Revenge17 min read
The Wallet on the Nightstand
ButterPicks15 views
I woke up because someone was fussing with my clothes.
"Don't move, Aya," a soft voice said.
I froze with my fingers at the clasp of my bra. It was the wrong kind of stillness—the kind that sits in your chest and turns the world thin.
"Like this?" the voice asked.
"Yes," I managed. My face burned like I had sat too close to a heater.
He adjusted the strap and lay back down without turning. He looked as if sleep wanted him and he let it sleep. His hair stuck up in little dark scissors. His face had the kind of pale, patient calm some people wear like a jacket.
"Are you leaving?" he whispered, and there was a smile in the sound.
"Yes," I said.
I realized my head cleared the way liquor sometimes does. The room smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and something floral. I turned my head and saw him in profile: eyes glossy with sleep, cheeks flushed, the kind of softness that made thinking dangerous.
Then my eyes caught the edge of a leather wallet on the nightstand.
It was his.
I touched it because a terrible, private part of me wanted to know everything. In it I found a card, his ID.
"You're old enough, Aya," he said, amused, not opening his eyes.
"Okay." My hands shook as I slid the card back.
"Goodnight," he said and pulled the covers up. One hand, lazy, rested on his forehead. "I'm a little tired."
That small phrase—"a little tired"—pushed something hollow into my stomach.
I left barefoot, snatching my bag and phone. The day outside was bright and loud with other people's happiness and plans. We were on a group trip; it was only the first evening and I had slept with a boy I had met that afternoon.
I hated myself.
Two
A knock woke me the next morning. Laughter flowed outside the door like someone had left music on.
"Why did you open the door so slowly?" Gianna asked the second I looked out.
"We have to catch the bus," she said like she had planned the world and commanded its schedule. Her face was already made for sunlight and cameras.
"Okay," I lied.
Gianna held my arm and guided me to breakfast.
"Where's your boyfriend?" one of the other girls chirped.
"He said he wanted to sleep a bit more," Gianna replied, and a blush came quick and pink on her face.
My nerves went taut. I remembered his words—"a little tired." I remembered the ID. I remembered the wallet. And then I felt small in a corner of a room filled with people who knew how to shine.
Three
On the bus he boarded lazily, as if someone invited him and he had all the time in the world.
"Forest," someone said behind me. So he was Forest Ruiz.
When he passed, he gave me a small smile that did me in.
"Hey, lovebirds," Gianna said, eyes bright.
He sat behind us, and his voice drifted through the bus like a slow current. He sounded like someone who belonged in other people's stories.
"He just said his family checks on him a lot," I overheard. "They come by."
"Come play more with us sometime," Gianna cooed.
He answered softly and polite: "Sure, when I have time." The bus ride blurred past. I tried to listen to music but I still felt watched—like a moth under a lamp.
When we stopped, Gianna was surrounded by her crowd. Forest and I were at the edge, strangers again. He stood tall, careless; I felt small and observant.
"Need anything?" he asked.
"Do you want a medicine?" he said, casually, and my blood ran cold for a reason that was part memory and part fear.
He folded his hands in his pockets. "I'll be back."
He walked away down a narrow lane. I told myself he was going for tea. I watched him go and my heart refused to believe he would buy medicine for me—and then he returned with two cups and slipped one into Gianna's hands and one into mine.
She took hers with a smile.
She handed mine to me.
I opened the bag and there, shining and tiny in the foil, was a round tablet.
I thought of last night.
Four
The trip ended with laughter, pictures, and Gianna bragging about Forest. I took the bus home alone. That night I swallowed the tablet with water and told myself it was nothing. I told myself I would not be that kind of ruin.
Later I scrolled through Gianna's social feed and froze. There was a photo of Forest leaning on a railing at sunset, eyes lost and handsome; Gianna's half-smiling face hovered at the edge, triumphant. He looked like someone who belonged in the sun and not a room. I set her feed to private for me and pulled the blanket over my head.
My period became a living thing that month—twice in one month, sharp as knives. I had never experienced that before. The pills had taken something from me.
I tried to tell myself it was merely a side effect.
Five
Weeks went by. Forest and Gianna were a public picture: dinners, trips, manic happiness. Gangly, private me watched and tried to learn to be invisible. Gianna invited me to more outings. I said yes because I always said yes to her.
"Forest texted," she chirped one night. "He wants to bring me a present."
"That's lovely," I muttered. I lied better now. If I was quiet enough, maybe the world would not notice me.
"Do you see how sweet he is?" she asked. "Remember when he bought us both milk tea? He got my favorite and yours because he remembers. He's perfect."
"Good for you," I said.
She called his private doctor once on my behalf. I stared at my phone, silent and small. When she finally announced his plan—children, careers, a wedding, a Gucci bag—I thought about how small my life felt in comparison.
Six
"Hey, you okay?" Oliver asked at the office one night.
I hadn't realized I had stayed late. Oliver Ewing was my manager, rough humor and kind eyes; he had a way of stopping the world with a joke that made me breathe again.
"I'm fine," I lied.
Forest appeared beside him, casual in black, like sleep and cigarettes and perfect hair belonged to him.
"Come on," Oliver said. "I'll drive you."
"Scared of the dark," Forest said, smiling.
On the drive home Forest and I barely spoke. He was the same man who had let me sleep in his room and the same man who had been a joke in my phone messages. I wanted to tell Oliver about last night. I wanted to tell someone. I couldn't find the words.
"You're bleeding?" Forest asked at one point. "Are you okay?"
"It isn't like that," I said. He shrugged and we drove on.
Seven
I tried to cut them out. I deleted Forest from my contacts. I thought I could save a piece of myself by erasing him.
He called the next morning.
"Did you sleep?" his text read.
"I'm sleeping," I wrote and meant it as a lie.
He answered: "You can remove me from your phone, but I won't let anyone take me out of your life if you don't want them to."
I stared at the screen, annoyed, strangely pleased, and then anxious again. He had a way of making things impossible to pin down.
Eight
Soon I found myself drawn into their orbit again. A company barbecue, a chance meeting—these things happen. I should have stayed away, and I couldn't.
"Stay," Oliver said.
"So you want me to stay and roast meat?" I asked.
"I want you to not be alone," he replied. He wasn't my brother, or father, but the man asked me to stay and I stayed.
At one point they made me play a silly social game. The rules were absurd and I ended up having to clear Forest's online shopping cart.
It was humiliating as the others laughed. There were dabbed mouths and camera flashes; someone thought it funny. I paid with my card and left.
"Why'd you do that?" Forest asked afterward, in the washroom, cutting a cigarette.
"I don't know," I said. "I was dared."
He smiled at me and it was easy to believe him.
Nine
Things did not get easier.
I found messages on my phone that were not mine. Photos arrived at my parents' house, photos of me at public events, photos of me with Forest in moments I could not remember. The messages had a small, cruel note: "What would your family think if they knew?"
Gianna sent one of those messages. So did someone else.
One night, angry and foolish, I "mis-sent" a message to Forest that read: "If your Forest is so pure, why not let me have him?" I planned to laugh and say it was a joke if he replied.
He called me instead.
"Why would you say that?" his voice was soft, curious.
"I didn't," I said "I just—"
"You put me on your blacklist then unblocked me," he said lightly. "You miss me."
"Stop," I told him.
He laughed at that, and said, "If you want me, don't ask permission. Just take me."
I deleted the conversation and put him back on silent.
Ten
Then everything got nasty.
I found myself drawn to a horse farm one afternoon. I thought it might be safe. I thought I could meet an old classmate and talk frankly. I didn't expect to find Forest with Gianna. I didn't expect the sly, poisonous strings that tugged on the past.
"Why are you here?" Forest said, then: "You're always linked in my brother's stories."
"I work for him," I said. "This is my internship."
"Small world," he said. He smiled in a way that didn't reach his eyes. I felt exposed.
The day ended tensionless, too thin.
At night my phone buzzed with a strange prayer: "Are you okay? Help." It didn't say where. Somewhere, someone was trying to orchestrate drama, and I felt again like a puppet.
Eleven
And then the horror came.
I woke up in a place I didn't recognize—white walls, cold light. My hands were bound. My mouth was gagged. I could think only of the panic rising like a wave.
"She's awake?" a voice said.
The door opened. He stood there, an expression I had never seen before, strict and pressing. It was not the same patient smile that had adjusted my strap.
"You're quiet," Rohan said.
"You shouldn't be here," I managed, muffled. He laughed.
Rohan—Rohan Contreras—had been the sheltered boy everyone admired. He had been my crush once. He was behind this.
"You don't belong to anyone but me now," he said.
"No," I tried, but the sound felt small and damp.
"I wanted you for a long time," he said. "You and I. You can't have both Gianna and me. You belong to my plans."
I realized with a cold certainty that the years of small cruelties, the marginal comments about me not fitting in, had been plans—carefully prepared.
Twelve
I escaped, mostly because he had flaws. I ran, because panicked legs do not consider elegance. I hit a safety exit and a cleaner screamed. Hands reached for me. I called someone: anyone. I ran to the place with lights and layouts I knew, and I ran into Gianna, smug and smiling.
"You're fine," she said. "I told you. I would never—"
"Why did you bring him?" I asked.
She laughed like a sparrow, mild and chill. "I didn't bring him. He wanted you."
But there were messages—recordings—left on my phone. There was the smell of medicine on the foil he dropped in my bag. There were texts where Gianna proposed cunning plans about "putting her in a place where she wouldn't resist the jolt."
I felt used, then used again, then emptied.
Thirteen
I wanted revenge—sharp and clean. But revenge that burns you eats your good parts, too. I thought of paying them back with humiliation, equal measure. It felt childish and righteous at once.
Instead I went to Oliver.
"Do you trust me?" I asked him.
He looked up from his desk. "Depends on how you use the trust."
"I want them exposed," I said. "I want it public."
He considered me like a chessboard and nodded. "We'll make their game public."
"Will you help me punish them?" My voice was small like a child's asking for a bandage.
"Publicly?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. I wanted their faces to be seen and heard, their laughter to stop under the weight of consequences.
Fourteen — The Punishment
The family gala was always the sort of event where people measured their own value by how their name sounded in a room. The Dominguez Estate hosted this year's charity dinner; Salvador Dominguez—Forest's grandfather—sat at the head of the high table like a small empire of old tastes, all wood and quiet judgment.
I had never imagined any scene where I would stand with a microphone and ask an entire room to learn something about the people there. I had never intended to be brave.
"Good evening," I said, and my voice shook. "My name is Aya Vang. I was once the quiet girl on the edge of this town."
There was a rustle. Forks paused. A woman in pearls looked at me as if I were an insect. Murmurs fluttered like birds.
"Why are you here?" Gianna mouthed to me across the room, fingers virtuoso with anger and a practiced surprise.
"Because tonight I want the truth about how some people make monsters and call it love," I said. The words felt dangerous and right.
"Who told you to—" Gianna started, her face hard.
"Nobody." I lifted my phone and Oliver counted the seconds down in my ear. The banquet hall was full—clients, family friends, journalists. On the stage, a projector screen flickered. We had recorded everything: texts, screenshots, videos, receipts, dates. We had mapped a small, ugly trail.
I hit play.
Video one was crude but clear: a conversation between Gianna and Rohan plotting which doors to leave unlocked, which pills to set out as "medicine." Her voice was bright as always, saying: "Make sure she takes it. She needs to be smaller."
Gasps. Cutlery stilled. A woman near me covered her mouth.
"That's not me!" Gianna shrieked, standing. She was first shock and then a quickly staged outrage. "You're planting lies—"
Her tone faltered when the next file played: a recording of her in the bathroom before the farmhouse, whispering over the phone to "make sure he finds her." She laughed. The laughter dissolved into a brittle, panicked plea as the projection cut to messages showing money transfers with her name in transaction comments.
Her face changed. The lighting in the hall was less forgiving than the streams. Her laugh went from light to strangled to a red-hot anger. She pointed, fingernails like small knives.
"You can't do this to me," she said. "You can't—"
People snapped pictures. An elderly patron said, "Goodness." Phones recorded. Someone typed into voice-recorder apps and the sound was already breaking across the room. The audience leaned in like a sea parting.
I watched Gianna's expression shift: first defiant, then shocked, then fierce denial. She tried to rally a smile, then tried to cut a look at Forest. He sat quiet, hands folded. His face went pale.
The second projection was not funny at all. It showed Rohan crossing my dorm hallway. He was unmasked by Oliver's discreet recording months ago, where he spoke of tracking my steps, laughing at the idea I could resist him. There were screenshots of his messages—threats thinly veiled as "care." There was one audio clip where he said, gleefully, "If I make her small enough, she will only want me."
Murmurs turned to murmurs of disgust, and then to loud hisses of anger that rolled like a small storm.
Gianna's eyes widened until she looked like a deer trapped in headlights. "That's doctored!" She cried.
Forest stood. He had always been the person everyone forgave; he walked to the stage like a man half asleep who had been woken into a nightmare.
"Forest?" his grandfather asked, the voice like a judge.
He looked at me. "I will answer," he said.
"Go on," Oliver said to the microphone, his voice the anchor. "We have more evidence."
There were receipts—hotel check-ins at odd times, a purchase order with contraception, a delivery marked for a house tied to Rohan. "Why?" one guest asked aloud. "Why would anyone—"
Rohan, who had once smiled like a boy, had stayed silent until now. When the last clip—an audio of him boasting about 'locking things in place'—played, his face collapsed.
At first he denied everything. "No—this is insane," he said. He was confident enough to be cruel, then the presence of everything turned his confidence brittle. He moved from denial to anger to a whisper of plea in the space of minutes.
"I didn't mean—" he said.
"You meant," Gianna spat, but her own voice was paper-thin.
There were hands in the hall holding phones out, people filming the unraveling like a sport. Books had been closed. The caterer froze mid-serve.
"How could you?" the woman in pearls asked now. She was one of the family's closest patrons; she'd once smiled politely at Gianna. Now she looked at her with disgust and said, loud enough for everyone, "You are cruel and dangerous."
Videos went from my phone to others. The room's mood shifted. Sympathy for Gianna had been a currency; now it melted.
Rohan's face had slowed. He moved from vehement defiance to a flustered denial. He looked around as if trying to find someone to take the blame. There was none.
"You think this makes you clever?" he said suddenly, turning to the room. "You spotlight me—"
"Silence," Salvador's voice cut across the hall like a blade. He had been quiet, looking at the screen, his face unreadable. "This is no place for your games."
Forest's eyes met Gianna's then Rohan's. He didn't leap to defend either. He looked at me, and there was nothing of the boy who had let me in that night, and nothing of the gossip profile men had found so charming before.
"You spoke of love," I said. "You called it care. You bought it gifts and then you called it ownership. You do not get to hide behind nice clothes and charitable donations. You do not get to define people by what you can take."
Gianna's mask cracked. She cried for a moment, then swore and screamed at me, "You ruined me! Who are you to—"
I did not answer. There were police uniforms at the edges, people who had been waiting for a signal. Oliver had sent them the files; they had verified. The evidence was not just a slideshow of high school cruelty; it was a map of behavior—payments, messages, recorded confessions—and a plan.
Gianna went through stages: first she marched, then she stammered, then she shrank. She tried to play the victim, but cameras filmed the fervent cruelty in her voice. Her friends' faces changed in real time from indulgent to ashamed; a few stepped away. Her phone went hot with texts. Someone in the crowd began to clap, ironically at first. The applause spread as the room decided which side it was on.
Rohan's reaction changed more dramatically. He went from smug, to shocked, to incredulous, to pleading, to imploring. "No, please. It got out of hand, I didn't—"
Bystanders reacted: a woman took a photo and posted it. A father in a suit pulled his daughter close. Guests whispered and some took out the phone to record a woman who had once been untouchable now sobbing at a banquet.
"Look at her," Rohan said, voice breaking. "She's—"
"Quiet," Salvador said. "You will speak to the police."
Rohan's face sagged like a man whose armor had been removed in full view of his battlefield. He had the arc of someone who had enjoyed unaccountability. Now the arc bent quickly toward collapse. His mouth worked. He denied. He begged. He blamed me for not stopping what he had done earlier. The change—smug to pleading—was visible: eyes bright with something like fear, body folding in.
Gianna, faced with the film of her own voice giving instructions and laughing, became inconsolable. She wept at first in a childish way, then her expressions turned feral. "You're ruining me!" she cried. "Do you have any idea what this will do to my life?"
People laughed, and it was terrible. Not the cruel laugh she once enjoyed, but the laugh of those watching a big pretender be exposed.
"You brought this on yourself," I said softly. It sounded calm, like a verdict.
"That's not true!" she shrieked.
"Take responsibility," Oliver said. He had recorded every exchange and worked quietly behind the scenes for weeks to ensure the evidence was sound. His voice, normally so gentle, had the weight of a man with responsibility.
The crowd reacted like a living thing. Some whispered: "She blackmailed a friend." Others said louder: "She used her status." Someone recorded a clip that would flood social media. Gianna saw her followers' counts drop on a phone someone flashed at her. Her friends unfriended her on the spot. People pointed and people gasped. I watched the moment her social currency collapse and felt the rush of something I had never expected: relief.
This was the public punishment—not a trial in a court of law, but a social verdict. People turned their backs. Journalists whispered. A woman muttered, "I wouldn't hire her." A young man filmed and uploaded and the clip went viral before the dessert carts arrived.
Rohan's fate was different. When the police stepped forward and took the evidence, the room's roar dimmed to a hum. He was led out, flailing and trying to bluster, then begging, then collapsing into silence as cameras captured his fall from casual menace to terrified defendant. People who had once smiled at him now looked away. Some walked out. Some vomited.
Gianna's punishment was social ruination: her supporters left, her vanity lay in ruins, she faked bravado and then had no audience. She cried to anyone who would listen, then to no one. Friends snapped pictures and posted them with scathing captions. She left the gala with her hands empty.
Rohan's punishment was being taken into custody, handcuffed, not for anyone to cheer but for all to watch. He pleaded publicly and denied; he begged; he broke down and cried, then tried to menace, but by then his words meant nothing. People were silent or filmed it. His last face as he passed the doorway was a strip of shame: surprise, denial, then an apology that sounded hollow.
When the law took hold, the room exhaled. People processed it in their own ways: sympathy for victims, vindication, gossip, self-righteousness. But most importantly for me, for the first time I saw that an evening of generosity could be the scene of a justice that was not about revenge but about balance.
Fifteen
Afterward, people crowded around me. A few said, "Thank you." Others were silent. Forest's grandfather, Salvador, who had been a judge by both nature and choice, spoke quietly.
"You were brave," he said.
"You had to be," I replied.
Forest found me outside, alone, under an umbrella of dewy light. He looked smaller, as if the gala had peeled something away.
"Do you hate me?" he asked.
"No," I said. "But I can't be what you want without honesty."
"Will you stay away?" he asked.
"I won't pretend to be nothing for anybody's comfort," I said.
He nodded. His face was calm in a way that felt like fresh wounds under silk. "I did wrong," he said. "I should have listened. I should have stopped what they were planning. I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't fix everything," I said.
He looked down at his hands. "I know."
Sixteen
After that night, Gianna's world changed. Rohan's name was in the paper. People in our town treated them like a lesson.
Gianna tried to reconcile with her mother and lost the easy smile. Her friends abandoned her. She walked the corridors of our university like someone whose currency had been taken. Her public humiliation was deep: she cried and begged for forgiveness in hallways and was filmed, and those videos were posted with merciless commentary. She tried to explain, then lied, then finally knelt one afternoon on the campus steps, raw and noisy with apologies that did not come from the place they needed to. People walked past her and a few patted her head—pity, venom, relief—all at once. She reached for me; I turned away.
"Why won't you take me back?" she asked once, standing in the pouring rain outside the library. Her makeup ran like bad watercolor.
"Because you betrayed me," I said. "Because you wanted a show and a person in it. Because you called yourself my friend and used me as a prop."
She sank to the curb and sobbed like someone whose last page had been torn away. Her reaction changed from raging to broken, from blame to supplication to a small, shamed regret. She had once been the queen of everything; now she was a woman who had to find some other way to live. People photographed her collapse. A crowd gathered. Some threw words like stones. Some used their phones. Some simply turned away with a look that said: this became too much for us.
Rohan fared differently. He stood before a magistrate, and his face was a mix of shock, denial, bargaining, and finally resignation. The day he was led into custody his mother cried publicly; the town watched with a mixture of horror and vindication. He could not charm a courtroom the way he had charmed a hallway. In that room, his power meant nothing. He begged, he attempted excuses, he did not gain the sympathy he had once assumed would be his. Instead he got a sentence that included counseling, consequences, and an evicting from the circles he used to float in.
When the sentences were passed, it was not purely about justice. It felt like a message. The crowd outside the courthouse was quieter than the gala had been. There were no cameras catching delicious humiliation, but the ripple of speech spread. People spoke of accountability. A journalist whispered to me and said, "This is about teaching everyone you can't build a life on other people's suffering."
Seventeen
Days passed. People started to talk like that was the end of it, then they didn't, because consequences have a way of lingering. Gianna followed me in the hallways with apologetic glances; Rohan's name became a cautionary tale told to boys who thought they could take advantage of others.
Forest came to Oliver's office one evening.
"Can we talk?" he asked.
"Already did," Oliver said. "You know what you need to do."
He went on to do it. He apologized. He took responsibility publicly for being quiet when he should have intervened. He took steps that were not perfect but were real: therapy, public statements, making amends in small, earnest ways. He stopped the flippancy that had been his charm and began to learn what it meant to be accountable. People watched and judged and slowly, very slowly, let him re-enter certain circles. It was not an immediate redemption but a long, careful walk.
Eighteen
As for me, I learned something else.
"I don't want to be small," I told Oliver one night. "I don't want to be the girl who disappears."
He looked at me. "Then don't."
"I used to think I needed to be softer to survive," I said. "But I don't."
"Good," he said. "Grow."
Nineteen
Weeks later, when the gossip had blurred into background noise, Forest and I met again by chance at a coffee shop where Oliver sometimes worked on weekends. We were both quieter. We both had scars, not visible but there.
"You look better," he said.
"Maybe," I answered.
"Would you like to try being friends?" he asked.
I considered it.
"Friends," I said slowly. "If we are honest."
He nodded.
Twenty
Time moves in odd rhythms. People who hurt you will hurt others; people who don't learn will repeat. But the one line I kept repeating to myself was simple: I choose myself.
On a late autumn evening, I sat at the window and looked at the tiny foil wrapper of a tablet I had kept in a shoebox. I rolled it between my fingers—crinkled, small, a ridiculous thing. It had been evidence but also a symbol: a small thing that had unbalanced my life.
I thought of the gala, of Gianna's fall, of Rohan taken away, of Forest trying to make sense of wrongness. I thought of Oliver handing me a cup of tea in a cold office and telling me to be brave.
I slid the foil into a drawer. I closed it tight.
The world moved on. People still had private fears. People still pretended. But that night, I slept without the weight of small secrets. I slept because I had found a voice. I slept because the scar on Gianna's ankle—something from long ago—was no longer a lever for her. It was only a scar.
When I woke, the morning light stroked the room in the way it always had: exact, honest, soft. I picked up my phone and typed a new contact into its bevy: my name—Aya Vang—and no one else.
The End
— Thank you for reading —