Revenge10 min read
My Second Life, a Viral Frame, and the System That Wouldn't Let Me Lose
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I woke to a woman's shouting and the smell of cheap perfume and spilled wine.
"Open the door! If you've got the gall to sleep with my son, at least have the decency to open up!" she screamed.
I blinked at the ceiling, my head pounding in a way that said someone had rearranged my insides overnight. A man—stiff, shirt half unbuttoned—was sprawled on the bed beside me, his face pale and still. My hand found the thin sheet and I curled it around myself.
"Who—" I started.
"Wake up!" I slapped his face. "Wake up, West!"
He didn't move. His skin smelled like paint thinner and clumsy apologies.
People hammered the door from the hallway. Footsteps. Voices. "She's in there! Open up!"
I swallowed. I—Cloe Watanabe—had been famous once. I had been an actress who got everything and, in some version of fate that disliked excellence, had died under a freak lightning strike during a storm on set. I remembered blue light and then nothing. Then a metallic voice, impatient and bureaucratic: System 666.
"Accepting original memories," the voice had said in my dark. Then a fossil of a life I did not live flooded me—an heiress, a spoiled girl named only in my file, a family with teeth.
Now I lay in a hotel bed and the family that wanted me shamed stood outside.
"Open the door!" Brianna Alvarado—her voice shrilled—kicked. "Open the door, you shameless slut!"
I pulled my knees up, wrapped the sheet tighter, and said, "If there's a problem, come in. I'm not shy."
There was a stunned pause, and then Brianna's voice turned sharp. "You think you can joke now? You with West Elliott? Right before our son's wedding?"
They had come to catch me. That much I understood before I even saw the footage on a phone.
I thumbed through pockets and found West Elliott's wallet. There: his phone. His fingerprint unlocked it easily. My fingers were colder than my heartbeat as I scrolled call logs, then messages. There—an old conversation with Gabriela Neves, and a cluster of texts with dates and times. I pocketed the phone, palms sweating.
The door burst open. Brianna stood framed like a queen of spite, Gabriela behind her—her face composed into hurt.
"How could you?" Gabriela accused. "Shen—Jameson—was going to marry you. This will ruin everything!"
I let out a laugh that wasn't mine. "Oh, really? Then buy me a ticket, Gabriela. That way we can go over the guest list together."
Brianna slapped me across the face. The sting sang new life into me. I tasted copper.
"You—" Brianna's lips trembled with fury. "You're a disgrace."
"Maybe," I said. "But I'm also honest enough to ask the right questions."
I grabbed West's jacket and pulled it free. "Who did you call last night?" I demanded.
Gabriela's voice trembled. "I—"
"Stop." I pulled the phone open, merciless. "Watch."
A live feed from a tiny spy camera popped up. The camera had been planted inside a floral arrangement. Small, hidden, discreet. The video played: Gabriela slipping something into a glass, pulling West toward the couch, slipping away. My own arrival, disoriented, being guided to the bed by muscle and by a friend I thought I trusted—Isabelle Peters—then the scene disappearing into edited shame.
"How dare you?" Brianna cried. "This is slander."
"It's recorded," I said simply. "Do you deny it?"
Gabriela's face collapsed. Brianna's mouth flapped. People crowded in—Suits. Neighbors. I felt the old, old current of cameras and lenses—my life before had taught me how the world watched. The room smelled of perfume, regret, and the cheap ozone of a plan gone public.
"You're lying!" Brianna screamed.
"Not according to this," I said. "Look."
West Elliott stirred, then looked at Gabriela as if the truth were a physical wound he'd been hiding from. He stammered, "I—she—"
"Shut up," I told him. "Talk later."
My palms were steady. I was someone else's memory but my purpose was clear. The system's blinking prompts pulsed at the edge of my mind: Task one, two, three. Each star was a prize for keeping my cat fed in the world I had been ripped from.
We were actors on a stage we had not chosen. I decided to improvise.
*
The next two days were chaos. Jameson Curry—my announced fiancé—sent me icy messages. His mother, Millicent Davis, called me in a voice that tried to sound cultured and ended up sounding like an accusation. Brianna and Gabriela rehearsed their sorrow and their rage in public, mixing them with sympathy performances for an audience they expected to take sides.
The system whispered: "Recommend: replace the luck‑child. Binding function available."
"Bind what?" I barked into the dark, alone in a bathtub that night.
"Your choice will affect the world's current 'luck' vector," System 666 replied. "If the current luck‑child loses favor, the world's luck will rebalance. New luck‑child emerges when value hits zero."
"That sounds like nonsense," I said.
"Cat food is real," the system said. "Choose."
I could have given up. I could have cried and tweeted and watched another brand die. Instead I clicked the option the system offered: "Install: Luck‑Rebinding Module." The download crawled like a snail. I paced. The progress bar taunted me: 0.01%.
"Faster," I told the invisible bureaucracy.
The download finished far sooner than I thought possible. The world had rearranged itself.
*
We met the evening of the charity gala at the great hall of Redleaf Center, and I wore red—the dress people would not forget. Jameson smoldered on cue; Millicent perched like a swan ready to peck. Gabriela's mascara threatened to run; Brianna's false composure was paper thin.
"She is showing up as the fiancé," Millicent told anyone who would listen. "How bold."
"Don't worry," Gabriela lied. "Jameson is a gentleman. He will defend the family honor."
Outside, cameras hummed like angry insects. Reporters lined the red carpet.
"Ms. Watanabe!" someone shouted. "Do you have a statement about the footage?"
"I have a full schedule," I answered. "You may call my publicist."
Jameson arrived with a procession and a glare. He took Gabriela's arm and then—unexpectedly—offered his arm to her in public. Photographers pounced. A dozen cameras snapped the perfectly staged image of future husband and alleged lover.
Gabriela moved like she had rehearsed vulnerability. Jameson smiled. Brianna applauded the spectacle quietly.
Then my cue.
"Excuse me," I said into the microphone waiting for me like a lover. "I thought tonight might be about fashion and charity. But—"
"—what's this?" Jameson curled his lip.
"Tonight we will show everyone what two-faced looks like," I said. "Is that fine with you, Jameson?"
His jaw tightened. "You'll regret—"
"Watch," I said.
I had asked Elliot Conner—quiet, meticulous Elliot—to help. He was the elder brother of West Elliott, a reasonable man who disliked gossip unless it served the truth. He handled the tech that night. He fed the hall a single, undeniable feed.
The big screen behind the dais swallowed the chandeliers and then, then spat back footage: Gabriela arranging cameras, Brianna coaching her daughter through late-night calls, Isabelle Peters slipping towards West Elliott's drink with a hand that trembled but did what it was told. Then Jameson—Jameson on the phone, laughing about how quickly alliances could be fixed; Jameson arranging for a manager to release a photo at the right moment.
Gasps rolled through the room like thunder.
"That's edited!" Brianna cried. "Those are private—"
"Private?" I asked, and the lights made my eyes pale like coins. "The footage shows your hand and your daughter's. You don't get to call it private and then show it like a saint."
Jameson tried a cool smile and it broke. "This is slander!"
"Is that so?" Elliot said into the microphone, and he had a way of being soft that was harder than any steel. "Is it slander when there's a time stamp and a camera angle you chose to place?"
A reporter shouted, "Where did you get that?"
"From the place you all used to think you controlled," I said. "From a florist arrangement and a hotel server who keeps receipts."
Cameras switched angles. Phones rose. People shouted. For the first time that week the hall wasn't a set—people were witnesses.
Then came the long punishment I had promised myself I would make precise.
I had wanted public humiliation to be more than a rumor. I wanted the change to be a lesson.
The screen played a longer clip. In it, Gabriela and Brianna plotted the timing, the planting of narratives, the promise of favors. Jameson listened and laughed. "We can cut the line. Make her look mad, make her look disloyal. Then we remove the brand. Then her family collapses, and we tidy up."
The hall fell into a low, awful hush. People who had once wanted favors from Jameson now swallowed. Their expressions slid from curiosity to revulsion.
Brianna's face blanched. For the first time she was not shouting; she was small behind her pearls.
"How—" she whispered.
"You're done," I said.
No one slapped Brianna. The world did something worse: it turned its back. Phones recorded, hands trembled, and the microphone captures what a moral paper tiger sounds like when it loses its claws. A dozen executives—men and women who had traded favors for introductions—made phone calls that sounded like tiny bullets into Brianna's accounts.
"Your brands will be suspended," a stern voice from a retailer said into a phone. "We can no longer maintain such association."
Her cheeks turned the color of old roses.
Gabriela sobbed. Her knees buckled, and for once the camera liked her not because she played innocence but because she had nowhere to put the shame. People who had once smiled for her now took careful steps away. A hair stylist who had designed her image spun on his heel like a reed in a storm.
Jameson, meanwhile, had to watch his stock price on a monitor Elliot had quietly arranged: the ticker beside his face dipped, then dropped. Investors had no patience for moral risk.
He barked orders into a phone that delivered numb replies. The CEO who had stood beside him for years placed a hand on his shoulder and then let go. A PR agent whispered the word "resign" into his ear as if it were medicine.
Around them the room's atmosphere crystallized: people turned from applause to clicking tongues, from admiration to a cold professional distance.
I stepped to the microphone again.
"Justice isn't private," I said. "It's visible, because the visible makes us afraid to repeat what is ugly. You wanted me ruined in private; I chose to make your cruelty public. You can either learn or be left behind."
Brianna lunged. She tried to drag Jameson into the fray, to salvage his name with her fury. A cluster of staffers blocked her, and the hall—once poised for selfies—filled instead with the sound of a woman's breath breaking.
Outside, phones streamed the feed. Hashtags spun. Investors called their brokers.
The punishment was not a theatrical fall down a flight of stairs. It was something more intimate and unbearable: trust evaporating. People I never knew before decided they could no longer be seen with the people who had plotted ruin. Brianna's local clubs uninvited her. Gabriela's charity donors withdrew support. Jameson's company lost a major tender after a client decided it could not align with a scandal.
"Why are you doing this?" Brianna screamed, tears streaking her mascara like falling paint.
"Because you taught me how to plant a camera," I answered. "You taught me where you hid your cruelty. And because someone has to show the world that plans like yours don't just ruin one person—they hurt families and employees and brands. You're not missing anything but the mask."
The crowd's reaction changed in stages. At first there was shock, then the whisper of "finally," then the slow acceptance that the people they applauded yesterday had been actors in a terrible play. Old friends of Jameson's who had been quiet sat up, deciding which side of the ledger they'd prefer: truth, or reputation patched by lies.
Gabriela fell to her knees and begged. "Please—I'll do anything. I'll apologize. I'll resign. Don't—"
"Too late," said a woman with a habit of speaking plainly. "The harm isn't something words fix. Go where you can make amends—quietly."
Cameras closed in. A thousand small judgments were made and recorded. The internet would not forget.
In the days after, there were many smaller punishments: Brianna's husband—someone I later learned had quietly stood by but despised the spectacle—filed for divorce. Gabriela was escorted from the company she'd wanted to run and replaced by a board member who had been patient enough to wait for the truth. Jameson watched a boardroom he had once controlled gather in whispers, and his father, a man of steady principle, did not pick up his calls.
They had wanted to make me a laughingstock. They became a cautionary tale.
*
That didn't solve everything. My father's business still needed saving. My grandfather—Green Mason—still wanted peace for his last years. I had a cat to feed with top-tier kibble. System 666 still chirped promises of rewards for completed tasks.
But the punishment had been public, complete, and earned. I had made them feel the dizzying, solid, real friction of consequences. They had moved from smug to shattered in ways that could not be edited away. People recorded, watched, and decided they would not stand by that shape of cruelty again.
"Good," System 666 purred in my head. "Luck rebinding initiated. Target: Jameson Curry. Value: -10. New current: 90."
"Do you feel better?" Elliot asked quietly as we left the hall, smoke and perfume and the press behind us.
"No," I said. "I feel cleaner."
He smiled like someone who had put an old, stubborn engine back together. "Let's go fix your company, then. And your cat."
"First things first," I said.
*
Over the following days, I planted other seeds. I refused to be the spoiled heiress of the life someone had assumed for me; I became the executor of an image economy. I tweeted about dresses—yes, the "breakup dress"—and watched how fashion and scandal could redirect attention. I rebuilt my company's staff with people who loved the work, not the perks. I promised pay rises to designers who stayed. I moved a young designer, Claire Cisneros, into a downtown apartment because she lived too far and had talent you could hang a city's billboard on.
Dialogue, action, and a few strategic mic drops led to a small rebound in public sympathy. Live streams (a world Elliot claimed was "vital" and I claimed I just had to learn) helped me talk directly to people. "I was stupid in a previous life," I told the camera once, "but cats do better when fed, and I like paying my bills on time."
Elliot smirked. "You are many things, Cloe. Stupid isn't one of them."
The system kept its ledger. Stars translated into cat food. I collected them and, more importantly, ticked off the tasks in a way that secured my small, new priorities—keeping Green Mason's days peaceful, giving Claire a chance, and making sure no one could throw our family's name into the gutter again.
Some nights I still saw flashes of blue lightning, of stages and cameras. I still had the taste of copper from the slap. But mostly I had plans: small, stubborn, human plans.
"I will make the brand matter," I told my grandfather once while he sipped his tea under the grapevine in his yard.
"You always did have a mouth on you," he said, smiling.
"So did you," I said.
He winked. "Then use it."
And use it I did. I learned the ledger of reputation, how one image could unmake a person and how one feed could remap a city. I learned to fight back with cameras, with truth, and with people who would stand with me against curated cruelty.
The system blinked one night as I tucked my cat, Momo, into a new plush bed.
"Task complete: protect family business—four stars awarded," it said.
"Good," I murmured. "But keep working for that five-star cat food."
Momo purred and I laughed—loud, real, thankful. People recorded me that evening when my laugh echoed across the small house and tagged me with a thousand little hearts.
It was a start.
The End
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