Face-Slapping10 min read
"New Wedding, Same Lie — My Small War Against a Family"
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“Do I even have a home?” I asked, voice trembling under the gray rain.
I had the dress in my hands, the satin sticking to my palms. My phone flashed a headline like a knife: “Quinn Ivanov and Leia Mitchell spotted entering hotel together—engagement rumors.” I looked up through the raindrops and Quinn’s face was a cold island.
“You’re not a child anymore,” Quinn said.
His voice was flat and dangerous. I closed my eyes, and the rain blurred his features into someone I loved and someone I never could have.
“You’re marrying her,” I breathed. “You’re getting married.”
“Yes,” he said, like it was an observation about the weather.
I swallowed the rest of my protest and did what I always did when my heart broke: I packed his things into a box and tried to burn the pages of my diary.
“I will stop liking you,” I told the flames. “I will let you go. Happy wedding.”
I didn’t know then that he would chase me to the airport, or that he would stand there like a statue while I fled in a dress, heart raw, feet numb.
“I’ve come to get you back,” he said at the curb, stepping out of a black Maybach.
“You should go,” I said, because the world had not taught me to beg for what I wanted.
“You go back and finish what you started,” Quinn said. “Go back and marry Harrison.”
Harrison Castro—my fiancé on paper, the nephew of Quinn, the boy everyone called “the heir,” the spoiled man who would have made my life a cage.
I forced a laugh. “You saw the news. Why are you here, Quinn?”
He looked smaller than the headlines had made him. “Because you ran,” he said.
I ran with him back to his apartment because I had nowhere else to go, and because I still had foolish hopes Quinn might be the kind of man who would change everything for me. That night I found the Parker pen I’d given him at sixteen on his desk.
“You saved that?” I whispered.
“No,” he said. “I never used it.”
He lied like it was easy. I pretended not to notice.
Later he drove me to the club where Harrison and a girl named Frankie Mortensen—my so-called sister—were bragging about my ruined life. I heard them inside through the thin walls: Harrison, mocking; Frankie, full of venom.
“You’ll help me,” Frankie had said to someone inside a private room. “Or I’ll leak her letters.”
I felt the blood leave my face.
Quinn’s hand closed on mine. “You should have called me,” he said. “I’ll cancel this.”
“You can cancel it?” I asked, though my mouth tasted like metal.
“I’ll do everything I can,” he promised.
“Would you marry me?” I blurted.
He glanced at me, surprised. “You should be resting. Close your eyes.”
I didn’t want to let him put me back in the dark.
Days folded into each other. Quinn arranged things—quiet calls, firm words. Harrison’s reputation in town was no secret. Frankie’s social climb relied on others’ credit. Quinn told me, once, “I’ll make sure your name stays clean.”
I wanted him to mean it as something more than protection. I wanted him to mean it more than the “uncle” he insisted I call him.
“He’s my uncle,” I told a friend later. “That’s the worst part.”
“You sound like you love him,” my friend said.
“I did, for eight years,” I said.
“You still do.”
In public, I learned how to smile like a blade. I learned how to stand in ceremonies and nod through congratulations as Quinn and Leia posed perfectly. Then the hotel lights went out on a screen and the world watched my handwriting fall across a giant display: the private love letter I’d written at sixteen, signed with my childish name.
When the room went quiet, I heard Quinn say nothing. I heard my blood pulse and then I saw Goddard May—Quinn’s grandfather—collapse to the floor.
“Is she—?” someone whispered.
“No,” Quinn said quietly. “Not her.”
But everyone had already decided.
I was done being quiet. I left the room in a snow of gossip.
I later learned Frankie had stolen the letter and uploaded it. She’d wanted to ruin me, to make sure the marriage stood and her own dirt stayed clean.
After that, people whispered all over town. I was called shameless, careless, a liar. My father, Ricardo Crow, who had never forgiven me for anything, called to bark orders and to demand I sign away what my mother had left me—unless I obeyed him.
“You can have my life back,” he said once, voice slick. “Sign the transfer and I’ll save the company.”
I laughed once, and then I told him to go to hell.
I called an editor. I called an old contact at a gossip agency and fed them what Frankie feared most: receipts. A recording of Frankie saying she’d post the letter. Photos of her offering favors to Harrison. Proof of the abortion and the private messages that showed Frankie’s pattern—not of fame, but of hunger. The next morning the internet turned on Frankie.
She was ripped apart in headlines. Brands dropped her. Her agent cancelled contracts. People reposted every mean word she’d ever said in parties and private chats. I watched the screenshots climb like vines and bury her.
“Why are you doing this?” she screamed at me when we passed on the street.
“Because you started it,” I said.
She looked like a cornered animal—eyes wide, mouth working uselessly. That was the first satisfaction. But the rules said she must fall in public, and so I planned the place.
The shareholders’ meeting was everything a city could be: chandeliers, investors, cameras. Harrison Castro sat smug under a white tie, convinced he could buy anything. Harrison had bribed subordinates, forged signatures, lied about land deals. He thought muscle and money would hide him.
I stood up when it was my turn to speak as the executive director representing my mother’s share. I shut my folder and looked at the audience. I had Quinn’s Parker pen in my pocket.
“Before we vote,” I said. “I need to correct the record.”
“Emma—” Ricardo hissed.
“Listen,” I said, and the room went taut.
“I will not let the company my mother left be stolen. I will not let a man who faked documents and a woman who blackmailed me profit from this. Here is everything the board needs.”
I set a laptop on the podium. The projection screen came alive.
First, the messages. Frankie’s voice, recorded, pleading with a fixer to plant the letter at an event. “Get me the letter on the big screen,” she said. Then Harrison’s name appeared in the same messages, mockingly calling me “easy money.”
Harrison rose to deny it. “Those are fake,” he stammered.
“Not fake,” I said. “Here is the bank transfer where Harrison paid the fixer.”
I walked through each piece—texts, transfers, a video of Harrison and Frankie rehearsing lines for an event. I had a forensics expert run the emails; I had a journalist friend verify the chain. For months I had wired evidence, and now the room drank it in.
Harrison’s face went from arrogance to colorless.
“You can’t prove—” he said.
I clicked. More proof: his signature in a forged document to transfer a parcel of land that belonged to the company. A contract where an investor wrote his name and Harrison’s as co-signers. “This is basic,” I said. “This is theft.”
The boardroom murmured.
“You’re lying,” Ricardo said, but his voice shook.
At that point cameras swivelled. Stockholders, board members, and the assembled press were watching. The media had been tipped. Phones lifted like an audience of small suns.
Harrison stood up. His face was livid.
“You—” he started.
“Sit,” Quinn said, every word controlled, so quiet you could hear it like the crack of a twig. “Sit down and listen.”
“I will not be lectured,” Harrison said.
“Not here to lecture,” Quinn said. “We’re here to show the truth.”
Quinn stood tall. He had been shamefully silent the previous months; now his presence was a blade. He pushed a bundle of papers toward the chairman. “This is a full audit. The transfers. The forger’s confession. The fixer’s testimony.”
Harrison went pale. Frankie began to babble. “It was his idea,” she cried, then “No, it was mine,” then “I was forced,” then silence.
The cameras panned in. The press began to write headlines live: “Harrison Castro Accused of Forgery,” “Boardroom Shock as Fixer Testifies,” “Socialite Frankie Mortensen’s Contracts Cancelled.”
The humiliation is hard to compress, but it happened in real time: Harrison’s mouth worked. A director called a lawyer. Stock prices dipped. Investors leaned away like someone with a contagious disease.
Then the worst: the chairman asked for security. I watched Harrison bolt for the elevator, but cameras blocked his exit. He stumbled under the weight of everyone’s eyes. Journalists shouted for quotes. Board members whispered about legal action.
Frankie tried to flee and was stopped by hotel security. She pulled at her hair, mascara running—exactly the image the gossip pages would seize. People started recording. One investor laughed out loud. Another said, “I thought he was untouchable.”
Harrison got on his knees in the middle of the conference room, breathless and small.
“Get up,” Quinn said flatly.
Harrison looked up, trembling. “Please—” he stuttered. “Please don’t ruin me.”
“You started this,” I said, and the room watched as he slid from arrogance to pleading. “You put my life on a screen at my uncle’s engagement.”
“You tricked me,” Harrison cried. “She said she needed money. I—”
“You think that changes anything?” I asked. “You chose to sign forged paper. You chose to pay a fixer. You chose to use someone’s privacy as a weapon.”
The mob crushed in. A reporter shoved a microphone in his face. “Were you afraid of losing the deal?” she asked.
“I… I—” Harrison’s voice ripped into pieces.
Frankie’s cell phone began to fill with notifications: calls from brands, from her manager. She went white. The chairman cleared his throat and announced an investigation. Lawyers started moving files. Police were called to take statements because forgery is a crime.
Harrison begged. He started to weep. He fell forward and pressed his forehead to the polished wood as if the floor might swallow him. His suit was ruined with coffee someone had spilled in the chaos. The room didn't look away. A murmur rippled through the audience, between pity and hate.
“That’s what it looks like,” one investor said. “When someone thinks they’re above consequence.”
Security led Harrison and Frankie out. They were escorted through the lobby, surrounded by cameras, reporters shouting questions. The look on Harrison’s face was a kind of ultimate defeat—the man who had once given orders to others now craved mercy from strangers.
“You think you’re done?” Frankie yelled at me as they were pushed through the glass doors.
“No,” I said. “But I am done being afraid of you.”
The video of Harrison on his knees spread faster than any rumor. It trended. People shared the footage with comments like, “Karma,” and “Don’t mess with someone’s life.” Brands issued statements saying they would review contracts; agencies cut ties with Frankie.
The fallout lasted weeks. Harrison was subpoenaed. Frankie lost everything—agents, deals, endorsements. People who’d supported her found cold reasons to distance themselves. The city, which had once cheered for glamor, watched as that glamour cracked and spilled on the pavement.
I didn’t feel triumphant for long. Watching a man bow his head in the dirt felt hollow. Quinn watched me, his face like weather—unreadable and relentless.
“You made them suffer,” he said one evening when it was quiet. “Was that what you wanted?”
“No,” I said honestly. “I wanted them to stop using other people as weapons. I wanted to be able to walk down the street without whispers.”
He took my hand. “You could have told me,” Quinn said.
“I tried,” I said. “You asked me to step into their life and be a kind of proof. I did. You still let them hurt me.”
He closed his eyes. “I was a coward.”
Quinn’s confession came slowly after that. He stopped being merely a steward of propriety. He began to fix things he’d been too proud to fix for years. He fired people who’d been complicit. He quietly rehired workers Harrison had fired. He read legal documents beside me in late hours.
We never rushed a label. I had learned to keep my heart at a distance.
Months went by. The company stabilized. I took my mother’s twenty percent stake and refused to sell it. I built a plan not just to save the business but to transform it. I worked late, learned numbers, and made decisions. Quinn was there sometimes, brief and solid like a shadow that came when the light burned too bright.
“Why help me?” I asked him once, fingers stained with ink.
He didn’t answer at first.
“You were always the only person who knew how to be steady,” he said finally. “You were the only person who made me want to be steady.”
That was the first time he said something that sounded like the truth I had been waiting for. His hand found the Parker pen on his desk and he drew lines on a napkin like someone practicing confession.
“You could call me whatever you want,” he said that night. “But I will tell you this: I have never spoken to you like a man to his lover because I was always afraid of where it would go. I’m not afraid anymore.”
I watched him, because I had made myself grow tough enough to demand proof. “Then prove it,” I said.
He did not get down on one knee in a dramatic display. He told me the truth every day in small things: defending me in meetings, saying my name in public when it mattered, leaving his car outside my building when snow fell so I would not walk alone. He could have done these things quietly. He did them loudly, so that the city knew who I was to him.
The world had shifted. Harrison was prosecuted and paid restitution. Frankie tried to rebuild with a quiet apology video that no one watched. My father begged for reconciliation and I gave him a thin nod and a firm position on the board—under my terms.
One evening in late spring, Quinn stopped me on the rooftop garden of the company building. The skyline pulsed like the city’s heartbeat. He looked at me like he was naming a star.
“Will you let me be more than your uncle?” he asked suddenly, and the sentence was clumsy and honest.
My breath caught. Around us, the city hummed anonymously, unaware of the small, dangerous question.
“You’re asking me to trust you,” I said.
“I’m asking you to let me try,” he said. “I will never make you feel small again. Not in public, not in private. Not ever.”
I studied his face—the thousand small lines that had appeared when he worried—and recognized what love could look like when it had waited.
“You left me once,” I said. “You let them hurt me.”
“I know,” he said. “I failed. I failed you because I followed rules and not you. I am sorry for that. I will spend my life proving it.”
The city breathed around us. I placed my hand on his cheek because I wanted him to feel the pressure of my promise.
“If you hurt me again,” I said, “I will not be gentle.”
He smiled, and it was a small, broke-open smile. “I don’t deserve your gentleness,” he said. “But I will earn it.”
We didn’t race into a bright future. We built it—day by day, paper by paper, apology and repair. Quinn learned to speak plainly. I learned to let someone stand beside me without swallowing my own voice.
Months later, in the quiet of his office stacked with old pictures and the Parker pen on a shelf, Quinn took my hand, knelt on one knee in a private, small way that no one else saw, and said, “Will you be with me—this time not because you owe it to a promise, but because I want the chance to be your person?”
“I will,” I said.
When we finally stood together at a small dinner, the city had already begun forgetting the scandal. Harrison had paid his dues. Frankie was learning humility in private. My father learned to respect me as a partner.
The worst part of loving someone had always been power—who could hurt, who could forgive. I had fought to make the playing field honest.
One night, much later, I found the old Parker pen in an envelope on my desk. Quinn had written a single sentence: “You kept me honest.” I wrote back on the same page: “You kept me safe.”
We were both wrong and both healing. That’s love, I learned—it’s messy and slow and sometimes terrifying. But we had both decided, with our hands and proof and quiet courage, to try.
—END—
The End
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