Chapter 26
“No! The cat was just helping!”
The cat—bless his confused soul—was covered in powdered sugar and looked like a very sad ghost.
Then I saw Ray. Slouched on the couch. In his boxer shorts. Scratching his stomach.
Like a leftover mistake I kept forgetting to throw out. And suddenly, the mental image of him gambling away half a million pounds in my old casino burned through me like battery acid.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to smother him with a pillow or stuff a broccoli down his throat.
Ray.
The man who’d gone through my drawers looking for spare change. Who left his crusty socks on the dining table. Who had the audacity to lose half a million in the casino I used to own before Alec took it.
And now he had the nerve to breathe loudly near my coffee.
“I swear, I’m done with casinos,” he said, not even looking up from his phone. “I got a trucking gig starting tomorrow. Long haul. I’ll be gone two weeks.”
My eyebrow twitched.
“Gone-gone?”
“Yup. Alaska first. Then cross-border stuff. I even bought a new map.”
You’d think he’d told me he was going to save a dying orphan, the way he looked so proud of himself. I sipped my black coffee, hot and bitter, just like me. “As long as you’re not going to the casino again.”
“No. No more gambling. I’m a changed man.”
“You said that last time. You even got a tattoo of a dice and ‘NO REGERTS’.”
Ray paused, then nodded solemnly. “That’s true. That was before I hit rock bottom.”
I took another sip. This time, I imagined it was wine. A whole bottle.
Mylene dropped by with fresh bread and a bag full of donated baby clothes. Bless her soul.
We were sorting socks by size when Maya ran past screaming, “JAYA PUT GLITTER IN MY UNDERWEAR!”
Ray was in the background watching Die Hard and chewing cereal straight from the box.
Mylene leaned close and whispered, “Girl, how have you not poisoned him yet?”
“I almost did last week. But the bleach bottle had a baby safety lock.”
“I can help with that,” she offered, half-serious.
We both laughed too hard.
Meanwhile, Jhing Jhing called, frantically reminding me about the school PTA costume drive. Apparently, I volunteered.
Me. The bringer of chaos and guns. Volunteered.
When the kids were finally passed out—Jaya on the floor hugging a wet shoe, Aliya halfway off the couch, and Maya snoring under a blanket fort—I tucked them in and escaped to my room.
Ray was asleep. Snoring like a dying moose.
I carefully tiptoed around his mountain of dirty laundry and locked myself in the bathroom with my laptop.
The screen lit up. I opened my encrypted vault. A list of offshore transfers flickered back at me.
Everything was working.
The properties were sold. Now, the Chinese and Korean were suspicious of Alec. The media was circling like sharks.
And now, I had to decide which thread to pull next. I decided to go take the money back Ray easily lost. I will go there myself and gamble my way in.
But before I could plan, a notification blinked on my phone. Ray had texted me—from across the apartment.
[Ray]: hey u seen my trucker boots?
I stared at the screen. He was ten feet away. I could hear him breathing.
And that was the moment I knew… He needed to leave. Not tomorrow. Now.
The next morning, I helped him pack.
“Well, don’t you seem eager,” he said, shoving his duffel into the hallway.
“I’m just excited for your fresh start, Ray.”
He blinked. “You called me Ray.”
I smiled. “Slip of the tongue.”
He kissed my cheek.
I stiffened like a corpse. What the fuck? I really wanted to kill this man. How dare he!
He chuckled. “Still don’t like it when I do that, huh?”
“Not unless you want to lose teeth.”
He laughed, thinking I was joking.
I wasn’t. Hell, right there, I want to just slit his throat.
Finally, he got into his old truck and drove away, off to chase something that wasn’t me, and for once—I breathed.
The apartment felt ten sizes larger without his stale presence. The kids were still chaotic, of course. But now, I had space.
To plan. To move. To burn Alec’s world from the ground up.
And this time… no snoring truck driver would get in my way.
It all started at 7:46 AM on a Wednesday.
The coffee hadn’t even kicked in. My youngest was doing battle with a pancake that was somehow both burned and raw, while Maya screamed about a missing sock that was right on her foot.
Jhing Jhing sat on my couch like a zombie in pajamas, holding a baby bottle she mistook for her coffee mug. Mylene was already two steps away from crying because her toddler glued cereal to the TV again.