My Husband Announced Our Divorce in Front of 300 Wealthy Guests and Introduced His Mistress as His Future Wife—Then I Signed One Name That Made His Mother’s Smile Disappear. / Chapter 98 / 130

Chapter 98 - The Lion's Den in Luxembourg

The Grand Hall exploded into pandemonium.

Journalists surged against the velvet ropes, flashbulbs exploding in a dazzling blizzard of white light. Shouts in French, German, and English echoed off the vaulted ceiling. The Chief Magistrate frantically hammered his ivory gavel against the sounding block, shouting for order, but no one was listening to him.

All eyes were fixed on the dead woman walking.

"Silence!" Genevieve Whitaker’s voice cut through the chaos like an iron whip.

Though she was an elderly woman, the sheer force of her presence—the living matriarch of a dynasty that had shaped European finance for a century—commanded an immediate, stunned hush. The magistrates on the bench stood up in shock, bowing their heads instinctively.

"Magistrate Von Hauer," Genevieve said, stepping forward. "You were about to ratify an inheritance fraud engineered by a bastard child and an embezzling husband."

Victoria Vance found her voice, though it was shrill, trembling with manic desperation. "Guards! Arrest these people! Eleanor Vance is clinically unstable! That woman is an impostor posing as Genevieve Whitaker! The court has already recognized my petition!"

"The court has recognized nothing," I said, lifting the Tenth Ledger high so that every camera and every magistrate could see the gleaming silver spine bearing the dual serpent and the Whitaker seal.

I walked up the steps to the central dais, stopping directly in front of Richard.

He took an instinctive step backward, his knees knocking against the mahogany chair. The arrogant scion who had handed me divorce papers at the Plaza, who had paraded Sloane Avery before three hundred wealthy guests, was now sweating profusely, his chest heaving, his eyes darting frantically toward the exits.

"You wanted the Whitaker fortune, Richard," I said, my voice soft, intimate, and deadly. "You wanted to trade me in for a younger model, steal my family’s trust, and use my blood to bail out your bankrupt hedge fund."

"Eleanor, please..." Richard whispered, his voice cracking, tears of panic brimming in his eyes. "We can talk about this... it was my mother, it was all Victoria! She made me do it!"

"Richard, shut your mouth!" Victoria shrieked, lunging toward him, her poise completely shattered.

"Too late, Victoria," I said, turning away from him in utter disgust.

I slammed the Tenth Ledger onto the Chief Magistrate’s bench. The heavy thud echoed across the silent room.

"Magistrates of the Tribunal," I announced, projecting my voice to every corner of the amphitheater. "I present the Tenth Ledger—the sole, uninterrupted cryptographic authority of the Whitaker Sovereign Trust. And I present the evidentiary docket uploaded forty minutes ago by Sloane Avery, detailing eight billion euros in illegal leverage, attempted murder, and high treason against the international banking covenants."

On the massive digital displays hanging above the tribunal bench, the red numbers began to cascade.

The time was exactly 9:00 AM.