The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins (Mia and Kyle) novel Chapter 478

Mia's POV

My phone buzzes in my clutch.

The vibration travels through the leather, through my thigh, demanding attention. I pull it out. The screen is too bright in the dim VIP section, a rectangle of harsh white light in all this careful purple and pink and blue.

Alexander (video call)

My stomach drops.

Guilt. Immediate and irrational. Like being caught with my hand in a cookie jar, except the cookie jar is a nightclub and the hand is my entire body in a dress that costs more than my children's monthly daycare.

"Drink this," Marcos says, appearing at my elbow with a shot glass. The liquid inside is amber, glowing like something molten in the shifting lights. "Daniel's special."

I take it without thinking. My other hand is fumbling with the phone, trying to silence the buzzing, trying to buy myself time. The shot glass is cold against my palm. The phone keeps vibrating.

"You gonna answer that?" Tyler asks. He's leaning back, watching me with those blue eyes. Amused.

I down the shot.

The alcohol hits my throat like lava. Actual lava. The kind that burns villages and reshapes landscapes. It scorches a path down my esophagus, explodes in my stomach, sends tendrils of heat racing up into my skull. My eyes water. My nose burns. My whole face feels like it's been set on fire and doused in gasoline.

"What—" I gasp. Cough. Gasp again. "What WAS that?"

"Fireball and something else," Marcos says. Grinning. "Daniel's secret recipe. He calls it the 'Bad Decision.'"

"That's—" I'm still coughing. The phone is still buzzing. "—that's an accurate name."

I grab the phone and stand. Too fast. The shot is already doing something to my equilibrium. The floor feels tilted. The lights are suddenly too bright, too loud, too everything.

"I need to—bathroom—I'll be—"

I don't finish the sentence. Just move.

Away from the table. Away from the pretty boys. Away from Sophie's knowing look and Scarlett's raised eyebrow. Toward the bathroom. Toward somewhere quiet. Somewhere my children can't see the purple lights and the champagne bottles and the men with their shirts unbuttoned.

The bathroom is down a hallway. The bass is muffled here but still present—a heartbeat in the walls. I push through the door. It's empty. Thank god. Just me and the mirror and the fancy hand soap that probably costs thirty dollars a bottle.

I answer the call.

"MAMA!"

Alexander's face fills the screen. Too close, as always. His nose taking up half the frame. His eyes bright and excited, pupils reflecting the warm glow of what I recognize as the kitchen light.

"Hi baby." My voice sounds strange. Too high. Too guilty. "Why are you still awake?"

"Because DADDY is making PANCAKES!"

My brain stutters.

"What?"

"PANCAKES, Mama! At NIGHTTIME! That's against the RULES but Daddy said rules are different when he's in charge!"

Alexander pulls the phone back. The camera swings wildly—ceiling, floor, the corner of a cabinet—before settling on a wider view of the kitchen.

And there he is.

Kyle. Standing at the stove with his back to the camera. He's wearing a gray t-shirt and sweatpants. His feet are bare. There's flour on his left shoulder, a white streak against the gray. He's flipping something in a pan, the movement practiced, easy.

He's in my mother's kitchen. Making pancakes. At eleven-thirty at night.

"Where's Grandma?" I ask. The words come out sharper than I intended.

"She went HOME," Alexander announces. "Daddy said she looked tired and she should go rest and he would take care of us. So now he's HERE and she's THERE and we're having PANCAKES!"

"Kyle sent my mother home?"

"Yeah! He said—" Alexander pauses. Trying to remember. "—he said something about giving her a break? And then he made us take baths and brush teeth and THEN he said we could have midnight snacks if we were good!"

In the background, Ethan's voice: "It's not midnight. It's eleven thirty-four."

"SAME THING!"

"It's literally not the same thing. Midnight is a specific—"

"ETHAN. Nobody CARES."

I'm watching Kyle's back on my phone screen. Watching him flip another pancake. Watching the comfortable way he moves through my mother's kitchen—the kitchen where I used to sit as a child, eating cereal, complaining about homework.

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