Face-Slapping12 min read
He Came Back — The Brother Who Broke Me
ButterPicks13 views
I never thought the word "brother" could taste like iron.
"Brother," I whispered once when I was a child, and his face smiled like sunlight.
"Josie," he said now, and it felt like the mouth of a cave.
"Stop," I tried to say, but he already had his hands on my face.
"Be quiet," Eldridge Picard murmured, very soft, and his thumb wiped the tear at my eye.
"I've waited a long time," he said.
"I—" I couldn't finish.
"Relax," he said. "Relax and let it be easy."
He had come back like a tide.
When Henry Green first rescued me, I thought rescue meant safety.
"You'll always have a home with me," he had said, and his voice was like a tree's shade.
"I will never let you be alone," he promised.
I believed him because I had no other hands to hold.
I loved the idea of Eldridge once. I remember him the way children remember sunlight — bigger than everything, impossibly kind.
"I'll bring you candy," he told me when I was eight, and I ran.
At twelve I thought him noble. At fifteen I hid when I heard his name.
"Why did you leave?" I asked him once, the question small as a coin.
"Family matters," he said, with that smooth half-smile. "Things get messy."
"Was it my fault?" I whispered.
"No," he answered in that cold clarity his voice had learned. "It's not your fault. It's yours to bear — and mine to keep."
He had been sent away two years ago — exiled, some called it. Henry said it was to save us both.
"You must never let him come back," Henry had told me. "Not until you are married. Not until after ten years."
I clung to that rule like a promise against the dark.
Then Eldridge came back.
He walked into my life in the quiet of my apartment like a shadow and a bloom at once.
"Good," he said softly. "You look peaceful here."
"How did you—" I began.
"I was worried," he smiled, and his eyes were a sea at midnight. "You have a new place."
He showed me the screen on his hand — a huge crystal wall in the living room — and I sat as if I was a child at a story.
"Is that… my living room?" I asked.
"It was," he said. "It's better now."
On the screen I watched myself as if I were on a stage. I watched the couch where I had read curl up like a sleeping animal. I watched the bed where I had woken trembling. I watched my life that no longer felt mine.
"This was the third day you moved in," he pointed. "You sat and read for hours. You looked so calm."
I felt my hands close into fists. For days packages had come — terrible things inside meant to make me small, meant to convince me I had no past without him. Then one package was a note: "Move out." Henry found me a place to live, the way people move a fragile vase into a new box. I thought distance would be safety. Distance was only a number.
"Is Henry— is he all right?" I asked.
"He's being tended," Eldridge answered, with his voice folding into polite silence. "Do you want to go see him?"
"Yes," I said.
We went by the back entrance of the hospital, in case there were cameras. Eldridge turned me into the patient room like a man showing off a pet, and Henry lay small and white beneath tubes and the steady beeping of a heart on the screen. I pressed my fingers to the hospital bed rail as if to anchor myself.
"Is he awake?" I whispered.
"Not yet," Eldridge replied. "He is resting."
His hand felt like cotton when he straightened the blanket over me, and I let him because what else could I do?
"Stay," he said. "Rest. I'll be with you."
Everything with Eldridge was like that: a net of kindness over something sharp.
"You're quieter than I remember," he said to me one night as he brushed my hair flat.
"I've always been quiet," I told him.
"No," he smiled. "You have edges. Edges that will make you mine."
He told me rules as if they were laws.
"Three rules," he said. "Don't be loud. Don't be late. Don't be curious."
"That's not fair," I said.
"It will keep you safe," he promised.
At night, the house hummed. He made tea and hummed softer songs. He read documents out loud in a voice that made the paper feel warm. He prepared to step into the mayor's office like a man of destiny. He told me things drifted apart naturally — and every time he said a thing was natural, a hinge shifted in my chest.
"You're going to be mayor?" I asked once in a room that smelled of coffee.
"I might be," he answered. "I have things to do."
He changed, in the way storms change the sea. When Henry's heart failed once — an attack, sudden like lightning — Eldridge did not break. He smiled at reporters and touched shoulders and made promises. People called him competent. People called him poised. They didn't see the camera in my living room. They didn't see the nights when his voice turned a blade.
"He will be fine," he said to me beside the television the day the news announced Henry gone to the hospital.
"Are you worried?" I asked him.
"Worry accomplishes nothing," he said. "Action does."
He arranged things. He told me about a woman, Katharina Webb, who would be his engagement. She was all eyes and arrogance, tall and certain of herself. "She will be a good match," Eldridge said. "She will be convenient."
There was a moment when I thought I had sympathy for him — a small kindness. He wears kindness like a coat. But then he took the coat off.
One night, he sat me on his lap in front of the fireplace and kissed me the way a vow is broken. I tried to push away and he made me quiet. He made me answer him. He had always known how to answer me before I could speak. He had built a memory minefield and left me to walk through it.
"Why are you doing this?" I cried once, my voice small in the great house.
"Because you belong with me," he whispered. "Because you are the only one able to understand me. Because I can protect you from being torn to pieces by the world."
"You're not protecting me," I told him.
"Protection is a complex word," he said. "And I own complexity."
He fed me pills to still fear, he fed me sugar to sweeten pain; he recorded moments that should have been private and kept them as evidence. When I protested he showed me the footage and smiled like a man with a key to the city.
"If you ever tell," he said, holding up his phone like a talisman, "you will not survive the shame. No one will believe you and your life will be worse than now."
I learned to live small. Astrid Davidson — my oldest friend, a woman of business and blunt honesty — kept me tethered.
"Stay quiet," Astrid told me once, hands around a cup of coffee. "He knows how to make you feel small."
"I don't know what to do," I told her. "He has everything."
"I will find the pieces," she said. "I will pry them out."
We tried to plan. I planned to be patient, to be invisible. He forbade me from going to many places and allowed others. He set rules about school, men, and daylight as if life could be boxed.
"Three rules," he repeated with a tender voice that killed.
Then Dario Shimizu found me.
He was a flash in the street — a shiny car, quick hands, laughter like metal. He made a joke and his hand brushed my waist and I felt the floor drop. "Come with me," he said. "I promise you'll be fine."
I said no.
He did not hear no. He took me anyway in a line of black cars to a club called Paradise, where lights bled like paint and bodies moved in a way that made my skin crawl. I had been taken before in my life, but never stripped of the illusion that I might be rescued.
"You're very silent," Dario said, circling like a shark. "We like silent things."
"Leave me alone," I whispered.
"No," he said. "Not tonight."
Someone tapped his shoulder. A presence stepped into our circle: Eldridge, smooth as river stone. He had come for me without asking permission — like a god showing up at a tavern.
"Let her go," Eldridge said.
"She's mine," Dario grinned. "We were having a talk."
Eldridge smiled. "Dario, you've made a mistake."
What happened next should have been a fight. Instead, it was a performance. Eldridge walked through the room like he was walking onto a stage, and people made way. He looked at the crowd. He smiled. He reached into his pocket and took my phone.
"You owe me for this," he said to Dario, and Dario laughed because he thought it was a joke about status. Dario tried to push him. Eldridge's smile sharpened.
"Stop," Eldridge said, and Dario fell backward like wood split.
They called it humiliation. They called it a display of power. Dario left with bruises and pride like a torn coat. The club applauded like they had watched a show.
"Eldridge, you can't keep playing like this," I cried in the car as we left.
"Why not?" he said softly. "It keeps you safe."
I thought about safety a lot after that night. What made a safe place? Who decided that a cage called protection was anything but cruelty?
Then the city proclaimed it: Eldridge Picard, new mayor.
Green Burks came to speak, and the crowd cheered like a cathedral. He was a man with broad hands and a laugh that covered everything. He took the stage and praised his young colleague.
"Our city needs structure," Green Burks said. "We need a leader who is unafraid."
Eldridge waved like he had wings.
And I sat in the audience, hollowed by fear, when Astrid slipped me a small envelope.
"Open it later," she whispered. "When you are alone."
Inside were letters, and photos, and copies of the packages. They were evidence — every nasty parcel — and a note: "If he goes public, so will I." Astrid's words were a rope.
I wanted to be brave. I wanted to drag him onto the stage and tear his face into confession. Instead, I learned the cruelty of patience. Eldridge had a city behind him; I had a trembling hand.
"You're going to help me," I told Astrid that night.
"I already am," she said. "But some things require more than proof. They require a moment."
That moment came at the farewell gala Henry's office surprised the city with — Henry's memorial, they called it. They had turned something private into a public shrine. The hall was packed. Faces glittered like coins. Tickets were worth more than life.
"Josie?" Astrid's whisper was a thread. "Are you ready?"
"I am," I said, and I was a bundle of glass and fire.
Eldridge entered the hall with the poise of a man born to make headlines. Katharina stood at his side like a polished blade. The crowd bowed and applauded. He looked at me — he always did with that slow hunger masked as affection — and I felt the weight of a secret about to detonate.
"Tonight is for Henry," Green Burks intoned. "We celebrate his life and his service."
"Let us look forward," Eldridge said, presenting a smile stitched with steel. "For the city, for the future."
I walked to the stage when the announcer called for a moment of memory. I had hidden a small device in my sleeve. Astrid had given the speech for me. I would not stand in the shadow of the man who had ruined me.
"May I speak?" I asked into a microphone, the voice in my throat like a cracked bell.
The room was polite and curious. The little light on the recording device blinked.
"Everyone," I began, and for once my voice wasn't breaking. "This is my father — no, not by blood — this man," I said, nodding at Henry's portrait on the stage, "he took me in when I was eight. He called me family and gave me shelter. He taught me about books and pictures and the way to fold clothes."
Polite laughter. A soft murmur.
"And this man," I said, and I turned toward Eldridge, "took too much."
The room grew cold as a closed window.
Eldridge's eyes narrowed. "Josie," he said, a tone of playful reproach. "Is this where you make declarations?"
"Yes," I said. "If the world knows what you kept, then the world will understand how you terrorized me."
"You can't mean—" he began.
I clicked the device.
A large screen behind the stage, the same soft crystal that had haunted the corner of my apartment, filled with faces that were mine. It was my voice; it was my shame on display. The footage was edited — the most damning moments chosen. The room's air seemed to burn.
"No!" Eldridge cried, but I heard silence like a cloud rising.
I watched him break in front of a thousand people. He transformed from the smooth man who could talk a storm into a creature of panic. His mouth opened like a fish.
"How dare you?" he gasped. "You—"
"You filmed me while I was asleep," I said plainly. "You blackmailed me. You threatened me. You used the city, my life, and a screen. You are not who they think you are."
"That's a lie," he said, eyes blood-hot. "You staged this. You want to ruin me."
"Watch," Astrid said in my ear, and she reached up with the proof — bank transfers, notes, the envelopes he had mailed to me. Files that couldn't be faked. She handed them to the MC, who held them up like an offering.
People in the hall murmured. Phones lifted like birds. Someone began to film, small lights everywhere catching the fall of a king.
Eldridge's face moved through stages: denial, then anger, then a thin, frantic laugh. He tried to take the microphone. Security moved like water between us. He lunged once, and a chair fell. The crowd made a ring like a tide.
"You cannot," he said. "You — you'll ruin us both."
"Maybe," I said. "But you chose this game."
"You're making this up," he insisted, his voice cracking. "You want money. You want revenge."
"No," I said. "I want truth. I want anyone who might be at risk to know. I want the cameras in my apartment to stop watching me. I want the files returned."
A woman in the crowd shouted, "This is monstrous!" Another cried, "We trusted him!"
Eldridge's composure collapsed. He barked something, then all flight seemed gone from him. His legs buckled and he fell to his knees on the polished floor. There was a rawness in the way he reached out — like a child who had been told there was no shelter.
"Please," he begged aloud in front of everyone. "Please, don't do this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Silent phones recorded everything. A man stood to film with a steady hand. Someone took a picture. Eyes burned. The gallery's chandeliers caught the moment and threw it back. A child in the crowd wailed at the sound of a man acting like a man unraveling.
I had imagined many punishments: slowly being ignored by everyone, exile, justice in a courtroom. I had not imagined this — the raw unclothed arrogance of him undone publicly.
"Let him get up," Katharina said at my side at first, her voice taut like twine. Then she stepped back. Her face was a mask that slipped.
"Let him beg," said a voice near the back, sharp as a needle. "Let him taste shame."
He crawled closer to me, hands scraping the floor as if searching for a memory that would buy him time. Reporters leaned forward like wolves at the scent of horror. Someone in the crowd started to clap slowly, and then applause mingled with gasps. Phones were grown eyes.
"Don't touch me," I said quietly, and he stopped as if at a hot iron.
"Why are you doing this?" he sobbed. "Why are you ruining me? I built a city!"
"Not at the cost of people," I said. "Not at the cost of what you did to me. Not at the cost of anyone."
He went through denial and bargaining in front of me. "If you take this down, I'll resign," he pleaded. "I'll go away. Don't make me a criminal. You'll ruin everything."
There was a woman in the third row who recorded everything with a steady, unfaltering hand. She turned the phone and livestreamed the whole scene. "Watch him," she said, voice tremulous. "Watch him when the mask drops."
The crowd reacted in waves. An older man sniffed and patted his chest as if to steady himself. A group of young men whispered in outrage. Someone recorded and laughed — a laugh that wasn't laughter at all, just a sound that meant "I knew it."
Eldridge's voice folded in on itself. He tried to stand and fell back. People around him shifted; no one comforted him. The world had turned off the lights for him. He said the words people say when everything is on fire: "Do you forgive me? Please."
"Get up," someone shouted. "Face your deeds."
He looked like a man who had been stripped of all his ornaments. The city that had loved him found him suddenly small. I saw in his eyes the same ocean I'd seen as a child, but now it was black and bitter, and it swallowed him.
Security came for him after the crowd's anger turned into orders. They drew closer, gentle and mechanical. He struggled as a wounded animal, then he stopped, exhausted. He covered his face with his hands and sobbed like a boy.
"He confessed," the MC said into the microphone, voice breaking. "He admits to wrongdoing. Legal counsel will take over."
"Do it," someone whispered. "Do it now."
Police led him out. His shoulders drooped. He looked at me one last time, a question and a plea blended into a single grain. He mouthed words I couldn't hear. I closed my eyes because looking back was a privilege I wanted to deny him. I had pierced the veil.
The camera lights followed him like constellations as he left. People snapped photos for the next morning's papers. The streaming feed had millions watching. No one could pretend they didn't see him now.
The crowd dispersed then, a flock breaking into the night. In the echo of the hall, someone started to applaud me. The sound grew until it was a roar — not for me, but for truth.
Astrid hugged me hard. "You did it," she said, her voice only a little steady. "You did it."
"I did," I admitted. "But I never wanted glory. I wanted safety."
We walked out into the cool night. Phones buzzed in pockets; messages flew across the city like moths. Katharina had gone pale and quiet, her position shaken. Green Burks disappeared into a conference of PR men. The mayor's office would implode on its own.
Eldridge Picard's fall was only the start. The law takes its own route. Later, the police charged Dario Shimizu with assault and ordered a search of the Paradise club. Dario tried to deny, but the club's security cameras — unlike Eldridge's secret feed — had been left on, and a dozen people stepped forward with statements. The law can be slow-eyed, but when the world watches, it moves faster.
I thought about Henry on the hospital bed and mourned him again. I thought about the envelopes and the papers that had once been weapons. I thought about the little porcelain cup Henry kept on his desk, chipped at the rim, the one he used every morning to drink a bitter coffee while reading the paper. He loved ordinary things.
The days after Eldridge's public undoing were like a winter thaw. I received messages — some kind, some vile. The cameras that had watched me were suddenly handcuffed around someone else.
"Are you okay?" Astrid asked, searching my face.
"No," I said. "Yes. Maybe both."
I went back to my apartment once the investigations allowed it. The screens were still there, but they felt hollow without a gaze behind them. I turned the device off and slid it into a drawer. It made a small click that sounded very loud.
In the quiet of that evening, I opened the drawer and took out Henry's chipped porcelain cup. I set it on the table and, gently, almost as if I were handling a sleeping bird, I put it back into the box I'd kept since my childhood — an old wooden box carved with a small pattern of flowers. The box was something my mother had given me before she left.
"Maybe someday," Astrid said softly when she visited, "you will feel safe again."
"Maybe," I echoed. "But for now, it is enough to know the screens are off."
He had been punished in front of everyone — his smile stripped away, his pride in tatters. He had begged, he had been shouted down, cameras had captured the tremor in his voice. The city had watched. The law would continue, and the court would have its say. But for the first time since I was a child, I had pulled a cord and the music stopped.
And when I tucked the small wooden box under the bed, Henry's porcelain cup sat on top, a modest thing in a city of lights, as if to say the ordinary was worth more than any throne.
The End
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