal hammer dropped.

Massimo.

For the corporate embezzlement, the grand larceny, and the theft of trade secrets—

He was handed a maximum sentence on all counts.

He was sent straight to federal prison.

The court seized every single asset from his rival firm to pay back the millions he had stolen from my family trust.

Overnight.

The man who had arrogantly called himself “Don Moreau.”

Became a broke, disgraced felon drowning in millions of dollars of restitution debt.

Word from inside the prison was that his mental state completely shattered within weeks.

He spent his days pacing his cell, repeating the exact same sentence like a broken record:

“If I had just stayed away from Liliana… if I hadn’t betrayed my wife…”

But the world doesn’t care about “what-ifs.”

Liliana.

For the felony abuse of power, the asset grand larceny, and the intentional endangerment of a human life—

She was handed an equally brutal prison sentence.

Her stress tore through her body, and she ultimately lost the baby.

Every single luxury, title, and status she had so desperately flaunted.

Became the final, cruel irony of her life.

As for me.

The corporation.

It returned to its rightful trajectory, completely stabilized and surging with more power than ever before.

I reclaimed the center seat in the CEO’s office.

My mother’s health stabilized, her body slowly recovering under the best medical care money could buy.

And my baby was born perfectly healthy.

A beautiful little girl.

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows of my penthouse, cradling her close to my chest.

Outside, the endless lights of the New York skyline danced across the glass.

An associate had asked me earlier that day during a board meeting.

“Donna, do you have any regrets?”

I smiled, looking down at the soft, sleeping face of the little girl in my arms.

“I never regret the choices I make,” I whispered into the quiet room.

“My only regret—”

“—is ever being soft-hearted in the first place.”

The city lights glimmered. The world was finally quiet.

And my life.

Had only just begun.