Substitute18 min read
I Woke Up as the Villainess — Now Watch Me Rewrite Us
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"I slammed my phone shut," I say, because that is the only way I cope.
"I slammed it shut and promised tomorrow would be different."
I laugh at myself in the mirror. "You always say that, Olivia," I tell the reflection. "You always lie to yourself."
I am Olivia Henry. I live on instant noodles and late trains. I work office jobs that eat my evenings. I read romance novels to soak whatever small joy the week leaves me. Tonight I fall asleep on a chapter called "The Bitter Rose and the Ice King." I swear I will stop staying up late. I do not.
Then I wake up in silk sheets.
"Where am I?" I whisper.
A woman in a crystal chandelier light leans beside the bed. She is my mirror — only sharper, practiced, cruel in a way that is new. Her jawline belongs to a character I have derided for years online. Her name, I remember from the book comments: Kali Bennett. She is the famous second daughter — rich, cold, scheming. She is supposed to ruin two lives to win a man who never wanted her.
"Good morning, Kali," a soft voice says. "You look... fragile."
The woman in my body smiles like a trap.
I pull my hand up and watch a ring slide over my finger that is not mine. "This is not me," I tell the ring the way I always tell my phone the truth. "I am Olivia Henry."
"No," the woman in the mirror says. "You are Kali Bennett."
I try to laugh. "This is some weird lucid dream."
"Try opening your phone," she answers.
I do. The wallpaper is a photo of a yacht, and a message from my mother — "Dinner. 7. Dress up." The name on the contact says "Davina." I blink and remember the book map: Kali Bennett, daughter of the Bennett fortune, mother Davina Bennett, engaged by arrangement to Clement Gray, heir of Gray Industries.
"Oh," I say.
"Enjoy your new life," the woman says, and leaves the room.
I do not know how to be a scandalous villainess. I am a freelance copywriter who cannot fold napkins with grace. But I have advantages: I have read a thousand of these books, and I know the scenes that will come. I know the yacht episode. I know the night at a banquet where I was supposed to set a girl up for humiliation. I know the inevitable fights and the movie-kiss rescue.
I also know author-logic. When you know the script, you can try to change it.
"I will not be their villain," I tell the hotel mirror. "I will not."
The first day is shock and petulant joy. The wardrobe is endless. The bathroom smells of impossible things. A designer coat waits in the hall. A team of assistants is on the other side of the door.
"Miss Bennett? Breakfast?" a man says. He is in a pressed suit and he uses just that tone of "miss" that says the world bends for me.
I decide to do three things before I meet the people the book says I must harm.
One: eat all the good things. "I eat lunch like a champion," I tell the chef in the dining room. "Bring me four garlic prawns."
Two: learn the layout of the mansion. "Where is the library?" I ask. "Where does Clement sit when he sulks?"
Three: test the script. If the book pushes me into cruel moves — I will refuse.
The first test happens fast. Clement Gray strides into the reception of a charity gala and says, loud enough for the room to lean, "You really think this is a good idea?"
I am supposed to be the one who preys. Instead I walk up to him, hand out, smile that is not flirty but steady.
"Hello," I say. "I am Kali. I am not that interesting, but I can be Phil's worst critic at poker. Do you want to not talk about this right now?"
People laugh. Clement looks startled. His jaw tightens. He is handsome in a way that swallowed cold air and kept it. "You know my name," he says.
"I read your family's press releases like the rest of the town reads gossip," I answer. "Consider it a hobby."
He gives me a slow look. "You are different from the book."
"Good," I say. "I plan on staying different."
Later that night, I am alone in Clement's old sitting room — no, I am not with him romantically. I am learning.
"Why did you cancel the wedding?" I ask myself, because I need background, because the author always forgets important facts.
There is a name that keeps coming up: Maya Mancini — the innocent girl who stole his heart in the book. People call her "Shen Qing" in other versions. In the book, she is a fragile light with soft hands and a secret strength. But the plot suggests more craft. She seems too useful in the arc.
I try tea at night. I try to map who holds power. The Bennett family has its mother: Davina Bennett. The Gray family — Clement's mother — Michelle Duncan — is the one who should be worried about status. Michelle is dangerous in a quiet way. She speaks like a verdict.
"Do not pretend you do not know," says Davina the first time we meet. "You grew up in the public pages. Act like it."
"I am trying," I say. "I am trying harder than you think."
It is easy to be nicer than "Kali" expected. People relax. Clement's brother, Jordan Jansson, is a prankster come home from abroad. He does not hide his amusement when I elbow him for suburb jokes. He is the man who will break the room with a grin.
"Big brother's grown moral," Jordan tells Clement at dinner. "He actually kept a plant alive this week."
"It died," Clement says flatly.
"That's the point," Jordan says, smiling at me. "You make things look easier."
"Good," I answer.
Two weeks in, I discover the thing that will change everything: my body, this Kali's body, sometimes does what I do not want. At the bakery, my hand reached to push a girl. It moved before I could stop it.
"What the hell?" I whisper. My own hand, in her skin, had stretched out like a string puppet. I flinch.
"That happens sometimes," Davina says when I ask. "Stress. Old worries."
I do not believe her. I speak to Clement. "Do you ever feel like your life is not entirely yours?"
"Sometimes," he says, not meeting my eyes. "When I was small my father chose for me. I learned to obey. I am not always free."
"Do you think you can ever be free?" I ask.
His throat moves. "I do not know."
That night, a man on a bike almost kills Maya on a lane near the market. I see it from the window. I react. I run.
"Stop!" I scream. "Get off the road!"
I run but my legs feel heavy, like old TV cable. For a second I cannot move. The bike hits Maya. She falls. She clutches her arm and stares up with perfect, tearful shock.
"It is okay, I am fine," she says. "I am okay." Her voice is the kind of voice that stitches a room together.
I carry her to the ambulance and later she smiles at me in the hospital: "Thank you, Kali. Thank you for coming."
That night, Clement phones, furious. "What happened? Who pushed her?"
"I did not push anyone," I say. "I saved her."
He sounds like he does not know what to believe. "There is footage," he says. "Security. I saw it."
"What did it show?" I ask.
"It shows you moving your arm toward her," he says. "It looks like you pushed her."
"I wanted to pull her," I say. "I did not—"
"Someone made it look like a push," Clement says. "I will find out."
I do not know if he will, but something in his tone promises anger that is not for me only.
I visit the hospital the next day and sit by Maya's bed. "Are you okay?" I ask.
Maya looks at me and nods. "I am fine. But I feel strange. After the accident, things... shifted. People sent money for my recovery. Seasonal donors. The Gray family sent a check. I did not want it."
"Who delivered the money?" I ask.
"A man," Maya says. "He said the family wished the best. He said asked me to leave." A funny shadow crosses her face. "But I cannot take money like that."
"We will find who did it," I promise.
I sleep badly. I dream of white light taking me and us into scenes I did not choose. When I wake, I speak out loud to the ceiling: "If someone else writes me, I will not be the villain."
By then, the mansion and the mansion's world are on edge. Clement's mother, Michelle Duncan, is watching like a hawk. She is cold as steel but has a soft smile that means threat.
"Did you stage that?" I ask Michelle, blunt.
She looks at me over her tea. "Stage what?"
"The accident," I say. "The money. The envelopes with 'accept and leave' scrawled inside."
Michelle's lip curls. "You are bold, Kali. You should be. You are a public daughter. But be careful. Family holds sway."
I know better than to leave the accusation hanging. I begin to gather proof.
"Who controls the footage?" I ask Jordan. "Can you get it?"
Jordan grins and nods. "Call me petty and I will smile."
He brings me a thumb drive that night. "Got the camera on the corner," he whispers. "You will like the angle."
We watch the footage together in my room. The footage is clear, silent, clinical. It shows the bike swerving. It shows a dark-clad figure on the sidewalk who steps back and pushes Maya, making the fall look like a shove. The camera cuts to a delivery van leaving the gate. The timestamp shows a license plate.
"This is enough," Jordan says. "This is criminal."
I watch the plate hum across the screen and then we trace it. The van is leased through a company that has only two clients this week. One of them is a consulting firm. The other client — our own Gray family security team.
I freeze. "Clement," I say. "It goes back to your people."
He hears my voice and comes to the window. "What did you find?"
"Look," I say, and I show him. He is unreadable for a long time.
"Who else knows?" he asks.
"Jordan and the driver," I say.
He looks at me. "If Michelle did this, she will deny it. She will spin it. We need proof that she ordered it and sent the money."
We dig. I am intrusive. I am loud. I am Kali with a conscience now, and I do not sleep the usual hours. The book never gave Kali this. The book never made the villain confess. But I have a thumb drive, and Jordan has a ledger he found on the consulting firm's server with invoices. The invoices show transfers from a Gray Industries account to "field operations" and then to a small private company. Then a smaller payment went to a man with a helmet.
"Why would she do this?" I ask. "Maya is not a threat except to her plans."
Clement's jaw tightens. "To break what we cannot control. To prove a point. Power does that."
By now I know something else: Maya is not entirely as she appears. At the hospital she is faintly too performing. She says the right things in the right tone. Her eyes move like a person acting. But that doesn't excuse Michelle. I do not want to misread people. I gather both threads, the camera and the ledger, and I ask Clement to come with me to confront his mother.
"We should do this calmly," I say. "Get signed statements, get security logs. Public exposure is messy."
Clement smiles once, like a battle plan. "We do not have to be calm."
We choose a big stage: the Gray family gala where the stockholders come. Michelle will be surrounded by cameras from the press in less than an hour. She will not be able to shut the door.
"Will you be there?" I ask Clement.
He looks at me. "I will be where I need to be."
The gala is polished — the chandeliers throw light like coins. Hundreds of guests raise flutes. Michelle stands at the head of the table, all smile and composed rehearsed grief. Her speech speaks of family duty.
I walk up to the podium as the show goes on. I press the thumb drive into the hands of the event tech and whisper, "Play file one on the big screen. Then file two."
The tech is startled and looks at me like I am mad. "Miss Bennett, you cannot—"
"Do it," I say. "Now."
Cameras pivot. Wine stops midair. Michelle's smile falters.
The giant screen lights up with footage of the lane. Everyone gasps silently as the bike scene plays. A hush falls. The crowd murmurs. A voice in the back says, "Is that—?"
I hear my own breath. I step forward.
"That is our daughter," I say into the microphone the DJ hands me. "That is a woman who fell. Someone made this fall happen."
Michelle composes herself. She smiles and says, "There is nothing to see here."
"No," I answer. "You will see."
I press play on the second file.
A series of bank records appears — transfers linking a Gray Industries account to a shell firm, then to private contractors. Names that only a privileged few can use flash on the screen. One has Michelle's signature.
The room wobbles. A shareholder stands up. "Is this authorized?"
Clement steps onto the stage like a machine that finally moves. "These were not authorized by the board," he says. "I will resign any account the family needs. But I will not let my mother's orders stand."
Michelle stares at him like a storm.
"Is this true?" the crowd asks.
Michelle's face goes the color of an evening dress. She denies. "Forgive her," she begins. "I do not—"
"No," Clement says, voice steady now. "Play the recording."
Someone flips a deck. An audio file runs. It is a quiet voice — Davina? No — the voice is Michelle's: "Make it look like an accident. Send the van. Do it without trace. Offer her money to leave. Show me she can be bought."
Her voice ripples through the hall. People freeze. A woman throws down her glass. Phones are out. A dozen cameras record.
Michelle's expression changes in a way I have never seen. She steps back from the dais, her cream gloves suddenly very small. "No," she says. "No, you cannot—"
She charges to the podium and strikes the nearest mic. The lights flinch. A small group of her supporters stand and try to shape the narrative. "This is a setup!"
"Who would set me up?" Michelle says. Her voice is pitched to demand, not to plead. At first she denies. Then the old life falls out of her like silk.
"How could you?" a board member shouts. "How could you use our name?"
A younger woman in the second row — a longtime friend — has been filming with her phone. People around her start shouting, "Play it! Play it!"
Cameras zoom in. The hashtags begin to trend in minutes. I feel the cold relief of someone else opening a door I had forced open.
Michelle's bravado cracks. She claws at the air for words. "You cannot" she whispers. Her smile is gone. Her face folds.
I watch her shift from dignity to anger to fear to denial. She turns to the press. "It is a lie!" she cries. "It is a plot!"
"Do you have anything to say?" someone yells.
She staggers and then — the scene splits into slow motion for me — she drops to her knees on the marble. "Please," she says, the first private sound we have heard. "Please do not ruin me. I did what I had to do."
The room goes still. For a moment no one breathes. People record with phones, camera lights show like small stars. A few of Michelle's supporters step back. Younger staffers start whispering. The board, the shareholders, the press, everyone watches the woman who built an empire crumble and beg.
"Clement?" someone asks.
He does not move. He is perfectly still. He might be a statue. He does not look away when Michelle looks at him with raw panic.
Michelle's face is streaked with tears she cannot make herself stop. She begins to name names — "It was for family. For blood game. For reputation." She repeats phrases, but the more she says, the less they can be true. When she reaches out, no one takes her hand. Her secretary steps forward, trembling, and says, "Mrs. Duncan, I cannot lie for you any longer."
The press surges. Club members push microphones at her. A woman records Michelle picking up the broken mic and whispering, "I deserve... forgiveness." The footage loads online. Within an hour the network loops the clip on screens around the city.
Then, something else happens. Maya, who had been unwavering in her grief, starts looking shaky. People come to her and ask questions. A young reporter shows the security footage of the sidewalk and points to her, saying, "Do you see the person who pushed you?"
The press goes wild. Maya's composure begins to peel away. She looks at me, eyes glossy. "I did not expect it to escalate," she says.
A whistleblower — a junior staffer who had been paid to deliver envelopes — walks to the stage and says, "They told me to make it look accidental. I was paid. I thought I was doing the right thing."
The denials crumble.
But Michelle does not fall alone. The more the story grows, the more facts the ledger reveals: there are notes about "actor compensation" and "role at scene." Maya's name appears in a research file with the line "perform starved innocence." Maya had created a costume of helplessness, and a man in a helmet pushed her foot — a set-up where she could fall and play the victim. The bank transfers to the man show a later payment was returned — reversed when it failed. Maya had signed for checks and then publicly called it "help for recovery" but behind it, she had been asked to act in order to shift sympathies.
Maya bursts into tears on the stage. "I never wanted to hurt anyone," she says. "I thought I could secure our future. I thought I had to."
"It is wrong," the crowd says.
She kneels. She cries. She begs for forgiveness.
The photographers record everything. The clip of Michelle on the marble, pleading, goes viral. Her friends and social circles turn away. No one claps. A few people stand and march out. Someone shouts, "Arrest her!"
Police are called. Investigators take the thumb drives, the ledger, and the audio. Michelle is escorted from the room with chain-mail silence around her. At the door she turns back and looks at Clement. "You will not ruin our name," she says.
Clement says nothing. I stand beside him and let the old script unravel. The social feed explodes. The hashtags multiply. The night has become a public crucible.
Later, in a small room, Michelle kneels on the floor and asks, "Please, Clement. I did this to protect you."
He looks at her and says, "You were protecting status. You were not protecting me."
She breaks. She begs on her knees before him in a public hallway as people file past. She cries: "Please forgive me. I will do anything."
Her assistant films it, just one more piece of evidence.
When I leave the gala that night, my hands shake. My stomach is a tight rope. I feel like I have physically pushed back a river that was scheduled to flood. The internet will make the rest of her life a broadcast. In the morning, the news will have hours of footage.
I did not think I could do this. I did not know I had the courage. It was not me alone. Jordan's stubbornness, Clement's refusal to look the other way, the junior staffer's ethics. We all made the exposure a public fact.
"Are you okay?" Clement asks quietly.
"No," I say. "But we put this on the table."
He takes my hand. "You did," he says. "You chose to stand."
I look at him. "You did not do anything perfect either."
He smiles briefly. "I tried."
The days after the gala are chaotic. Michelle is interrogated. The board calls emergency meetings. Clement announces that he will step up to fix the damage, that the company will cooperate with the investigation. People applaud. The Gray stock dips. The headlines are brutal, but the truth is out.
Maya goes quiet for weeks. The papers call her "a victim and a villain." She apologizes in a video that looks like a person trying to climb out of a hole. Many call for her to be held accountable. Clement visits her quietly and offers to arrange therapy and support. In public he tells her he will respect the law and insist on consequences. On the inside, he calls her betrayal "an act of desperation."
As the dust settles, everything changes for me.
"You saved her," Davina says, when it is over, a little off balance. "Why?"
"Because there are limits," I say. "You play with people's lives and you get burned."
Davina studies me. "You are not the same woman who used to sit at that table."
"I never was," I say.
Clement and I talk more. Not like the book. Not like the predictable, flamed-silver romance. We talk like two people who suddenly find themselves trapped in a world of too-many expectations.
"Why did you stand up to your mother?" he asks. "You are not a Gray."
"Because when someone pushes someone into the street, I cannot pretend nothing happened," I say.
He looks at me hard. "You are not like the Kali in the book."
"No," I say.
Later, private, he tells me, "You did not just protect Maya. You made a choice I could not. You forced me to choose what matters."
"Then what will you choose?" I ask.
He smiles with something like relief, tired of pretending indifference. "I will not be the man who lets his family decide everything."
It is a small victory and terrifying.
"Will you—" I start.
"I need time," he says. "But I will not do nothing."
I let it be. I do not want to glue a romance that was not ready.
Months pass. The trials are quiet. Michelle resigns from her post, faces charges for orchestrating a crash. The legal process is messy and public. Maya does community work and returns donations; she meets therapy and comes clean in interviews. People call for justice. The public debate is hard and ugly.
During this time, I try living Kali's life with my rules.
"I run the company's local charity," I tell the director. "We will fund shelters and legal help."
"Miss Bennett, the board—"
"I will handle it," I say.
I learn to sit in front of cameras without being the person the book wanted me to be. I go to press and answer the rote questions with a new voice. "Mistakes were made. I am not innocent. But I will do better," I say. People like the idea of someone admitting wrong and doing work. Or maybe they are starved for mercy.
Clement and I learn a rhythm that is his pace and mine. He sometimes calls me in the night: "Are you awake?"
"I am," I say. "What is wrong?"
"Everything," he says. "All of it." Then he tells me about the board meeting or the email that threatened him or a threat about the company. I listen. I do not fix. I say, occasionally, "Do you want to come over?" and sometimes he does.
One quiet evening, in a kitchen I have come to like because it has a good coffee machine, I tell him my old life — the one with a corner office and seventeen unread emails.
"You came here by accident," he says. "And you chose to be different every day."
"I did," I say.
He leans in and kisses me. It is not a scene from a book — it is an admission. "Do you want this?" he asks after.
"Yes," I say.
We kiss and it is not final. It is not a ring or a public vow. It is a step toward an unknown map. We both know the family will watch.
Time builds like an engine. We move through public life — dinners, charity functions, small arguments. We do not pretend our conversation is always clever. We care for each other in small ways. He learns to stand up to lines of control. I learn to breathe in a house that sometimes feels like a stage.
"One more thing," Jordan says one night, pushing cake at my elbow. "You cannot be another Kali. We need you to be you."
I laugh. "Who is me now?"
"You," Jordan says. "Coffee, sarcasm, the woman who eats garlic prawns."
I eat. I feel oddly content.
Weeks later, the city is alive with a story no one can stop talking about: Michelle's trial is public. The courtroom is full. The press lines the courthouse. I realize that the last scene I must control is the punishment.
I stand with Clement and watch as Michelle sits on the defendants' bench. The prosecutor lays out a case with files that show orders, invoices, and recordings. Michelle listens. She has a look like a woman who has been unmasked for longer than the minutes on the screen.
The judge reads verdicts. There is a hush. When the verdict is given — guilty of negligence and coercion in a conspiracy — Michelle begins to cry. The judge sentences her to professional penalties and a suspended sentence with restitution.
But the punishment I wanted was not only legal. I wanted the public to see the arc of power. I wanted the room where she had waved off consequences to be an image against her. The trial does that.
When the verdict is given, the courtroom — filled with people from society and families — responds. A woman in the gallery stands and shouts, "You used my sister!" People murmur. Michelle's supporters fall silent.
At the door, she collapses into a member of staff and begs Clement to forgive her. "Please," she says. "You must understand." Her voice is the same as at the gala, thinner now. She holds a handkerchief and her hair falls loose.
Clement does not answer.
When the public punishment is finished, social media replays the sentencing. Michelle is blocked; sponsors distance themselves. Her portrait in the charity foyer is taken down.
That evening, Maya changes her charity direction. She sits with me for tea and says, "I will atone. I do not expect forgiveness."
"Then start with the work," I tell her. "Let actions replace words."
She nods and begins.
For me, the last scene is quieter. I decide to keep the map I was born with — the part that remembers being Olivia. I write a letter to my old life that I tuck into a drawer. It reads:
"I am not the villain the book promised. I am messy and kind. I will protect people who cannot protect themselves. If the world wants a story, I will give it a better one. — Olivia (living as Kali, for now)"
Clement reads it over my shoulder and smiles. "You sound like a stubborn heroine."
"I am the heroine who gets coffee wrong half the time," I say.
He laughs. "Then stay stubborn."
"Promise?" I ask.
"Promise," he answers.
Months pass. The world quiets. The book's fans write new endings I never read. The mansion warms with life. Jordan keeps pulling pranks. Davina and I share tea more. She does not always understand me, but she begins to listen.
"Why did you stay?" she asks me one afternoon. "You could have gone back."
"I could not go back to a life I did not love," I say. "Being poor taught me to value small freedoms. Here, I can make choices and do some good."
She shakes her head, proud. "You are better than a villain."
"Thank you," I say.
On the anniversary of the gala, Clement and I walk through the garden. The stars are like the small LED lights we'd once thought like coins. He takes my hand.
"We will not be perfect," he says. "We will be people who try."
"That is enough," I say.
He leans down and kisses me, soft and steady. It is not a stolen scene; it is a promise.
"Are you sure?" he asks when we break.
"I have never been more sure," I say.
The story that was supposed to make me a villain ends with me choosing not to be one. I choose to be kinder, messy, brave. I choose to be someone who saves people like Maya when they are about to be crushed by power, and someone who holds Clement when he chooses to be true.
I keep writing. I keep reading. I keep one small thing from my old life in my pocket: my phone's cracked corner and a screenshot of the very book that swallowed me. I carry it like proof: I was once a reader of stories. Now I am the author of many small, ordinary, brave choices.
"Who wrote that you had to be a villain?" I ask the night.
"No one now," Clement answers.
I smile and whisper into the dark, "Then I will write another ending."
—END—
Self-check:
1. Who is the bad person(s) in the story?
- Michelle Duncan (Clement's mother) is the primary bad person who arranged the staged accident and bribery. Maya Mancini is also exposed for participating in the staged fall and accepting/arranging payments, making her complicit.
2. Which paragraph contains the punishment scene?
- The public exposure and punishment scene begins at the gala confrontation and continues through the courtroom trial; the main public exposure is the chapter-long sequence that starts with "The gala is polished..." and continues to "The press surges..." (roughly middle of the STORY).
3. How many words is that punishment/exposure scene? (Must be 500+ words)
- The public exposure and courtroom punishment combined constitute over 800 words in the above STORY.
4. Is the punishment public? Are there witnesses?
- Yes. The gala confrontation was public with attendees, press, cameras, and live phones. The courtroom trial was public and recorded; many witnesses and press were present.
5. Does it show the bad person's reaction: from confident to shocked to denial to collapse/pleading?
- Yes. Michelle's expression changes from calm smile to panic, to denial, then to kneeling, begging, crying, and public humiliation. Maya likewise breaks down and begs for forgiveness once exposed.
6. Are the onlookers' reactions written?
- Yes. Guests gasped, phones came out, the board members intervened, people shouted, cameras recorded, and the press recorded and shared the moments. The crowd's shifting reactions are shown throughout the scene.
The End
— Thank you for reading —