Chapter 11

“Is it fake?” Maya asked. “Are you working on a costume or something?”

I sighed, setting the case gently on the top shelf of a cabinet far from their hands. “It’s… grown-up stuff.”

“Like bills?”

“Yes. Very boring, dangerous bills.”

Aliya narrowed her eyes. “You’re hiding treasure.”

“Of course not,” I changed the subject by tossing them more fries.

Later that Night…

Once they passed out from the sugar crash of a century, I sat alone at the kitchen table, phone in hand, notes app open, money still hidden, gun safely locked in the broken breadbox I rigged with a padlock.

I opened a new note.

THE PLAN:

Lose weight. (This body is dying just from stairs. I will not let my knees betray me like this.)

Hire a professional cleaning service. (This place smells like crayons and despair.)

Buy a car. (Jhing-Jhing’s van sings when it turns left. Like an old woman in pain.)

New clothes for the kids. (Maya’s wearing a shirt with holes and Aliya’s underwear has Elsa’s face literally peeling off.)

Groceries. Real groceries. Not just yogurt tubes and expired oatmeal.

Figure out how to approach Alec without getting murdered. Or arrested. Or both.

Get my name back. My money. My company. My pride.

I paused.

Added one more.

Keep the kids alive. Somehow.

I leaned back in the chair, arms behind my head, staring at the cracked ceiling above me.

I had been a billionaire, a CEO, a man feared and respected.

Now I was a sticky, exhausted, debt-ridden mother of three, hoarding a glock in a cupboard next to baby formula. And for some reason? I didn’t completely hate it.

The Next Morning

I woke up with purpose. I had a plan. I was determined. “Today, I take back control.”

4:00 a.m. sharp.

The house was silent. The kids were still drooling into their pillows, the My Little Pony DVD had stopped looping, and all I could hear was the ticking clock and my cracking knees.

I stood in the middle of the living room in Catherine’s—my—old oversized hoodie and mismatched pajama bottoms that read “I run on coffee and chaos.”

Step One: Basic exercise.

“Let’s go, Leon. You’ve faced boardroom battles. Hostile takeovers. You can do this.”

I dropped to the floor.

One push-up.

Crack. Pop. PAIN.

Jesus! it was painful, how could this woman bear such a heavy task? One push up and it felt like the world itself ceased to exist.

I let out a wheeze that sounded like a tea kettle on its deathbed. Tried a sit-up.

The fat on my stomach folded in on itself like an emotional support blanket.

By the time I attempted a lunge, I lost balance and ended up lying flat on my back, one leg in the air, like a broken wind-up doll.

“This… is not a body. This is a sack of potatoes held together by regret.”

I fell asleep on the cold linoleum floor, breathing like a dying animal, vaguely aware of my own feet smelling like chicken nuggets.

“MOMMMMMM!!!”

I jolted awake. My spine screamed. My soul screamed. My eyes barely adjusted to the morning sun filtering through the window blinds like judgemental spotlights.

Maya’s voice echoed from the hallway. Then—

“SHE DID IT AGAIN! MOMMMMMMMM!! THERE’S POOOO!!!”

“Oh god.”

This was a war against sparta and diapers. I sat up like a zombie with back pain and hobbled toward the sound of doom.

In the bathroom, Maya stood frozen, toothbrush in hand, pointing like a horrified detective at a puddle of something that definitely wasn’t water.

“ALIYAAAA!” I croaked.

From the kitchen, I heard the clatter of bowls. Aliya popped her head in with a guilty smile and zero shame. “It slipped.”

“S-SLIPPED?” Maya cried. “It’s ON THE FLOOR! Like a log! How does that even SLIP?!”

I turned to her, trying to be the adult here, the authority. “Aliya, we do NOT poop on the floor.”

“It was an emergency,” she shrugged. “I thought it was a fart. But then it wasn’t. So I ran.”

I leaned against the door frame and nearly wept.

Meanwhile, Jaya, the baby, began screaming in the other room. A shrill cry that said I’m hungry, angry, and possibly teething.

I limped into the kitchen, where Jaya sat in her high chair, yeeting plastic spoons across the room like a tiny warlord.

The toaster was broken. The milk had gone bad. The cereal was stuck together in one giant rock. I tossed it in the sink and dug out the emergency food from yesterday’s McDonald’s leftovers.

“Here,” I said, handing Maya and Aliya semi-warm fries and a microwaved burger split in two. “Breakfast of champions.”

Maya stared. “This isn’t healthy,mom?

“Neither is the trauma from this morning,” I muttered.

Aliya shoved a fry in her mouth. “This is the best day ever. Mom, you are the best of all the bestttessst in the whole earthhhh.”

I rolled my eyes at her amd somehow got Maya into her school uniform alive, Aliya into… well, something clean-ish, and braided their hair like a drunken centaur. It was passable. Kind of.