Chapter 25

The police came ten minutes later.

Mylene was taken to urgent care — her cheek swollen, but she was okay.

The man? Hospitalized. Concussion. Broken ribs. Bruised ego.

I was handcuffed.

“Yes, officer,” I said calmly as they led me to the front yard. “I assaulted a man with a bubble wand and balloon stick. He hit my friend. And scared the children. I have no regrets.”

One officer whispered to the other, “She’s a badass.”

They uncuffed me. Took my statement. Didn’t arrest me. Mylene returned that night, wrapped in ice packs and fire in her eyes.

“Remind me to never cross you,” she muttered, eating leftover pink cupcakes.

Jhing Jhing passed me a wine cooler and saluted. “You are now the Queen of Pig-Unicorn Brawls.”

Later that night, when the kids were asleep and the yard looked like a warzone of party cups and shredded glitter banners, I sat on the porch.

I opened my secret laptop.

The screen showed Alec’s mansion — panic, arguments, lawyers storming in and out.

I smirked.

Then I looked at the bruises on my knuckles and the weight loss app that congratulated me on 27 pounds gone.

I was changing.

Faster than anyone expected. But not softer. Never that. Just sharper. Cleaner. And ready.

Because this birthday may have ended in chaos—

But the real party was just beginning.

It was just after midnight. The apartment was quiet. The kind of eerie, tense quiet that seeps through walls like a ghost holding its breath.

The kids were asleep — sprawled on their beds like little warriors resting after a chaotic party war. Jaya still had pink frosting in her hair. Maya was wrapped like a burrito in three blankets. Aliya had insisted on sleeping with a plastic sword tucked beside her pillow “in case the cake man comes back.”

I was in the garage, sipping black coffee in my secure, military-grade underground office — the hum of screens lighting my face. Alec’s security feeds danced in front of me like a digital opera. His house was chaos. Traitors, broken shipments, and a PR disaster eating him alive.

I had just started decrypting a Yakuza meeting ledger when my phone buzzed.

Ray.

I blinked. What the hell was he doing at this hour? And why was he calling at 12:17 a.m.?

I let it ring.

Then it rang again.

Twelve times.

Damn it!

With a sigh deep enough to shake tectonic plates, I answered. “What?”

Ray’s voice came out panicked. Desperate. “I—I need help.”

I froze.

He was supposed to be in Alaska. Whale-watching. Shark-fishing. Cousin-hugging. Whatever ridiculous lie he’d cooked up this time.

“What happened?” I asked flatly.

“I’m in trouble,” he whispered. “I… I owe money.”

I stood, slowly. My back cracked. My pulse slowed.

“How much money, Ray?”

Silence.

Then—

“One hundred and eighty thousand pounds.”

I let out a single, low laugh. “That’s not debt, Ray. That’s a death sentence.”

He came home the next day. Looking like hell’s least successful janitor. Hair greasy. Shirt wrinkled. A casino wristband still clinging to his arm like a scarlet letter.

“I swear, I was going to win it back,” he mumbled. “I just— I didn’t know the casino changed ownership.”

My eyes narrowed. The bastard. How could he be this stupid.

“What casino?”

He looked up sheepishly.

“The… the one um, that dead billionaire used to manage under that alias—uh—Bella Thorne?”

What the hell? I nearly choked. “That was never his alias, Ray. That’s a Disney star.”

“Oh, but how did you know that?” he muttered.

“It doesn't matter, Jesus. How could you lose so much?” I gripped the back of the kitchen chair. “You gambled away nearly one hundred thousand at Alec Darrow’s casino?” The one he stole from me? The one that I left rigged with a silent alert system the second someone used a last-name-only ID to open a VIP tab?

Ray’s face lost color.

I gave him a withering look.

I sat him down. For a minute he was like a lost wet chicken. I gave him fruit juice. He was shaking like a cold ferret in a paper bag.

“Ray,” I said gently. “How long have you been gambling?”

He couldn’t meet my eyes. “Since before Maya was born.”

“How much have you lost?”

“...Over half a million.”

My teeth clenched. My fists curled. I wasn’t even angry — not in the explosive way I’d been when Alec kissed Dorothy, or when that drunk dad ruined the birthday.

This was different. This was a quiet kind of rage. This body remembered the pain, the betrayal.

The next morning started with cereal spilled on the floor, Maya screaming about her missing hairbrush, and Jaya trying to flush a plastic pony down the toilet.

I was halfway through brushing my teeth when I heard the unmistakable crash of porcelain in the kitchen. “Aliya! What did I say about climbing the shelves?!”

She peeked around the corner, her curls full of flour. “I was trying to make pancakes for you, Mommy.”

“…With the cat?”