Face-Slapping17 min read
"You Want Me to Marry Her?" — A Wife, a Lie, a Public Fall
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"You want me to marry her?" I snapped.
"No, Nico, listen," Isaac Carpenter's voice shook but stayed firm. "It's decided. Kaya is to be welcomed into the family."
I laughed, a short, sharp sound. "You want me to marry Kaya Braun? The quiet girl with the old promise?"
Isaac looked past me at her. Kaya stood beside him like she owned no fear. She looked at me with a slow, small smile. Her hand stayed by her side. She did not reach for mine.
"You're not listening," Isaac said. "This is about the shares. This is family business."
I folded my arms. "Family business?" I said. "She isn't one of my people. I'm not doing it."
Kaya met my eyes then. "Hello, Nico," she said, and she extended a pale hand.
I took her hand only with my eyes. I did not take it with mine.
"I won't marry you to be a show," I said. "I won't sign my life away for a name and a story."
Isaac slammed his cane down. "You will do this. You will marry her whether you want to or not. Your shares, your company, everything hinges on this."
Kaya's voice was soft. "I will not take your shares, sir."
Isaac's face melted when she said that. "Little Kaya," he croaked. "You worry too much. Just be my granddaughter's wife for a while."
I left the room and the house like I left most things I did not want to think about. I left the question burning. My phone buzzed on the way out. I read the message and my hands tightened.
"Boss," the agent said. "We found a tie to the Braun family."
The world narrowed to a point. A small warm memory pushed past my anger: a little girl with sunburned knees and a shouted name I could not forget. For a second I felt something I did not anticipate.
Then I put that feeling away like a dangerous tool. "Don't touch anything yet," I said. "Keep watching."
That afternoon, the wedding plans moved faster than my will.
"Don't take this as a sign you will be loved," I told Kaya the first time she looked at me outside of a reception hall, her hair done plain and perfect. "I marry you because it suits my needs. That is all."
Kaya's face did not change much. "I understand," she said. "I came because Isaac asked."
"You knew it would be like this?" I asked.
"I knew your grandpa was persistent," she said. "I did not know the rest."
We said vows that felt like a contract and not a life. The press called it a merger. Old men called it fate. I called it a transaction.
Days after the wedding, I found a photo on my desk. A paper-thin print showing a woman in a café waving at someone. A name printed on the back: Bella Bauer.
"Who is she?" I asked.
"You know Bella," Simon Brandt said as he leaned against the glass. Simon ran security and other ugly things for me. "Small time star. Loud mouth. She likes being noticed."
"Don't touch her," I said.
That night she walked in where she was not welcome.
"You're late," Kaya said. She was in my living room. A woman curled in my arm screamed like a child.
"You're the housekeeper?" the girl in my arm said. "Why do you slam doors so loud?"
Kaya walked in and stopped. She looked at the woman in my arm and then straight at me. Her eyes had a hurt that did not ask for my defense.
The woman, Bella, blinked. "Who's she?"
"She is the homeowner," I said in a tone meant to cut. I forced the words out with an edge.
"You're her wife?" Bella asked and laughed too loud. "So real."
"Get out," Kaya said.
"On what grounds?" Bella pushed up and tried to shame. "Nico sleeps with me every night."
Kaya's voice dropped. "You should leave."
"Do you know what a joke she is?" Bella asked the room. "She has nothing. She has a fake smile. She wears the title like it's free."
I felt something in my chest pull. I crossed the room like a man who had been hit. "Enough," I said. I caught Bella's wrist. "You are not worth my time."
"You're worthless," she said. Then she used that word that put a thud under the whole house.
"You agreed to marry her to keep your shares," she sang at me. "Why protect a neighbor who is a show?"
"Don't talk," I said. "Or I'll make you leave."
That night, when Bella leaned against my car as if I had forgotten enough, I asked one question: "Is that child real?"
She laughed and showed a paper. A scan. A staged photo. "Pregnant. It was my chance."
"You're lying," I said and I could see the way she planned it on her hair and in her hands.
"You're in no place to judge," Bella said, and she winked.
I knocked her to the curb with a hand on her shoulder. "Stop making trouble for my wife."
She looked up like a queen who had been lifted. "I'm not your wife's problem," she called as I walked away.
The next day reporters swarmed. They wanted a blood. They wanted a story.
"Why are you staying?" my grandfather asked me that night. "Why do you let her meet those women? They will lead you to ruin."
"She asked me not to bring her into it," I said.
Isaac cleared his throat. "She's your protection," he said. "But be careful. She may not be what she seems."
I was careless enough to think I had nothing left to fear. Then a picture arrived—Bella in a market stall, blood on her skirts, and a crying call to "help, my baby." The city's feeds burst like weather.
"Who sent these?" Kaya asked when she found them.
"I did not," I said. "But someone wants to break her."
Kaya sat down. "Someone helps me," she told the empty air. "Someone helps the truth, too."
She held a press meeting and looked like an angel in the flame. The cameras loved it.
"I will not trade blows with gossip," she said to the press. "If there is a child involved, get a paternity test. If the child is mine or not, I will raise it. But do not make her a target without proof."
Reporters cheered and shouted and then the one who lied came in sliding like an actress on stage.
"I'm a mother!" Bella cried and she moved as if every man should take pity. Her manager stood behind calming like a dog.
"Is the baby yours?" a reporter asked.
"Yes I —" Bella started, and then on the large screen behind us pictures came up of her buying fake blood and planning the scene. Her manager's hands were caught on camera in a market deal and a cashier recognized her.
"Is that you?" a vendor asked her. "You paid for stain. You made the show."
Bella changed her face. The film caught the lie. People in the room gasped. Her hands went to her mouth.
"Where did you get them?" Bella fired.
"From your phone," Kaya said and cold. "From a friend who wants the truth to be told."
"Who is your friend?" Bella asked, voice rising.
Kaya smiled. "Does it matter? The truth is the truth."
Bella's face switched from pretend pain to real fear. She lunged for the mic and tried to make a scene. "She is lying! I did not—"
"Sit down," a man in a white coat said. "You need to calm... we have evidence."
People recorded. Phones rose. Bella's cries turned into a wet, ugly noise. She was asked to step outside. A police officer took her arm.
Later the world shredded her.
Her phones filled with messages. Brands canceled deals. Her agent said he could not save her. Fans turned. Clips of her fake birth scene went viral with comments scolding and disgust. She called me at night.
"Please," she said into the phone. "I can fix this."
"No," I said. "You made this mess."
"Please." She sniffed.
I hung up.
But the worst was not the public collapse. The worst was the vengeance chain Bella had set in motion to protect an old hurt.
In the week after the press meeting, I found two men talking in a warehouse near the docks. They had my company's logo on their coats. "We need to stop the woman," one said. "We need her out."
I listened, and I learned that the transfer that had killed my parents could have been hidden. A paper file that my father had once had was missing. Someone had edited the reports.
"You were paralysed," I said to the man as he lit a cigarette.
He flinched. "Boss!"
"Where is the file?" I asked.
He kept his mouth shut.
Kaya walked in on my interrogation as if she belonged. She put a hand on my arm.
"Don't break him," she said.
"Do you know something?" I demanded.
She looked at me, then back at the man. Her jaw hardened. "He's protecting someone big. My parents' case was never closed. I know they were hurt."
"By who?" I asked. "The products we buy?"
Kaya swallowed. She looked small in my warehouse light. "Someone in your circle."
I remembered an old ledger, a man named Mark Ball who had been rumored to move shares and bury small rivals. I asked my team. They said he played both sides.
"Mark Ball?" Simon said.
"Yes," I said.
"He's been with Isaac for years," Simon added. "Old family friend."
I found Mark. He denied everything. He smiled too easily.
"You married her for shares," Mark said from the other side of his desk. "You don't have to like it."
"Where is the file?" I asked.
He flicked a glass with a chain. "Names get lost. People die. Life moves on, Nico."
I left after that, and I left with a hunger I had not felt since my father died.
Kaya and I lived like two strangers for a while. The house had the same furniture. The beds were not warm. I did not expect them to be.
But she kept going to work and she kept her own fight.
"You are someone else at your job," I said once.
She looked up. "Work keeps my mind away from the part of me that waits."
"Waiting for what?" I asked.
"For the answer," she said.
She asked me to trust her to run the press line. She told me to step back. I did, but I watched.
When Bella was arrested after more fake shows and a stack of blackmail emails, she collapsed in court. It was a scene that chewed up headlines for a week.
But the real deal came when Kane, a small fixer from Mark Ball's list, got greedy and started selling files on dark web feeds. He sold a ledger. It had names. My father was in it.
I took the ledger to Isaac. He refused to see it at first, then his hands shook.
"You remember an old man who came to my shop?" Isaac said. "He told me something. I was a fool not to listen."
"Who killed them?" I asked. "Who made the call?"
He closed his eyes. "It was a deal gone wrong. I thought it was business. I thought the other man would survive. He didn't. The ledger hid a transfer signed by two names."
I sat in the dark and traced the handwriting. One of the names matched Mark Ball. The other matched a woman in his network.
"I put you in to fix things," Isaac said. "I thought it would be less painful."
"What did you do?" I said.
He bowed his head. "I did not think it would take a life."
I stood and walked out. The city felt like a wrong map.
For weeks I kept close to Kaya as she scheduled a small reveal. She had found proof of manipulation connecting Bella, Mark's fixer Kane, and a larger smear campaign that had been used to force my father's company to sign certain deals.
"You're not safe," I told her one night when she came back stained by late hour.
She touched my face as if she was measuring me. "You think I asked for this?"
"No," I said. "I don't know what I think."
One night I came home to find my door open. I closed it and heard a noise—a soft rustle. I found a box on the table and a packet of photos inside.
"Who sent this?" I asked.
"It wasn't me," Kaya said through the hallway. "Someone is helping."
The photos were of Bella meeting a man in a market. The man had a tattoo. I knew the tattoo. It belonged to Kane.
"Someone is trying to help the right person," Kaya whispered. "They think I need protection."
I told my team to watch the man. We found Mark's accountant leaving messages with a foreign number. He was terrified.
"He will talk," Simon said. "If they pay him to talk."
We waited for the right moment. The right moment came at a gala—a charity event—where Mark and Bella both attended as sponsors. I arranged for cameras. Kaya arranged for the right speech.
"Good evening," she said into the microphone, the hall full of glitter and guests. "Tonight I need to ask a favor. I need the people who were hurt to get answers. I need the truth."
The crowd clapped. It was thin applause.
"I want to tell a story," she said calmly. "About a woman who sold pain for cash."
Bella, sitting at a table, stiffened. She looked at Mark. He smiled like a man who had played a good card.
Kaya began to speak about the market photos, about a ledger, about the phone messages. She named names. The room shifted like a held breath.
"Mr. Ball," she said and pointed to him. "You may have moved deals. You may have surprised many. But you can't hide the truth forever."
Mark stood.
"This is slander," he said.
"Then answer this," Kaya said. She clicked a remote. The large screen behind her lit up with footage. It showed Mark signing a transfer. It showed Kane being paid. It showed Bella taking staged props.
"Those are my records," Mark hissed.
"No," Kaya said. "Those are your own hands."
The room shouted. The guests looked at their phones. The papers that covered Mark's deals were shown in close up. I knew each line. I had read the ledger. The camera zoomed on his name.
He looked small.
"How did you get those?" Mark barked.
"How did you get away with killing a man?" Kaya said. "How did you sign a ledger that cost a life?"
He turned red and tried to get to her. Security held him. Cameras rolled.
"I swear it's not me," Bella cried and tried to run. She stumbled and fell down an entire staircase. The sound of her fall echoed. People gasped. She lay in the center and covered her face.
"Get her a chair," a woman shouted.
Bella looked up, and her wide eyes met me. "You were behind this," she cried, and then she began to beg.
"Please," she said through tears. "I did what I had to."
"Then live with it," Kaya answered. "Live with the shame."
The press circled like wolves. Mark's phone lit with calls. Investors texted. 'Withdraw funds' flashed on screens. Charity sponsors who had their logos on the gala left their tables and walked away.
Mark's company stock fell the next day. Sponsors left within hours. Partners terminated contracts. People recorded his meltdown. He collapsed on the stage and then refused to speak. The board held an emergency meeting and voted him out.
Bella's manager was paraded by the police for the market evidence. Bella was charged with fraud. Her fans turned and posted cruel clips. Her sponsors dropped her. Her bank accounts froze. She called for help and got none.
She walked out of the court the day they detained her and I watched her kneel on the sidewalk. She was pleading with anyone who would listen. People took videos. Someone hit her on camera. Someone shouted.
"Please," she said to me across the crowd. "Please give me a chance!"
I walked toward her and stopped.
"You're nothing but a liar," I said.
"Please," she begged on her knees, hair wet with rain.
The crowd around her filmed. One woman held up her phone and shouted, "Record this. This is justice."
Her face thinned and she began to shake. Someone dragged her away and the world kept watching.
The fallout was brutal. Mark lost partners and money. He was publicly shamed and fired from the board. He could not hide.
Bella's career was finished. Her old friends blocked her. Sponsors cut her off within days. The app that handled fan mail turned off. She lost everything—the roles, the promise of fame, the brand deals. She was alone in a way she had never been.
She went to one live broadcast, stood under the lights, and finally broke.
"What did you want from me?" she asked me.
"You wanted to take a place that was not yours to take," I said. "You wanted to build a life on other people's pain."
She cried and then she screamed. The crowd took a step back like they had been sprayed.
They tried to sue me for helping Kaya. The paper said we used power to silence. But the ledger was real and the phone records were real, and Kane had given a full confession.
Someone in the crowd cheered when I walked past them.
I went home and my chest felt full and heavy.
Kaya had given a press statement about fairness. She said the truth would serve both the poor and the powerful. The next morning, Isaac came to me and said, "You did well."
I looked at him. "Did I save your name or mine?" I asked.
"You saved both," he said after a beat. "You saved more than you know."
It was not that simple. Mark Ball's fall cracked more than his pride. People we trusted in business fell away. The company had to be rebuilt on new rules. I lost partners. I lost some of the safe routes.
But I watched Kaya in the week after the gala. She moved back into the office. She kept the ledger in a folder and she slept less. One morning, I found her in the kitchen with a small cake. Strawberry, like the childhood days I had forgotten.
"Why a cake?" I asked.
She smiled shyly. "It is a cake my mother used to make."
"You remember your mother?" I said.
"Not much," she said. "Just the taste."
We ate it in silence. I watched her lean over the plate and realized I wanted to protect that small joy like a secret.
I had been mean and cruel to her. I had used her as a shield and then I had demanded the world not touch her. I made a list of things I owed her.
"You said you would do your duty," Kaya said one night when I did not come home until early. "Have you done it?"
"I did it wrong," I said. "Sometimes I am right because I chose you. Sometimes I'm wrong."
She looked at me with something like pity. "You are allowed to be wrong," she said.
"Then tell me how to fix it," I said.
She took my hand like it was something fragile. "Be there," she said simply.
A week later, Bella's trial began. She walked into court with a face cleaned of makeup and had no friends. Cameras stared. The prosecution called phone tax records and payments. The defense argued she had been attacked. The court called it what it was: a plan to destroy reputations.
Bella's collapse in front of the court had effect. The judge ordered her to repay what she owed. There was public disgrace, court-ordered community service, and a social sentence that cannot be paid. Her career died.
The man who had planned the ledger was arrested on the day he tried to flee. Mark tried to buy his way out but he had lost too much. He sat in a cell and ate warm bread and counted the minutes.
Kaya did not celebrate. She closed her laptop and came to my house. It was raining and we sat together watching the dark fill the glass.
"You should have left," she said.
"Left what?" I asked.
"Leave this whole thing. Go somewhere your name is clean."
"My name changed nothing," I said. "My father's name was never clean."
She took my hand. "He isn't your enemy."
"Then who is?" I said.
She looked at me and then placed something small in my palm. A scrap of cloth with a faded kite pattern. The thing I had once given her as a child but had never had back. It was thin and soft. "Keep it," she said.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because when you forget, this will remind you of who you were," she said.
That night I left the house and walked into the rain with that scrap in my coat. I needed to think. I needed to do something I had never done: choose.
The next weeks were slow and careful. I stopped the deals that had been made without study. I fired men who could not be trusted. I stopped paying for silence. I told the board we would open the records and pay for justice.
"You're risking the company," a board member hissed.
"I'm risking my name," I said.
"You risk what?"
"Everything," I said.
In the middle of all this, something quieter was blooming. I found myself waiting to see Kaya's car in the morning. I would drink coffee and watch the window and then when she answered my call, I would breathe easier.
"Are you late?" she asked into my phone one morning.
"Always," I said. "But I will be there."
One afternoon she called and said, "There's a small market now, a place with tea. Come."
I went and she was there with an empty chair and a tiny cup of tea. She looked at me like a person who had found something and wanted to share it. "Sit down," she said.
We talked about the ledger, about Mark, about the way people react. We talked about simple things—the taste of strawberry cake, the smell of rain on dry earth, the small kite cloth. We talked with soft lines. We talked about forgiveness in small steps.
"Do you forgive me?" she asked and her eyes were straight.
"For what?" I said.
"For thinking you would always be cruel."
I closed my eyes. "No," I said honestly. "I don't know yet."
"Then start," she said.
"Start what?"
"Start by caring," she said.
I did the small things: I ordered her favorite tea. I stopped meetings to walk with her to her car. I sat in a chair during late nights and watched her work. She watched me as I signed the ledger open and invited a public audit.
When the report came out, it was bare and clean and heavy. We had to pay, to confess, to show our hands. Investors came back slowly. We lost some partners but gained the trust of new ones who did not fear the light.
One morning I found a note on my desk. "Come to the roof," it said. The roof had the old city behind it and a small wind. She had set up a kite there—two short sticks and a soft cloth, a child's thing.
"Why a kite?" I said.
"Because it's what we had when we were small," she said. "You used to steal my kite when we were kids."
I touched the kite. The cloth was thin and filled with memories. "I remember," I said.
"Do you?" she said.
"Not all," I admitted.
She laughed. "Then rent your memory."
"Thank you," I said, and in a voice I had not used on her before, I said, "I am sorry."
She looked straight at me. "For what?"
"For not protecting you," I said. "For being cruel. For testing you."
She opened her hand and gently touched my cheek. "Then change," she said. "Real change is long, but start now."
So I started.
I stopped leaving without a word. I began to talk instead of shout. I told her once, wrong and clumsy, that I liked the way she said my name. She smiled and looked at the kite.
The world did not change overnight. Mark Ball's ruin kept a bitter taste in my mouth. Bella's collapse faded like a wound that scarred ugly. But our lives moved forward.
One autumn evening, a new rumor began to spin—some small paper said I was falling in love. I let the rumor pass. I let a small blush rise and fall like weather.
At night when the house was quiet, Kaya would come into my office and stand by the window. I would look away from the screen and she would come to me.
"Do you want this marriage?" she asked quietly.
"No," I said. "Not the way we started. I want a marriage that I choose now."
She closed her eyes. "Then choose."
I held her hand. "Will you choose me?"
She opened her eyes and looked at me like I was asking for a life that was risky.
"I already chose," she said.
That night was not perfect or clean. We argued once about who would take care of what files. We stared at each other like two people learning to speak a new language. We made small amends.
Months passed. Mark Ball was in handcuffs. He lost his company and his home. His name carried a stain onto his old family. People who once flocked found a new way to look at their own decisions.
Bella Bauer sat alone in a small apartment. She wrote a public apology and then took it down. Her career did not recover. She tried to volunteer at shelters but was turned away. She wrote a letter to the court and asked for forgiveness. The world did not accept it in full.
One day she was on television, an interview full of shaky light. She had lost everything. She cried live.
"I was hungry," she said. "I wanted a life."
People did not forgive. The net is a hard ground. She had chosen a dangerous way and it had eaten her alive.
I watched the broadcast in the quiet of my house. Kaya sat beside me. She leaned her head on my shoulder.
"What do you feel?" she asked.
"I feel empty and full both," I said.
She laughed a small laugh. "That's grown-up."
"Are we grown up?" I asked.
She looked at me and then at a small kite cloth I had kept in my coat. "We are getting there."
One winter evening, Isaac called us to the old family room. He looked small and old and a little sorry. He had always been hard to read.
"You two," he said. "You did better than I thought."
Kaya put a small hand on his knee. "You told me to come," she said. "You told me to be family."
He reached out her hand and squeezed. "I am sorry for the past," he said to me. "I did not know what it would cost."
"Do not apologize more," I said. "You already paid in fear."
He nodded. "Just care for her."
I did. I began to.
Time is patient and it asks for work. We did the work. I signed letters of apology to anyone we had wronged. I opened a fund for the families who had lost to corporate fraud. We went to courtrooms. We sat in small offices and we wrote checks.
One night, months later, we were on the roof and I held the kite.
"Do you remember when you used to take it?" she asked.
"A little," I said.
"Then do it now," she said.
So I did. I ran and the kite rose into the cold air. It caught a wind that felt like new. Kaya laughed and the sound bugged into the roof tiles and stayed.
"Hold it," she told me when the kite danced.
I held it and the string burned a small line in my palm. I felt alive in a simple way I had never allowed.
"I will protect you," I told her without great pomp.
She looked at me like the entire city could lean on our small word. "Then don't make me fight alone."
I bent and kissed her hand. "I won't," I said.
The next morning, newspapers called our move a new beginning. My lawyers called it a clean slate. But the small thing that mattered was the way Kaya looked at me over a plate of strawberry cake.
She put her fork into my slice and smiled.
"You're messy with cake," she said.
"You're not used to me," I said.
She laughed and then she reached across the table and wiped my mouth with her thumb, the same way a child might. "You are learning."
I learned slowly. I learned to say I was sorry. I learned to ask. I learned to hold a kite in the rain.
Some nights I still wake up and remember the hot days and the ledger and the sounds of Bella's pleading. Those nights are not easy.
But when I take the kite cloth from a drawer and hold it to the light, I remember a small child who once tugged at my hand and a promise older than either of us. I remember a cake tasted in a small kitchen.
Kaya puts her hand over mine on the kite and squeezes. "We are not done," she says.
I look out at the city and then at her and I take a breath. "No," I say. "We are not done."
We are trying and failing and trying again. We are cleaning the mess of the past. We are learning how to be kind in a world that taught us otherwise.
That is the only ending I will promise. There will be no clean finish. There will be work. There will be love, beside the hard things, like a kite that will sometimes fall and sometimes soar.
And when the wind comes, I will hold the string.
The End
— Thank you for reading —