Face-Slapping14 min read
The Whitepaper Heart (a quiet girl learns to burn)
ButterPicks11 views
I am Cecilia Ziegler.
"Is the storm worse?" Ludwig Crow asked as he guided me into the bedroom full of machines and beeping lights.
"The doctor said stable," I whispered, though the word felt thin in my mouth. The rain outside made the windows blur like an old photograph. Andres Rossi lay under a hospital blanket and the machines timed out his breaths like a metronome.
"He's awake," a voice rasped from the bed.
"Father." My throat closed. I should have been stronger. I hadn't been strong enough when we were kids. I wasn't strong now.
"Listen to me, Cecilia," Andres said. His voice was a thread that tangled guilt and love. "Everything—property—will be yours. Protect it. A man came today. It was him. He ruined us. Promise me you'll... take revenge."
I didn't say I doubted. I didn't know how. I only nodded.
"He said—" Father coughed into the cloth. "He said my world was over because of them. Remember that."
"I remember." I knelt until my knees burned on cold tile. "I remember everything."
After the machines went quiet and the "beep" became a long, flat tone, I held the silence like a hot coal. It burned and I kept it. The funeral came fast. People processed in like weather. Leonor Blackwell arrived in black, immaculate, carrying a polite smile—and she was not alone.
"Hello, Cecilia," Leonor said softly, and we pretended grief was a shared language.
"Ludwig," she added, nodding to the butler who had been with us for decades. "I brought someone to keep you company."
She brought Julian Silva.
"He is from my work," Leonor explained, sitting with the kind of ease that belongs to people used to moving others like chess pieces. "He will help you."
I looked at Julian and felt nothing but a small, cold knot. He looked wet from rain, in a shirt clinging to him as if the night had decided to press him in shape. He looked like every boy from a campus poster and a boardroom magazine melted into one person. He did not smile.
"Hello," Julian said in a flat voice. "I'm sorry about your father."
"You don't have to be sorry," Leonor said, and I watched her hands move like a pianist. "You have been useful to us for years."
I tried to understand the threads that bound us. My life had been in separate rooms: my father's hospital, my tutors', the quiet of the house. Julian had always been there, sometimes for me, sometimes against me. He had once corrected my painting with a laugh. He had once promised me protection. I did not know which version I had.
"Go upstairs," Julian told me as if he owned the floorboards. "There's a room ready for you."
I obeyed. Obedience felt safe.
— five days earlier —
"He's going to confess at graduation," the campus girls said, all lipstick and shrill giggles.
"To whom?" I asked without looking up from my sketchbook.
"To you," Emma Henry said, eyes bright. "It's so sweet — the campus idol, Julian Silva, is going to ask you to be his."
I laughed then because it was easier than crying. Julian had walked with me through four years. People called me unlucky: pretty, quiet, and a little broken. They called me a "special kind of quiet" because my ears heard less and my eyes looked more. Julian called his connection to me a responsibility. He said it was because his mother had asked. He said many things.
At graduation Julian stood in front of everyone and said, "Cecilia, will you be with me? I will always protect you."
I heard the applause as if through water. My chest bolted. I cried, the tears falling like a sudden rain. He kissed my head in front of a record of faces and we pretended the world was only that.
"You're idiots," a voice had said later. "You're not even related."
"That is exactly the point," Julian whispered once, as if he were revealing a secret and his every word was a coin.
— now —
"Are you happy?" someone asked me in the kitchen as Leonor poured tea.
"Sometimes," I answered. Sometimes was all I had practiced.
"Then be happy," she said. "Stay with us."
I was polite. I nodded. That was what I knew.
The first months were a slow tide of small humiliations. Julian's voice could be warm and saving. "Don't say that," he'd tell me gently when my attention drifted to loud markets or strangers. "You look like a child who lost her map." He would buy me pastries and tuck a blanket over my knees. Then he would call me "stupid" the second he had gone cold and the room had shrunk.
"You are fragile," he'd say into my hair once. "I am the only one to hold you."
Weeks later, walking into the company offices where Julian's influence sat like a statue, I felt the pull of a plan I could not see. I was easy to place. He placed me in front of a camera on a nation-wide audition. Agustin Christian took my hand like a business partner and promised lights.
"You're going to be a star," Agustin told me, his smile glittering like business hours.
"Can I?" I asked. "Can I do it?"
"Of course," he said. "You have a look. You have a story. We will wrap it in light."
They wrapped me. Cameras burned. People loved the quiet girl who smiled like a secret. I learned to move just so, to let the camera see a softness that I did not feel. My name trended. My voice rippled in studio rooms. I could feel a future forming like a map under my feet.
But then an "anonymous" photograph leaked. It went everywhere. The network said I had used a connection. "They were photographed together." The comments were sharp and sharp-edged. The world responded with teeth.
"Is this true?" Agustin asked me urgently.
"Who?" I asked.
"Julian. Is he...?" His hand shook.
"It was him," I said. "He was with me."
"Then he should say so."
"No," Julian's text said on my phone that night. "Not yet."
Later, Agustin told me, "Julian asked us to limit your screen time. He—he wanted control."
"He wanted what?" I asked, though I already knew.
"He wanted slow. He said make it appear natural. He said you should endure a little." Agustin's face folded. "He said we could manage the tide."
I learned that night that the people who "managed a tide" could drown you gently.
"Don't worry," Agustin said, patting my hand. "This is how it goes. We will ride the storm."
I believed him because I had no reason not to.
— on the set —
"Stay here," Julian said when I was assigned to an early challenge. He watched my hands with an expression like an equation.
"I'm nervous," I signed and mouthed. He watched my lips — he always watched.
"You did fine," he told me later. "You have a face people buy."
"But—" I started.
"No buts." He held my face the way a person might hold a fragile bowl.
People said nasty things online. They said I had traded my grace for a life. They called me names I could not fully hear but saw all the same. I stopped reading comments. Leonor cried quietly once and said, "They will pass."
Then, the day the program was scheduled to release me, it turned into a month. Then into three. I felt like a clock wound too tight.
"It is for your career," Leonor said once when I asked for release.
"Release me," I mouthed to Julian one night. I hadn't meant for him to hear; but he did.
"Why do you want to go?" he asked, in the same cool voice he used when he wanted something.
"Father is unwell. I want to see him," I signed. "I want to go home."
He laughed then, soft and small like glass. "You are here because you belong to me."
That was when my world turned.
— the turning —
"She is ours. Let her sing, but not too loud," Julian told Agustin.
"Agustin, be careful," Leonor told him. "This is a family matter."
"Family matters are sometimes business," Julian said. "You are my advantage."
They thought it was simple. They thought I was paper waiting for them to fold.
At the program I learned more hands could shape me. Luca Dumont, a friend of Julian's, said with a smirk, "Keep her quiet in interviews. Make her look like an angel who doesn't argue." He winked like a villain from a comic strip.
"How long?" I asked once.
"As long as it takes," Julian answered.
I kept singing. I kept dancing. The votes piled up. I climbed to second place. The world loved the worn-looking girl with the perfect pitch. I loved the applause like someone loves light after darkness.
But then the world turned to scandal. Someone posted an old picture again, and "Julian is not mine" began trending. The company head released a statement: it wasn't Julian in that picture. They denied responsibility. They told me to say I was "just friends." They asked me to shoulder their silence.
"Say it," Agustin urged. "Say 'we are just friends'."
"I want to tell the truth," I said softly.
"Not yet."
They told us all to keep calm. I kept calm while my insides broke into small, unnoticeable shards.
— the night I waited outside his office for seventeen hours —
"He's late," the security guard said with a tired voice. "Is this someone important?"
"I am waiting for my brother," I said. I always called Julian "brother" out of habit. It made him closer and safer in my mind.
"He'll be out soon," the guard promised.
But he didn't come until the lights above locked and the moon turned the glass blue. When he finally walked through the door, he did not look up.
"Why are you here?" Julian asked without moving.
"To see you," I said. "I waited."
"Why?" he asked, like I was a small insect with a peculiar relation to time.
"Because you said so," I answered.
"Fine." He kissed the top of my head as if to mark property, then shoved me into a car and drove away.
He was careful with the camera when he wanted to be. He was cruel when he didn't think anyone watched.
— that winter, when I became a star —
The cameras suddenly liked me. My face was on billboards. People called me "the quiet charm" and "the miracle voice." Parents brought children to my shows, and their mothers wiped away small tears at my songs.
"You're doing really well," Agustin said proudly. He meant well. I wanted to believe him.
And then I went home one night and my head spun and the bathroom slipped beneath my feet.
"I don't feel right," I told Julian.
"Sleep," he said.
I fell into a darkness like a sea bed.
When I woke up, the ceiling was white and the air smelled like metal. Elaina Zeng, our family doctor, looked at me with something like grief in the line of her mouth.
"You fainted in the shower," she said. Her hands were steady. "You had a fever and signs of trauma."
"Trauma?" My heart stopped like a button in a dress: sudden and useless.
"We should run tests," Elaina said, always the professional. "You need rest."
"Will you take me home?" I asked Elaina quietly.
"I will stay," she said. "But, Cecilia, you must listen to me: if someone is using you, you must protect yourself."
"Who?" I blinked hard.
"Julian," she said. "I have been here long enough to see the patterns."
Julian slammed the door when he came to see me. He wanted to be both guardian and gaoler.
"Do you understand me?" he snapped. "You cannot tell your father or Mark Day, your real father, about this. It will blow up everything."
"But—" I started.
"No buts." He would give me candies and then break my toys.
I started to realize something dangerous: love, when wrapped in control, becomes a tool. The same hands that touched my hair might one day fold me flat.
— the first public punishment —
I kept working, though my body wanted the quiet rest of winter. People loved me. They collected my songs. I collected the courage to speak.
One evening, when the company scheduled a shareholder gala that would include a charity auction and the board of Andres Rossi's company, I did what I had never done. I walked on stage, and I spoke into a microphone in front of hundreds of guests, and I showed a worn paper I had kept since the first night Julian pressed his palm to my face.
"This is what he wrote to me once," I said, my voice steady as a blade. "He told me our relationship was private, necessary for his image. He told me he would orchestrate my career and control my silence. He used my silence as collateral."
There was a hum like an insect after that. Agustin looked at me as if I had lit a match in the dark. Leonor's face stayed smooth as stone. Julian's color flickered, like a candle sputtering.
"Julian Silva," I said, looking right at him with the small clarity that comes from finally letting go of fear, "you lied. You sold my privacy to the market. You pawned my silence. And you told people I was 'just a friend' when you knew the cameras would hurt me more than they would help."
"Stop this," Leonor whispered, thin as tissue. "Cecilia, you are making an error. This is not the way."
"It is," I said. "Because people justify public silence when it protects them and damages others. I cannot let either side win like that."
"Who is doing this? Who leaked?" a board member shouted. Phones flickered; the room filled with the bright blue screens of a thousand small accusations.
Julian laughed then, low and ugly. "You will ruin us both," he spat. "You will ruin me."
"I am already ruined by your choices," I said. "This is public."
"I never said it was me," he said with sudden clarity, the denial a shield.
Agustin stepped forward and touched my arm. "Cecilia, please. This is not the time—"
"The time is always right," I said. I opened my palm and put the small paper on the podium like a defiance flag. "Tell the shareholders, Julian. Tell them you hurt me. Tell them you used me."
Journalists leaned forward, their pens like trapdoors. The room had become a sea of hungry eyes. Someone's phone recorded. God's little angels in suits clicked on cameras.
"Fine," Julian said slowly. He moved across the room in a way that looked like someone moving a chess piece. He planted himself in front of us and lifted a hand to the assembled board. "I have always been cautious of public narratives."
"You're ashamed," I said. "Tell them you made me a secret. Tell them you kept me for leverage."
He stared at me as if at glass. A long breath left him. "You are making a spectacle," he said. "Do you know how much chaos this will bring?"
"Let them watch the chaos." The words tasted like salt.
Suddenly, a woman stood and pointed her phone. "He signed transfer orders last month! He's the one who pulled property strings late at night!" Someone screamed the file names; someone else flashed a document on their screen: a transfer order with Julian's initials. The room roared. Julian's face went pale.
"No—that's a forgery!" he yelled. "They're lying!"
"No," Leonor said, and I heard something like a crack in her voice. "Julian, is this true?"
Julian's denial splintered into panic. He moved from defiance to bafflement to attempt at control. "You can't say that. Those orders were to secure assets. They were legal."
"Legal?" someone shouted. "How many times did you authorize transfers without board notice? How long did you hide payments?"
The investors nudged each other. Phones lit up. The CEO's assistant, Jax Davenport, stood with his voice shaking, "There are emails. Signed by Julian. He suggested limiting PR exposure for 'unfavorable' persons."
Julian's mouth opened. He looked at Leonor as if expecting rescue. She looked away.
"You did this," a woman whispered. "You destroyed her."
The board's chairman rose slowly. "Mr. Silva," he said, voice like gravel. "We will be auditing every action. If you have misused corporate assets to manipulate publicity or careers, you will be held to account."
Gasps circled like birds. Shareholders cursed. Cameras caught every flinch on Julian's face. For the first time, he was not in control of the scene.
"You're done," a young intern said to him with a kind of casual cruelty. "We trusted you."
Julian's face crumpled from power into something raw. He grabbed at gestures—"That's not—"—but the salting eyes of a thousand strangers were on him, and his voice thinned.
He tried to speak. "I didn't mean to—"
"Mean?" someone yelled. "That word is weak. This is deliberate."
The chairman's words were heavy. "We are temporarily suspending Mr. Silva's authority pending an internal investigation and contacting legal counsel. This is now a matter for the board and the law."
"You're lying!" Julian burst, then clamped his hand over his mouth.
The crowd pressed closer. Phones recorded, and one feed streamed to a live audience. His face shifted dramatically: the smug mask fell away, replaced by horror, frantic denial, and finally a broken pleading. "You're all wrong," he said, voice raw. "This is—this is a mistake."
A woman near the front began to cry out, louder than the others. "My daughter is a fan. She believed in kindness. You lied."
"Shame," Leonor whispered like a final verdict.
People pushed forward to record his disgrace. Some applauded. A few shouted, "Shame!" Others stood stunned into silence. Julian's reaction moved from fury to desperation: he tried to explain, then tried to flee, then only tried to plead. At one point he dropped to his knees and put his face in his hands. Phones flashed; a few people recorded the scene and uploaded it within minutes.
"Don't!" he yelled, looking up at me. "Please—don't make it worse for me."
"I already made it public," I said. "I made it true."
His eyes burned. "You will ruin us both," he said again, but this time there was a crack—a childlike terror in it.
The punishment was public humiliation couched in reality: the board stripped him of temporary power; investors withdrew commitments; the company's PR disavowed clandestine transfers. In the hall, people spoke of lawsuits. Two employees produced more documents: wire transfers, private emails. Each revelation tightened the noose.
Julian's face went through the stages: surprise, fury, denial, bargaining, then collapse. He tried to rationalize, then cussed, then begged. The crowd reacted as they do: some turned away in disgust, some recorded him to circulate the spectacle, some left, their conversations already forming headlines. A few of Julian's old protectors—friends who had stood by in small scandals in the past—murmured and looked away.
At the end he sat like someone emptied, and a security guard helped him stand. He was escorted out quietly with nobody touching him; he had been disarmed by his own choices.
I did not shout triumph. I did not dance. I had only taken the step of making a wrong visible and then letting others weigh it.
— punishment aftermath, the collapse continued (public phase) —
Newsrooms exploded overnight. Julian's signature appeared on everything—on decisions to pressure public narratives, on orders that shifted funds. His mother, Leonor, had to barricade herself behind excuses. Investors demanded board meetings. The financial angle turned guilt into crime; the PR angle turned pride into scandal.
"How could you?" Leonor asked me once, when we were alone, fury and fear and exhaustion mixing in her eyes.
"I told the truth," I said. "I could not leave it in the dark."
"You destroyed the family," she said.
"I saved myself," I answered.
Leonor's silence afterwards was a thin scrape. She had to choose whether to defend him or to protect the company. She chose the company.
Julian tried to call me that night. He left a message that unravelled like a confession: humiliation, regret, blame. "You don't understand," he said, trembling. "I didn't plan to hurt you. I thought... I thought I could hold it together."
His voice broke with each word. I watched the voice message once, twice, and then deleted it. Let the record be public, but not his plea. Let the evidence stand.
— other punishments, private and social —
Not everyone exacted justice in the boardroom. Social punishment came quick and brutal, but not the same for everyone. Those who had helped him with the manipulations lost standings too. Agustin Christian, who had tried to hide emails, was publicly criticized for poor ethics; he lost contracts and had to appear on daytime shows to "explain." Luca Dumont, who spread a rumor about my "attitude," was publicly shunned by a circle of producers; his calls were no longer returned. Each person experienced a different collapse: reputation, money, community.
But Julian's punishment was the most complete. He had been public before and controlled the narrative, but this time the narrative turned on him. It was not an accident. I chose to expose what was true, and the world considered it.
— what I learned afterward —
"Do you regret it?" Emma asked me on the phone after the clips spread.
"No," I said. I had no tears left for that kind of apology. "I only regret giving him that kind of power for so long."
"He used you," she said.
"He used us all," I answered.
The days after were loud. Reporters knocked on doors. Fans left flowers. Some wrote me letters explaining cruel things they had said. Some apologized. Leonor visited the hospice of the company and walked into a board meeting with the faces of an embattled noblewoman.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Mark Day asked me weeks later in a soft voice. He had always been certain about everything, the kind of man who saved lives the way others breathe. He listened with a face that looked like a child's as I explained.
"Because I thought it was my burden," I said. "Because he told me so."
"You are not a burden," he told me. "You are a person."
"Thank you," I said. It was the truth.
— the small things that kept me whole —
"Design it," I told Emma one night. "Help me make a ring. Not for him—never for him. For me."
She laughed. "Okay. A ring to remember you're still yourself."
Emma, who had gone abroad and learned to cut diamonds, worked late and sent me sketches of a simple band with a tiny, raw jewel set like a morning star.
"Put our photograph on your phone," she said jokingly.
I did. It was a grainy, student-time photo: Julian laughing with his head thrown back like a boy; me, expressionless. I set it as a memory of a time before I learned to speak loud.
"We're going to be okay," Emma wrote. "You will make this story yours."
— the ending I choose —
I still keep that small screen saver: two young students caught between classes, two noisy lives, one photograph. It reminds me of what I was and what I have become—not because of a man, nor a scandal, but because I learned that truth had a heavy and startling light.
"Are you afraid?" my father had asked in the quiet before he left me his last will.
"I am," I said, honest as a child, "but also, I am less afraid than I once was."
"Then go," he would have said. "Protect what you love."
So I did. I protected myself first. I protected the music I believed in. I protected the people who needed real saving.
At the shareholders' meeting when Julian's name came up in cold, legal tones, cameras caught his face as it changed: he went from dignified to desperate in the space of an elevator ride. It was a spectacle turned justice. People applauded, hissed, recorded. Some cried; some called it entertainment. I called it necessary.
I am Cecilia Ziegler. I waited by a hospital bed, I stood under spotlights, and when the moment came, I took the stage and let the truth speak. The world watched. The world said its verdict.
And when I get lonely at night, I open the sketchbook and draw the ring Emma designed—unfinished, simple, stubborn.
"Finish it when you're ready," she wrote.
I will.
The End
— Thank you for reading —