REVENGE, DIAPER and SNACKS - Chapter 52: Chapter 52

The coffee shop was not ready for us. The bell above the door chimed politely as we entered—but what followed was anything but polite.
Seven children.
Two strollers. One toddler escape artist. Three sugar-starved pre-teens. A diaper bag that looked like a refugee emergency kit. And one four-year-old asking loudly, “Does this place have chicken nuggets??”
They did not.
We descended like a hurricane.
Mylene had her twin girls, armed with pink toy cars and a pathological need to throw them into innocent civilians’ ankles. Jhing Jhing carried her baby strapped to her chest like a tiny war general, while her daughter ran ahead screaming “CUPCAKES!” as if she was declaring war.
Me? I had Jaya wiping chocolate milk off his face using the dog’s hoodie he passed on the sidewalk, Maya trying to order ten brownies in a British accent, and Aliya pretending to faint dramatically because "I haven't had sugar in six hours."
I gave the barista a one-hundred-pound tip before the situation escalated into a lawsuit.
“Hi, I’m sorry in advance,” I said sweetly. “Please bring us every sweet you have. If it has sugar, we’ll take it. Keep the change. Also… do you offer therapy in the back?”
The poor guy just blinked, nodded, and waved us to a corner table as if guiding a herd of goats.
We crammed ourselves into a long booth. The kids took over one half with a mountain of brownies, croissants, and frappes that could induce cardiac arrest.
Chocolate smeared everything: cheeks, noses, table, probably someone’s shoe.
I sipped my overpriced pink latte and leaned in. “So…” I said in a hush-hush tone, “a guy died in police custody last night huh.”
“Yes, I call this too cliche?” Jhing Jhing gasped, mid-bite into a blueberry muffin. “Sounds murder to me?”
“Agree,” I said. “Convulsed. Bleeding. Foamed at the mouth. Textbook overkill.”
Mylene cringed. “Shit. I can't help but want to rewatch Dexter again on Netflix.”
“Yep. The asshole deserves it and the same creep who stalked me in the park a few days ago. The one who pretended to ask for directions and kept looking at my chest like it had answers.”
“Men are pigs,” Jhing Jhing said, as Ivy dropped an entire cookie into her frappuccino. She didn’t blink. Just drank it anyway.
I leaned back and watched as Aliya licked chocolate from the window like a bored cat. “His death? Too convenient. It stinks of Alec.”
Mylene snorted into her mocha. “Isn’t everything Alec’s fault these days?”
“Yes,” I said with a straight face. “Even this overpriced strawberry pink croissant. Probably Alec’s fault.”
“You think he killed the stalker?” Jhing Jhing asked, pulling a sticker out of her baby’s hair. “To protect you or…?”
I raised my eyebrow. “To cover his tracks. Or to scare me. Or maybe to impress me. You know how psychopaths are—dead bodies are their love language.”
“Ahhh so romantic,” Mylene muttered, feeding her toddler a spoon of whipped cream while he screamed for a cinnamon roll “that looks like a snail!”
“Ladies, focus.” I dropped my voice lower. “He’s watching me. He has people on the street. He returned my SUV, he’s offering coffee like he’s courting me, and now someone dies in police custody who just happened to stalk me?”
Drama…
I couldn't help but smile inside, my girls, my friends were really something else, it felt like I truly belonged to this mayhem though I already had a plan but still, I just couldn't help myself and asked for their opinion, mom-sass-jean opinion was always better.
Jhing Jhing nodded slowly. “He’s spiraling.”
“Spiraling into a Catherine-shaped abyss,” Mylene added.
I smirked. “Exactly. I want him to be obsessed. I want him to be confused that he wouldn't even recognize a blueberry muffin from a wet-dirty diaper.
Mylene smirked, “Exactly, we can’t let him know we were pulling the strings.”
I smirked like a badass rotten dorito, “I need ideas. What do we do next—subtly?”
Jhing choked on her latte. “Subtle? Catherine, you faked fainting in front of your ex back in college just to get free croissants.”
“That was strategy,” I corrected.
“You hacked a slot machine using a black lipstick USB drive.”
“Efficiency.”
“You told the barista your name was Muffin Blueberry just so Alec’s men couldn’t track your drink orders.”
Mylene cackled. “Okay that one was sexy, I’ll give you that.”
As we tried to plot, the kids hit stage-four sugar combustion.
One of the twins tried to eat a straw wrapper. Maya stacked six brownies into a sandwich. Aliya was giving another child a motivational speech about chocolate addiction. Jaya and Ivy staged a dramatic faint again—on the pastry display.
Jhing Jhing threw a napkin over her face. “We’re going to get banned.”
Mylene, juggling her baby and her dignity, leaned in. “Listen. If you want Alec to stay obsessed but confused, we need a two-pronged attack.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”
“One—continue being too perfect. Bake cookies, volunteer at school, look like a Pinterest board threw up on your house. But occasionally—slip. Say something only the devil would say.”
I grinned. “Like threatening the neighbor with a rusty spoon?”
“Exactly.”
Mylene leaned in closer as if she was telling me the formula of coca-cola, “We all knew that his brother died right? The fucking Leon Darrow? I heard it was Alec who killed the poor guy, rest his soul.”
Eh?
I almost spit my overpriced latte.
Me? Poor guy? Me, the Assassin of Sass?
The Kingpin of Diapers and Tea Cups?