Face-Slapping14 min read
He Branded Me, He Forgot Me — I Brought Down His Empire
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"The door clicked open."
"I didn't hear you come in," I said, pushing my wheelchair toward the hallway.
"You smell gas again?" Reid Hahn's voice was flat as stone. He stood in the doorway in a raincoat, the rain dripping off his shoulders like nothing mattered.
"I forgot the stove," I said. "I will fix it."
"You always forget," he said. "Just delete my fingerprint from the lock."
"I forgot. I'll do it." My hands trembled but I smiled.
Reid didn't look at me. He walked straight to the study. I watched him go. He moved like the man I knew since we were children. He reached the top shelf, took the velvet box.
"That's mine," I said.
"It's my grandmother's gift to her son's wife," he said, cold and sharp. "You don't deserve it."
"I am Lin's wife," I stammered. "I was his wife."
"You were," he said. "Not anymore."
"Please," I said. "Don't leave in the rain. It's dangerous."
He shoved my sleeve away. He took off my coat and threw it at my feet.
"Don't make me stay," he said.
The door slammed. I ran after him into the rain, carrying the bowl of soup I had made. I stood at the gate and watched a black Bentley slide away.
"The soup," I called. "Take it. It's for your stomach."
The driver, Colby Wu, rolled his window down and said, "Ainsley, remember you and Reid are divorced."
"I know," I lied. "But please, take it to him."
He took it. Reid never lowered the window.
Later, back inside, I found the walls covered in copies of a thick form, the divorce papers. I touched the paper. My chest went hollow.
"Divorced," I read aloud. "Why don't I remember this?"
My phone buzzed. My notes reminder glowed: MRI checkup today. I went. The doctor tapped the CT.
"The blood clot has spread," Dr. Gene Robin said. "Your smell and taste were affected before. If you don't do surgery, you have six months."
"Six months," I said. The word fell like a stone.
At the hospital the nurse came up to me, smiling. She wore a bright pair of jade bracelets that caught the light.
"Hi, Ainsley," she said. "Don't you remember me? I'm Amber Jordan."
My heart stopped. The bracelets. The voice that had been at every family bedside. The same woman Reid had chosen to marry.
"Amber is his fiancée," I whispered.
She touched my arm and said, "We're getting married soon. Please bless us."
"Bless you?" I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. I wanted to ask how she got the bracelets, why they fit her wrist. I wanted to ask why she had been at the hospital the night my parents died, why she had been at my surgery, why she had been closer to Reid than I was.
Reid came. He read the report, hands shaking.
"You betrayed me," he said later in a café. "You sold our plans to a rival."
"I didn't," I said. "I don't remember any of that."
"Then why was your name on the records?" he asked.
"Because I was near them," I said. "I don't know."
Colby sat silently. He slid a stack of papers across the table. The records showed what everyone believed — my name, the leak, the reason for a cold war between us.
"You lied," Reid said. "You left me, you chose them."
"I lied?" I laughed. "I was in a cage. I was broken. Do you know what it feels like to wake up with parts of your life stolen?"
"You betrayed me," he said again. He wanted me to be small. He wanted the anger to stay clean.
I bowed my head. "I'm sorry," I said. "If I did, I'm sorry. But the doctor says I have six months. I need to know."
"Then get surgery," he said after a long time. "I'll pay."
"Why?" I asked. "Because you'll never forgive me? Because you'll watch me live and hate me?"
"It doesn't matter," Reid said. "You saved the family before. You will get better. That's enough."
I wanted to be angry at him. I wanted to throw at him the year of slaps and the nights of silence. I wanted to make him feel the exact hollow he left in me.
Instead I whispered, "Will you stay? Will you be here while I can't remember?"
"I will fund the surgery," he said. "But not the rest."
That was the truth. He gave me the lifeline and drew the line.
The operation was rough. I remember the lights, the long move to the operating room, the voice saying, "She is stable," then nothing. I woke up days later to find my head clearer. The surgeons had done what no one expected. I could remember again. Pieces fell back into place like loose tiles settling.
Reid was in the corridor when I woke. He said, "She made it."
"You look better," he said, softer. "But you won't be the same."
"I don't want to be the same," I answered. "I want to be honest."
At first I played the quiet patient. Amber came, always near, nurturing, the perfect nurse. She smiled too wide. She put a hand on Reid's arm in the corner and said, "We will be parents. Help me choose a name."
My stomach lurched. I watched them like glass in my hands. I loved Reid like a brother, a first friend, a man who'd promised to protect me. I didn't ask for him back. I asked for truth. But truth was rusted in everyone's mouths.
Then the ambulance flipped.
"Amber's car," Colby called. "The transfer— the rescue— the ambulance— it crashed on the coastal road."
I was still weak but I went. When they flipped the rescue ambulance upright we found Amber and me inside, blood everywhere. The sea swallowed the truck. They pulled Amber out. I remember her face. Pale and wet, like paper. She held her stomach and said, "Don't let me lose it."
Then the truck slid into the water.
I don't remember everything after that. I remember him pulling a body from the water and then not pulling mine. Later they told me the sea had taken me. Later they said I had been saved by fishermen, then by a small hospital, then by better surgeons. Later my face looked wrong and my legs were weak.
When I came back, Reid refused to come pick me at first. He said, "It's safer you stay." He came finally. He found me with a scar across half my face and one leg smaller than the other.
"You should be angry," I told him, turning my face to hide. "You should be furious."
"I am not foolish enough to forget," he said. "But I can't love two things the same way. I won't marry for taste again."
"You mean Amber?" I said.
"Yes."
That night I saw my scar in my mirror like a foreign country. I thought of the small letter hidden in a tin, the time capsule Reid and I buried when we were children. I thought of my small promise to protect him once. I thought of who had branded me.
"You were branded," Reid said once, blunt. "By Franco. He did this."
"In prison?" I asked.
"He kept people in his pockets even inside," he said. "But I took him down."
"You took him down," I said. "Then why does his shadow still move like a thing with fingers?"
Reid did not answer.
I started to work at the company. The board had given me shares — half of the family's holdings were in my name now. The old men at the table, the directors who had once turned their faces away from me, now asked me to join. They wanted me near because my shares could not be left to a stranger.
"You're a threat," Reid said. "Be careful what you touch."
"I need a desk," I said at the first board meeting. "I need a name and a vote."
"You have a vote," he said, uneasy. "Just don't make a mess."
"Then call me your colleague," I said.
People who had been cold to me were suddenly warm. They brought me tea, they called me "Madam." I smiled but my hands were fists under the table.
"Why are you so close to Amber?" I asked one night, quietly, to Reid, while the house slept.
"She saved my mother and father," he said. "She was there. That counts for a lot."
"Was she the only one?" I asked.
"She tried to save them," he said. "She was there."
That was the truth and a lie. She was in the right place at the right time. Timing becomes loyalty.
I wanted to know the truth about the crash. I wanted to know who had cut the brakes, who had tampered with the ambulance, who had put the sea between me and the oxygen of rescue.
I hired Uri Ellis — a private man who looked like he drank too little and slept less. He found one thing after the other. He found that the brake cable had been cut. He found a shadow on the hospital footage creeping under the ambulance an hour before it left. He found a whisper trail that led to a name in the old files — a name I had seen once on a list of payments: "Franco Alvarado."
"Franco can move," I said. "Even in prison?"
"He moves through people," Uri said. "He always had friends inside."
"Who inside?"
"People who benefit when he gets what he wants," Uri said. "People who don't like being told no."
Amber kept her jade on. She wore it like a crown in public. She smiled like someone with a map in her pocket. She was always in the right room at the right time. I couldn't let that stand.
I confronted Amber in a small café. She ordered hot milk. I asked her to show me her back.
"What?" she said.
"Just show me," I said. "One quick look. If you have a mark, we'll know. If you don't, I will apologize in public."
She laughed, then froze. She moved like someone who had been learned to move.
"You are rude," she said, but her fingers trembled by the zipper.
"Do it," I said.
She opened the zipper.
"No scar," she said. "I don't have a scar."
I kept pushing. "Why were you at the hospital the night my parents died? Why were you at my surgery? Who did you really work for?"
She stood, hand on the cup, fragile now. "Ainsley—"
"Stop," I said. "Stop lying."
Reid came into the café. He saw me pull at Amber's dress. He reached out and pushed my wheelchair with one careful hand. He told Amber to go. He covered her with his jacket and walked her out like she had been a child. He told me to apologize.
"I will apologize if you are wrong," I said.
"Drop it," he said. "Now."
So I rose. I knelt. I felt the fake weight of the board's eyes. I prepared to bow before the woman who would take my place.
Amber cried like a struck thing and left. Reid carried her away. I felt nothing. Only a hollow again, but this time with an edge.
That night Uri came with a file. "I got something," he said. "Franco didn't want you dead, Ainsley. He wanted the child."
"The child?" I asked.
"You were pregnant when they found you," Uri said. "Tests show you had recent surgery in your abdomen. There was a scar we missed."
"I remember a scar," I said. The memory of the prison came up like a raw sound. "They removed something."
"They removed the embryo," Uri said. "And someone else in the hospital was involved."
I felt sick.
"Amber's involvement?" I whispered.
"I don't know." Uri rubbed his hands. "But I found payment records tied to an old man who used to run the service department. He was paid to make the ambulance unsafe."
"Who paid him?" I asked.
"Name on the wire is a company in Franco's control."
I sat with that in the dark and thought of the small tin we buried as kids. The letter we wrote. "Don't ever lose each other." I had kept the vow. I thought of Reid hearing the lies and choosing to hate.
We planned the reveal.
First, we staged a small shareholders' vote. I walked into the boardroom and took the chair reserved for me. I had evidence. I had copies of bank transfers, repair shop logs, CCTV stills. I left nothing to feelings.
"Why are you holding this?" Reid asked coldly from the head of the table.
"I want the board to ask one question," I said, turning to the directors. "Who tried to kill me on the coastal road?"
The directors shifted. Some were shock-white. One man, Mr. Chen, stood and said, "We want to open full inquiry."
Reid closed his eyes. "You are making this worse," he said. "You know who benefits from this chaos."
"Who benefits?" I asked, voice steady. "Franco benefits. So does anyone who wants my shares to be worthless. Who knows when you will sign over power, Reid?"
He didn't answer.
I had Uri play the footage. I had Gene Robin testify about the scar. I had wire transfers laid like bones across the table.
"And Amber's file?" someone asked.
"You think I'm going to let a nurse walk undetected?" I said. I pressed play.
The room watched the handshake between Amber and the old repairman outside the depot. The old man shoved a panel beneath the ambulance and then left. The shadow slipped out of the hospital. It was small, a hand moving like a rat.
Amber's name appeared on documents. Wire transfers led straight back to a shell company controlled through Franco proxies.
"Amber Jordan," I said, "was paid to help Franco's men get close to the ambulance. She signed hospital forms to keep us calm while the cables were cut."
Amber's face went white. She stood.
"This is slander," she said.
"Amber, did you sign for the transfer?" I asked.
"I— I didn't know what he was doing," she cried. "I was there to help. I am the child's mother. I—"
"You are a liar," I said. "You were paid."
"No!" she screamed. "I loved him!"
"You were paid to move, and you moved," I said. "You pulled the threads."
The director at the end of the table dropped his cup. "Show proof," he said.
I slid a folder across. The bank trace, Amber's signature, a transfer labeled "surgery logistics." It matched the date the ambulance left.
"How could you?" Colby whispered behind Reid.
Amber shouted, "You can't blame me for the crash! I didn't mean—"
"You did," I said. "You helped make the truck unsafe. The brake cable was cut. The child's life was endangered."
She ran out. Security followed. She slammed through the glass front and yelled to reporters, "I'm a mother! I didn't—"
Reporters smelled blood. Cameras rolled. She tried to run but the board had already called for security.
In the corridor, she collapsed and threw herself to the marble floor, hands on her belly. "I'm pregnant," she cried. "My baby—"
A woman from the hospital team burst in with a certified report. "Amber Jordan," she said. "We have test results. Your samples show no trace of tampering on the early scans. The child is yours, but the fall could've killed it. We need to act."
Reid listened to the word "child" like a man who had been numbed. He looked at Amber like someone who had lost a ledger and found a coin he didn't want.
The crowd outside the building surged. People wanted to see the woman who had wronged the ex-wife. They wanted shame. That is how the world is arranged—front seats and slow motion.
"Arrest her," someone shouted.
"Wait," I said. "You want blood. But justice is not a mob's game."
I had more. We had quietly obtained signed witness statements from the repairman who was paid and from a janitor who had seen Amber at the depot with a man in a black cap. We had messages linking Franco to an old account. We had the doctor who had performed my abdominal surgery confirm that an unlicensed team did emergency work to remove something in my womb the night I was found. He had been bribed, but the record leaked.
The chair called for police.
"Amber Jordan has been detained for questioning," the police said on camera.
She cried, "You can't do this! I'm a nurse!"
"And you were paid by a man who owns prisons," Sgt. Morales said. "You have the right to a lawyer."
Franco's name flashed on the news like a curse. He was arrested in prison in a sting that followed from evidence we'd quietly leaked to the right detective. The men managing his network were brought out like rotten fruit.
Reid turned to me in the stunned quiet that followed. "I believed them," he said.
"You believed the easiest answer," I said. "You lived in a small, neat hatred. You picked the wrong target."
"I wanted to punish someone," he said. "I didn't know how much you had already given."
"You were wrong," I said. "You were cruel."
He closed his eyes and left the room. Later, alone in his car, he called and I answered.
"Why did you leave me," I asked, simple.
"I thought you had chosen money," he said. "I thought you'd stood with Franco."
"I did what I had to," I said. "I loved you. I tried to save your family."
"You saved them," he said. "You sold your body to save them."
"No." I laughed once, a small sound. "I did what was needed."
A day later, Amber was in cuffs at the courthouse. She raged and cried. People watched. The boardroom that had once primed itself to push me out now toppled two men who had hidden Franco's papers. They apologized. They begged.
"You have power," one old director said. "We were afraid."
"Fear makes people small," I said. "Decide what you are."
Reid came to the hearing. He sat in the back. He watched. His eyes were red.
"I should have seen it," he told me after. "I didn't look."
"Do you regret it?" I asked.
"I regret how I left you," he said. "I regret that I didn't stand with you."
"Regret is a small thing," I said. "It won't stitch scars."
He smiled a small salt smile. "Then what do you want?"
"A scorched apology?" I asked. "No. I want something simple."
"You want me to stay," he said.
"No," I said. "I want you to be decent."
We fought then, words like small knives. He hoped I'd want him back. I would not allow him to buy my forgiveness with fear.
"You can have your shares," he said finally. "Take them and go somewhere you can be safe."
"No," I said. "I will stay."
Because I had found something else. I had found purpose. I had found a ledger and a list and a reason to keep living. I would use the shares. I would use them to root out the rot Franco left.
The court case dragged on. The papers called Amber everything from traitor to saint. Some called me mad, some heroic. I learned how to sit with people who shouted at me and not crumble. I learned how to file evidence. I learned how to make a room of men answer for what they had done.
When the final hearing took place, the courtroom was full. Amber's defense lawyer tried to spin lies. Then I released the video — the one of her leaving the depot and meeting the old man. I had Uri's voice recorded, the man admitting the pay, the registrar showing the transfers. The judge watched. The judge allowed it. The room gasped.
Amber sobbed. She looked at me once, full of a wounded, complicated anger. "You killed me," she said.
"No," I said. "I exposed you."
The judge pronounced the sentence soon after. Amber would stand trial for complicity in endangering a person and in the tampering plot. Franco's network was unravelled. The old men who covered for him were fined and forced out. The company restructured.
Reid tried to stand up for Amber, but she had been sewn into a lie too deep to find her way home. The pregnancy was delicate; doctors fought to save her child. She lost it in the end. The papers wrote includes that headline so coldly I felt sick.
At the end, in a small room after the last hearing, Reid came and stood near me.
"You won," he said.
"I didn't want to win," I said.
"You made them accountable," he said. "You gave me the truth."
"Then give me one thing," I said.
"What?"
"Don't call me 'wife' unless you're sure. Don't build a life on the idea of what you can take."
He looked at me for a long time. Finally he said, "I can't ask you to try again. I can't ask you to trust me. But I promise one thing: I won't let what happened to you happen again to anyone else in my life."
"That's enough," I said.
We went to the old hill behind the Lin estate. The tree where we had buried our childhood capsule stood like it had never changed. We dug with our bare hands.
"Do you remember what we wrote?" Reid asked.
"Yes," I said. "We promised to never be apart."
"We broke that," he said.
"You did," I said.
I took the small velvet box from my bag — the jade bracelet my grandmother had given that had been lost, then returned to me, then taken and handed to Amber. The bracelet had been a chain among us since childhood. I held it out.
"Keep it," I said. "Give it to someone you choose because you love them, not because you owe them."
His fingers closed around it for a second, then he let it go.
"No," he said. "This was always meant for you."
I laughed, a sound like rain. "Then it's useless to both of us."
I opened the tin of the time capsule. There was our childish letter and two plastic toys. I put the bracelet inside. I closed the tin, then wrapped it again in the paper of our old letter. I handed the tin to Reid.
"Let's bury it," I said.
We dug. Our hands were clumsy, but we worked. The hole swallowed our cheap treasures and our better promises.
"Do you want me to leave with you?" Reid asked, voice small.
"No," I said. "Go make a home that's honest. Let me make a home that's honest. We can be family in a different way."
He nodded.
We filled the hole. We stamped the earth down. The sky was clean and pale. The sea in the distance was calm.
"Will you come visit?" he asked.
"If you need me, you know where I am," I said.
He hugged me then, awkward and careful. "Protect me," he whispered.
"I will," I said. "From what I know."
He stepped back. "I am sorry," he said.
"Say it when you mean it," I said.
He did not speak. He walked away.
I sat on the bench and watched him go. The bracelet buried with our childish promises would stay under that tree. It would stay there until years later, when someone dug it up and remembered us as more than the mistakes we had been.
"Do you regret it?" Colby asked once later, when we were alone.
"Regret?" I thought of the branding, the lost child, the broken legs, the friendships bent by truth and lies. "No," I said. "Not regret. I would rather have the truth."
"And Reid?"
"I still love him," I said. "But not like before. I love him like a family. It is steady. It will not take my life."
A few months later, Amber's trial ended. She was convicted. Franco's network fell apart. The men who helped cut the brake lines went to jail. The repairman who took the money testified. The papers called me vindicated. The company stabilized under new governance.
At the year mark, I took a trip abroad. I had a suitcase that held a few dresses and a passport photo. I put a tiny seed inside my jacket pocket — a seed from the tree under which I had buried the tin. I planted it in a city abroad, in a public garden. I left a note under its soil: "For those who are brave."
I wrote to Reid once a month like a postcard. He answered twice. We never reconciled. We never hated. We were surfaces of a truth, clear and honest and cold like glass. It was enough.
One day, when I returned to the hill, I found the tin again. The tree had kids playing at its base. The tin was a little lighter. The bracelet lay inside, bright as always. I looked at the bracelet, then at the letter. We were both there, small and unbreakable.
I stood and rolled down the hill, the wind cooling my cheeks. I laughed at the air.
"You promised," I said to myself softly. "You promised you would not be taken."
The city buzzed behind me. The sea sighed. I pushed my chair forward slowly, not toward revenge, not toward love, but toward a life I could hold. One day at a time.
The End
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