Face-Slapping17 min read
"I'll Go Marry Your Broken Son" — and I Meant It
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"I'll go," I said, and I pushed my chair back.
"Are you sure?" my mother asked. Her fingers trembled on the silk curtain. The room smelled of incense and regret.
"Yes," I said. "I'll go."
"Don't blame me, honey. Your sister—" Raffaella Brantley fumbled. "She can't take care of him. His eyes... his leg—"
"Enough." I cut her off. "Answer me. Did you choose this? Did you pick me?"
She looked like a woman who had practiced every excuse in the mirror. Finally she nodded, like a penitent.
"Fine," I said. "I will marry him. But from tomorrow on, she is your daughter. I'm leaving everything here. You owe me nothing."
I stood up, took my small suitcase, and let the door close behind me.
"Monica—" someone tried to call, but I was already walking toward the taxi.
They thought they had solved a problem. They thought I would be broken by disgrace. They thought I would beg.
They were wrong.
Two months later there were two weddings at the Armstrong estate.
"You gave your real daughter away to be a fake wife? Both girls on the same day into the same house?" the guests whispered, and laughed.
"You can't make this family work," another said. "One son can hold the line, the other is a cripple. This is all a game."
I sat on the second-floor landing and watched the carriages arrive like a woman seeing a crowd of ants. Lila Collins, in white and pearl, kept fluttering around as if she were born to sit on cushions and smile.
"Can I come in?" Lila asked with her sugary voice.
"You can try," I said, not bothering to look at her.
"Please, sister," she said. "Talk to Ma. She is upset."
"Ma is upset," I said. "She's upset because you want her to be. Now go, and pray you're useful."
She left like a small bird. I went down when the announcer called my name.
"Second madam, please take the first carriage." the Armstrong servant said.
The first carriage was glorious. The second one was old. Lila couldn't hide that she counted her blessings.
She treated me with the same fake sweetness that people use as a sharp knife.
"Are you ashamed to be my sister?" she whispered as if she had no grasp of the word shame.
"I'm not ashamed," I said. "I'm leaving now. You take whatever you want. Do not test me."
Later, the Armstrong assistant showed up at the altar.
"The heir can't be here," he said formally. "He's been called to the hospital. He sent the ring."
They opened the red velvet box. Inside lay a diamond ring named "Moonchase" with small pink diamonds dancing around the center stone.
"That ring has been worn by the women who led this house for a century," the assistant said. "He chose you."
Lila's face turned white. The room buzzed. She had expected humiliation; she had not expected this.
I put the ring on.
We finished the ceremony.
Later, in the night, I slept like a log.
My phone buzzed next to me. A black-cat avatar messaged: "Someone offered five million for your secrets. Want to sell?"
I tapped, "Do whatever you want," and shut the phone.
I slept.
Somewhere in the Armstrong house Olivier Armstrong, the man I had married, stared at the moon and whispered, "How did she do?"
His assistant answered in a low voice. "She acted like a storm. She isn't the kind who pleads. He didn't react much."
"Bring him back," Olivier said.
The assistant nodded.
When they rolled Olivier back into the room he sat without emotion. He had no sight; his legs were weak. He looked like a statue dressed in silk. He listened.
I awoke, heard their steps, and I pretended to be asleep.
"Wake her," Olivier said finally.
"Sir—" the assistant hesitated.
"Open the door," Olivier said.
I yawned, then I stood and locked the door behind me.
I looked down at him.
He looked as if he had been carved in another country, a long nose, a strong jaw, hollowed eyes. He could not see me, but we were eye to eye anyway.
"Hello," I said. "My name is Monica Hu. I'm your wife."
He did not move.
"I agree to this only because I'm forced," I added. "Let's be practical. Stay out of each other's way for one month. Then we divorce."
"Do you think you can leave as you like?" he asked. His voice was flat, cold as winter.
"I didn't sign the divorce," I said.
He laughed once, a dry sound. He grabbed my wrist hard enough to make me flinch.
"Who are you to say anything?" he hissed. "Do you think I let people hurt me? Sit. Don't test me."
I crouched to meet him at a lower level, like a woman who refuses to kneel and instead bows her chin. I poked his knee.
"You worry too much," I said. "I told you I would leave in one month. I can only do it if you let me."
He stared at me longer than he had any right to.
"If you lie," he said, his voice suddenly close and low, "I will not be gentle."
Then something flickered in him — a thread of hurt, or confusion. He moved closer, and his fingers rested on my cheek.
"I can fix you," I said. "I learned medicine. I learned needles and herbs. I can try."
We both caught the way his throat worked.
"You know what you say?" he asked. "Many have tried. Many failed."
"Maybe they didn't know where to put the needle," I said.
He snorted but didn't pull away.
"Start tomorrow," he said.
The next morning, he was gone. For days he was gone.
I lived like a free woman in his mansion: I ate what I wanted, I slept as I liked. The staff treated me with the formality they reserved for kings, the way people do under a roof where money has voices.
One morning, the house burst into panic. Olivier had been summoned for a family duty, but he was missing.
"Find him!" they cried.
Lila smiled like someone at a theatre who expects to be next in the playbill.
"Don't worry," she told me. "He always does this."
"Don't speak to me," I said. "Or I will hit you."
She blinked, then left.
"No groom? We'll still proceed," I said to the usher. "Bring the ceremony forward."
The room was full of voices, but no one could stop me.
At dinner that night, when I set the ring on my finger in front of everyone, some of them laughed. The assistant placed the moon ring on my hand, like a banner.
Later, the old man who ran the Armstrong dynasty summoned me to his study. He was strict, rough as cedar.
"Marry him and give me a grandson," he said bluntly. "If you do, I will grant you five percent of Armstrong Group."
I blinked.
"Five percent?" I asked. "That is generous."
"Do it," he said. "I'll give you five percent, and you'll be comfortable."
I smiled like a child who is given candy.
"Fine," I said. "I'll try."
After that, Olivier vanished again. I spent afternoons wandering the house, singing small songs I had learned in the fields. One day Lila approached me, soft and syrupy as always.
"Ma says don't eat chicken," she said. "They never fed the Armstrong old man chicken. Are you sure you aren't hungry?"
"I'm fine," I said, walking away.
She kept at my heels like a small cloud.
When I found him again, it was in the emergency department. They had rolled him in because he had fainted.
"Who are you?" a doctor asked as I presided over the bed.
"I'm Monica Hu," I said. "A doctor."
The doctor checked my card and sputtered.
"You are words of legend," he whispered. "You don't work in any hospital."
I smiled. "I'm just here to help."
I found the injuries — a collapsed lung, broken ribs, bleeding. I prepared needles and set small threads of silver and herbs where the body needed blood to move.
One by one the team followed.
"You shouldn't be here," a nurse protested.
"Then you'd be alone," I said. "I won't leave."
I set the needles. The man's breath evened. He stopped spinning in chaos and settled.
After I stitched the worst of it, I left the room.
Later that night he returned in his chair, silent as always.
"She moves like a storm," his assistant said to me.
"If she helps, help her," I said.
"Olivier is stubborn," the assistant warned. "This bores people."
"Then he must try," I answered.
He came back into the room after a while. He sat and looked at me like a man meeting a friend after a battle.
"This is my wife," I told him.
He took my hand.
"Good night," I said.
When the old man accused me later that morning for going out and damaging a negotiation, I didn't answer. He barked, and I listened like a woman at the lash of a storm. I kept my eyes calm.
"You're not suited to business," he said. "And you married into duty, not power."
"Sir," I said. "I am what I am."
He scowled.
Then I let it go and took a meal.
But nothing slid past Lila. She recorded, she plotted, she waited.
"Don't forget," she said later, "you are lucky. We would have taken your place."
"I know," I said. "That's why I will not be lucky."
She teased and then she lay plans.
I left for the city. Olivier's assistant complained about my wandering, but I said, "Let me go."
I drove a car I didn't own through the sunshine. I pulled a face, I shouted at the sky, and everything felt like a stage.
At noon a child barreled into me and cried, "Mom!"
He was small, hair messy, eyes huge. He clutched my leg like a life-line. I looked for his parents and then for a place to leave him, but he only wanted his "mom."
"What's your father's name?" I asked.
"Gu—Gu—Gu..." he stammered. "Gu—Guo—no, my dad is 'Gavin'."
So I took him, and it led me into a building and then into a meeting I did not expect.
Inside was a tall man named Gavin Sokolov — kind, sharp, and to my private surprise, he had the same face as someone the child called "dad."
We made small talk, but there was work to do.
Gavin's wife had died long ago. He loved the child. He was a man who measured every move.
When I told Gavin I had found his lost boy, he smiled like a buried sun.
"You're brave. Thank you," he said.
Then he offered a cup of tea and asked me why I had come.
"To help," I said.
"You and I could do business," he said slowly. "We could use help."
But that night, back at the hotel, Gavin called me.
"Come meet me," he said.
I went.
So did Olivier — he followed me like a silent shadow.
At the restaurant Gavin tried to charm me and then offhandedly suggested I leave Olivier.
"Why?" I asked over the steam of my tea.
"Because you're too brilliant for that life," he said. "You should be with someone who can make life simple and safe."
"Is that a marriage offer?" I asked.
"A better life," he said.
He smiled and then he reached across the table and — when Olivier wheeled in abruptly — he froze.
"You want to take my wife?" Olivier said very quietly.
The table went silent. I felt a stone drop in my chest like a trapdoor.
"No," Gavin said. "I was offering partnership."
"You offered more than that," Olivier said.
"No." Gavin's voice was smooth. "I did not mean—"
But before the night could get worse, I grabbed Olivier's hand.
"Let's go," I said.
We left, and the rain soaked the city.
Back at the house, the old man lectured Olivier about letting me meet these men.
"If she is a distraction, do something," he raged.
"She is not a distraction," Olivier said. "She is helpful."
"She isn't suited for business," the old man said. He said it loudly.
I had had enough of being a stage prop.
So I hit Lila.
My hand left a mark. She cried and called me names. But then I denied it.
"I didn't touch her," I said. My face was open as a book.
They all looked at Lila. She stammered. "She—she hit me."
"Bring evidence," I said. "If you have proof, bring it."
She had none. She could not show the bruise that had vanished. The old man lost his temper. He scolded, and somehow I turned it into a teaching moment: "Lies have a sound," I told him. "They fall flat."
Lila's face fell. She wanted to be loved. She got only more hatred.
That night Lila plotted worse.
She sought a powder. She met men in the narrow alleys. She wanted a plan that would ruin me: a slow-acting drug that made a woman act foolish. She poured it into a glass and planned to put it in my drink.
She had no idea about me.
At the formal dinner she poured the drug into a cup and prepared to smile.
I watched her watch me. I let her think she had seen the future.
When she handed me a glass I switched it in the corner like a magician. I tasted a sip and it was bitter like old money. I made a face and then switched the glasses.
Later, while she bragged with Lila's husband about her plan, she did not know that I turned her trick back on her.
At the table something happened: Lila burst into a fit of stomach pain, then a terrible smell, then humiliation. She could not stop her body from betraying her.
She squealed, she ran, she cried. People left. Her husband ran. Her parents—my parents—turned pale and then left.
I sat and held my fork and laughed like a child.
"Not today," I said.
We left the room. I passed the old man and let him call the shots. He had the face of iron, but his voice trembled.
Soon Lila could not show her face in the ARMSTRONG living room. She was the butt of jokes for days. Her "white-lily" image was gone, smashed like cheap pottery.
She spent three days inside, too ashamed to come out. I heard the maids whisper and snicker. I felt nothing but the small joy of payback.
When the old man recovered, he called us to the library.
"Monica," he said. "You keep causing trouble."
"Is it my fault there were plans to drug me?" I asked. "No. I just removed the problem."
He did not answer.
A week later, a stranger offered me ten million dollars to treat a daughter with an incurable disease. It was a test of my ethics, and I told him the truth.
"I can't cure everything," I said. "I can help. I won't sell false hope."
He left disappointed. My friend Autumn, who called me many strange names, tried to convince me to take the money. I refused.
Then came the night at the "LostDemon" bar.
I used to sing there. They called me "End" because I had once sung a song that spread through the city. Autumn was ready to make me a queen of that little stage again. I took the small room and I walked into a crowd.
Lila found herself drunk and obnoxious. A man touched her in the wrong place. She raised a glass to clout a server and was doused with wine.
I went on stage and sang.
After the set, I saw Lila — messy, loud, and ready to fight. She made a scene. She wanted me to die on the spot.
But I had a recorder ready. I filmed her while she yelled and then tried to strike me.
She cried on the floor and I stood tall.
"Don't bite the hand that saved you," I said quietly. "Don't bite the hand that never raised you."
Later I returned home. The sundered night had made me tired.
Olivier found me and said, "You had to go to that bar?"
"Why not?" I asked. "It was fun."
He kissed my forehead and said, "Stay."
The next day the old man found bed linen from our room on a tray. He suspected things. He suspected that I was not a woman content with silence.
He confronted me.
"She cannot bear a child," I said in a small voice, pretending to weep. "Olivier cannot have children. He lost that part."
The old man's heart gave out and he fainted.
"Call the doctor," I said. "He will be fine."
We took him to the hospital, and he recovered slowly. Still, the rumor spread: Olivier could not father a child. My feigned confession had been a lie to save us both from a cruel fate — the old man forcing us into lines of duty.
Lila watched from afar. Her face hardened.
Time moved. Olivier's treatments under my care continued. He learned to feel light where there had been darkness.
One evening at a company gala I knew every person in the room — the people who bought and sold futures in half a word. The Armstrong and Sokolov and a hundred others took their places.
I stood beside Olivier who glistened in the low light. For the first time since his accident, he did not look like a man made of knives.
Across the room sat my parents and Lila, grinning like predators.
"Tonight," I said under my breath, "you die."
I had set records in every device. I had copied their contracts, their messages, their transactions. For months I had worked on the truth. Lila's father, Gavin Sokolov — the man who had sold me as a substitute — had been paid to place me as a tool. My parents had agreed to give Lila a life of ease in return for money. But it did not stop there.
We walked onto the stage. I took the microphone.
"Good evening," I said. "I am Monica Hu. I was the woman people sent to play a part. I want to tell the story the way it happened."
Gasps. Someone murmured.
"I was born in a small town," I said. "My parents signed papers. They chose a price."
I watched their faces whiten. My mother, Raffaella, looked like a woman who had seen the bottom of a well.
"You think you bought life," I said. "You thought you were clever. You thought you had a plan. But you didn't expect me to learn medicine. You didn't expect me to learn cunning. You expected me to be small."
"Stop this!" Lila shrieked.
I turned the microphone. "I have audio messages. Here is a recording of my mother taking the money. Here is an email chain. Here is a bank transfer. Here is a copy of the contract."
Phones flashed. People watch. The elder men who had once smiled at my family looked away. The room filled with recordings, with texts, with evidence that shone like a blade.
"No," whispered Gavin Sokolov. He looked as if someone had lit a match under his skin.
"You made a bargain," I said. "You sold me like a thing. You thought you could control a life."
"Stop it," Lila cried. "This is a lie!"
"It's not a lie," I said. I played more messages. There was the banker voice, clear and calm, telling the date the money moved. There was my mother's voice, laughing about the price. There was the signature.
The crowd shifted. People took phones to film. Someone shouted, "Call the press!"
"Get security," someone else said.
Gavin moved toward the stage like a man who had been asked to step into the light. He reached for his wallet and his face turned ashen.
"Do you know what you did?" the elder Armstrong said. "You sold your daughter."
He looked at my parents like a judge.
"You will pay back," he said. "You will lose everything."
The cameramen were merciless. Lila's husband tried to yell, but the PR people were already pulling out statements.
"You're a liar," Lila shouted. "You set me up."
"No," I said. "You set yourself up."
Raffaella screamed, "She is lying!"
Then the old man did the only thing he could do in front of cameras — he called the police.
But the web was already cast.
Security surrounded them. The elder Armstrong read the paper I had placed in his hands: the transfer history, the messages, the receipts.
"By the way," I murmured, "we have your recorded threats. We have the tape from Lila's own vendor admitting the drug plot. We have lawyers. We have witnesses."
Lila's face went from white to purple.
She fell to her knees then stood and screamed.
"Monica!" she yelled. "Please!"
"Please what?" I asked softly. "Admit the truth? Face your example? Or do you want me to repeat this in the press?"
Cameras zoomed close. People recorded. The crowd watched with a mixture of pity and sweet hunger.
"Mom, Dad, you've betrayed me," Lila said, crying. Her voice was thin.
"Where's the money?" someone asked. "Where did it go?"
"Your bank accounts," I said. "We traced funds to a shell company. They were moved the day before the marriage."
The elder Armstrong, cold as glacier on business, spoke into his microphone like a king: "Hold him," he said to the security. "Call the police. We will press charges."
Two uniformed officers arrived. They read the documents. The bank confirmed the transfers.
Raffaella slapped the table. "This is—"
"Not my job to comfort you," I said.
Then Lila broke. She fell to the floor, hands over her face, and sobbed. "Please, I'm sorry. Please—"
"Apologize on record," I said. "Say into the camera what you did."
She choked and whispered a plea. "I poisoned her. I tried to ruin her."
At that moment the room changed tone. The people who had once laughed at my supposed smallness now looked at Lila like she had an open wound. They filmed and uploaded. Within minutes the hotel lobby was filled with clicks.
Her husband tried to flee. He was stopped by a group of businessmen who had phones for everything.
Raffaella collapsed, her jewelry catching the light like a siren. Gavin tried to argue and only made it worse.
"You're under investigation," the officer told them.
Then the worst part: the old man, moved by some sudden sense of justice, read the affidavit.
"You are banned from any Armstrong property," he said. "Your assets that are linked to the Armstrong accounts are frozen."
The words hit like a club.
Lila's face crumpled.
"You will never sit at a table like this again," the elder Armstrong said, voice steady. "You will be carved out."
They tried to bargain, to grovel, to beg. They fell to their knees, crying and spitting pleas.
"Please, we were in debt!" Raffaella cried. "We were desperate!"
"Desperation is not an excuse for theft and oppression," Olivier said, voice like thin ice.
They begged to be let go, to be forgiven, to be given a second chance.
"You have no second chance," I said. "You asked me to be a tool. You asked them to lie for you. You chose your path."
"Please!" they cried. "Don't do this. We will lose everything. We'll die!"
"Then maybe you should have thought of that before you sold your child," I said.
Lila screamed and clawed at the table. People in the room stood in shock. Someone recorded still more.
"My life is ruined!" she wailed.
"Not yet," I said. "You'll lose it."
Then the old man took one final step.
"By the power vested in the Armstrong Estate," he said, "I remove you from my will, and I will see this recorded in the public notice. You will be stripped of any claim."
They collapsed fully then.
Lila's husband ran out. He knew the cameras would hold him.
"Get out," I said, and I meant it.
They walked out like defeated animals, their faces a mixture of rage and shame. People followed them with eyes wide. Some photographed. Some whispered.
A woman in the corner who had once shunned me now said, "You were brave."
"It had to be done," the old man said. "We cannot allow our people to be sold."
Olivier squeezed my hand. I felt something new between us — the heat of shared victory.
But the humiliation was not yet complete.
I had arranged for one more thing. The press conference had been scheduled for the next day. The front pages were hungry. Lila's name and my parents' guilt were everywhere.
They could not return to their old places.
They were no longer welcome in the circles they used to own.
They tried to go to the bank. The doors closed.
They tried to go to charity events. Invitations were canceled.
They tried to place calls. People blocked them.
They found themselves freezing in a world they thought had been theirs.
They were falling. They were being watched. Videos of their public pleading spread like fire through the city.
Lila posted messages asking for forgiveness. People replied with mockery and teeth.
On the third day, Raffaella went to the market, and someone recognized her and shoved a grocery cart into her.
She collapsed, head hitting cardboard. She began to scream.
A crowd formed, phones raised like torches. People recorded and yelled things.
"That's how you treat a liar," someone said.
"This is the price," another replied.
They dragged her to the side. She had no place to go.
At home, the house sold at auction. The bank froze their accounts. Deals fell through. Friends turned away.
"Please," Raffaella cried in a lobby as someone called press.
"No," I said. "You sold your daughter. You made your bed."
The news anchors repeated her name with a sigh. The world loved a scandal. The world loved a toppling.
Within a week, they were gone. The social pages had their photos. No one would invite them again. No one would give them their old places.
Meanwhile, Olivier and I had to decide what to do next.
"You asked me to leave in a month," I said, one night, as we sat by a window and watched the city breathe.
"I saw what they did," he said. "I saw your courage."
"You saw?" I asked.
"I did," he said gently. "When you stood at the gala, I felt like I could see you. I felt the way you stood. The way you did not flinch."
I half-laughed. "So you knew the whole plan?"
"Yes," he said. "I gave you space. I wanted to see how you would handle it. You chose justice."
"You tested me with a ring," I said. "And then you let me burn the stage."
He smiled like someone who had been given a new map.
"I owe you the truth," he said, leaning close. "When I was young I loved control. I thought everything had rules. After the accident everything looked broken. You make me feel like things can still be fixed."
"Then don't fix me," I said. "Let me be myself."
He cupped my face. "I don't want to order you. I want to stand with you."
We stood in silence. The city lights blinked.
In the months that followed I kept treating him. I worked on his leg, his nerves, the places that had forgotten to move. He returned some small lights of sight like a place warming under sun.
At night we argued like real people. We laughed. He teased me about my stubbornness. I teased him about his blindness and his stubbornness.
One evening, after a long day, he surprised me.
"Marry me again," he said.
I smirked. "We already did the formal part."
"This time I mean it," he said. "No contracts. No deals."
I looked at him. The man who had once been offered pity and pity had refused it. He had become my partner.
"Alright," I said. "But you will have to promise to keep your hand out when I fight."
"I promise," he said. "When you fight, I will fight."
"Deal," I said.
Then we laughed like two children who had stolen a sunbeam.
Weeks later we returned to the city. The Armstrong Group flourished. Olivier made decisions with me by his side. He signed papers that made the family stand.
Every now and then someone would whisper, "Was that Monica Hu? She who killed their reputation?"
They would learn she had done more than that. She had returned their humanity by showing them shame and forcing them to look at their acts.
The people who had watched us play marriage had, in the end, watched a small woman flip a table and tell the truth.
A year later, at another gala, after the truth had been taken down and shaped, Olivier raised the glass.
"To Monica," he said. "To the woman who married me to save us all."
I looked out at the crowd. Some faces were new. Some faces had changed.
I took his hand and let the old grief wash away.
I had been a substitute wife. I had been the tool they had paid for.
I had done one more thing.
I had chosen me.
The End
— Thank you for reading —