Chapter 9
It opened.
And I swear, at that moment, it felt like I had just won a bid for a billion-year-old artifact. Not because of the money. No. This was deeper than wealth. This was the first thing that had gone right since I woke up in this soggy diaper circus of a household.
I grinned. No—I almost cried. I had power. I had knowledge.
And in ten minutes, that power shattered me.
Emails. Messages. Notes. Calendar.
It was all there.
Catherine O’Sullivan. Half Irish, half Korean.
Married to Ray O’Sullivan, a truck driver who worked deliveries to Scotland and came home every weekend. The man was real. Just not present. The adult shoes. The razor. The unwashed smell of man lingering faintly in the hallway—I wasn’t hallucinating.
They had been married for ten years. No living parents. No siblings. Just her and the girls and this dump of a life.
And yes—I was still in Ireland. Galway, to be exact.
A sleepy suburb. A forgotten apartment. An exhausted woman trying to keep it together.
I flipped through school emails. Maya was in fifth grade. Smart, according to a teacher’s note. Loves cats. Aliya, in third, had been caught feeding dried insects to classmates more than once.
Jaya, the baby, was a walking hurricane in a bib.
Then I found the news. The moment that sliced me in half.
A tab open in the browser: “Leon Darrow Dead: Billionaire Bad Boy Killed by Own Exotic Pet.”
I clicked it.
Dozens of headlines followed.
“Tech Empire Mourns the Death of Leon Darrow.”
“From Orphan to Oil Tycoon: The Leon Darrow Legacy.”
“Greek Supermodel Dorothy Mourns Tragic Death of Lover.”
Photos of me in my prime.
Suited. Grinning.
Powerful. Alive.
And a shot of Alec.
The bastard!
My brother.
Standing at my funeral. Delivering a eulogy with tears I knew were fake. And just like that, I felt it—A black fire twisting in my gut.
He took everything. My company, my properties, my assets, even Dorothy—the woman I had saved from a yacht fire in Santorini. She looked radiant beside Alec now, like she’d never known me. Like I was just a bad dream.
“Alec inherits the Darrow Estate after tragic accident,” one article read.
He had won.
And I? I was buried in the past, in a grave labeled by my own stupidity. I had trained that spider myself. Fed it. Pampered it.
“Famous bachelor dies from venom of rare pet spider—authorities unsure if it was accidental.”
My lips curled in silent fury. They called it accidental? Please.
I knew Alec. I knew how he worked. Subtle. Precise. Always behind the curtain pulling strings while smiling on stage. He’d done it. He’d taken everything.
And now I was stuck in the body of a mother of three with saggy breasts and a broken phone charger.
My chest tightened with the weight of unbearable rage. My hands were trembling again. Not from grief—this was something hotter. Darker.
I closed the phone with a snap. And I screamed. Internally.
Externally, I just stared at the cracked ceiling while Jaya climbed onto my lap and tried to open my mouth with her chubby fingers.
“I need a plan,” I whispered. “I need to think.”
A silence fell across the room as the TV shifted to static. Aliya farted audibly in the kitchen.
“Just you wait, Alec. Just you wait.”
That night, I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t.
Not with the weight of rage, regret, and baby drool slowly soaking through my only clean shirt.
The kids eventually passed out like knocked-out gremlins. Jaya had fallen asleep hugging a carrot. Aliya snored while spooning a hairbrush. Maya clung to my side like I was still her mother—and not a dead billionaire trapped in Catherine’s squishy body.
But I remembered something.
A failsafe. A last card I’d hidden long ago. Back when I still wore Italian leather and not cat-print pajama pants from Penneys.
“In case of absolute betrayal,” I had told myself, “don’t rely on digital. Bury it. Hide it like your life depends on it.”
Because maybe it would.
And now it did. There was a stash. Somewhere.
Hidden in a cabin I bought under a different name, tucked in a mountain just a few towns away. Inside that cabin was:
One unregistered gun
Two burner phones
Three ATM cards
An international passport under the name “Leonard Hahn”
Several envelopes stuffed with Euros, Dollars, and Yen
And a watch that could access my off-grid account in Switzerland
No one—not even Alec—knew about it. I could almost hear the man’s smug voice now, sitting on my throne, probably wearing my watch, fondling my old life like it was a souvenir.
I was getting it back. But first—
I needed a car.
The Next Morning…
I stood outside Jhing-Jhing’s door at 7:12 a.m., clutching a squirming baby under one arm and a bag packed with mismatched socks, juice boxes, and a metal spoon (Aliya said it was her weapon).
I knocked. Hard. The door opened almost instantly.
And there she was—Jhing-Jhing. A plus-sized Filipina goddess of pancakes and unsolicited advice, wrapped in a massive unicorn robe and holding a steaming mug that said "Don't Talk to Me If You’re Skinny."
“Oh my gulay,” she gasped, eyes wide. “Catherine?! You’re awake?! Praise Jesus and all his backup dancers!”
“I need a car,” I said.