Face-Slapping15 min read
"Get Out" — The Night I Was Given a Divorce and a Debt
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"Get out," I said, but my voice came out thin and shaking.
Lincoln Warren stood in the doorway, back to me, one cold shoulder bare in the dim light. A stack of papers hit the bed with a soft slap. The divorce papers fanned like a cruel fan.
"Juliana, stop pretending," he said. "Don't put on that act."
I pressed my palm to my throat. "Lincoln, we just married. I—"
He turned slowly. His face was empty. "Do you think for one second I married you out of love? I married because my grandfather ordered it."
I heard my own laugh, thin as glass. "Then why marry me at all?"
Lincoln smiled like a knife. "Why? Because it suits him. Because you ate at his table for twelve years. Because your mother's hospital bills were paid by my family. You won't leave clean. Not without paying."
I stared at the papers. My name, my neat block letters. The ring burned cold on my finger. "I will—" My mouth closed hard.
"You're a liar and a whore," he said, and the word hit like a slap I did not feel.
He reached out and closed my jaw with two fingers as if I were a child with a bad habit. The gesture felt worse than the words.
"Sign," he said. "And then go. I'll even make sure you leave with nothing. You'll pay back your mother's bills with whatever you have left."
I signed. I tried to keep my hands steady. I remembered every year I'd lived in their house since I was twelve, every birthday I baked for his family, every quiet hour I nursed my mother through illness. I had loved him in silence for twelve years.
"When I look at you, I remember the accident," he said then. "And I can't stop hating it. I can't stop hating you."
I felt the room tilt. He dropped the papers on my chest and left the light on. I sat alone and let the night pry its way inside me until dawn.
A child's hands woke me.
"Who are you?" I asked, sitting bolt upright.
"Grandpa sent me," the boy said. His eyes were bright and strange and—he looked exactly like Lincoln when he was a child. "My name is Apollo. Who are you? Are you the new maid?"
I stared. "No. I—I'm Juliana. I'm... your wife's—"
"You're pretty," Apollo said, mouth full of confusion. He ran his small fingers over my face and went back to play with a wooden horse.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
"Juliana, did you—" Valentina Jesus's text read. "Are you okay?"
Before I could type, a call came from an unknown number. Emilio Blackburn's name flashed on the screen.
"Come to Old Hill House," he said without hello. "There are things you need to know."
I went because there was no one else.
Emilio Blackburn greeted me on the sofa, ancient and sharp. He had the face of a man who had everything and gave little away.
"Did Lincoln hurt you?" he asked before I sat down.
"No," I lied. "He... he was blunt."
He cocked his head. "He was blunt because he's been a fool. Juliana, Apollo is Lincoln's son. He is blood. But he is raised by me. And I want you—yes you—to take care of him. I will give you forty percent of the family company."
My mouth dropped open. "Forty percent?"
"Yes. This is my decision." Emilio's voice was steady. "Lincoln is stubborn. He needs to learn life. He needs roots. You will have a position. You will not be homeless. You will not be alone."
He looked at Lincoln, who had just appeared in the doorway. Lincoln's face flinched when Emilio said my name.
"Take her home," Emilio said. "Bring her back tonight to meet the boy properly."
Lincoln's expression flickered into something that might have been relief, then annoyance. "Grandfather, I have work."
"Then make time," Emilio said. "And Juliana, put on that jade bracelet when you come again. It suits you."
Lincoln's jaw tightened. He stepped forward, took my hand, and we left.
I tried not to read intention into his touch. I failed.
A month later I was back. Apollo sat on the couch, swinging his legs.
"I'm hungry. Make me porridge," he said like a small general.
I made him porridge. He ate like a small animal. He called Lincoln "Daddy" and told me his mother would come back soon. A pain dug under my ribs that had nothing to do with food.
One day Apollo's face swelled, a rash blooming like a secret. "My throat hurts," he whimpered.
We ran to the hospital. The doctor poked and worried and I watched Lincoln lose his composure like a curtain finally dropping.
"Are you telling me—she gave him peanuts?" he snarled at me when the nurse left.
"I'm allergic to peanuts," I said. "How could I have—"
He cut me off. "Pray he lives. Or you will pay."
The words hit like flint. I felt hollow and small. I could not breathe. The nurse took my hand and said, "You're pale. You should lie down."
I left the ward and later woke to white sheets and a soft-faced doctor.
"You fainted," Coleman Jacobs said. "And you are pregnant. You must take care."
"Pregnant?" My hand searched my belly like someone checking a sleeping bird.
I called Valentina and told her. She whooped and said, "That's our miracle," like it was simple. But I knew Lincoln's heart. I knew how he had said "We will not have children." I knew this child would start a war.
I told him anyway. Lincoln looked at me like he had just been told the weather might change.
"We won't have children," he said, final as a judge's gavel.
I laughed, then cried. "So you will abandon him. You already decided."
He didn't touch my shoulder. He gave me a check for five million cash and a single cold phrase: "Withdraw from the design contest. Let L&J win. Be sensible."
"Who are you to dictate my work?" I asked.
"Your little studio is in my way," he said. "Be sensible."
I walked away and called Valentina. She sent me intel. A man named Miguel Roussel might have a drug—HZ4—that could wake my mother up. My mother had been in a coma for years. I would sell everything to have her back.
That night I went to the Royal Garden Club. The room smelled of expensive perfume. Miguel lounged back like a king who had lost interest in his crown.
"You look different," he said. "Why are you here, Juliana? You don't belong to our kind."
"I need HZ4," I said. "For my mother."
He smiled with the suspicion of a man who has corners and cash. "I can give you some. But everything costs."
"What does it cost?"
He leaned in and his fingers found my waist. "You."
At that moment Lincoln's voice cut in like winter through glass. "Juliana, give me the drink."
Miguel let go as if burned. "Cold Warren," he said. "How nice of you to join."
I handed Lincoln the glass. He sipped and said, "Too cold." Then he kissed Miguel on the mouth in front of me. Miguel stiffened and then laughed. I saw then that this was a chessboard and I was a pawn.
Outside, Valentina smashed a brick against the car and pulled me free. She hugged me hard.
"You don't have to take that," she said. "You're better than that man."
I wanted to believe her.
Miguel's price for the drug was clear a week later: six dice rolls in a private room. We played a cruel game of chance. The stakes were humiliation and the drug. He laughed when he stripped. I won the four vials I needed because luck smiled on me for once. When Miguel stormed out, he swore he would not forget.
The week of the contest in the mall arrived. My small studio, The One, had made it to the final with L&J, the giant brand. I sewed for nights, I stitched for mornings, and I built a collection that was me.
When I walked the runway in white, the lights found me. I couldn't breathe but I held in my chest the memory of my mother's face.
"Who is that beside him?" Valentina muttered. Lincoln sat across with a woman who smiled like an easy lie.
The vote was tied when Miguel stood and defended me. "Let people vote!" he demanded, and he made them. The crowd moved and stuck stickers. My team clung to each other like sailors in a storm.
L&J and The One tied and then Miguel pushed the crowd to vote with stickers. The result named The One the champion.
"You're the winner," Valentina cried, hugging me.
I should have felt triumph, but my phone's ring was a knife. The hospital called. My mother coded on the table. We rushed and we waited and a man in a white coat, Coleman Jacobs, came and spoke to me in a quiet voice.
"You used HZ4?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
He shook his head. "HZ4 is not a cure without follow-up. It needs a continued supply or the patient can relapse. Miguel sold you a starter, not a cure. We can stabilize her now but we need more."
My legs gave way. I thought of Miguel's laugh and Lincoln's coldness. I thought of Valentina's steady hands and Emilio's odd kind faith. I thought, too, about the bruise on Apollo's face and the lie that had shadowed my life.
"Who gave you that drug?" Coleman asked softly.
"Miguel Roussel," I said.
A week later the other shoe fell. My team called. The bolts on our fabric were missing and our factory contract was being strangled. Some people at a big company had a grudge.
"Someone is trying to bankrupt us," Valentina said, raw with rage.
They lured my lead seamer, Wang Isabelle, to a 'business lunch' and someone slipped something into her drink. She was fine, but our head seamstress disappeared with a suitcase and our shipment delayed. It smelled like sabotage.
I went to confront Buck Hernandez, a designer who had once flirted with buying me out. He sat at a table like a man who always expected bows.
"Who told you to freeze our fabric?" I demanded.
He shrugged. "Fashion is not a charity. If you're in my way, negotiate."
Something in me quieted and hardened.
I called Lincoln.
"Please," I said on the phone. "Find out who is doing this. My company is on the line and my mother could need repeated doses of HZ4."
He listened like a closed door. "What right do I have to help you?"
"You could be the father of this child," I said. "You have influence."
There was a silence like a cliff between us. Then he said, soft and sudden, "You will not sell anything. I will watch."
A trap was set not long after. The Fashion Gala moved out to a private high floor. Men in suits and women in glass took their seats. Buck arranged for a private dinner because he liked being seen.
They drugged my assistant and shoved her in front of men who treated women like food. They wanted me to fold, to give up, to beg. The room's walls seemed to breathe with people who had power.
I refused. I looked at Lincoln. He sat like a statue and then, to my surprise, stood.
"Let her go," he said.
Silence turned the room to ice. Buck laughed him off. "And who will stop me?"
Lincoln stepped forward and slapped the man who had mocked me. It was the sound of a match being struck. People stared. Someone laughed, but the laughter died when Lincoln's hand snapped again, this time into the centerpieces. The plug pulled the cord of carelessness.
From that night on I stopped being the girl who takes slaps. I filed complaints. I hired lawyers. I burned my fear into a new resolve: I would make them look small.
They tried fire and then water. My studio's fabrics were delayed, then canceled. A truck of ours broke down in the night with rips cut into miles of silk. The tabloids spread lies about my character. People I trusted stepped around me.
"Why don't you leave?" Valentina whispered once.
"Because leaving is giving them the victory," I said.
I dug. I learned. I bribed help where I had to. I used Emilio's forty percent to secure a line of credit. L&J's backers were proud and blind. Buck's people counted on that.
And then a single clean move: I set a trap.
"You're playing with dangerous men," Coleman said as we planned.
"We're going to make a public scene," I said. "At the charity auction where L&J will be showcased."
"Public?" Coleman asked. "That will bring cameras."
"Exactly."
I worked on the pieces for the auction with my whole team. We made a wedding dress like the one I should have had—simple, honest, stitched with thread that caught light.
On the night of the auction I walked in wearing Emilio's "Lucky Tear" necklace on my throat. Cameras turned. Lincoln was there with Guinevere Crane, the woman who had pushed Apollo into the garden, who had poisoned a child's tea and lied about it, who had smiled while my mother's health was gambled like a poker hand.
I looked at Guinevere and did what I had learned. I did not plead. I did not beg. I spoke.
"Good evening," I said into the microphone. "My name is Juliana Hart. I run a small design studio called The One. Tonight we are here for charity, to raise money for children. I have a story to tell."
Faces shifted. Murmurs rose like a tide.
"Two years ago, a child in this house almost died from an allergic reaction," I continued. "The kid's mother said it was an accident. People felt sorry and moved on. But the truth is sometimes small and cruel."
I had Coleman Jacobs and an emergency printout. I had bank transfers. I had phone records.
"Ladies and gentlemen, here is a recording," I said. "This is a call between someone who tried to buy an experimental drug and a person who thought they could blackmail a family for power."
I played the clip. Guinevere's voice—sweet and poisonous—mussed with Lincoln's assistant. Miguel Roussel's voice too, smug and oily, promising drugs for favors.
When the clip ended, the room was a held breath.
"You're lying!" Guinevere screamed first.
"No," I said. "Here are the bank transfers Guinevere made to hire the men who sabotaged my production. Here are the text messages where she admits she pushed little Apollo off the balcony because she wanted to scare his father into staying with her. Here are the hospital records that show she withheld medication."
People's faces drained white.
They turned to Guinevere.
She laughed, high and steady. "This is nonsense. You have nothing but jealousy and rumors."
"Show them your contracts," I said. "Show them your messages from Buck and Miguel. Show them your payment to the men who followed me."
She couldn't. Her hands shook. A woman with a phone in the front row rose and shouted, "Post the documents!"
Someone in the crowd took out a phone and uploaded the recordings. Another called an old news editor. Cameras swarmed like angry birds.
Guinevere's face changed. The smile melted into a spasm. Her eyes went wide, then hard. She lunged at me but security held her. She pushed and screamed about slander. People recorded. The charity hall became a stadium for the fall.
"You're pathetic," she spat when she saw the bank numbers display. "You can't buy a life with money. You can't—"
The words died in her throat as the feeds rolled. Her assistant dropped their tablet and ran. Murmurs shifted into shouts.
"She's admitted to hiring the saboteurs online," one reporter said. "She admits the call. She admits the transfers."
Guinevere's face crumpled. First a denial, then a stammer, then a plea. "I didn't mean—" she said. "Please, I can explain."
People laughed. A woman near the stage stood and announced, "I work in supply chain. We just got a memo that Guinevere Crane is under investigation for corruption. Her contracts are void."
Guinevere dropped to her knees. "No, please," she begged, hands clawing the carpet. "I can give you everything. I will leave town. Please forgive me!"
They filmed it. Cameras held the scene of a woman on her knees, voice thin and raw, apologizing to a crowd too eager to spit. Hundreds of people streamed the video. The charity's sponsors immediately withdrew their support. Her email address lit up with hate. Old friends called to say they had "no idea." Her social accounts were flooded. The press chefed the clip into headlines.
She didn't merely lose face. She lost contract after contract. Her modeling gigs evaporated. Sponsors dumped her. Her manager cut ties. Within days the headlines had a cruel rhythm: GUINEVERE CRANE: FALL FROM GRACE. PAYS FOR SABOTAGE. KID'S NEAR FATAL REVEALED.
She posted a video of contrite tears. No one believed her. She cancelled her social events. Her bank accounts—frozen pending investigation—showed little mercy. A woman who had used other people's lives as tools found herself in the cold.
She tried to run to Lincoln. He looked at her like a stranger.
"How could you?" he said, voice low.
"I—" she started.
He turned away and left.
The cage of consequences snapped shut quickly. The police investigated. The men she hired were arrested or found. The factory's sabotage led to criminal charges. She was publicly humiliated at the auction in front of hundreds and then millions more online.
Around me, things changed. L&J's board had to respond to the scandal. Buck Hernandez tried to distance himself. Miguel Roussel's purchases and sales of HZ4 were exposed too. People were looking. Emilio pushed a quiet statement through his channels: he had placed me in a position of guardianship and power, and he would support me.
Lincoln came to me the day after the public fall.
"Juliana," he said, standing at the edge of my studio. "You were brave. You didn't beg. You did not fold."
He looked different—raw and real. "I'm sorry," he said, and this time the words had weight.
I had rehearsed this scene in my head a thousand times. I had imagined tearing him down, demanding a single clean apology, or asking him to prove his love. None of that seemed right.
"Don't say it like a favor," I told him. "If you mean it, show me."
"I will," he said. "I will make the world fix what we broke. You will have your forty percent. You will run L&J's bridal line. Apollo will be recognized. Guinevere will answer for what she did."
He said the words, but I wanted more than promises. I wanted truth shown in the light.
"Then start," I said. "Start by taking responsibility publicly for how you treated me. Start by admitting you used me as a pawn. Start by telling everyone you were wrong."
He nodded. "I will," he said.
I watched the months turn. Guinevere was sued. Sponsors left. Miguel faced regulatory hearings for trading dangerous, unapproved compounds. Buck lost a major investor for being connected. The men who followed me were either jailed or their identities exposed. Guinevere's social accounts became a record of apologies and deleted comments. She went on camera once and sobbed. People recorded. The video of her kneeling did not disappear from the net for months. She lost her job, her circle, her standing. Her husband—if she had one—filed for divorce. Her company collapsed. The townspeople who once pretended to love her now spat words.
One night she called me.
"Please," she said. "I will do anything. I will pay you. Just—"
I listened.
"Do you want me to go away?" she begged.
"No," I said. I surprised myself. "I don't want you erased. I want people to see what happens when people do this."
She sobbed and then she ranted. "They don't understand me."
"They understand one thing," I said. "You chose to hurt little kids to get what you wanted. People will not forgive that."
The law took her. She faced charges. In court she stood before a thousand eyes, lawyers who shaped her apologies into thin ribbons. She pleaded. The judge read the evidence. The jurors looked like hollow things.
When the verdict came, she stood like a statue. "Guilty," the judge said.
She collapsed. People filmed. The media called it a downfall to teach a lesson.
I had not wanted blood, but justice had a shape of its own. Guinevere did not merely lose public grace. She lost freedom for a time, lost money, lost name, lost her circle. Apollo's name was cleared. My mother's treatment continued under authorized hands. My studio rebounded with people who believed in honest work.
Lincoln kept his promise. He stood in a boardroom and said publicly that he had been cruel and wrong. He said he had been blind to the truth of his childhood grief. He admitted that he had used me and he asked for forgiveness. He said he would transfer forty percent to me, but he wanted to work beside me, not above me.
"Are you asking me to be your partner?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "If you will let me."
That answer came after we both had seen the worst. It came after he had watched me stand in front of cameras and tell the truth, after he'd watched me stitch a dress with trembling hands, after he'd watched his world split and rearrange.
I looked at him, at the man who had once said "Get out." I thought of the nights he had left with stone in his eyes, and of the nights he had stood in rain while I was driven away. I thought of Apollo, asleep one afternoon on my lap, tiny hands curled like petals.
"Prove it," I said.
He took my hand then, not a possessive grip but a steady, working hold. "Watch me," he said.
We built something that was ours. Emilio watched like a careful gardener. Valentina was always at my side. Coleman ran a small clinic program to track HZ4 use properly. Miguel Roussel's name faded into regulatory reports. Buck was left to mend a reputation that wasn't mendable.
Guinevere watched from a prison window as her name became a lesson. People online wrote her fate like a warning. She sobbed into a pillow some nights and stared into a void other nights. That was part of the punishment—public collapse and lonely days. I felt little joy in it.
"I don't want to see her die," I told Lincoln quietly once. "I want her to understand what she did."
"She will have time to think," he said.
Months later, at a charity ball where our new collection was shown, I stepped onstage wearing a dress we had designed for brides who had been hurt and had found their way back. The crowd was smaller than before. The cameras were kinder. Lincoln stood at the front row and clapped like he meant it.
After the applause, he came to me backstage. He took the "Lucky Tear" necklace from my throat and tucked it into my palm.
"Keep it," he said. "When you look at it, remember you were brave."
I smiled then, a quiet, real curve. "You made your choice a long time ago," I said. "But you chose me."
He kissed my forehead then. "Let's make sure our child grows in a better world," he said.
Years later, when Apollo ran into my sewing room with flour on his face and giggle marks on his cheeks, I would pinch his nose.
"Mom," he said, laughing, "you promised to make me a dragon costume."
"I promised," I said. "And we'll make it together."
I keep the "Lucky Tear" in a small box above my sewing machine. Sometimes at night I take it out and trace the smooth diamond with my thumb.
"Are you happy?" Lincoln asked once, late, when the house was quiet.
"I am," I said. "I am not what I was. I have scars. I have stitches. I have a child who copies my laugh and a man who learned to say sorry. I have my work. That is enough."
He nodded and kissed my hand.
"Then keep your studio open," he said. "And keep making beautiful things. Let the world see how it heals."
I closed my eyes and thought of the first night he told me to go. This time the door opened for different reasons.
At dawn, when Apollo climbs into bed and hugs us both, he pulls the Lucky Tear out of its box and sets it on his small chest like a treasure.
"This is mine now," he says with the gravity of a child who knows a grown-up secret.
I tuck it back into the box and slide it under my sewing pattern.
We are not perfect. The scars remind us of mistakes and of lessons learned hard. But the world we made in the shards is stronger. The woman who fell is now the woman who stands. The bad men fell messy and loud; their noise is our lesson.
In the quiet, when I stitch by hand, I think of the green jade bracelet Emilio asked me to wear. I put it on sometimes. It fits. It does not change the past. It marks that someone chose me when I was small and no one else would. It is proof that even in families built of business and old debts, a different kind of knot can be tied—one that holds.
The End
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