Sweet Romance12 min read
I Decided to Stop Playing Nice
ButterPicks13 views
I am Allison Klein. I learned the plot before the author finished the chapter where I break.
"I won't let her in," I told the mirror, and my reflection smiled like a challenger.
"You sound like someone who already lost," my reflection said back in my head.
I had read my ending so many times I could sleepwalk through it. Unmarried, penniless, pregnant, and finally in iron bars—that was what the book gave me. The world around me treated the script as law. My father, Matias Golubev, walked like a man who never feared scandal. Jolene Coppola moved like a queen who had bought her crown. Owen Harper, my fiancé, moved like a statue until he needed to act like a man.
"She has the kid. She will sit on my father's lap and smile at shareholders," I told the houseplants as if they could sway fate.
"You can still choose," Stefano Riley, my grandfather, told me once with hands that trembled like old paper. "But beware of saving another woman's life with your ruin."
"I'll do better," I said. "If the story wants me crushed, I'll crush something back."
I invited Jolene to my house for tea.
"You wanted to see me?" she asked, serene.
"Two choices," I laid the pill bottle on the table. "Abort and marry my father. Or leave."
She smirked. "Allison, with your father's net worth, you can't make me leave for less than two million."
"Then you misunderstand me," I said. "This is not negotiation. It's an offer."
She laughed and leaned forward. "And if I tell your father? What will you do then?"
"Tell him yourself," I shrugged. "We both know how loyal he is to the truth." My voice cut like a clean blade.
She chose the pill. She swallowed it with the same calm she used to sign contracts.
Then she stood as if seized, grabbed her belly, and screamed.
"Help! Somebody!" She smashed a cup. Blood stained the white dress she always wore like armor.
I froze. The scene was mine once—my old trick used as a defense. Now it played back at me.
"Are you alright?" Owen Harper asked as he stepped into the living room. His voice was gentle. He looked at Jolene like she was the sun.
"I am fine," I said. "You should leave."
"You can't treat people like this," he said, but his voice broke when Jolene fell onto my father's arm and he looked like a man who had been stabbed.
"You are cruel," Owen told me later outside. "You are cruel and small."
"Small?" I laughed. "And you are noble because you treat your chosen like a treasure?"
He left with her like a prince choosing a princess out of two choices.
"Make no mistake," I told myself. "If I'm written to fail, I will at least make them watch."
Jolene went to the hospital. My family bankrolled the best care. I did not go; I had cameras planted in my own house.
"Watch the footage," I said the day I slid the USB across to Jolene's bed. "I have shared it with the board and your friends."
Her face drained of color. "You did what?"
"You chose not to tell your father?" I asked. "You chose to lie and to entrap. And when you lie, you must be prepared to be seen."
My father was furious. "Allison, this is criminal talk."
"Then go call the police," I said. "And while you're at it, explain why you helped this woman sit into our house like a queen."
The police came. Jolene had an audio file and a compliance script. She wanted to pin the scandal on me. I countered with a backup.
"She recorded you," I said, letting the words land like snow. "I recorded her."
My father's face turned every color of a bruise. He stormed around like a man whose empire had sprouted a leak.
"Do you think I would let her live here?" I asked my grandfather that night. "Do I want to be the woman everyone pities?"
"You are not pious," Stefano said with a half-smile. "You are stubborn."
"I will be clever."
I took Jolene's pregnancy to the lab. The DNA didn't belong to my father. The test gave me a small bright happiness and a huge bruise of reality.
"She lied to everyone," I told Owen when I saw him again. "She lied about his child."
"What do you want me to do about it?" he asked, tired.
"Nothing," I said. "I will not beg. I will sell my shares if that's what the plot wants. But I will not be silent."
I sold my shares. I told myself it was to avoid the crash, to move wealth out of reach. I told myself I would hold something that would save me from the worst chapter. I thought I had a plan. The plan was a candle in a windstorm.
"It will be fine," Nehemias Schwarz told me once, the man they called the driver. He had driven Owen's car for years. He had the look of someone who watched others live, quietly hungry.
"You're not just a driver," I told him the night our hands first met.
"And you are not just anyone," he said, and his eyes were a claim.
He was not the man I expected to need. He was dangerous, clever, and soft in places that made me think of a life past spoilers. He told me at last that he was not content to be only a tool to wreck a company.
"I will not let them take you for granted," Nehemias told me. "I won't."
"I don't know if I can trust anyone," I said.
"You don't have to," he said. "Just trust me."
We were reckless. We drank and slipped together into a night that didn't belong to the story any longer. He wasn't Owen Harper. Owen might have been carved by duty; Nehemias was carved by obsession.
"Did you use me to ruin Owen?" I asked him once, fingers tracing the clock on his wrist.
"No," he said. "I used him to get what he took from my family."
He told me he had been born with another name, and that the river of his life had been reshaped by accidents and enemies. He admitted he had long kept a plan to strip Owen's family of power. "I want it back," he said. "And I want you."
"Love sounds like a convenient war cry," I said.
"It feels more like destiny," he replied.
We moved fast because the story insisted we would. We moved like two people pushing against a clock.
"Do you promise me one thing?" I asked in a moment of unguarded weakness.
"Name it," he said.
"Don't make me end up like my mother," I whispered. "Do not let marriage be the chain."
"I will give you a choice every morning," he said. "And I'll stand between you and the rest."
We traded secrets. He told me he had tried and failed many times, that he had hidden wealth from me, that he had orchestrated pieces of the takeover for reasons I didn't fully understand until he handed me a bank statement with numbers that looked like mountains.
"Six hundred million," I said, and laughed with something like disbelief.
He had a plan. He wanted to sink a rival company, to reclaim what his family lost years ago. He wanted revenge, and I wanted to survive.
"Help me burn the script," Nehemias said. "Let them all watch."
We accelerated events. We arranged staged fights. We trapped Olivia Reed—Owen's golden child, the one who was always polished like a display doll—in a warehouse. We took her because the story said I would be driven to do something irredeemable. I didn't want to believe I would be the one to cut a life short for theater.
"Allison, what are you doing?" Nehemias asked as we pulled the warehouse doors shut.
"Following the script," I replied. "And rewriting the parts I can."
We bound her to a chair. I held a small blade to her ribs—enough to scare, not to kill. The words on the page told me to draw blood; the author's pen required it to cement the punishment.
"Why are you doing this?" Olivia cried. "This will ruin you."
"I don't care," I said, and my voice was glass.
"Release me and I will leave," she pleaded. "You don't have to do this."
"Then you must have a choice," I reminded her. "And I will force the hand on both sides."
The warehouse doors slammed. The echo of our decisions vibrated like a tuning fork.
Owen arrived like thunder.
"Let her go," he demanded.
"Let her stay," Nehemias countered.
"Do you want me to take a beating for you?" Owen yelled. His face was a landscape of fury and confusion.
"Take ten slaps and she lives," I told him, cruel as a judge.
The air filled with the sharp, wet slaps that change things.
"Stop!" someone shouted. The crowd outside—those who had gathered because of the leak we had carefully orchestrated—shifted like an audience waiting for an act. The sound of Owen's compliance sent ripples through everyone.
"You are a coward," Olivia whispered through tears. "You are a coward, Owen."
He had no choice but to obey if he loved her, and he did. His kneeling change felt like a twist of fate.
Nehemias and Owen fought. They tore at each other like two storms. I aimed for the plan: the shove, the fall, the line that killed a pregnancy in the original script.
A heavy foot hit me. Pain exploded in my belly.
I saw Nehemias run with me to the car. Hospitals smell like antiseptic and worry. The doctor asked questions with fast eyes. Anything could go wrong.
"Hold on," Nehemias begged the doctor. "Save her."
They could not save everything. The world is indifferent to scripts until the crowd decides to care.
When the miscarriage happened, everything felt raw and true. I learned that loss is not a plot point but a slow, grinding season.
We were arrested. The tabloids had their feast. Everyone who had sat in judgment rose their phones as if to give their verdict.
In the cell, I thought it was the end. "It's your ending," I told Nehemias. "It's mine."
"No," he said. "We get to write a new one."
He kept his promise. He coaxed, bargained, and bartered. He traded assets and leverage he had been saving for ages.
When the court dates came, when the prosecutors wanted a spectacle, we had one ready for them: the public punishment against the real villains.
The shareholders' gala lasted three hours. I walked in hand-in-hand with Nehemias. The room smelled of champagne and impatience.
"Allison," my father said coldly. "You don't belong here."
"I belong wherever I choose," I said.
"Present the evidence," Nehemias said, and his voice was calm.
He had a USB, and he had more: bank transfers, hidden contracts, proof that the company Matias had been trying to hand over was deeply tainted. He had recordings that made Jolene's voice crack like an old phonograph.
"She bought influence with lies," Nehemias said aloud. "She lied to marry into your trust."
"You cannot prove—" my father started.
"Watch." Nehemias pressed play.
The room's atmosphere changed. The video showed Jolene taken by the cameras, counting money, making calls. The board members turned pale. The banking documents rolled onto the screen like confessions. A ripple of shock moved through the room like wind.
"No!" Jolene cried. "You cannot! Those are falsified!"
"Why would I falsify?" Nehemias asked gently. "Because I was orphaned, because my family was crushed when a car took them, because your firm took what was mine."
The crowd murmured. Someone laughed. Phones rose to record.
"Jolene Coppola," I said, as cold as a verdict. "You seduced my father for a life you did not earn. You convinced him to sign his name over while the company's ledgers hid poison. You took my seat at the table."
"I—" she began, but the next footage rolled: texts between her and a shell company, invoices that showed money funneling to shadow accounts. The board secretary gasped. A shareholder stood and asked for an explanation.
"This will ruin us all," Matias whispered, his voice the size of a ruin.
"Not us," I said. "You chose that path."
Jolene's face collapsed. "You planted this! You planted the cameras!"
"I planted what you planted first," I answered.
The punishment I gave them was not just words. It unfolded in public as if it were a stage play and the crowd were the jury.
"You are stripped of the right to vote," Nehemias announced. "You are barred from participation. These transactions will be audited. The press will be invited."
The room reacted. Phones clicked. The board secretary's hands trembled. A dozen investors whispered. Men who had been polite now openly shifted away.
Jolene went pale, then ashen, then furious. Her smile cracked, thinned, and broke. She tried to sway a director. They backpedaled. The chairman stood to distance himself.
"You cannot!" she screamed, and the scream sounded small and animal.
My father had a different arc. He had always made himself a cliff's edge. The crowd watching his fall saw him shrink.
"Matias Golubev," Nehemias said, "you cannot complain when the debts you hid are dragged into the light. You cannot blame everyone else without owning the part you played."
Matias's eyes went blank with confusion, then sharpened as he tried to bargain.
"Allison!" he shouted, voice cracking. "You're ruining the family!"
"The family you sold lies to!" I returned. "Do you remember when you promised my mother you would be a better man?"
The young investors watched like hawks. They were already tallying losses. Nehemias handed the documents to a small, fierce director. Cameras rolled. Traders whispered about leadership instability.
"Your name will be in the newspapers," one investor said aloud. "Your business will suffer."
Matias tried to appeal to loyalty. No one moved to his side.
The public action was cruel and exacting. The gallery of guests who had come for wine and to be seen shifted into a courtroom. The whispers turned to outrage, then to decisions.
They fired Matias from active management that night. They suspended the share transfers. They petitioned an external audit. Board members who had been near him now stepped away as if his touch burned.
Jolene's reaction changed fast. First disbelief, then fury, then a flailing defense. "You can't do this!" she pleaded, voice hoarse. "You will destroy innocent people!"
"No," a journalist said into his phone. "You're the one who bought the innocence."
She began to beg. The scene became a slow, ugly fall of a woman who had believed her own lies.
The crowd began to clap. Not politely. They clapped as if sealing a verdict.
"Shame on you," one woman hissed. "Shame."
A man in a suit stood and spat, "Mercenary."
Phones filmed every flash of the guilty faces. People hissed. People cheered. A teenage intern took a video that would go viral in hours.
Jolene's expression alternated. She first tried to deny. "This is slander."
Then she panicked. "My children—"
"Which children?" a woman asked. "The one who isn't your husband's? The one you hid?"
That was when Jolene broke completely. Her face crumpled. She grabbed at Matias like a life raft and found only his folded arms.
She fell to her knees in front of them both, begging. Her voice moved from composed to thin to raw.
"Please," she sobbed, "I didn't mean to—"
People recorded. People turned away. Some clapped. Some walked out, shaking their heads. The chairman, whose face had been a careful mask, announced a special meeting. The press asked questions like hyenas.
Matias tried to keep dignity. He failed. His pleas sounded like muffled thunder. They had watched his deals; they had seen his indecencies. They had, in many ways, been waiting for this to collapse.
His reaction was a human collapse. He went from arrogant control to disbelief, then to bargaining. He tried to absolve himself by pointing fingers. He tried to call the whole thing a conspiracy. He even accused me.
"You did this for revenge!" he said, voice cracking.
"Yes," I said. "And yes. Because you let others live by cruelty."
Nehemias did not smile then. He closed his eyes. He had wanted justice, not theater.
The crowd's verdict was visceral and total. They wanted the names. They wanted to know they'd been cheated.
"Expect criminal investigation," someone said. "Expect regulators."
"You're finished," another hissed. The words landed like gravel.
Jolene's face changed again. She tried to look defiant, to make the narrative her own, to claim persecution. She delivered lines to any camera that would listen. "This is a witch hunt," she shrieked. She tried to beam the humility of a wronged woman. It collapsed into sobs.
"Good," I said under my breath.
They left with their reputations in tatters. They left under scandal. They left to face the ugly courts of business and public opinion.
And for the first time since I had learned my fate, I did not feel bitter or small. I felt like a person who had taken back a little room of life.
"Why make it public?" a friend asked me later. "Why humiliate them?"
"Because the story taught me to be the one who always took the shame," I answered. "I will not let them keep it."
Nehemias held my hand as cameras followed. "You did what needed to be done," he whispered. "But we will have to expect that the retribution is not over."
We were right. The ripples we started expanded into storms. Regulators looked into the land we had flagged. A guilty board member confessed. Deposits were traced. Jolene's partners fled. Matias's phone calls were subpoenaed.
They tried to salvage the good parts. But the public punishment was a tidal wave. It left more broken than it fixed. It left faces red and ruined the comfortable.
When the dust settled a little, I looked at Nehemias.
"Is this the ending?" I asked.
He smiled like a boy who had been given an extra day of summer. "No," he said. "It's the prologue."
I had been sentenced by the book to prison. I had already faced that conclusion in my living room and in my head. We leaned into what lay ahead, because we could not walk backwards.
In the cell, people like us talk. They confess their reasons. They confess their fears. Nehemias told me he had failed a thousand times to change his fate, but this time he had me.
"Do you really mean it?" I asked in the low light.
"Every life I've lived," he said. "I've come back to you."
We planned and plotted inside the grey walls. We made bargains outside for our defense. We learned things: generosity, patience, resilience.
When we left, the world was watching. We had lost much. We had gained something else—control. No longer did I feel like a character reading a script. I felt like a woman taking the paper from the author and folding it into a paper plane.
"Where will we go?" Stefano asked, the evening we walked out.
"Anywhere," I said, and Nehemias squeezed my hand.
We left the city for a while. We went to a place where no one knew our names. We kept our baby, who had been threatened by the script and by the cruelty of others. Nehemias had pulled strings, invested in a better doctor, guarded the life like a shrine.
On the day of our child's full month, I slipped the little ring Nehemias had once threaded into a chain onto my finger.
"Marry me," I told him then, and the joke in my mouth had turned to a promise.
He laughed like a man who had rehearsed a thousand proposals. "I have rehearsed this," he said, voice small.
"Good," I said. "Then do it for real."
He found my ring and slid it on my hand. "I will love you in every life I am given," he said.
"You promised to give me a choice every morning," I smiled.
"I promise it again," he whispered, all breath and warmth. "And I will guard our child. I will guard you."
We held the baby, and the moon was an obedient witness. The story still hummed behind us like a radio, but we were not the songs it would play.
"I want you to tell me everything you remember about the past cycles," I asked him as I let my head rest against his shoulder.
"I will," he said. "But for now, just breathe."
I did. The air tasted like permission.
We were not immortal. We were not perfect. We were two flawed people with a stolen life and a second chance. We had humiliated the people who threatened us and paid for our sins.
The end was not written anymore. We had a blank page and a pen, and that felt like more than the story had ever given me.
The End
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