REVENGE, DIAPER and SNACKS - Chapter 97: Chapter 97

“No,” I said, leveling the pistol at her. “But you’re the one standing on the cliff.”
Her heel slipped. Just slightly.
And that’s all it took.
Gravity didn’t ask permission. She fell. Screaming.
The silence after was violent.
Later: The Clearing of Aftermath
Somewhere in the mountains, dusk settling in ash and silence
The gunfire had finally stopped.
Smoke hung in the air like a bad memory, curling around shattered trees and burnt earth. The bodies were still warm. So was the rage.
Joe lay on a makeshift stretcher fashioned from torn canvas, broken branches, and a whole lot of stubbornness. Blood seeped through the bandages Mylene had wrapped around his side, staining her designer scarf—once cream, now a shade called “warrior crimson.” Her hands trembled slightly, not from fear, but from adrenaline crashing. The last of her motherly fury leaking out.
She swallowed hard. “He’ll live. Barely.”
“You say that like it's a bad thing,” Joe grumbled, wincing.
Jhing Jhing stood nearby, wiping blood off her cheek with a used makeup remover wipe, the kind scented with cucumber and regrets. Her eyeliner was smudged, her ponytail was crooked, but her attitude remained pristine.
“Do we have coffee?” she muttered, eyeing the broken thermos on the ground. “Because I feel like I earned at least a triple-shot espresso. Maybe two. With whipped cream. And vengeance sprinkles.”
I didn’t answer. I was sitting against a tree, arms limp, staring out at the jagged cliffside we had just fought our way across. The mountain wind bit at my skin, but I barely felt it. My ears were still ringing. My soul was still echoing.
“She’s gone,” I whispered.
Joe opened one eye. “She was gone a long time ago, boss.”
Boss. That old title. It hit different now.
Mylene pulled her bloodstained jacket tighter around her shoulders and looked away, blinking fast. “That was… a lot of bullets.”
“You looked hot though,” Jhing Jhing said with a half-smile, giving her arm a squeeze. “Like, very survivor chic. If Vogue ever runs a ‘Post-Apocalypse Mom’ issue, you’re the damn cover girl.”
Joe chuckled—then groaned and held his ribs. “Enough fashion talk. We need to move. Get off this mountain. Burn what’s left. No one can find this place again. Ever.”
That’s when I looked down at the journal in my lap. Its leather cover was scorched, edges frayed, but the words inside?
Still intact. Still dangerous.
Still true.
“No,” I said. My voice was quiet, but something sharp had returned to it. Steel beneath the exhaustion. “We don’t burn it.”
Jhing Jhing raised a brow. “Oh? We gonna frame it next to your ‘World’s Best Mom’ mug?”
Mylene blinked. “Wait—girl, are you about to become a crime… influencer?”
I stood, brushing off ash and sorrow.
“Better,” I said. “I’m going to become a damn truth-teller.”
They looked at me like I’d lost it—which, to be fair, I had. Pieces of me had been scattered across battlefields, boardrooms, baby bottles, and betrayal.
But this? This was the part where I stitched myself back together.
“We tell it all. Every secret. Every lie. Every name Alec buried. Every child he used. Every woman he silenced. I’m done hiding behind diapers and cupcakes.”
Jhing Jhing gave a wicked grin. “So… you’re going full Oprah with a kill list?”
“Not just a kill list,” I said. “A legacy.”
Mylene’s eyes shone. “You’re going to set the world on fire, aren’t you?”
“No,” I whispered, voice hard. “I’m going to free the ghosts.”
I looked toward the cliff’s edge, where so much had ended. Where Catherine, Leon, and every version of myself had bled.
Not just the ghosts of the dead—
But the ones still walking.
Still trapped in silence.
Still waiting for someone like me… to scream.
We didn’t sleep that night.
The air still smelled like blood and gunpowder, and none of us had the emotional bandwidth to deal with a mosquito bite, much less the trauma of a full-blown gunfight, cliff-fall, and makeshift surgery.
We gathered around the smoldering campfire on the edge of the clearing. Someone had managed to boil water on a metal plate over the embers, and by some mountain miracle, Mylene had found the emergency espresso sachets from her makeup bag.
“I swear,” she muttered, stirring the cup with a twig, “if we live through this, I’m marrying a barista.”
Joe, wrapped in a thermal blanket and leaning against his backpack like a war-weary action figure, chuckled. “Make sure he knows first aid and has great health insurance.”
Jhing Jhing passed around cups of coffee, then dug out a bar of chocolate from her tactical purse, which had somehow survived both the ambush and her own dramatic flying tackle of a henchman. “We lived, didn’t we?” she said. “That counts for something.”
I stared at the fire, the heat of the cup in my hands grounding me as the adrenaline faded. “Dorothy’s gone. But that doesn’t mean this is over.”
Joe nodded grimly. “She mentioned others. We’ve only scratched the surface. There are still pieces of this network out there, and I’d bet my last bullet they know we’re involved now.”
Mylene stretched her legs toward the fire and examined her chipped nails like they were war medals. “Then we go after them. Like sexy ghosts of vengeance. I already ruined my boots and stabbed a man with a hairpin. I am committed.”
Jhing Jhing smirked. “And I flirted with a mafia guy while wearing neon blush. I’m basically undercover material.”
I leaned back, taking a sip. The coffee was terrible. And perfect. “We need to return. Regroup. But we don’t disappear. We go back loud.”
“Like how loud?” Mylene asked.
I grinned, eyes glinting with new purpose. “Grocery aisle meltdown loud. We’re going home, fixing our lashes, hugging our kids—and then we make them afraid of women with contour palettes and a vengeance plan.”