Sweet Romance10 min read
Black Swan and the Firelit Revenge
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I learned to steady my brush before I learned to steady my heart. The ink darkened the paper, and I wrote one single character: "Jackson."
"Bianca?" My phone buzzed. The voice on the line sounded like concern and practice pity, both of them cheap.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"You know Jackson is in trouble," the voice said. "Those rich kids are cornering him at the old teaching building. Go help him, or don't say I didn't warn you."
I laughed—a small, cold sound. "And why would I risk a scratch for someone who used my kindness like a coin?"
"He's—he's the one you liked. You always helped him."
"I liked the idea of him," I said, and hung up.
The old campus building smelled like rain and dust. Light slashed through broken windows. Jackson stood pressed to a wall, fists clenched, a halo of boys circling him like vultures.
"Look at his shirt," one boy said, loud enough for the whole corridor. "It's because of Bianca. She buys him his clothes and his courage."
I walked in slow. I let my heels echo like a verdict.
"Edric," I heard someone say from behind. Edric Perez stepped in beside me, easy as a smile. "You won't –"
"I won't," I said.
The leader of that pack took a step forward. His sneer was predictable. "Bianca, are you here to shield your charity case again?"
"A cheap word," I said. "His clothes are his to return."
Jackson looked at me as if the light had gone out in the world. "Bia—"
"You don't have my right to call me that," I said. "Return what I gave you. I asked one time."
The leader laughed. Hands, even cruel hands, are slow to learn. Edric moved, not as fire but as steady warmth, and placed a hand on my shoulder like a shield.
"Enough," Edric said. "Leave."
Two things happened that afternoon. I watched their fists land on Jackson and I did not move; and I watched Edric slip me a thin jade pendant and say, "For your throat. Say what you need to say."
"Why are you so cold?" Jackson whispered later, when the bruises had started to purple. "Yesterday you cried in my arms."
"Yesterday I was someone else," I answered. "Today I have a plan."
Edric stayed. "You made me a promise back then," he said. "You promised you'd let me be your friend."
"I didn't know I would need you," I said. "But keep that promise."
Edric smiled—the kind of smile he only gave me. It was small, careful. "I never do favors I don't mean."
The taste of revenge is not a single spice but a whole recipe. I rehearsed neat, patient steps. I rewrote my past like I rewrote letters with a brush: erase here, restore there. I let the world think I am the same Bianca who used to hand out gifts and favors. Inside, I was another person—a rehearsed actor who put on softness like a glove.
"Do you remember those watches you liked?" I asked Floyd one evening when he hovered, too proud to return the gifts he'd bragged about.
"Which ones?" Floyd Escobar blinked, surprised.
"The silver one, the old model. I bought it."
He gulped. "Oh. I—"
"Return it," I said.
He swallowed. "I don't have it now. I sold it."
"You sold my present to buy you drinks," I said. "Pay tonight's bill. Or sign that you're in debt to me."
I laid out a simple choice. He, like many men who confuse pride for strength, chose to fight. The club was loud and glassy and smelled of cheap perfume and cheap courage. I walked in like a calm star, my cool hand already on the papers I'd had some men draft.
"You will pay," I told them in front of their friends. "Thirty thousand. Or you will sign an IOU."
Floyd laughed first. "Bianca, you're joking."
Thirty thousand is a lot to say out loud when your allies are thin. It hung in the room like a test. They called me names, tried to belittle me, but when the security guard set a pen in front of them and there was a camera over the bar, vanity and fear shifted their weights.
"Bianca, listen—" Floyd started.
"This is my company’s venue," I said. "I decide."
They signed. Some tried to laugh afterward, but the parts of their faces that once had arrogance collapsed into shame. Jackson, who had fled, returned later to find his name in the middle of such a mess and his face pale.
Edric watched me, and once again that rare smile pressed toward his lips. He protected me without being asked, unfolding his coat for my shoulders when evening chilled the rehearsal room.
"You keep turning your back on him," Edric said one night as we crossed the campus, when the streetlights were a mottled yellow. "Are you happy like this?"
"I'm not searching for happiness," I said. "I'm searching for justice."
Edric slipped my cold fingers into his. "Still, let me be the warm thing you can touch."
Three small things, like stitches, started to weave us together: his laugh when I mispronounced a French word, the time he took off his coat in the rain to warm my shoulders, the quiet hour he taught me to breathe when panic struck. "You are reckless when you hold everything at once," he said. "Let me hold one thing instead."
I let him.
I had learned the old tricks of being liked—tea, kindness, gentle proximity. I learned another trick too: to make them think they still had the power. So I played a part with Jackson: closeness, gentle pricks, offers of help. I taught him dance steps for the graduation ball, and his hands were sometimes clumsy and sometimes tender. He stumbled and blamed himself and smiled helplessly when I corrected him.
"Don't you see I'm different?" Jackson asked as we practiced. Rain had dampened the courtyard and his hair clung damp to his forehead.
"You've always been the one who forgot to give back," I said. "Maybe you'll learn to look after yourself."
He seized my wrist. I did not pull away immediately. "Bia, I—"
"No," I said. "You don't get to wedge sentiment into people's debts."
Edric watched us practice and later pressed his lips to my temple. "Careful," he said. "You won't like the ash if the fire burns wrong."
He was right. I had planned to humiliate, to expose, to watch karma do its messy work. But confession doesn't burn along tidy lines; it scorches people you once misread as belonging to you.
The graduation ball was my stage.
I worked with Edric, with his quiet hands and his surprising patience. "Black Swan," I told him one night in the dance hall, rehearsal lights casting long, theatrical shadows. "I am going to be black swan."
"Black shows where the light goes," he murmured. "It will be beautiful."
"You will be there?" I asked.
"Always, where you need me," he said, and when he said 'always' it was not the end of something banal; it was a soft oath.
I danced like a woman who had woken to her own reflection and found it untouched. The black costume—Katya's design—came like armor. The feathers caught stage lights and threw them back like answers.
The night of the ball my plan unfurled: Jackson would be there; Bear McCoy—who had leaned and schemed to ruin my family's business because he wanted what was not his—would be there in the company of men who believed in him; and Ludwig Popov, the man who knew how to look like a protector while sharpening a blade of betrayal, would be there with an ally he believed secure.
I stepped onto the stage and the hall dimmed to a hush. Music rose like a tide. Angels in the audience leaned forward. I danced, every leap and pirouette a memory translated into movement. When the last chord hit, I bowed and let the applause be a curtain until the next scene.
I walked down from the stage, and the lights changed from warm to cold. Edric took my hand. At the center of the hall I stopped and pulled a thin roll from my dress pocket: a slideshow of calls, messages, photos—evidence that could not be laughed away.
"Everyone," I said into the microphone. "Let me tell you a story about favors and debts. About men who take kindness like a coin and spend it at bars. About promises sold to the highest bidder."
"What is she doing?" someone hissed.
Edric stood beside me, steady. "Show them," he said.
I clicked the remote. The screens flared. Images glided across: Jackson accepting gifts, refusing to return them; Bear whispering to investors behind closed doors; Ludwig tipping payments and then sneaking away to strike the fatal blow last time.
The translations were crisp, the receipts exact. My words were simple.
"You remember when my family fell? You remember I stood small and alone? You remember who walked away and who widened their hand to take advantage? This is not just about me. This is about what happens when people think they can use someone like a tool."
There was a murmur that became a wave. Faces pale, glassware tilting. Jackson's mouth opened and closed. "Bianca—" he started.
"Jackson," I said. "You left me to drown last time. You sold our trust for applause. You can beg, you can cry. But you have to face what you made of our past."
People turned their phones into recorders. The videos batter the quiet like rain. Bear McCoy realized his investors were watching proof that he had lied about projects and misled partners. He tried to step forward, grand and angry.
"You can't prove—" Bear barked, his voice cracking.
The room hushed. The head of an investor delegation stood, face a mask I had seen before when they held out bank terms. He shook his head. "We trusted numbers," the man said. "We do not trust lies."
Bear's expression changed from outrage to a slow, blank horror as his backers murmured, reached for their phones, and then for their coats. A man's empire can be a stack of cards and a reputation; tonight the wind of evidence blew his cards away. He stood swaying as colleagues cataloged comments and withdrew offers.
While Bear's deals collapsed in real time, Jackson found himself abandoned in a different way. A girl whose opinion had once seemed like sunlight leaned back and said his name and nothing changed. He could see in eyes that once admired him doubt and disgust.
Then the crowd turned to Ludwig.
I had saved Ludwig for last.
He had smiled in the past like a man who owns your secrets. He had stood at my bedside and promised me protection while he planned the knife that would kill my last life.
"Ludwig," I said softly. "You promised to keep me safe. Who cleans the blood that a man spills when he puts on a face of honor?"
Ludwig's jaw tightened. He stepped forward, words sharp: "You can't—"
"Listen," I said. "You were paid to do things that sent me away. You were paid to keep your mouth shut." I clicked one more image on the screen. A payment record, a name, a voicemail where the plan is discussed. The crowd gasped.
"What are you going to do?" Ludwig rasped. "You can't ruin me here."
A woman in the first row stood up. She had been one of the family body's many allies, a socialite whose reputation had been fed by what Ludwig kept hidden. Her face went white.
"You took my reputation," she said. "You made me look like a partner who stood for things I did not—"
Ludwig's bravado faltered. He moved from denial to rage to shallow horror. Then he realized the cameras had caught him. A dozen phones pointed like a jury. The change on his face was cinematic: from contempt to the realization that his whole careful life was being swallowed by light.
"Stop it," Ludwig begged. "Bianca, stop. I'm sorry. I didn't—"
The apology cracked and fell. Sorry doesn't buy the quiet of a crowd. People began to whisper. Some started recording as if the world needed proof that monsters can be human and human means fallible.
"He was my protector," I said, and the words landed gentle. "He turned my trust into a weapon."
Edric's hand found mine. "You did well," he said. "You are the only one who can choose what to do next."
I watched each man's color fall. I watched their masks fall into their hands like props. I watched friends step away. I felt something cold ease into me like a winter night: justice, not vengeance. That night the three men tasted ruin in three different forms: one social, one financial, one moral. The crowd's murmurs became a storm; cameras flashed.
Jackson's reaction changed fastest. He tried to be indignant, then pleading, then denial, then the raw fear of a man who realizes the woman he misused is stronger than his memory of her. He came forward, hands shaking.
"Bianca," he said. "I—please. I didn't mean—"
"You meant comfort like you meant a trade," I said. "You meant me for a story."
He sank, like a man who had spent all his courage and found none left. People whispered, "What a shame," "How stupid," "He looked like he had the world."
Bear McCoy's reaction was different. He snarled and tried to fight, trying to salvage investors. But men in suits check their phones and calmly walk away when you show them the facts. He moved through anger, then astonishment, then a slow crumbling as his numbers evaporated. The investors filed complaints and withdrew support within minutes. Securities can be as fragile as a child's card house.
Ludwig's descent was worst. He had built his life on controlling secrets. Under light, he begged, then accused, then finally tried bargaining. I refused. He fell to knees in front of the cameras and apologised—first to me, then to the women who had looked to him for protection, then to no one and everybody. The crowd watched him, and a fury hung thick in the air. Someone shouted, "Shame!" Others made video calls to law firms and journalists.
The worst part of their fall was not the loss of money or friends. It was the public version of their souls being scanned. Each of them tried the ancient stages: denial, rage, bargaining, pleading. There were no stages left but naked collapse. Faces turned away. People took their seats as if watching a spectacle. Some clapped. Some took notes. Some pressed calls.
I had expected satisfaction. I got something like quiet. It was a flame that burned bright and left ash that smell like nothing.
Edric squeezed my hand. "Are you okay?"
I nodded. "It's done."
And yet, after the storm, in the quiet corridor where the chandeliers hummed, Edric said, "You don't have to hate him forever. You don't have to carry this into every room."
"Did you ever?" I asked.
He looked at me like someone shielding me from a storm. "I never stopped watching you. You practiced your brush like a prayer. I wanted to be the person who kept your light warm."
He took me, and the world narrowed to the heat of his mouth and the steadiness of his arms. I learned his small mercies—how he liked his tea, how he slept on his left side, how he read the last line of a book before putting it down. I let myself rest against him like something at last placed on a shelf.
We did not preach or make vows. We shared quiet. He stood by the window the night the news broke, when all three men woke to their own ruin, and he simply said, "You are not ash. You are not the things they made of you."
When I tried my brush again months later, the ink did not tremble so much. I painted one word and set the paper down.
"Black."
It was not about darkness, I realized. It was about the color that holds every other color in contrast. He took my hand as if he would never let go.
I still keep the thin brush he gave me. When the house is quiet and the night is clear, I hold it and remember the flame that burned and the one that did not.
At the mercy of an audience, the men changed faces and the crowd changed theirs. That last scene—the cameras, the public shame, the way the chandelier threw light on the hair of those who watched—stays with me. I sometimes close my eyes and see that ballroom, the black dress, Edric's steady silhouette.
"Promise me one thing," he said then.
"No promises," I replied, smiling. "But I promise to keep my brush ready."
And he laughed—the rare sound that had become my new music.
The End
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