5. Alyssa

Ididn't go see who was at the door right away because I didn't care. Instead, I went and took a shower, took my time finding something to wear for the day, and then went to see what smelt so good coming out of my kitchen.

My three sisters-in-law were in the kitchen making breakfast, and my brothers had already left to go to their jobs. Not everyone can fuck off the day like me. My sisters-in-law are stay-at-home wives; there are no kids between any of them as yet, and I'm not sure why.

I sometimes think my brothers were just as traumatized by the divorce as I was, but they can have other reasons for not wanting to start families. Mom doesn't have baby rabies, so that could be one of the reasons they don't feel pressured into doing it. And knowing my brothers, if any of their mothers-in-law were the type, they wouldn't put up with it or allow their wives to be bullied.

"What smells so good, and who made it?" Sometimes things can smell amazing and taste like shit. "You two didn't let Jilly near the stove, did you?" That started the three of them laughing their asses off, including Jilly. It's a running joke in our family that she could burn water because she has.

Jilly has ADHD or some form of it and gets distracted easily. In fact, she has a whole TikTok series with millions of viewers who keep up with her mind-numbing distractedness. My family had taught her, after years of putdowns from her own, how to turn that negative into a positive. Now, it's a comedy act instead of a shortcoming. She loves it.

"No, Miss. Smartass. Penny and I made Daisy cook since she's Susie Homemaker." Daisy loves to bake and cook; she's now the family's designated chef for all celebrations, if she chooses to, of course. Brian would have an aneurysm if he thought she was being taken advantage of.

She'd turned her baking skills into a little side hustle that brings in good money when she's so inclined. She gets to pick and choose her clients these days because Jilly had introduced her on her channel some time ago, and some low-level celebrity ordered her coconut mango cake and raved to anyone who would listen about it, and the next thing you know, she was getting orders from notable people.

Now, those cakes are being sold through an online delivery company that's known nationwide. I think someone was trying to buy the recipe or something like that, but she refused because her great-great-grandma brought the recipe from Jamaica when Adam was in the garden or something, and she was the only one in the family to inherit it since no one else seemed interested before her.

I had a hand in getting her cakes recognized, thanks to my connections. Penny is their manager and the one who organizes things. I guess calling them housewives isn't exactly correct now that I think of it, but that's what they call themselves, so who am I to judge?

There were freshly made cinnamon rolls, my favorite, bacon, eggs, and freshly squeezed orange juice to go with the pot of coffee, which I was sure was not the first of the day. I poured my first cup and eyed the liquor cabinet through the archway into the other room.

Baileys, I need Baileys and maybe a shot of whiskey. I'm not an alcoholic, and I don't usually use booze to numb my pain, but I have two free days before the weekend, so what the hell else should I be doing?

By the time I turned around, there were three steaming cups waiting for theirs. "Freaking alcoholics." I poured them some and took my seat at the kitchen table.

"So, who was at the door earlier?"

"Denny's parents and sister."

"What did they want?"

"To talk to you about what happened, I guess. Bri ran them off." Daisy answered as she topped off my cup with more coffee.

"Forget about them; how are you doing this morning, sweetie?" Penny asked and stole a piece of bacon off my plate like there wasn't a whole ass platter in the middle of the table.

I smacked her with my fork, and she grinned and stole another one.

It's awesome having sisters. The first time I said that, they'd all looked at me like I was crazy. That's because they thought that after all these years, Mitzie and I would've had a sisterly relationship. That's something Mitzie likes to pretend when out in public, and since my brothers never discuss our family's past, not even with their wives, out of respect for Mom and the pain she still carries, they didn't know any better.

Things have changed now since they've married into the family. We all sat down and discussed things, and as a whole, we protect Mom as best we can. Mom is another, bigger part of the reason I have decided to handle things with Denny this way.

Not just because of the divorce but because of the effect, it's had on her all these years. Dad was her one true love; Denny was not mine. That's the reason I accepted his proposal. We both knew where we stood. I liked him better than most, and there was a sexual attraction, which was enough for me, and he swore it was the same with him.

He's the one who hounded me all through college until I caved in my junior year, and we've been together ever since. Well, until yesterday, anyway. If he had told me that he was in love with someone else, I would've bowed out.

I'm young, I'm hot as fuck, I would've found another companion within a week if I so chose. But that bastard had to go and cheat and activate my inner bitch. She was not supposed to make an appearance for at least another ten years.

Well, she's here now. "So, you three planning to stay here all day?"

"What do you think your brothers would do to us if we left you alone?"

"I don't want to find out. Trey threatened me with violence if I got distracted on the job."

We all knew that was a joke because he acts like he drank her bath water. That ADHD sex must be off the charts. Unless she forgets what she's doing and bites his dick off.

"What are you laughing at?

"I was just thinking…. Oh, never mind." Can't put any ideas in her head because she'd fixate on it, and who knows where that would lead. Since it looks like I'm not ever getting married and having kids, one of these bitches is going to have to reproduce.

"What did they say exactly? What did he tell them happened?"

"We don't know; Bri just opened the door and said ‘leave' in that way of his and closed the door in their faces."

"Hmm!"

"What is that look? What are you planning now?"

"Nothing, it's just not their turn." I have to take care of the fifteen-year grudge first; then and only then will I deal with the two who disrespected me. There should be order in everything.

I played nice for the next couple of days and into the weekend, so my family would get off my ass. I had them focusing on our upcoming trip in two weeks, which was supposed to be my destination wedding but was now going to be a kickass family reunion in Cabo.

My brother had a bed delivered that first day to replace the old one, and each night, when I made my escape, I stayed up well into the morning hours working on my master plan. Now, I learned coding from Brian, hacking from Cam, and game development from Trey. My double major was in engineering and business, and I work in acquisitions for the local corporation I interned with all four years of college.

The last meeting I had with that Garrett person wasn't so much to take over his company and to meld one faction of one of his software companies with ours under an umbrella. I say all of this to say that I know my way around computers and have since I was about ten when Bri first started teaching me to code.

Math is my shit, and computers are a close second. As for hacking, that's practically child's play for someone like me, and I found a real knack for it early on. At first, when I was about twelve or thereabouts, it was just something fun to do to pass the time, especially on those weekends I was forced to spend with my sperm donor along with the hag from hell and her disgruntled spawn.

It was easy enough to learn their passcodes, which were never changed, but even without those, it was easy enough to hack into their systems. I've been linked into their Wi-Fi for the past eleven years or so. Suffice it to say, I know plenty and I have the saved folders to prove it.

As I mentioned earlier, my inner bitch wasn't supposed to make an appearance until sometime in the future, but since Denny pulled the tiger's tail, I guess now is as good a time as any. Now that my family had stopped side-eyeing me and taken themselves back to their abodes, it was time to get started on phase one of my operation.

Now, Miss. Mitzie is a speed demon, always has been. When Dad bought my Miata as a way to buy my love for the twenty-first birthday, she kicked up a fuss and claimed she'd always wanted one. I told him if he gave her the same car as me, I'd disown him.

As a starter car, it's not bad, and it's not even that expensive, but there's no way she was getting the same as me. She did that shit all throughout my childhood and won, but as an adult, I wasn't having it. In the end, Helen talked him into getting the car for her and he caved.

Grandma, his Mom, counter-attacked by giving me pieces of her heirloom jewelry that Helen has had her eyes on for as long as she's been married to my Dad. That caused a stink, but since Grandma Mae didn't give a fuck, it fell on deaf ears.

In all these years, no matter how much he tried shoving them down my maternal family's throats, it never happened. No one was happy with the way he had handled things and though things had eased up over the years, it was still not enough for Helen and Mitzie, who always thought they should be treated the same as Mom and me.

When Mom was the one invited to family events, Helen would have a fit until Grandma let her know that in her house, her opinion was the only one that counted. And since Mom was the mother of her grandkids, she was the one she wanted to see. She knew my brothers, and I wouldn't be caught dead sitting around a table with that woman while our mother was left at home alone.

Dad didn't want to get written out of the will, so he would often show up. However, when it made Mom uncomfortable, his own family would ask him not to show his face. He didn't like that, but it was a bed of his own making.

Now, back to Mitzie's car. As I said, she's a speed demon. After the first three tickets, Dad threatened to take her car away, which caused another row, so for the past two years, she'd taken to throwing them away or stuffing them in her glove box. She'd even received some from out of state, mostly across the state line.

I simply tapped away at some keys, and that was enough for her car to be towed by the city. That was the first volley, but I wasn't going to stop there. In our state, with the number of tickets she had from this state alone, she could be looking at jail time on top of fines and maybe even a suspended license.

All I needed was her car's VIN number and the address, along with her license plate. I had all of the above, so it was easy enough. That should start off a firestorm of monumental proportions in the next day or so because even if the mother and daughter team had any ideas of hiding it from Dad, I was going to make sure he knew.

I drove by their place on my way to work Tuesday morning, and the car was gone. I knew Helen wasn't going to take my warning to leave town seriously, and I didn't want her to, not yet. But I was damned if she was going to have as long a marriage as my parents had. There's a reason for this, but I'll get to that later.

I spent the rest of the week preparing for my upcoming trip. No one at the job knew about my broken engagement because it was none of their business, and since it was family only, there was no way for them to find out until I was ready for them to know.

Dad was invited, but not his wife and stepkid, which had caused a ruckus. In the end, I think he decided to put them up at a separate hotel in the area, but I threatened to do them bodily harm if I even caught sight of them the whole time I was there.

Mom was the one who convinced me to let him walk me down the aisle because I wasn't even planning on inviting him, which he knew. He'd cried and begged and questioned how long I was going to hate him. I just said ever. I didn't even bother with the for on that one.

I heard from Bri later in the week that Dad was having a fit because of Mitzie's parking tickets and the mess she was in with the car. How did he know, even after the lengths his wife and step nightmare had gone to to keep it hidden?

Well, that's easy; Rhoda had sent him an anonymous email with all the details that she'd stolen from the city database. Bri said he called him ranting and raving until he asked him what he wanted him to do about his fuck up? That's what we call his marriage.

Of course, I wanted in on the action, so I found myself at his house that evening uninvited but always welcome. He looked a bit nervous when he opened the door and saw me standing there. "Hi, Dad, what's up?" If he was expecting me to mention the beating, he was sorely mistaken. Everyone knows I have spells.

"How're you doing?" I walked into the house, "Where's everyone?"

"They went out somewhere. How are you doing? With the whole Denny thing, I mean. Did you call and cancel everything yet?"

"Oh, I'm not canceling; we're still going."

"You're going through with the wedding?"

"Of course not, but you and Mom paid a lot of money, and I'm not about to waste it. You're still coming, aren't you?"

"Oh, of course, if you'd like. So, you've decided to make it into a family vacation, huh."

"Kind of."

"Great, don't forget what time we're leaving next Thursday."

"Of course."

"Okay then, I guess I'll see you then." Bummer, I was really looking forward to the theatrics.

"Baby, Princess, isn't there something you'd like to say?" I looked at him like I was the village idiot.

"About what?" His look was incredulous, but he knew better than to say another word about it.

"It's nothing. I'll see you at the airport then, if not before."

"Why would we see each other before?" I walked out the door and left. Denny called me for the one-hundredth time as soon as I got in the car, and I let it go to voicemail with all the others.

They've all been calling me every day for the past week and a half, but I've ignored everyone because I have nothing to say. Sherry had come by my place to talk, and in honor of our long friendship, I stomached her for five minutes before telling her I hoped her sister fucks her husband in her bed and then kicked her out of my house.

She called me a bitch, which she should know since she'd spent her whole life with me. As for Lacey, I haven't heard a peep out of her. I do have a great time listening to the messages from Denny's family, which go from pleading to accusations and everything in between.

Apparently, I was too career-driven, and that's why he'd strayed. I was a bitch for icing him out and ghosting him without a word. That proves I never loved him, and he was better off without me. The next message was about how much of a mistake it was to throw away a four-year relationship over a little mistake.

I answered nothing because it was not their turn at bat. Next Thursday couldn't come fast enough for me. My little trip to Dad's house had its purpose; as much as I wanted to see those two frothing at the mouth, I was more interested in looking into his eyes.

I know him well enough to know that he's close to the edge; I just need a few more days to give him that last push.