Born in the Mud, Crowned the Mafia Queen Chapter 07

Born in the Mud, Crowned the Mafia Queen Chapter 07

Once the scolding didn’t work, they switched to the soft approach.

Gentle voices now: “We’re family, after all, Better to have friends than enemies in business.”

I shot back, “If Marco’s family is in trouble, Dad, why don’t you go save them? You’re in-laws, aren’t you?”

My father’s face did something complicated.

He knew the mess Marco’s family was in wasn’t something a little help could fix.

He wasn’t willing to step in himself, but he wanted me to just be generous about it.

Laughable.

Later, Juliet came to see me too.

Before she even said anything, the tears started falling.

I knew she felt wronged.

She could beg anyone else in the world, but not me.

In her eyes, I was still that uneducated woman scraping by at the bottom of the food chain.

Coming to someone like that for help must have felt humiliating to her.

But she came to me anyway.

Through tears, she said, “Clara, even if I’ve wronged you, that’s between us. Why drag Marco into it? You

know how important this project is, why fight for it? Haven’t you taken enough from me already?”

How could someone so pitiful say something so shameless?

Why, in her world, was it always someone else’s fault?

At this point, I didn’t even want to explain myself anymore. I just went along with it. “Not enough. The more

you two cry, the happier I am.”

Juliet stood there, stunned.

I asked her, genuinely confused, “Also, we already won the bid. It’s a team effort, I’m just one part of it. Why does every single one of you think one word from me can make it all go away? Why does everyone want to

make me the villain here?”

Juliet cried, lost. “I don’t know, I don’t know anything about how this works. They just kept saying to come find you. So I came. But why isn’t it working?”

“Juliet, coming to me won’t do anything. If the company’s in trouble, tell the De Lucas to figure it out

themselves.”

When the crisis hit, Dante, the one who’d broken off and built his own company, stepped in and poured his own money into the family, pulling the De-Lucas back from the edge of bankruptcy.

Still, the family took serious damage.

Marco’s management was called into question. The board turried on him, and after a few rounds of voting,

he got demoted, stripped of real power.

He sank into a depression over it.

Probably partly because he’d lost to me and couldn’t stand it, he spiraled even harder, gave up on himself fo

a long stretch.

But whatever happened to him wasn’t my problem.

We’d never had any relationship to begin with.

My work at the company kept improving. Vivian praised me constantly, and even my father started looking

at me differently.

His tone softened whenever he talked to me now.

One day, at a business dinner, I ran into Dante.

He barely spoke all evening, but when I got up to leave, he followed me out and offered me a ride.

“No need. I have a car.”

I hit the key fob, and the Maserati in the lot chirped to life.

Dante looked a little surprised, then smiled, easy and warm.

He didn’t carry that old arrogance or disdain around me anymore.

After all these years of building something, of earning results, I’d picked up more than just that reckless

courage I used to have.

There was something else in the way he looked at me now, something warm.

I wasn’t a stranger to being loved. I knew exactly what that look meant.

But I had no intention of accepting it.

So when Dante asked to talk, I thought it over and agreed.

I didn’t want him hanging on any longer, and I wanted to set things straight.

I cut right to it. “Mr. De Luca, you’re in love with me, aren’t you?”