Sweet Romance14 min read
Red Roses, White Lies — A Woman Who Wouldn't Be Quiet
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I already knew Phoenix Archer had cheated on me.
"I saw his comment," I said into my palm while I sat on the couch, the phone screen burning the pattern of the photo into my eyes.
"Who?" Helena asked, peeking over the cup of tea she made for me.
"Amelia Pfeiffer," I said. "She commented on his post about me peeling crayfish."
Helena clicked her tongue. "What did she say?"
"She wrote, 'Clip your nails, I can see the dirt.'"
"Gross," Helena said.
"I made him delete her," I said. "He hugged me and said, 'Baby, she's at the same company. We shouldn't make it awkward.'"
"He did what?" Helena frowned.
"That's exactly what made me mad," I said. "If he hadn't defended her, she wouldn't have dared comment like that. He let her feel welcome near him."
Helena's face softened. "So you checked his phone?"
"Yes," I said. "Just the company chat. I told him, 'If you hide anything from me, I won't forgive you.' He swore. He said no one can be compared to me."
There was a brave, childish little hope in me then. A silly hope. Men sometimes say things that sound like safety nets, and I believed them.
Three days later, I went to his office with lunch.
"You're late," he said when he saw me.
"I wanted to surprise you," I said.
"You missed us," he said.
"I can wait." I waited in the lobby for him, just to see who he'd be walking back with.
When they came in, they were laughing.
"Why are you here?" Phoenix blinked. "Giselle, what are you doing?"
I walked up and threw the lunch box at him. It hit his chest, food splattering across his shirt and the tiled floor.
"Are you crazy?" he said.
"Dog and bitch," I shouted to them both. "You two deserve to die."
People turned. Amelia stopped smiling. Phoenix's face was strange. He looked at Amelia first, then at me.
"Why did you do that?" he said. "Apologize to her."
"Apologize?" I laughed through tears. "You defend her, then ask me to apologize?"
Amelia looked small and red-eyed. "Giselle, I'm sorry for making you misunderstand."
"Get out," I said.
"You are being unreasonable!" Phoenix snapped. "We had lunch with many colleagues. It's not a big deal!"
I felt him shrink away from me, as if I had become a stranger. He couldn't even hold me while I cried. That cut the deepest.
"Why are you protecting her?" I asked.
"Because she's uncomfortable. Because this isn't the place for a scene," he said, cold.
He turned his back and left with Amelia.
On the way home I cried until my throat hurt.
"Are you okay?" the driver asked when I asked him for tissues.
"I'm fine," I said. "Men are all trash."
He raised an eyebrow. "Breakup?"
"I dumped one," I said, sniffing.
"Well, good for you," he said, as if he were handing me a verdict.
I went back to Helena's place that night. She looked at me like she wanted to flip the world.
"He did that? Phoenix? He cheated?" she asked.
"He defended her," I said. "He didn't even ask if I was hurt."
"How long have you guys been together?" she said.
"Since college," I said. "He saved me from a creepy classmate once. He was my hero."
"Then heroes change," Helena said, but she sounded unsure.
We talked, drank cheap wine, and she tried to make me laugh. On the third day, I found Phoenix's chat with Amelia.
"She should be half as sensible as you," Phoenix had written.
"She if only could be half as considerate as you," I read, my hands shaking.
I smashed his phone against the wall. I splashed water in his face. I felt like I wanted to burn everything we had made together. I broke the couple cups we bought together.
He came home and saw the mess and I saw his eyes jump straight to Amelia's name on his screen that I had opened. He had deleted the messages he didn't want me to see. He had planned to leave only the safe evidence.
Later, when I went back to my apartment, I found the lock changed.
"Phoenix changed the code," I said, furious. I knocked.
The door opened. Amelia stood there and called out, "Honey."
There it was. The proof. She said it like a spell.
I shoved her in and shut the door. She cowered. She started to cry. I grabbed my baseball bat.
"If you wanted what was mine, you should have checked the price," I said.
"Stay calm, Giselle," she mouthed.
I smashed a cup. She screamed.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, bleating. "If hitting me makes you feel better, do it."
"That's the wrong promise to make," I murmured.
Phoenix appeared and tried to stop me. He pulled the bat away, cradled Amelia, and said, "Giselle, are you out of your mind?"
"I'm clear-headed," I said. "I've never been more awake."
Amelia told me a story that sounded like the plot of an old movie. She said he had protected her from a stalker and she had fallen for him. He patted her on the back. He gave her the big, quiet attention that once made me fall in love.
"Do you like being the hero?" I asked Phoenix.
He looked away. "It's over," he said. "We should stop."
I threw everything we owned into pieces. The management came, a neighbor called the cops, and the night smelled like broken pottery and spilled wine.
I packed his things and sent them COD to his office. He didn't contact me. A week later, he posted a new photo and one of his friends, Tomas Atkins, commented, "Finally escaped the tiger, congrats."
Helena fired back in the comments. Phoenix blocked her.
I called my brother Galen Legrand and said, "Do something."
He didn't say much. He sent dots. Then he said, "Alright."
I wanted revenge, but I also wanted answers. I wanted to know whether the man who had once promised to protect me had ever loved me.
One night, after a ridiculous party Helena and I went to, she woke me up with a scream.
"Look! He invited people to his engagement!" she shouted.
I stared. The invitation was real and intimate. He had the gall to put it up like a flag.
"He's marrying her," Helena whispered. "He didn't even invite us."
"I thought he would propose to me this year," I said. "I thought we..." My chest tightened.
Helena's brother—no, not her brother. My mind flinched. She had Emmanuel Owens, her brother? No, Emmanuel is Helena's brother? Wait. Helena's brother in the original was a doctor named Yubo; here, Emmanuel Owens is the doctor who will later be my defender. I realized names and roles had to be right.
"Helena, who is Emmanuel?" I asked.
"He's my brother," she said. "He's a cardiac doctor. He has eyes like a safe."
He was coming over the next day with us to a match of small complaints and big tea. Emmanuel was quiet. He had a kind of stubborn patience that surprised me.
We found out there was more than a ring. A man I knew from school told us Phoenix had staged parts of our story when he first chased me. The man said Phoenix had hired him to create a scene. The scene that had once convinced me to fall in love had been an act.
"Your first betrayal was a lie," the man said. "He always chooses the face that brings him what he wants."
I remember smashing a glass cup in the restaurant when that man said it. I picked up shards and screamed, "I'll kill you!"
Emmanuel stepped forward, his body strong and simple in a way that made me feel safe.
"Don't," he said, steady. "Giselle, think of your family."
He held my hands which were shaking. When he did that, it was different. He didn't ask me to stop for his sake. He asked me to stop for mine.
The world blurred. I apologized to Emmanuel for breaking him. He laughed and said, "Whatever. I'll be fine. Your hands are more violent than your heart."
He didn't press. He smiled. He asked me to bring him meals while his hand healed from the shards. It was harmless at first, he joked. He said, "I'm a doctor. You feed me, I heal you."
I started to visit him at the clinic. He had a way of looking at things in pieces. He could see a wound and measure it. He could see a person and know what they needed without making a drama of it.
One rainy evening I ran into him while I was carrying noodles and a thermos of soup. He said, "Get in. I'll drive."
I sat in his car and felt the warmth of the heater wash over me.
We walked up to my building and found Phoenix waiting.
He looked pleased to see me. He said, "Giselle, I'm here to repay the rent I owe. I want to be fair."
"Just transfer it," I said, holding my phone.
He looked surprised. "You own this place?"
"I do," I said. "I paid it. I bought it so I could be free of the day your rent didn't arrive." The words felt clean.
Phoenix's face shifted. "You've changed," he said. "You've gotten money from your family."
"I didn't say I didn't," I said.
"You disappoint me," he said, that old line.
"You did this to me," I said. "You lied to me."
He tried to tell me once more that he loved me. I closed the door gently, and his hand stayed on the frame.
Emmanuel stepped forward and then—suddenly—his patience snapped like a string.
"Leave," he said, and he moved like a wire pulled taut. He struck Phoenix a hard blow. Phoenix staggered.
"Don't you dare show your face in front of her again," Emmanuel said, trembling slightly, his face gone iron. The room smelled of rain and the metallic tang of a sudden fight.
Emmanuel hurt his hand in the scuffle but got up and hugged me before it swelled.
"You okay?" he said.
"I'm fine," I lied.
The next days were quieter. Emmanuel recovered, and I cooked. We talked like old friends. He joked to the nurses: "She cooks and I eat, that's the secret formula."
I started to like the way he made small jokes about big things. He didn't promise I'd always be warm. He gave evidence he would be there, and his evidence was steady. He was there when I cried, and he was there when I laughed.
But this isn't a simple love story. There had to be punishment. Phoenix couldn't walk away with the wounds only I carried. He had to be cut down in public, his mask peeled off where people could see him fall.
The punishment scene came at his engagement banquet.
We had gone because Emmanuel insisted. He said, "Let's go. Seeing the monster in his pretty suit might be quiet justice."
Helena whispered, "Are you sure?"
"I am," I said. "But I'm shaking."
The hall was bright and full. Round tables, soft candles, plates of glossy food. The air smelled like perfume and champagne. The spotlight landed on Phoenix and Amelia as they posed under a bust of roses. Cameras flashed. He looked smug.
"Why are we here?" I asked.
"Because we belong in the same room as this disgrace," Emmanuel said. He had a file in his hand. My heart thudded.
I saw my brother Galen across the room. He slid into a seat near the front with two men I didn't know. He made a subtle sign. I felt a cold thread of fear and excitement.
Phoenix gave an arrogant speech. He smiled at Amelia. "She is everything I ever wanted."
People clapped.
At that moment, a man in a dark suit moved through the crowd, and not a little man. He was a man whose hands didn't tremble. He walked to the hosts.
"Sir," he said quietly to Amelia's father. "We have a matter of law we must discuss."
The music kept playing, a pale tune. Amelia's father frowned, and the room still clapped along like a body going through a dance it didn't understand.
Then another man stepped on stage. My brother did not announce himself. He handed envelopes to the event coordinator. The air changed.
"What's going on?" someone hissed.
The men from outside were two officers from the bank, then another from the court, then a plain-suited man with a folder. They cleared their throats.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the plain-suited man called, his voice calm but carrying. "We have been instructed to inform you that certain assets of this household are currently subjected to investigation and partial seizure."
The music stopped as if cut by a blade. Forks froze midair.
"What investigation?" an older woman demanded.
"We have notice of asset seizure based on defaulted debts and fraud allegations," the officer said.
Someone gasped. Amelia's father's face went paper white. The band faltered. Phones came out.
"You're making a mistake," Amelia's father babbled. "This must be a misunderstanding."
A reporter in the crowd had leaned forward and whispered into her microphone. A man stood up and started filming. Heads turned.
Phoenix's smile left his face. I watched as the color drained. His practiced posture collapsed into something raw. He looked like a man whose map had been burned.
"What do you mean?" Phoenix shouted suddenly. "This is lies. Do you have any proof?"
Galen stepped forward then, calm and almost clinical. He held up a document and the room blinked at the name on its header. "These are records of loans and transfers that show payment defaults, collateral redirection, and falsified receipts submitted to creditors."
"You can't just—" Phoenix's voice broke. He had that moment of grasping at the air that made me see him as small.
Amelia's expression shifted faster than a photograph being developed. Her composed face cracked into worry. She started to whisper to her father, to Phoenix.
"Where did you get those?" Phoenix shouted. "Who gave you those?"
"My sister's friends," Galen said, the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. "People who know how to read the numbers."
Then a man in a restraint jacket—no, not a restraint jacket, a man wearing a plain uniform with a badge—walked to the center with a printed notice. He read out loud: "To the family of Ms. Pfeiffer: The following assets are under provisional seizure pending a full audit: one residence, three motor vehicles, corporate shares, and three personal accounts. This action was taken after multiple creditor complaints and the issuance of provisional liens."
There was a sound like a collective intake of breath. Someone started to murmur.
"He must have used the family's name to secure loans," someone said.
"Is this real?" another whispered.
The waiter dropped a tray. Wine splashed and this time it felt like blood to the room's illusion.
Phoenix's face moved through stages: confusion, a blinked denial, sliding to anger, then to pleading, and finally to collapse. He looked as if he were watching a play and suddenly became the audience receiving revenge.
"No," he said at last. "You can't—this is insane!"
"No," I said. "It's not insane. It's truth."
His friend Tomas Atkins tried to step forward to defend him. "This is personal," Tomas called out.
"Sit down," someone yelled back.
"No, you don't understand," Tomas blurted. "He didn't—"
"There are witnesses," Galen said quietly. "There are recorded payments and wire transfers. There are creditors who signed affidavits. This is not gossip. This is law."
"He used people and gambled with their lives," Helena whispered beside me. "He sold promises."
"Is this a setup?" Amelia shrieked, her voice high and breaking.
"Look at your own statements," Galen said. "Look at the wire trails."
Amelia's father tried to interject, hands trembling. "This is... my business..." His voice trailed.
Around the hall, phones recorded. Some people whispered pity. Some laughed. Women whispered about the face that had pretended to be tender. Men shifted uneasily, because men are scared of being fooled too.
Phoenix's cheeks went from red to pale. Sweat came out on his forehead. He tried to gather his suit jacket like armor, but it meant nothing.
"Don't touch my money," he said weakly.
"Where were you when creditors called?" someone shouted.
He tried to speak, to say it wasn't his fault. He tried to cast blame. He tried the lines he'd used with me, the ones that used to sound like shelter.
"She always knew," a woman at the back said. "She said he was such a catch."
"Do you have any idea?" another said. "He married opportunity."
Amelia ran out of composure and sank into a chair, as if the walls had closed in.
Phoenix started to mutter apologies that had no addressee. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I didn't mean—"
"Sorry doesn't pay debt," said a woman who had a small child. "Apologize to the bank."
"Apologize to the people you used," someone else added.
A man stood up and applauded slowly. It rippled. Nobody else joined at first. Then a few more clapped, not because they loved the spectacle, but because the universe had done a neat, brutal thing: it had cut off the hand that fed on people.
Phoenix's face crumbled. He reached for his phone as if he could call someone, any savior. His fingers fumbled, his thumbs flew. No one answered quick enough.
"I didn't do anything alone," he whimpered. "I was led. I was told—"
"Stop," Galen said. "Stop the excuses."
Someone in the crowd took a photo. Someone uploaded it to the internet. The banquet room hummed with cameras and gossip, and the sound was like a hive suddenly disturbed. People moved to the exits in small groups, talking, laughing, weeping, some disgusted, some vindictive.
Phoenix—who had once stood like a hero between me and some stalker—was now the subject of a spectacle. He tried to hold Amelia's hand and she pulled away.
"Don't touch me," she whispered. "I didn't sign up for this."
By the time the authorities led Amelia's father out, the room was full of whispers and videos and a delicious cruelty. People like to watch a tower fall. The man who had leaned on other people's lives for a ladder had no ladder left.
Phoenix's reactions had been cinematic: his smile had hardened into a mask, then cracked into a gasp, then he tried to deny, and then he begged, and finally he went white and hollow. He was small.
"Look at him," someone said. "He used her like a room to rent."
A woman near me muttered, "He deserved worse."
But he was being stripped of everything he thought defined him: respect, money, invited life. He had no audience to clean his face.
After the arrests and the whispering, they left the hall. Cameras followed. The world would now have pieces of their collapse to replay.
Outside, people were arguing about who had been fooled and who had been lucky not to be part of it. I felt like I had watched a model of karma at work.
Emmanuel took my hand, strong and warm. "You did good," he said quietly.
"No," I said. "Galen did. The truth did."
He kissed my forehead.
In the aftermath, Phoenix's friends stopped answering his calls. Tomas Atkins tried to step in but found the door closed. People I hadn't known I had ever impressed now avoided eye contact. The man who once declared me the center of his world now had no center at all.
He roamed the city like a ghost. He called me once and left a message. "Giselle," he said, voice shredded, "please..."
I deleted the message.
I started seeing Emmanuel more. He didn't try to save the world. He offered small things. He offered honest time and quiet gestures. He asked me to make him dinner and then ate with startled joy.
"You like it?" I said the first time I made him a little victory dish.
"It's perfect," he said. "You burned the edges, but it's perfect."
He laughed when I teased him. He called me fierce and then kissed my knuckles. I found myself wanting to be at his clinic, to watch him work with simple focus.
Months passed, in a way that felt both long and fast. He recovered fully. His hand healed. We argued a little and made up quickly. We learned one another in small patience.
One night, after cleaning up after another ridiculous banquet for which we both had ridiculous excuses to attend, Emmanuel stood in the doorway with wet hair and said, "Giselle, can we try?"
"Try what?" I asked.
"To be us," he said. "No labels, no rush. Just... see how it goes."
I looked at him. He wasn't smooth. He was not a sweeping romantic. He didn't promise me the moon. He promised to bring me soup when I was sick and to hold my hand when the world got loud.
"Okay," I said.
He smiled like a man who had been given a map to a small happiness and realized it was his.
He kissed me, plain and soft. It felt like coming home without the baggage. I realized that what I wanted most was not perfection. It was truth.
A few times, Phoenix showed up like the ghost of a bad habit. He begged, he promised, he tried to press pity like a button. I did not answer. He watched me hold Emmanuel's hand in the clinic and tried to slip an apology into the gap between a patient and a nurse. Emmanuel caught his eye once and his look said it all—no mercy, only a short, clipped justice.
The final scene came quietly, like a door closing.
We sat at a small table in Emmanuel's apartment, his hands warm around a mug. "I don't know why I like you," he said, smiling. "Maybe because you fight. Maybe because you cook badly but with heart."
I laughed. "That's a terrible reason."
He shrugged. "It's a good one."
I had been through being used by a man who staged love and a woman used as a sign of value. I had learned the harsh way that love said and love did not mean the same. Phoenix had taught me the lesson. Emmanuel taught me the remedy.
"Do you want to be with me," Emmanuel asked again, quietly.
"I do," I said, and I meant it.
He leaned forward and rested his forehead against mine.
"We will be honest," he said.
"Yes," I said.
Outside, the night was soft. Inside, the mug steamed. He took my hand and I let him. We were a small, ordinary arrangement that felt like rescue.
I did not want revenge as an end. I wanted to live. But I kept the memory of the banquet and the way Phoenix's mask fell apart. The memory did not taste sweet. It tasted like a warning.
If some nights I woke and my chest ached, Emmanuel was there. If some days I felt ugly and small, he reminded me of the lines I had learned. If some people said I was too fierce, he liked that I did not bow.
One morning, several months after the engagement banquet, I opened my messages and saw a line from Phoenix: "I wish I had been better." I thought of the man who once protected me, and then the man who humiliated me, and finally of the hands that had picked me up.
I let the message sit. I didn't delete it immediately. I didn't answer.
Then I turned off my phone and made an omelet for two.
We ate. He reached out and brushed my hair back.
"Do you remember the first thing I said to you?" Emmanuel asked.
"You said 'clip your nails,'" I joked.
"No," he said, smiling. "You said, 'Don't pretend you're someone else.'"
"I was pretending," I said.
"You don't have to pretend anymore," he whispered.
I looked at him and said, "I won't."
He kissed me again, softly, and then we went out to buy groceries. We laughed about nothing, and that was everything.
The End
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