Face-Slapping13 min read
"Sign it." Then I tore it up.
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"Sign it."
He pushed the pen across the table like he owned my hands.
"Take it," I said. "Take whatever you want. Just leave me my life."
Sebastien Olivier's face didn't change. He folded his long fingers around the document and smiled with no warmth.
"You'll sign, Avianna," he said. "You sign, and I'll make sure you're set for life. I'll make sure you keep the title—Mrs. Olivier—if that matters."
I stood up slow. My legs didn't shake. My throat did.
"You loved me at all in these three years?" I asked.
He laughed like a cold door slamming. "Never," he said. "Never once."
The laughter landed in my chest. I felt the air go thin.
"You're leaving because Claudia's back," I said. "That's the truth, right? That's why you want this signed now."
He barked a short laugh that had anger under it. "Don't you dare say her name."
"Say it then," I told him. "Say she came back and you remembered you had a white dress in your drawer."
He slammed his fist on the wall, the plaster cracked. "Sign that paper, Avianna. Sign it and be gone."
I took the pen he offered. I signed my name as if I were cutting rope.
He reached for it. I pulled the paper back and ripped it in two.
His face split. "Avianna!"
"I won't be bought," I said. "Not now. Not by you."
He closed his mouth like a shark. I turned and walked out.
Outside the house a black Maybach waited. Ambrose Cole leaned from the driver's seat, small girl in his arms, eyes warm.
"Avianna," he said, when I dropped into the car. "You good?"
"I am," I lied.
Ambrose smiled. "You don't have to be. Just let me carry the bad parts."
He reached for my hand. I let him.
We drove off and I left Sebastien Olivier and his rage in the rearview mirror.
Three days later the city had something new to talk about.
"DaKings Group has a new CEO," the papers said. "A mystery leader."
People camped outside the company like vultures.
Ambrose drove me to the gala at the Intercontinental. I wanted to watch the show. I wanted to be invisible. I wanted to be loud. I wanted to be both.
A smooth Rolls stopped and out came Sebastien with a woman at his side. Her hair shone like it belonged on magazine covers. Claudia Cardenas. White dress. Perfect smile.
"What a pair," someone said.
Ambrose nudged me. "Go see," he said. "Let him notice."
I walked past them like I didn't know them. He watched me pass. His eyes followed like a habit.
A woman nearby whispered and then squealed when Ambrose spoke, "This is my little heart."
People clapped like it was a show. Ambrose kissed the back of my hand. I laughed loud enough for everyone to hear.
Claudia's face tightened. She swatted a crystal glass to the floor for attention.
"Oh my," she cooed. "I'm clumsy."
Sebastien picked her up like always, soft and careful.
Ambrose leaned to me. "My heart," he said again, louder.
Claudia flinched.
Later she walked up to me like a cat with claws. "Miss Barlow," she said, all sweet poison. "You look… different."
"You mean less thin and more alive?" I replied.
She pulled a black gold card from her bag and tossed it on the marble floor like it was a pebble.
"One million," she said. "Take it and leave Sebastien alone."
I bent, picked it up, and—because she expected me to be small—I snapped the card like a twig.
Everyone's breath stopped.
"That's all?" she hissed. "One million?"
I slapped my heel on the floor and smiled. "This is not about money," I said. "This is about class. Watch."
I lifted my bag and took out a plain plastic card. I held it up. "This one has a hundred million. It doesn't mean anything if you don't know how to use power."
Claudia's face went white. Sebastien's jaw tightened.
"You're lying," she spat.
"Try me," I said.
Before she could respond, I walked over and slapped her. Hard. The sound was bone and the crowd inhaled.
"Apologize," I said, and I meant it. "Kneel."
She stared at me like someone had lit her world on fire.
"Now," I said.
Claudia fell to her knees like a cracked doll. Her fingers dug into the carpet. She begged and pleaded. Cameras flashed. Men whispered. Some were laughing. Others held their phones so the moment would live forever online.
"You will never touch me again," I told her. "This is your one million. Use it to buy silence."
She wailed. The kind of cry that steals respect.
Ambrose stood, arm around my shoulders. "You okay?" he asked me.
"I am," I said.
The night left Sebastien watching us like a man who realized he'd been wrong about an entire life. He left the event before the next course.
After the gala the papers shifted. "New CEO: Who is Avianna Barlow?" they asked.
I went to DaKings the next morning. The reception was a brick wall. The front desk clerk barely looked up.
"I have a meeting with Director Christoph Cleveland," I said.
"No appointment," she said.
"Tell him the CEO is here," I said.
She looked at me like I was making a joke. The phone pressed into her ear made her color change. "Sir? The new CEO… yes, right. Please come in."
I stared at the men at the top table. They were arrogant and used to not hearing the word no. "You're in the wrong room," they told me.
"So you say," I replied. "This company has five projects. Tell me why you invested in all five."
They talked around me, big words, empty numbers. My fingers tapped the folder under my arm.
When I pointed out a wrong percentage in their table, silence spread. It was a small thing, but if the math was wrong then the whole plan collapsed.
A shareholder asked, "How can she know numbers?"
"Because someone had to look," I said. "And because I will not let this company die under lies."
They left. The director, Christoph, scowled like someone who'd lost a game he thought was rigged.
I took control. I walked the sets, talked to crews, inspected budgets. I stayed in hotels overnight. I learned names. I pulled ledgers. I found that money moved like blood through hidden tubes—some lost, some stolen, some layered into shell companies.
"Do you know what you are walking into?" Christoph asked when I cornered him.
"I do," I said. "And I will fix it."
He laughed.
"You can't fix this," he said.
"Watch me," I said.
My first week was a war. I cut four projects that were bleeding cash. I kept one modern drama I believed in. I called back investors, renegotiated contracts, and demanded receipts. I told every manager that if they couldn't explain where the money went, I'd call the auditors.
They called me cruel. I called them greedy. They called me reckless. I called them honest. They were quiet after that.
Sebastien watched from the outside and he hated what he didn't control.
One night his assistant called. "The woman who was with you—Claudia—she fainted at home. She insisted on seeing you and collapsed."
He left his house and ran to the hospital like a man who had to see his world still spinning his way. I stayed in my office and watched him on the news, a man holding a woman's hand in a sterile room.
Then my phone buzzed. "We couldn't find her records online," Sebastien's assistant told someone on the line. "It's like she vanished. And the woman's phone—someone tried to hack it. We couldn't."
Some people hire spies. Some people hire threats. Ambrose sent careful men to watch.
"Don't worry," he said. "I'll make sure nobody touches you who doesn't belong to us."
"Good," I said. "But don't make my life into a war. Let me fight."
Ambrose wandered the DaKings halls like a lion in a new den. He loved the fights that made sense. He loved me because I was mine.
Rumors flew. "Why did Avianna take the CEO job?" they asked. "Who is backing her?"
I kept quiet. I worked. I turned the cameras toward products and not backstory. But I couldn't ignore the war.
Claudia's campaign didn't stop. She targeted me with whisper accounts, with leaked photos. She paid people to follow Ambrose and roll cameras at dinners.
One evening my phone buzzed and the papers lit up. "MYSTERY WOMAN SPOTTED WITH CEO SEBASTIEN," the headline screamed. Someone had cropped a picture of me entering a cafe. Someone had tried to make me the subject. I blocked any message from Sebastien.
"She blocked me," he fumed. "She dared to."
He came to DaKings furious. "What is she doing there?" he asked Christoph.
"She's the CEO," Christoph said like this explained everything.
He went white. "She is… DaKings' CEO?"
"Yes," Christoph said. "And very dangerous."
Dangerous was a word I learned to wear like armor.
The first real attempt on me was loud and stupid. A silver van tailing my car on a quiet street; a bunch of low-life hired to rough me up. I drove fast and made leaps like a stunt rider. They lost control and we left them behind.
I parked, got out, and walked toward my building. A group of men blocked the way. "Hand over your bag," growled a man.
I took off my heel, gripped it like a weapon, and fought. I don't dance. I hit with the heel. I kicked. I laughed in the middle like some crude music was playing. By the time law enforcement arrived, eight men were on the ground and one confessed.
"It was Claudia," he said, shaking. "She paid."
I called the station, recorded the confession, and I posted the details lines at a time across social. Ten minutes later the city's feeds lit up. "SHOCK: Claudia Cardenas linked to attack."
Within an hour the people who had followed her vanished from the feeds. Within a day her sponsors dropped her accounts. Within two days the tabloids dug into her past.
"I have dirt," she screamed to her friends. "I will sue!"
"You're done," I said in a live interview. "If you wanted a show, you made it. The public will judge."
The public judged loud. They dug. They found evidence that her family had disowned her years before. They found a string of lies and fabrications. They found the pay records for those men.
She became a headline of shame.
She went on television and lied. Cameras showed the receipts. Her PR team folded. Her accounts were hacked by angry fans. People called for her brands to drop her.
She lost endorsements. She lost invitations. She lost trust.
On the third day, she walked into a packed press room and—because she had no plan—she broke.
"Please!" she begged in one video that went viral. "I didn't mean…"
She fell to her knees. People recorded it. The newspapers wrote it. The comments were merciless.
"She cried and she pleaded," one headline read. "But the city's phones recorded every word."
The shame fell on her like a heavy curtain. Investors withdrew from projects linked to her. Her agencies cut ties. Friends blocked her. The woman who once brushed off cameras now had them record every moment of humiliation.
She called for people to forgive her. The internet went meaner. People found old interviews showing her staged persona. The footage of her kneeling played in slow motion. She begged one manager to take back his deal, and he laughed.
"This is your making," I said in a televised interview. "When you hire thugs to hurt people and then lie about truth, don't act surprised by the consequences."
Her husband—if she had one—left. Her agent texted "I'm sorry" and then stopped answering.
The fall was not small. It was total. For days crowds gathered outside her townhouse and filmed her leaving. People called her by names that made her wince. Her verified social accounts had thousands of hateful comments. She lost everything that could be measured.
I watched it happen and felt nothing but a small, cold fire of satisfaction. I had not wanted this for the show. I wanted safety. I wanted the harassment stopped.
But her ruin taught a city a lesson: you don't hire violence to get what you want. You don't throw people into pits and then stand aside.
Sebastien watched all this and his face changed each day. Anger became guilt, then confusion, then something else. Once he threatened me on the phone.
"Stop," he said. "Stop this. You don't get to decide things like this."
"Tell the truth," I said. "Stop pretending you didn't know what you were doing when you let her puff herself into your life."
"You can't keep doing this," he said. "You're reckless."
"I'm careful," I said. "And I'm done being small."
He offered money. He offered the usual things men with power offer. I said no.
"Why did you care so much?" he asked one night, voice flat.
"Because I cared enough to stop being a victim," I said.
He realized in the weeks that followed that there were things he had not seen. I had been there. I had put ice on his swollen ankle. I had moved cautiously around his house as he grew less mobile. I had hidden the fear and answered the nurse's questions. He remembered none of the small, unfussy things I had done that made his life possible.
Memory didn't come back like a phone call. It came back on the way the city turned its head to me and the way he had no claim on my new life.
He tried again. He came to the club where I sometimes danced for a night and watched from the shadows. He tried to make people believe I had changed because the cameras said so.
"You're a mess," he said, when he found me behind the stage.
"Maybe," I said. "But it's my mess."
He reached for me and kissed me like he wanted a map back. I shoved him.
"Don't," I said. "You have Claudia now."
"You think it's that easy?" he asked.
"No," I said. "I think it's impossible."
He left angry. I left bored. I had no desire to be his prize or his mark.
Weeks later DaKings' fat ledger caught a cold and coughed up secrets. Christoph had taken bribes. The company had bills that wouldn't match. I called in auditors and auditors delivered a pile of contradictions big enough to bury careers.
"We can file," Ambrose said. "We can hand this to the regulators."
"I want the company to survive," I said. "But not like that. We rebuild clean."
Ambrose looked at me like I had shown him the future. "You are impossible," he said. "And I'm in love with your impossibility."
"If love is a small fortress," I said, "then live there."
He laughed. "Call me old-fashioned. I prefer to be called your fan."
Soon, the board of DaKings signed papers to let me reorganize. Hollywood vultures scurried for the exits. Investors returned with conditions. I welcomed the clean ones and closed the doors to those I didn't trust.
Sebastien watched it all go wrong for him. He called and called but my phone stayed quiet. He tried to text and the messages bounced.
"You blocked me," he said, one night when he found Ambrose and me at a small table in a place that served good coffee.
"Yes," I said. "Because you were used to being in charge."
"You're being childish," he said.
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe I'm finally being an adult."
He tried to bargain. "We can work together," he said. "We can partner. DaKings' back line is valuable. My company can inject funds. We'll do this—"
"I don't want your money," I said.
He didn't stop. "Think, Avianna. You saved that company so I can partner and regain the resources I need. Think what we can do—"
I watched his face and saw the betrayal he felt when he realized someone else had made decisions without him.
"I don't want partners who see me as currency," I said. "I want a company that stands on its own."
He left furious. He started sending lawyers. He started pushing negative stories. He tried to drive a wedge between Ambrose and me. It didn't work.
In a last attempt he threatened to release a packet of information tying DaKings to a missing film and unpaid investors.
"Do it," I said when the threat came. "You think that'll take us down faster than you can ruin Claudia?"
He realized I had a threat of my own. "You blackmail me?"
"I call it balance," I said. "You want to break our company, I will break your narrative. The board won't back you if the charges hit the paper."
He swallowed a laugh that tasted like defeat. "Always dramatic," he said. "Always theatrical."
"Better the theater than the grave," I said.
The attack came at the worst possible night. A huge charity gala. Claudia, desperate and naked with shame, still tried to smile. Sebastien arrived like a wounded man with a script. I went because DaKings needed to be seen as stable.
A fight started like knives in a dressing room. Words turned into hands. He grabbed me like an anchor; I shoved him off and a forkished knife stuck in his chest during the scuffle—an accident—then the room spun.
Everything slowed. I saw his blood on my hand. He laughed haggardly.
"You could have killed me," he said, then coughed.
"You were trying to control me," I said. "You didn't deserve to have that control."
I left. The press had everything. They played it over and over. He went to the hospital and I kept walking.
I ordered ninety-nine white chrysanthemums and sent them to the hospital. The florist asked why. I said, "For a funeral of what never was."
They laughed at me. I smiled.
At the hospital, I found him pale and tired. He pretended not to notice the flowers. I put them on the bedside table.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because time is up," I said calmly. "For both of us."
He tried to speak with the easy charm that had once won me. "Avianna—"
"Don't," I said.
He froze, like a man being taught to spell.
"You think you can drag me back into being the woman you loved because it's easier?" I asked. "You had three years to see me. You chose who you wanted. I chose to leave."
"Why did you stay?" he murmured.
"Because I thought you might need me," I said. "That was my mistake."
He slumped back. "I can't fix it."
"You can't," I said.
He swallowed. "I... I wish I could ask you to come back."
"Save your breath," I said. "I already told you. I hate you enough to never love you again."
I turned to go. He grabbed my wrist.
"I don't want you to hate me," he whispered.
"Too late," I said.
At the door I paused. I looked back at the broken watch I had smashed months ago and the face he had once wanted to spend forever with. He needed an end as much as I did a beginning.
One press release later the city knew the truth about Claudia. Her charity partners had cut her loose. Her phone filled with hate, and then with emptiness.
Sebastien's empire staggered. Investors watched the news. The theater of people who had once applauded him began to reassess. He lost a seat on a board. A partner pulled out. The woman he had tried to buy saw him for what he was.
A month later DaKings announced a clean slate. Christoph left with a box of files and a face as pale as bad paint. Claudia's scandal stalked her like a shadow. Ambrose toasted me with cheap champagne in a private room.
"To the woman who didn't kneel," he said.
"To the woman who broke a watch and left," I said.
He laughed. "You'll always be my worthless, stubborn, impossible woman."
"Good," I said.
There are moments in a life that you can't plan. Some are knives. Some are flowers. Some are a man who finally understands he lost something he never had.
In the weeks after, I rebuilt. I hired people who would not make DaKings a trap for girls. I found scripts that mattered. We released one small hit. It ran clean in the box office. I walked on stage at a press conference and clapped for the team.
Sebastien watched from afar. He sent messages that were no longer full of commands. They were short, frightened. I skimmed them and pressed "delete."
One night Ambrose and I stood on the roof of the studio. The city spread beneath us like a messy promise.
"You ever think about it?" he asked.
"What?" I asked.
"Going away," he said.
"Maybe," I said. "Somewhere with no phones."
He kissed my hair. "I could buy you an island."
"I could buy it myself," I said.
He smiled and then grew serious. "Are you happy?"
"Yes," I lied again. "But it's a good lie."
He reached into his coat and pulled out a small leather box. Inside a watch lay like a secret. "For you," he said. "A proper one."
I looked at Sebastien's broken watch on my shelf—glass spiderwebbed from the night I'd smashed it—and then at the new watch. I thought of the life where I signed and tore. I thought of a life I could choose.
"No," I said, softly. "Put it on me now."
He fastened it. "To new time," he said.
I looked at the face. It read right.
"One day," Ambrose said, quiet. "If you want, we can ask the city to forget you were once home to something else."
"Let it remember," I said. "We don't gain lessons by deleting the past."
He kissed me gently.
In the morning I woke to a text I didn't open. The chrysanthemum vase on my table caught the light. A single white petal had fallen and sat on the table like a small, clear coin.
I smiled.
"Goodbye," I whispered—more to myself than to him.
I had the city, the company, a brother who loved me, and a life I had carved myself. I had the scars and the triumphs.
At noon I walked past a café where I once sat with a man who asked me to sign.
I left the door open.
No one knocked.
I walked on.
The End
— Thank you for reading —