Chapter 4: Flour Bomb Truth
The smell of burning chocolate chips was the first thing Cylene noticed. Acrid and sweet, it cut through the vague scent of Pedro’s - their old home—stale beer, lemon cleaner, and something else, something floral she couldn’t place. A half-burned candle sat on the counter, its wax dripping down the side like a misshapen tear. Pedro’s kitchen was a museum of half-starts: a half-packed suitcase yawned open by the fridge, half-empty coffee cups formed a stained ring around the island, a bowl of batter waiting for the griddle.
Juliet stood on a step-stool, her small face a mask of concentration as she stirred the pancake mixture with a wooden spoon too big for her hands. Pedro was at the sink, his back to them, scrubbing at a pan with a violence that suggested he was cleaning more than just burnt batter.
Cylene leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, watching. The USB drive was a hard rectangle in her pocket. The recorded scream from Emily’s call was a silent, satisfying weight on her phone. The legal gears were turning. But here, in this liminal space of a Saturday morning, was the human mess. The aftershock.
Pedro’s phone, lying face-down on the island next to a bag of flour, buzzed. A low, insistent hum against the granite.
Juliet’s stirring slowed. Pedro’s scrubbing stopped. Cylene’s gaze locked onto the device.
It buzzed again, slithering a half-inch across the smooth surface. A call, not just a notification.
Pedro turned, his hands dripping. He looked from the phone to Cylene, a silent question in his eyes. Ignore it? His face was pale. He hadn’t slept either.
Cylene pushed off the doorframe. She moved at the same time he did. Her fingers, reaching to flip the phone over, brushed against his as he went to grab it. The contact was electric, a jolt of shared history and present dread. They both froze, suspended over the buzzing slate.
“Is that the monster calling?”
Juliet’s voice was small, clear, and utterly matter-of-fact. She had stopped stirring completely, the spoon held upright in the bowl. She was looking at the phone, then at her father, then at her mother. Her eyes were the calm center of the storm.
Pedro flinched. Cylene’s breath caught. The phone buzzed again, a angry trapped insect.
Before either could answer, Juliet’s grip on the large bowl of batter tightened. With a deliberate, almost graceful motion, she tilted it. Thick, creamy pancake mixture cascaded over the edge, splattering onto the granite island, across the buzzing phone, and onto the floor in a slow, spreading pool.
“Oops,” she said, her voice flat.
Pedro snapped into motion. “Jules!” He lunged for paper towels, his focus shattered.
But in that single, flour-dusted moment, Juliet locked eyes with Cylene. Her lips, barely moving, formed two silent words. Check it.
The diversion was perfect.
As Pedro knelt, mopping up the gooey spill and muttering about waste, Cylene’s hand, already near the phone, swept it up. She turned, shielding it with her body, and wiped the batter from the screen with her thumb.
EMILY, the caller ID blared, alongside a photo of her from last year, laughing, her red hair bright under the sun. The phone stopped buzzing. A missed call. And then, a preview of a text message appeared on the locked screen.
Pedro, you need to call me. We need to talk before you do something you can’t take back. She’s manipulating you. She’s using Juliet. You KNOW what she’s like.
A cold, slimy feeling, distinct from the pancake batter on her fingers, crept through Cylene’s veins. The arrogance of it. The calculated poison. "You KNOW what she’s like."
“Who was it?” Pedro asked, his voice strained from behind her. He was balling up soggy paper towels, his knees on the floor.
Cylene turned, holding the phone out to him, the text preview visible. She said nothing.
He took it, his eyes scanning the words. A muscle in his jaw twitched. His thumb hovered over the screen—to delete it, to reply, to unlock and see the rest. The old pull, the need to manage, to explain, to soothe, was visible in the tension of his hand.
“Don’t,” Cylene said, her voice low.
“I wasn’t going to—”
“You were thinking about it.” She took a step closer, her voice dropping to a whisper so Juliet wouldn’t hear. “The ‘something you can’t take back’ is me filing the police report. She knows it’s coming. She’s scrambling. And she’s trying to use your guilt like a steering wheel.”
He stared at the message. The candle flame guttered beside him, casting jumping shadows over his face. The sweet, burnt smell was stronger here. “How does she know?”
“Martin’s office probably sent a standard notice to the Guild. Or her agent got wind. It doesn’t matter.” Cylene nodded at the phone. “That is the sound of a trap rattling. Do not stick your hand in to check if it’s empty.”
He looked from the phone to her, his eyes haunted. “She’s going to get worse.”
“Yes.”
“She’s going to come for you. For us.”
“She already is.” Cylene glanced at Juliet, who was now quietly scooping batter from the floor back into the bowl, a study in faux-innocence. “She just upgraded from stealing my work to trying to steal my character. And yours. In our daughter’s head, she’s a snake-haired monster. In yours, she’s a wounded bird you need to protect from mean old me, the evil ugly old ex. She’s casting the movie of this disaster, and she’s giving herself all the best lines.”
Pedro’s thumb moved. Not to type. He pressed and held on Emily’s name. A menu popped up. Without looking away from Cylene, his finger hovered over the option. Block Contact.
“Do it,” Cylene said, and it wasn’t a command. It was a challenge.
He tapped the screen. A confirmation box appeared. Block and delete “Emily”?
He exhaled, a long, shaky breath that seemed to come from his feet, and tapped Delete.
The name vanished. The photo was gone. It was a small, symbolic act. A number could be recalled. A pattern of desperation wasn’t erased so easily. But it was something. A line drawn, however faint, in the spilled batter on the floor.
“Good,” Cylene whispered.
A smaller, stickier hand tugged on her sweatpants. Juliet stood there, her fingers coated in flour and egg. “Is the monster gone from the phone?” she asked.
Pedro crouched down to her level. “Yes, bug. Gone from the phone.”
Juliet considered this, then looked at the mess on the floor. “The pancakes are kinda ruined.”
“We’ll make more,” Pedro said, his voice thick. “We’ll make a whole new batch.”
They cleaned up in silence. Pedro disposed of the ruined batter. Cylene wiped down the phone and counter. Juliet washed her hands, scrubbing diligently at the invisible monster’s residue. The griddle heated. A new bowl was mixed. This time, Cylene stood at Juliet’s side, guiding her hand as she poured perfect circles onto the hot surface.
The home filled with the good, clean smell of cooking, pushing back the stale and the sweet. They ate at the island, the three of them on stools, syrup making shiny pools on their plates. It was almost normal. Almost peaceful.
Pedro’s phone buzzed again, this time on the counter between them. Not a call. A text notification. The preview showed a different number, but the message was clear.
You blocked me? Seriously? After everything? You’re going to believe her lies?
Cylene didn’t reach for it. She took a bite of pancake, chewed slowly, and watched Pedro’s face. He stared at the screen, his fork suspended halfway to his mouth. The conflict was a physical thing on him—the clench of his jaw, the tightening around his eyes.
He put his fork down. He picked up the phone. His thumbs moved over the screen, typing.
Cylene’s heart sank. A cold certainty settled in her stomach. He was going to answer. He was going to engage. The pull of the drama, the need to have the last word, to explain himself, was too strong.
But he didn’t hit send. He turned the phone and slid it across the granite to Cylene.
On the screen was a new contact. He’d entered the number. And he’d named it.
POISON
Below, in the text field, he had typed a single sentence, unsent.
Do not contact me again.
He looked at her, waiting.
Cylene picked up the phone. She felt the weight of it. This was his test. And hers. She deleted the unsent message. She went to the contact, hit edit, and changed the name from POISON to DO NOT ANSWER. Then she placed the phone back in the center of the island, face down.
“You don’t warn poison,” she said softly. “You don’t negotiate with it. You label it clearly, and you don’t pick up the bottle.”
He nodded, once. A understanding passed between them, fragile and new. It wasn’t trust, not yet. It was a tactical alliance.
Juliet, who had been watching this silent exchange while carefully arranging chocolate chips into a smiley face on her pancake, spoke without looking up. “Daddy?”
“Yeah, bug?”
“If the monster tries to call again,” she said, pressing a chip into place for an eye, “will the phone say ‘Do Not Answer’?”
“Yes,” Pedro said, his voice cracking just a little. “It will.”
“Good.” She added a chocolate chip smile. “That’s a better name.”
Cylene met Pedro’s gaze over their daughter’s head. In his eyes, she saw shame, but also a dawning, weary resolve. The battle lines were being drawn not in legal filings or public accusations, but here, in a messy kitchen, over burnt pancakes and a child’s simple logic. The monster had a name in Juliet’s mind, and now a label in a phone. The next move was hers. And they would not be answering.
The silence after the phone stayed dark felt heavy, but not empty. It was filled with the scrape of forks on plates, the crinkle of Juliet’s nose as she swallowed her orange juice, the faint, persistent hum of the refrigerator. Cylene watched Pedro watch his daughter. His face was a map of regret, each line deepened by the orange morning light cutting through the blinds.
He finally spoke, his voice roughened by disuse. “I should have done that months ago.”
“Yeah,” Cylene said, not to absolve him. Just to acknowledge the truth. “You should have. But… I get it on some weird level.”
Juliet slid off her stool, her pancake demolished. “Can I go watch cartoons?”
“Yes, bug. Volume on three, okay?” Pedro said, the domestic instruction automatic. She padded out of the kitchen, leaving a trail of tiny, sticky footprints on the tile.
Cylene stood, gathering the plates. The normalcy of the motion felt absurd. Pedro moved to help, his shoulder brushing hers at the sink. They both froze again, that same electric charge from the phone moment jolting between them. He didn’t move away.
“What happens now?” he asked, his eyes on the soapy water.
“Now,” Cylene said, turning off the tap and drying her hands on a towel with deliberate calm, “I go home. I sit at my desk. And I do what I should have done the moment Martin confirmed the timestamps on my files.” She walked back to her purse, slung over the back of a chair. The USB drive was there. So was her phone, with its recorded evidence. “I stop asking her to be fair and I start making her accountable.”
Pedro turned, leaning against the counter. “The police report.”
“It’s not a dramatic showdown. It’s a form. An affidavit.” She pulled out her phone, her thumbs already moving. The precinct website was bookmarked. She’d stared at the digital form for a week, her cursor blinking over the ‘submit’ button like a dare. “It’s me officially stating, on the record, that she stole my intellectual property. That the script for ‘Coastal Echoes’ and the other one is mine. That the threats and harassment followed.”
He pushed off the counter, coming closer. “Can I see?”
She held the phone out. The screen glowed in the dim kitchen, displaying the stark, official form. Paragraphs of her statement were visible. Her words. The defendant, Emily Forrester, did knowingly and willfully appropriate... It was legalese, but the heart of it was hers—every late night, every rewritten scene, every stolen hope.
Pedro read it, his eyes scanning quickly. He flinched when he saw Emily’s name in the text, formalized as ‘the defendant.’ This made it real in a way a blocked number did not. “It lists the USB as evidence.”
“It does.”
“And the recordings?”
“Attached as digital files. Reference number B-114.” Cylene’s voice was flat, clinical. She had to be. If she let any of the old hurt in, the shaking in her hands would make it impossible to type. “It creates a paper trail. A foundation. So when Martin serves the civil suit next week, it’s not a he-said-she-said. It’s a she-said, and-here’s-the-police-report.”
He handed the phone back, his expression unreadable. “It feels like declaring war.”
“War was declared when she stole you and my life,” Cylene corrected softly, her gaze drifting toward the living room where cartoon laughter chimed. “I’m just finally showing up to the fight in the right uniform.” She took a deep breath, the air still tasting of syrup and burnt sugar. Her finger hovered. This was the moment before the fall. The point of no return.
With a tap that felt both insignificant and monumental, she submitted the form.
A white confirmation screen loaded. A case number appeared. CR-78234. She took a screenshot.
“It’s done,” she said, the words leaving her mouth like stones.
The weight that lifted was not relief. It was the different, heavier weight of consequence, settled squarely on her shoulders. There was no fanfare. No sudden crash of thunder. Only the distant sound of a cartoon car horn and the ragged sound of Pedro’s breathing beside her.
He ran a hand over his mouth. “Okay.”
“Okay,” she echoed.
Juliet’s voice floated in. “Daddy? The show’s over.”
He blinked, called back from the precipice of whatever he was feeling. “Coming, bug!”
Cylene slipped the phone into her purse, the case number burning in her mind. CR-78234. It was just a number. It was everything. She slung her bag over her shoulder. “I should go.”
“Cylene.” He stopped her, his hand not touching her arm but hanging in the space between them. “What do I tell her? If… if she finds out and asks? Or if anyone asks?”
She looked at him, this man she had loved and then left, now bound to her again in this bizarre, defensive pact. “You tell her the truth. You tell her that the mother of your child, your ex-wife, filed a police report because a crime was committed. You tell her that sometimes, ‘Do Not Answer’ isn’t enough. Sometimes, you have to say ‘This is on the record.’ Then you decide which side of the line in history you stand.”
The silence after her statement stretched, thin and brittle. Pedro’s hand finally dropped back to his side. He nodded, just once, a shallow dip of his chin that felt less like agreement and more like surrender to a new, harder reality. The cartoon laughter from the living room sounded tinny and far away, a broadcast from a simpler world.
Cylene adjusted the strap of her purse, the weight of the USB drive and her phone with its case number feeling like actual stones. "I'll see you on Wednesday for the parent-teacher thing."
"Right. Yeah." Pedro rubbed the back of his neck, his eyes darting toward the living room, anywhere but her face. "Do you... need a ride or anything?"
"I'll call an uber. Or take the bus." She didn't want to be trapped in his vehicle, in that small space smelling of his coffee and his new life. The distance between the door and the kitchen island felt like a mile of cracked ice. She took the first step.
Juliet appeared in the doorway, her small frame backlit by the television's blue glow. She held Mr. Waffles, a one-eared rabbit, by its leg. "Are you leaving, Mommy?"
"Just for a little while, jellybean." Cylene knelt, the tiles hard under her knees. She brushed a strand of hair from Juliet's forehead, her thumb tracing the familiar curve. "You be good for Daddy, okay?"
"Okay." Juliet clung to her neck for a moment, a brief, fierce hug that smelled of sleep and maple syrup. Then she whispered, hot and damp against Cylene's ear, "I told Mr. Waffles the monster's name is Do Not Answer, too."
A laugh, sharp and unexpected, caught in Cylene's throat. It came out as a choked sob. She held her daughter tighter, breathing her in. "Perfect. That's perfect."
She stood, her knees protesting. Pedro was watching them, his expression a complicated wreck of love and loss. He opened his mouth, maybe to say something about the report, about Emily, about the line in history.
His phone, still face-down on the island, lit up.
Not with a call. A series of rapid, frantic notifications. A flash of white light from the screen, pulsing against the dark granite. They both stared at it.
"It's not her," he said, a hollow certainty in his voice. "She's blocked. The number's blocked."
But the phone kept buzzing. Short, insistent vibrations skittering it across the counter. Text messages. Multiple. One after another.
Cylene's own phone, still in her hand, vibrated too. A single, soft pulse. Then another. And another.
They looked at each other. A shared, dawning dread.
Pedro snatched his phone up first. He unlocked it, his fingers clumsy. His face went pale, then flushed with a sickly red. "What the fuck."
Cylene looked at her screen. Notifications cascaded down. Instagram. Twitter. Facebook Messenger. Emails from unknown addresses previewing in her inbox. Her breath hitched.
The top message was a Facebook DM from a college friend she hadn't spoken to in years. Cylene, just saw this article about you and Pedro, what the hell is going on? Are you okay?
Another, from a cousin: Cyl, call me when you get this. We saw the post.
Her thumb trembled as she tapped the notification. It loaded a link to an online entertainment news site. The headline, in bold, screaming type, rendered her world down to two dimensions.
'COASTAL ECHOES' WRITER EMILY FORRESTER BREAKS SILENCE: "MY WORK WAS STOLEN BY A DESPERATE EX-WIFE."
Below the headline was a picture. It was a selfie, clearly taken just moments ago. Emily was in what looked like a tastefully lit home office, her red hair artfully messy, her eyes wide and glistening with unshed tears. She looked heartbroken. She looked betrayed. She looked, Cylene thought with a cold, clear fury, perfectly fucking composed.
Pedro was reading aloud from his screen, his voice a dead monotone. "'The most painful part isn't the plagiarism,' Forrester told The Buzz. 'It's the personal betrayal. Pedro and I were building a life. I was a mother-figure to his beautiful daughter. And Cylene... she couldn't stand to see him happy. This is her last, twisted attempt to control the narrative.'"
Each word was a needle. Mother-figure. Twisted attempt. Control.
Cylene’s vision tunneled. She scanned the article. It was all there. The accusations were slick, professional, framed with just enough legalese to sound credible. Emily claimed to have "dated drafts" and "concept emails" from years ago. She spoke of Pedro’s "intimate confessions" about Cylene’s "unstable behavior" during their divorce. She painted herself as the wounded artist, the supportive partner, the victim of a "bitter, vindictive" woman whose career had "flamed out."
The article ended with a killer quote. "'I just hope Pedro sees through this, for his daughter's sake,' Forrester said. 'And I hope the industry sees it for what it is: a sad, transparent fraud.'"
The final, calculated blow. An appeal to Pedro’s paternal instinct and a threat to Cylene’s last shred of professional reputation in one sentence.
Juliet, sensing the seismic shift in the room, pressed against Cylene's leg. "Mommy?"
Cylene couldn't speak. Her phone buzzed again. An email. The subject line: URGENT – Re: Your Claims.
It was from Martin, her lawyer. The preview text was stark: Cylene, call me immediately. She's gone public. The narrative is moving fast.
Pedro’s phone rang. He flinched, looking at the screen. “It’s… it’s my publicist.”
“Answer it,” Cylene said, her voice foreign to her own ears. It was flat, drained of everything but a terrible, focused calm.
He swiped to answer, turning away. “Hey. Yeah, I just saw it.” He listened, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No. No comment. Absolutely not. I don’t care what she told them, it’s not—”
Cylene was already moving. She sank onto one of the kitchen stools, her fingers flying across her own phone screen. She opened her cloud storage, the same one that held the police report files, the timestamped drafts, the audio recordings of Emily’s threats.
She searched for one thing. A specific file she’d buried and tried to forget. From the darkest, most humiliating days right after the divorce.
Pedro was speaking in a low, urgent hiss. “I don’t give a damn about ‘controlling the story,’ Mark. She’s lying. You have to—”
“Here.” Cylene’s voice cut through his panic.
She turned her phone toward him. On the screen was a video. A shaky, poorly-lit video taken on her old laptop over a year ago. It showed her living room, her couch. Pedro was on it, his head in his hands. He was crying.
Cylene’s own voice, exhausted and raw, came from behind the camera. “Just say it again. For the record.”
Pedro on the video lifted his face, his expression shattered. “She read your private files. The ‘Coastal’ drafts. She bragged about it. She said… she said she was ‘mining them for tone.’ She called it research.”
“And what did you say?” Cylene’s recorded voice asked.
A long pause. A shuddering breath from the Pedro on the screen. “I said it was wrong. And she laughed. She said you’d never do anything about it because you were too broken, too dead to me. And I… I didn’t stop her. I was so fucking sorry, Cyle. I was sorry and I was weak.”
The video ended.
The present-day Pedro stared at the now-black screen on Cylene’s phone. The color had drained completely from his face.
“You recorded that,” he whispered.
“I recorded a lot of things,” Cylene said, putting the phone down softly on the granite. The hard proof sat between them, radiating a cold, accusatory truth. “I was broken. You’re right. But broken people sometimes have the clarity to hit ‘record.’ Especially when they’re being gaslit by a professional.”
His publicist’s tinny voice leaked from his phone. “Pedro? You there? What’s the play?”
Pedro looked from Cylene’s phone to Juliet, who was staring up at them both, Mr. Waffles clutched to her chest, confusion and fear warring on her small face. He looked at the article glowing on his own screen, at Emily’s perfectly crafted victim-face.
He brought his phone back to his ear. His voice changed. It lost the panicked edge. It became low, solid, final.
“The play,” he said, his eyes locked on Cylene’s, “is that we don’t play. We show our cards. Send a statement to The Buzz and every outlet that picks this up. One sentence. ‘The allegations made by Emily Forrester are categorically false and defamatory. All evidence, including dated digital files and witness testimony, supports Cylene’s authorship. We will be pursuing all available legal actions.’ Use my name. Use Cylene’s. No ‘no comment.’ Just the truth.”
He listened for a moment, then said, “I don’t care about the fallout. Do it.” He ended the call.
The kitchen was silent again, but it was a different kind of silence. It was the silence after a door slams shut, irrevocably. He had chosen a side. He had crossed the line.
Cylene finally let out the breath she’d been holding. It shook. She picked up her phone, the video file still open. The evidence had emerged, not from a lawyer’s office or a police file, but from the buried archives of her own humiliation. It was the ugliest, most real thing she owned.
“Juliet,” Pedro said, his voice gentle but firm. “Go pack your dinosaur bag, okay? Just for a night or two. You’re going to stay with Mommy for a little bit.”
“Is the monster coming here?” Juliet asked, her voice small.
“No,” Pedro and Cylene said in unison, the word sharp and sure.
Pedro knelt down to her level. “The monster’s not allowed here. This is your house. But Mommy needs you right now, okay? And I… I have some things I need to fix.”
Juliet considered this, then nodded solemnly. She trotted out of the kitchen, dragging her stuffed rabbit.
Pedro stood up. He looked at Cylene, really looked at her, for the first time in almost two years. “Send me that video,” he said.
She did. With a tap.
His phone chimed softly as it landed in his messages. He didn’t look at it. “She has no idea what’s coming,” he said, a grim, cold certainty in his voice she’d never heard before. It wasn't the voice of the charming director. It was the voice of a man who had finally seen the battlefield clearly.
“No,” Cylene agreed, gathering her purse, her body humming with a terrible, electric energy. “She really doesn’t.”
She walked to the door, the case number CR-78234 and the devastating, intimate evidence on her phone now just the opening moves. The real game, public and brutal, had just begun.