The Stray Cat I Fed Warned Me About My Two Faced Best Friend Chapter 04

The Stray Cat I Fed Warned Me About My Two Faced Best Friend Chapter 04

The young hostess stood nearby with reddened eyes and nodded.

“That’s exactly what she told me.”

I opened my mouth, desperate to explain, but the evidence looked airtight.

Had I somehow blacked out?

Had I really brought the wings without remembering it?

That made no sense.

Before I could collect my thoughts, Derek Reed stormed into the restaurant.

His jacket was wrinkled, and dark circles bruised the skin beneath his bloodshot eyes. The moment he spotted Vanessa, he rushed to her side.

“Vanessa! What happened?”

Shock flashed across her face. Her lips trembled.

“Derek… I thought you were out of town. Why are you back?”

The surprise lasted only a moment. Then she began sobbing even harder.

“Our baby is gone. I couldn’t protect him.” She pointed toward me. “It was Natalie.”

Derek spun around and stared at me, his eyes burning with rage.

He grabbed a nearby chair and tried to swing it at me, but two men from another table caught him before he could get close.

“You sick bitch! You knew my wife was pregnant, and you still brought her out for the hottest food on the menu. You did this on purpose, didn’t you?”

“My son is dead! Either your family pays, or I’ll make sure you do.”

He roared until the veins in his neck stood out.

Vanessa clung to his arm, crying as though she could barely breathe.

“It wasn’t entirely Natalie’s fault. The chicken wings were made at her parents’ restaurant. Something in them is what killed our baby.”

Derek’s face twisted.

“Then her parents can pay too!”

The crowd’s outrage reignited at once.

“This is criminal!”

“That woman should rot in prison!”

“Her parents’ restaurant needs to be investigated too. What kind of people raise someone capable of this?”

“I found the address. It’s Parker’s Seafood Boil in the Southside Market District.”

“Let’s go shut them down ourselves!”

Several people pulled out their phones and opened their map apps. Others began talking about livestreaming the confrontation once they reached my parents’ restaurant.

I watched the scene unfold, my hands and feet turning numb.

I had changed restaurants. I had taken precautions. I had done everything I could think of to stop Vanessa from dragging my parents into her plan.

So why had everything still ended up exactly where the cats had warned me it would?

Derek pulled Vanessa against his chest. Though she looked weak and pale, the faintest trace of triumph crossed her face.

Customers surrounded us with their phones raised, livestreaming and recording every second.

Outside the windows, red and blue lights flashed across the rain-slicked street as the approaching sirens grew louder.

Then I smiled.

I walked toward Vanessa.

She immediately recoiled, watching me with suspicion.

“What are you doing? I already tried to hold my husband back for you.”

I said nothing.

Instead, I reached toward her sweatshirt and removed the small silver brooch pinned near her collarbone.

It was shaped like a butterfly.

When I’d picked her up earlier, I had fastened it to her sweatshirt myself and told her it was a gift from one of my recent trips. The moment Vanessa recognized the designer logo, she’d been delighted.

What she didn’t know was that a tiny hidden camera had been built into the center of the brooch.

From the moment she climbed into my car, it had recorded everything she said and did.

Every sound. Every movement.

Including what had really happened with the takeout bag.

Derek’s arrival hadn’t been an accident either.

The man owed more than two hundred thousand dollars in online gambling, credit-card, and payday-loan debt.

He terrorized Vanessa at home, and I had anonymously made sure he heard that his wife was planning some kind of scene at a restaurant tonight.

If Vanessa intended to stage a public tragedy, why shouldn’t her husband be there to witness it?

His arrival was the one variable she hadn’t planned for.

In my last life, Vanessa had turned Derek into the weapon that destroyed my parents. This time, I refused to let her control him from the shadows while my family paid the price.

I held the butterfly brooch in my palm so everyone could see it, then opened the camera’s cloud app on my phone.

“This recorded everything that happened tonight.”

I looked around at the crowd.

“Does anyone want to see the truth?”

The color vanished from Vanessa’s face.

Weak as she looked, she lunged forward and grabbed my wrist.

“No! Natalie, please!”

Derek froze for a moment, then shoved Vanessa away.

“She killed our son. I’m not letting her get away with it! What are you so afraid of? Let her play the footage.”

“Play it!” he roared across the restaurant. “Let’s see what kind of garbage this lying bitch comes up with.”