PART 6: The Downfall of the Betrayer
"Ma... Madison?" Ethan stammered, his voice trembling violently as if he were staring at a ghost. He could not believe his own eyes. The woman standing on the highest stage, enveloped in a radiant aura of power, surrounded by the city's most formidable tycoons, was the exact same wife he had insulted for three years as a "useless, penniless woman leaching off the Carters."
Beside him, Patricia nearly fainted. She clutched her son’s arm tightly, her lips quivering uncontrollably. "This can't be... She was just a broke, pathetic orphan! How could she possibly be the heiress of the Bennett family?!"
Madison did not avert her gaze. Holding her champagne glass, she stepped down from the platform, her movements fluid and regal as she walked directly toward the mother and son. The crowd instinctively parted to make way for her, sensing the impending storm.
"Long time no see, my pathetic ex-husband and former mother-in-law," Madison smiled, her tone gentle but freezing enough to pierce through bone.
"Madison, this... what is the meaning of this?" Ethan lunged forward, desperately trying to grab her shoulders, but he was instantly intercepted by two hulking, black-suited bodyguards who forced him brutally down to his knees on the polished floor. "Madison! I was wrong! I swear I didn't know you belonged to the Bennett family! If I had known..."
"If you had known, you wouldn't have crawled into bed with your mistress on the very night of our wedding anniversary? If you had known, you wouldn't have forced me to sign over my rights just to bail out your pathetic company?" Madison cut him off, her eyes filled with absolute disgust as she looked down at his face, twisted in pathetic regret. "Ethan, your vileness doesn't lie in whether you married me for money or not. It lies in the fact that you trampled on the dignity of a human being who loved you with all her heart."
Seeing her son forced to his knees, Patricia threw away the last shred of her dignity. She threw herself to the floor, attempting to crawl and grab Madison’s heels, weeping hysterically. "Madison, I beg of you! I am just an old, foolish woman blinded by greed. Please, for the sake of the three years we spent as family, save the Carter Corporation! We owe the banks 50 million dollars. If we don't get an injection of capital, the Carter family is finished!"
Madison took a cold step backward, avoiding the filthy touch. She looked at the two of them as if they were wretched insects crawling at the bottom of society.
May you like
"The three years we spent as family? Three years where I worked like an unpaid maid, enduring your constant abuse and humiliation—is that what you call family?" Madison turned to her executive assistant standing closely behind her, issuing a chilling order: "Notify all banks affiliated with the Bennett Group: freeze and terminate all credit lines and loans to the Carter Corporation immediately. Furthermore, file a formal lawsuit against Ethan Carter for fraud, attempted asset seizure, and breach of marital contract. I want the entire estate of the Carter family sealed and foreclosed within three days."
"No! Madison! You can't be this cruel!" Ethan shrieked in absolute despair as the bodyguards dragged him out of the grand ballroom under the mocking, contemptuous stares of Chicago's elite. Patricia fainted dead away on the floor right then and there, dragged out like a discarded sack of rags.
