Chapter 19
The weekend came faster than I expected. The kids were up at 6 a.m., screaming about waffles. Jaya had somehow managed to draw on the wall with what I hoped was chocolate. And Maya had cut her bangs again—short, uneven, and slightly psychotic-looking.
Despite the madness, I felt… lighter.
Maybe it was the fact that I’d finally figured out how to braid Aliya’s hair without tying her ears into it. Or maybe it was because I was finally able to jog three whole minutes without seeing my ancestors. I had even managed to lose half a pound.
Half a pound!
It didn’t seem like much, but in this body, it felt like winning a damn Olympic medal. I flexed in the mirror, grinning like an idiot. The guilt that once lingered in this flesh—Catherine’s sorrow, exhaustion, resentment—wasn’t gone. But it was changing. Like maybe, just maybe, I could give her some peace by becoming someone who fought for her kids. For herself.
I treated myself to something cathartic: checking my Swiss bank account.
I had to access it through layers of encryption, codes, and a security question about my first pet that only I would know (Cherry, a spider monkey I kept for a month in college—long story).
The balance blinked on the screen: €58.3 million.
I grinned.
Time to make life very comfortable.
I quickly transferred a modest portion—€25,000—to a new local account under a fresh alias. Enough to make things smooth without raising questions. I wasn’t here to make headlines yet. I just needed to survive and rebuild. With money came options.
First, shopping.
I strapped Jaya in the baby seat, bribed Maya and Aliya with promises of pancakes, and loaded everyone into the yellow family van. I still couldn’t drive it without the windshield wipers going off randomly, but I’d learned to ignore them like an extra personality.
We went on a full spree.
Kitchenware: pans that didn’t look like medieval weapons, a rice cooker, a full set of cutlery, and enough Tupperware to make me feel like a real adult. And spoons, my gods, the spoons, I've been hearing Jhing Jhing going on and on about spoons missing all the time. I swear I've checked the spoon in the cabinet and there I found three spoons, very old looking plastic forks and two sets of chopsticks. That was all. The cabinet was almost empty. Pity but for now, this Catherine was lucky. She has me. She can buy all the spoons in the world.
Clothing: school uniforms, pink dresses, shoes, and more pink dresses, books and pencils, socks without holes, rain jackets, tiny boots, and backpacks with sparkles and unicorns. I let them pick what they wanted, and it cost a fortune, but their smiles? Worth every damn cent.
Toys: too many, honestly. But Jaya giggled for the first time when I gave her a stuffed octopus, and Aliya was convinced her robot cat had “powers.” And Maya? The beautiful girl that glared at me when I spent two thousand pounds buying her new iPad, Laptop and a new iWatch for myself. It was all worth it.
Then came my things: rubber shoes that actually fit, dozens shirts, and by gods, some decent undies and compression leggings (which are Satan’s corset), and one dozen hoodies that declared “World’s Okayest Mom.” Perfect.
Later that night, back at the apartment, the girls helped me unpack the groceries and gadgets. Jaya sat on the countertop like a squishy boss baby while I cooked spaghetti with real ingredients for the first time.
The smell filled the apartment. The laughter, too.
Maya played music on her new tablet. Aliya performed an impromptu dance while Jaya smacked a spoon against her bowl like a war drum. I stood there, stirring sauce, watching them, and thought: This… this isn’t so bad.
Later that evening, after all three had fallen asleep, I hired a part-time maid. A kind Romanian woman named Petra who’d clean twice a week and didn’t ask questions beyond “Which cleaning solution do you prefer?” Bless her.
I collapsed on the couch with sore feet and a full heart.
The body was changing. I was changing. And for the first time, I wasn’t just a rich man in a woman’s life—I was becoming someone these children could rely on. I was building something.
Something real.
And tomorrow?
Tomorrow I’d run four minutes instead of three. And maybe—just maybe—I’d win another half-pound back from the grave.
It started innocently enough. Or so I thought.
The morning after our shopping spree and victory spaghetti night, I woke up to the sound of Jaya babbling to herself in her crib and Maya whispering “We’re out of milk again…” like a tiny, caffeine-deprived adult. I had one goal that day: survive the parent-teacher meeting at Maya and Aliya’s school, then sneak in a workout.
It sounded simple on paper.
Reality check: It was not.