Revenge10 min read
"My Clothes, I'll Take Off Myself"
ButterPicks296 views
"I can't breathe," I said, though the room smelled like smoke and alcohol and someone else's success.
"You're overreacting," Tyler Reynolds laughed, his voice thick with cheap whiskey. "Relax. It's all in good fun."
I forced a smile I didn't feel. "Mr. Reynolds, I really should—"
"Save it," he cut me off and grabbed my wrist. "You fly in from overseas and act so innocent. Come on, Emilia. Don't be that frozen statue."
"Let go of me," I said.
He tightened his grip, and his hands moved up my back, then lower, with the confidence of a man used to getting what he wanted. Five large men, his guards, lined the edges of the private room like trophies. The music and laughter beyond the tinted glass blurred into one endless roar.
"You're being dramatic," Tyler said, smelling the faint lemon perfume at my throat. "You should be grateful for chances. We don't give chances to everyone."
"I said let go," I repeated. The words were quieter. The bottle I had kept close—an empty prop left on the small table—sat within reach.
He moved in and tried to kiss my ear. I slapped him.
The slap landed harder than I'd planned. He recoiled, more shocked than hurt, and for the first time I saw the hesitation under his arrogance. But the guards closed in.
"Take her down," Tyler barked.
"Don't," I cried, picking up the half-empty bottle. "Don't come closer."
"You're bluffing," one guard said.
"You don't know what I'm capable of," I said. "You don't know anything about me."
A hand took the bottle from me mid-reach. "Six big men and you still try to play hero with a bottle," a man's voice said behind me, amused and cool. "Pathetic."
"I knew you'd come," Tyler hissed. "Cameron—stay—this isn't your place."
"Maybe it's exactly my place." Cameron Morin's voice was quiet but the room fell silent like a held breath. He stepped in, hair a little messy, a suit that had missed the crease of travel, and something icy in his eyes. He moved like someone who had learned to take what he wanted on his own terms.
"Cameron," I said, relief and a hot shame passing together.
"Get your men away," he commanded.
Tyler's bravado snapped like a brittle twig. "Cameron, you don't want to—"
"Watch me," Cameron said. He reached for the half bottle and smashed it into the table near Tyler's head. Glass and red wine flew. "You touch her again and I will make you regret it."
Tyler screamed and reached for his crotch as if pain could steel courage back. Cameron didn't stop. He shoved him to the ground, a motion so fast I didn't know whether it was fury or a design move I had seen before: precise, brutal, controlled.
"Cameron, stop!" I cried. "That's enough."
He looked at me like I'd said a private word. He didn't stop until Tyler was on his knees, clutching at his bruised face. People in the main room had started to gather outside the glass. Phones came up like tiny suns. A security guard called the police.
"I'm taking her away," Cameron said, pulling me toward the door. "You're safe."
"Thank you," I said. "For everything."
He didn't smile, not really. He only hooked two fingers into the strap of my bag and let me breathe. That night, in the car headed to the empty parking lot, he put two wine bottles in the trash and drove me home as if nothing had happened.
The next morning, the city learned a different thing.
"Tyler Reynolds is under investigation," the headline screamed across the news feed. "Prominent businessman accused of sexual assault; multiple victims come forward." The whole office buzzed. Coworkers whispered, printers paused. Camila Fleming smirked across the desk, enjoying the ripple of ruin.
"Did you tell them?" she asked me, loud enough for three other desks to listen.
"I did what I had to," I said.
"Sure, sure," she said. "You're so brave, Emilia. Or so clever."
"Don't," I said. "Don't taunt a person who is already drowning."
Weeks passed. The more public Tyler's indictment became, the louder the rumor mill grew. I kept my head down, wrote my articles, learned to breathe under the weight of cameras that wanted my face paired with the word 'survivor.' Cameron was always there, a shadow at the edge of every frame that featured me. He smiled less than the press wanted.
"You're too quiet," he told me once, in the parking garage after a late-night deadline.
"I'm still doing my job," I said.
"I don't like them saying we owe them anything," he said. "I don't like them pretending to be outraged now, then emailing him two weeks ago."
"I don't either," I said. "But this will pass. People will forget and move on. I won't."
"Then don't give them the luxury of forgetfulness," he said.
Cameron had a way of saying things that sounded like threats and promises at the same time. He could be a storm contained, and when he smiled, he broke the surface of the ice. That smile was rare. The first time I saw him smile at me like that, in the middle of the chaos, I felt something like warmth creep back into my chest.
"Why did you come?" I asked him once. "Why risk your name?"
"I don't like bullies," he said. "And I don't like liars."
"That's not an answer."
"Maybe I wanted to see if you were okay," he said. "Maybe I don't like imagining you with anyone else's hands on you."
He leaned in, surprised the breath left me. He took my hands and thumbed them like he was memorizing. "Tell me when it hurts," he said. "I'll make it stop."
"Promise me something," I whispered, stupidity popping out at the worst moment. "Promise you won't hurt me."
He laughed softly. "I won't hurt you," he said. "Only those who deserve it."
I had learned to live in halves: the person I was at work—clean lines, neat prose—and the person in private who had to glue herself back together every time her world threatened to snap. Cameron was the one man who saw the shards and still invited me to stand in the light.
He had ways of being small and grand at the same time. He would take my coat off when a draft moved through the newsroom, an action so private that the whole room noticed. Once, in the elevator, when an idea of mine failed and I started to cry, he shrugged his jacket off and wrapped it around my shoulders.
"You don't have to do everything by yourself," he said.
"I don't want you to pity me," I protested, embarrassed.
"It's not pity." He kissed the top of my head. "It's protection."
The story about Tyler exploded. The prosecutors called a press conference and invited the city. Cameras lined the courthouse steps like rows of black teeth.
"This evening," Cameron said to me in a quiet tone before I went on to give my statement, "you're not alone. Come on stage. Tell them everything."
"I can do this," I said, but my legs trembled.
"You can," he said. "And when they want to shame you, you'll tell them how it feels to reclaim your clothes, your voice, your life."
When I walked out under the white lights, the microphone felt heavy. My fingers shook. The crowd around the worldwide feed was a living thing—voices, phones, flashes.
"Emilia Lindstrom," the prosecutor began, "will read a statement."
I breathed.
"This is my statement," I said. "He tried to make me take off what I was wearing. He tried to make choices for me. He made me frightened. But I didn't let him take me. I chose to fight. I chose to live."
"You chose rightly," a woman behind me whispered. Cameras focused. The crowd murmured. Tyler sat in the back with his lawyer, his face ashen.
After my statement, the prosecutor brought another victim forward, and then another. A video montage of phone calls and private messages was played—Tyler's voice lecherous, his apologies false. Then Cameron stood and walked to the podium.
"I know people who try to destroy what others have built," he said. "I also know the difference between strength and cruelty."
He pressed a button. Live, the press screen showed a private booking log, names tied to table numbers and timestamps—the places Tyler had arranged, the women he'd chosen. He played an audio of Tyler's voice leaving a voicemail to a young intern, demanding she attend a "meeting."
Tyler's confident look melted into panic. The room watched him like a fish in a glass bowl. Phones rose; someone began to clap. The prosecutor announced fresh charges. The cameras pummelled every expression in slow motion.
"You're done," Cameron told Tyler as we walked out into the bright air. "People saw you for what you are."
Tyler's eyes bulged. He tried to shout back something about money and lawyers, but the crowd pressed in, crying "shame" and "monster." The tabloids would have a field day, and that day the field day was deserved.
Two weeks later, the real public punishment happened.
They called it a hearing. The city arranged a victims' panel at the public square—on the stage, under the billboard-sized screen that rose behind the courthouse. It became a vigil and a verdict: a living condemnation in front of everyone. It was not a courtroom sentence but a societal one. The people who had once dined with Tyler and laughed at his jokes now stood and told the world what he had done.
"Do you remember the day he touched you?" the moderator asked the first woman.
She nodded. "I remember everything. I remember the wine, the laugh, the smell of cigarette. I remember my name on his phone."
"Why did you stay silent?" someone asked.
"Fear," she said. "I had a mortgage. I had a life to lose."
"You're safe now," someone in the crowd called.
Tyler sat at stage right, shrink-wrapped in a suit from better days. His publicist clung to his jacket like a scarf. I had footage of Tyler's hidden camera recordings; the prosecutor played them one by one. The screen behind Tyler filled with small windows—each a woman’s tear-streaked face, each a voice reading a text Tyler had sent demanding compliance.
"You're watching evidence of patterns," Cameron said into the microphone, and the feed cut to Tyler's own words, recorded without his knowledge: "You know what I think you'll do for me," Tyler had said in one message. "Don't make me lose my patience."
When my turn came, I walked up the steps in a dress I had chosen myself. "This is where he wanted me to leave my dignity," I told the crowd. "This is where he wanted choices for me. I will speak my truth."
I told everything again. I told how he had laughed, how the guards had closed in, how the bottle had tasted like metal in my throat and like freedom when I lifted it. I described my fear. I described the men who had watched and the men who had turned away. I described the endless small cruelties that made a life smaller each day.
"You're a liar," Tyler shouted at one point, voice raw. "You're all lying."
"Prove it," someone shouted back. "Prove that you didn't do it."
He pleaded with a calm that was too old for the room. "It's a misunderstanding," he said, his tone flipping from bravado to whine. "She misread me. She tried to ruin me."
"Do you see his face?" Cameron asked, voice steady. "First he blames them. Then himself. Then the city. Then me. It's always someone else's fault."
"How do you feel now?" the moderator asked Tyler. "Being called before the city?"
Tyler's face changed in stages. At first he was defiant. Then he blinked. Then his tone cracked. He looked toward the press, then toward faces of women who had stood up—some in shaky suits, others in work aprons. The crowd's reaction moved from polite curiosity to sharp disdain.
"You're finished," a woman yelled.
"Please," Tyler said suddenly, collapsing into a softened voice. He looked smaller than his lawyers had ever let him be. He begged, then denied, then begged again. He tried to plead. He tried to buy people back with promises. "I'll give you money," he said. "I'll donate—"
"Not enough," someone said.
Someone else stood and read an email Tyler had once sent, boasting about the night, cold and proud. The crowd listened and then laughed at his attempt at humbling himself. People took photos. A few cheered. Others cried. My phone lit up with messages of support. The city had made him public property for the day and the verdict was social and loud: complete shaming.
Tyler's composure fractured in layers: pride, denial, rage, pleading. He tried to call his lawyer. People in the crowd recorded him with phones: the act of watching had become the act of punishment. He crumpled, finally, and for a long time he sat with his head buried in his hands as cameras captured every fold.
"This is what public justice looks like," Cameron whispered to me. "Not only the law but the people. Not only the court but the world."
"Is that what you wanted?" I asked him.
"I wanted them to see him for what he is," he said. "I wanted you to be free of his shadow."
The crowd began to chant the names of foundations, the names of shelters, the names of the city's women who had stood up. Tyler's name was not echoed back in the same way. He had become a subject of scorn.
When it ended, Tyler walked out alone, with no car waiting at the curb. The drivers who had once opened doors for him now turned away. No one volunteered a hand. He tried to speak, "I didn't—" but the microphone was taken away by the organizer. He looked straight at me once, eyes wet with anger and something like fear, and said: "Emilia, you won't get away with this."
I looked back and said, "I already have."
The rest was a slow unspooling. Prosecutors added charges as more women filed statements. Tyler's businesses began to leak contracts and board members distanced themselves. He lost partnerships, club memberships, finally the invitations. The city had a way of consuming men like him: not only through law, but through loss of social oxygen. This was the punishment that the city and the women together enacted—long, relentless, and public.
At work, Camila Fleming tried to smile at me after Tyler's fall. "You got what you wanted," she said.
"You helped," I corrected.
"Same thing," she said.
"No," I said. "Different."
She sighed. "So what now?"
"Now I work," I said. "Now I write. Now I keep my own clothes on."
Cameron held me later that night in the quiet of the house he loved: a narrow book-lined room with a window that cracked with the sound of the sea. "You could have told me to go away," he said, voice soft in the dark.
"Why would I?" I said. "You're the one who took the bottle."
"I could have saved you any number of ways," he said. "What I did was crude. I could have left it to lawyers."
"You saved me," I said. "And then you stood in front of a mic."
He laughed like it hurt. "I stand in front of a lot of things for you."
"You stood when I couldn't," I said.
He searched my face. "Say one thing to me right now."
"What?"
"Say the thing you do when you mean it."
"My clothes, I'll take off myself," I said.
He smiled with a breath that felt newly his. "Then stay," he whispered. "Stay with me. Let me be the person you come home to."
"Why would you want to be?"
"Because I like you," he said. "Because I like watching you read and watching you laugh and ruffling your hair and—" He leaned in and kissed me, gentle and certain.
My chest stuttered. It was not perfect and it never would be, but his touch had the right claim: gentle, not ownership. He held me like a person holding a candle in wind; not to burn it, but to shelter it.
There are dark nights and quick storms. There are men who try to make choices for you. There are days when the world seems set on erasing you. I learned to speak into microphones. I learned to print my own truths. I learned that the hardest choices are to stay and to fight in the same breath. I learned that rescue can be messy and love complicated, and that you can still walk away from everything to stand on your own.
When people asked me later—"How did you survive?"—I would say, "I kept my hands. I kept my voice. And I chose the people who helped me keep them."
Cameron would squeeze my fingers and say, "I kept my promise. I stayed."
And when they'd ask about the moment that changed everything, I would go quiet and smile and say in the smallest voice, "My clothes, I'll take off myself."
The End
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