Face-Slapping14 min read
"I fixed him — then I broke them all"
ButterPicks13 views
"Get up. Now."
I pulled back the sheet and shoved the tray into his hands.
"Mary?" Arlo's voice was thin. He squinted at me like the light hurt him. "Why are you—"
"Because you spat blood in the car and I don't want you to die on my watch." I set the bowl on the bedside table and folded my hands. "Drink it."
He stared, then drank. He hated the medicine but he shrugged away protest with a weak smile. "You put your hands anywhere near that mess called my chest—"
"I don't take compliments from dying men." I tapped the needle box beside the lamp. "Open your mouth."
He obeyed, and the air in the room changed. There was a soft click of a latch, a smell of herbs, the sound of someone refusing to give up.
Three months ago I never planned to be here. I was supposed to be a visiting daughter, an occasional guest. Now I was his improvised doctor, his quiet threat, and his most public problem.
"Who sent the photo?" he asked after I had finished wrapping his wrist.
"A stranger with a camera and a hungry woman at a cafe." I met his eyes. "I told you I was working. I did not say I needed permission."
Arlo sat up and watched me, finally. "Why are you so calm?"
"Because I know what to do." I smiled, and the smile had nothing to do with romance. "I help. I take records. I keep the engines running. I heal."
He studied me like someone cataloging a rare thing. "You keep surprising me, Mary."
That should have been the end of talk. But it wasn't.
"Mary, I'm asking you to stay. Officially." He laid the idea out like an offer. "Stay in the city. Be near the hospital. Let me repay you for... trouble."
I remembered the rain that night, the way the house smelled of wet wood and someone's quiet disdain, the way his fingers had been on my back in the dark. I remembered the bargain I had already made in my head before I had said it.
"If I can make you well," I said, "we divorce. And if there is any loss—money, reputation—I'll pay. Fair?"
He blinked. "You're making terms."
"I'm making sure I leave."
"Do you think I will agree?"
"I think you might. Or I think you will try to stop me. Either way, you will be whole or you will be alone." I put the papers down. "Name it."
He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "One year. If I am better in a year, you get the divorce."
"Done." I extended my hand. He took it, and for a second a thin white thread of something unspoken passed between us—fear, maybe gratitude. Then we went back to work: me on herbs, him on business.
"You are not what they said," he muttered one night as I pressed my thumb to his temple.
"They said a lot of things." I kept the needles moving. "People assume the worst of anyone they don't understand."
"They called you a village girl in the café," Arlo said, "and my aunt—"
"Aunt Ensley oversteps." I did not let him finish. He had not been at the house on the day the servants and relatives decided to test me. I had been.
"She shoved my drying herbs into the flowerbeds." I watched his face when I told him. "She broke the slices. She thought she'd humiliate me."
He closed his eyes. "I want to take care of that."
"You might," I said. "But we don't need to start scorched earth yet."
We did, of course.
"Arlo—" I said one morning as the family table buzzed around us. "If people pick a fight, you will defend me."
He lifted his fork with deliberate slowness. "I will. But sometimes defense means exposing the liar."
"Good." I looked down at my hands. "Because they are not small liars."
The first attempt to bury me under shame came from my own mother. The woman who had named me finally walked into his house with a designer box and a fake smile. Marilyn De Santis perched on the sofa and delivered a performance.
"Mary, you should be grateful," she said loud enough for everyone. "Arlo took you in. I just worry for the child—if there is one." Her words were a trap. She had handed a photographer a chance to take a photo of me with a man at the cafe. Minutes later, a smear headed for my name.
Arlo handled it the way he handled most things now: with cold clarity.
"Who posted this?" he asked in the study when he first saw the headline.
"A handful of accounts. A tabloid. Your cousin's friend." I put a cup of bitter tea into his hands. "They needed images. We gave them the truth. I told them the truth."
He watched me longer than required. "You staged the cafe?"
I did not deny it. "They wanted me to have no answer. I chose to have an answer."
"You cooked the evidence."
"I cooked it, yes."
He laughed once. It was soft and not entirely amused. "Somehow that makes it worse."
"Or better," I said. "This town lives on the smell of blood. Give them a bone they'll gnaw. Give them the skeleton—they'll stop guessing."
He closed his eyes. "You're manipulating my enemies."
"Yes." My hands did not stop. "And I'm saving your life."
They tried better things. A woman named Gianna Gustafsson, who smiled too openly and wore red in a room of gray, brought soup to Arlo's office. She claimed she just wanted to be kind; her hands trembled only when she walked away.
Arlo collapsed in the study that night. Emergency again. I traced the symptoms, tasted pieces of the story. "She brought you chicken."
"Yes."
"And you had my tonic? Only the tonic?"
"Yes."
"Then someone slipped something else into your dinner after you took the tonic." I said it aloud and felt the spine of the house tighten. "They tried to slow the medicine."
At the hospital I saw eyes cataloging blame. But I did not want to go through the slow, polite ruin of accusing a pretty woman. I wanted names.
"I want CCTV of the kitchen," I said.
"You'll have it," Arlo answered. "But be careful. They have people hungry for your downfall."
"Good. Then they will have cameras on their faces when it hits."
I started keeping small records. I brought in a private investigator with direct hands: Hunter Zimmermann sent a man in a gray suit who smelled of cold coffee and facts. We found tampered sachets, replaced ointments, footmarks where no staff should have walked, and a perfume bottle that had been replaced with a dangerous compound.
"Poison in a bottle," Hunter said one evening as he opened the evidence boxes in Arlo's office. "Anyone can do this if they have access."
"Who has access?" I asked.
The list was short. Family, house staff, the occasional hanger-on. People driven by hunger: for money, for status, for legacy.
The first public punishment was small but necessary. A thieves' confession before witnesses: the night the perfume was changed, our cameras captured the housekeeper, a woman named Corinne Crowley, taking the box under the pretense of cleaning. Corinne had slapped a fake smile on, because someone had promised her a new life elsewhere.
"Corinne," I said in the kitchen when the staff was called. I stood with Arlo at my side. "We have the footage."
Her face, used to swagger, folded. "You have no right," she spat.
"Then let's see what right you have." I clicked the laptop. The screen showed her moving, quiet, determined. "You took it out of the drawer. You put the bottle in the trash. You put the new bottle on the shelf. Why?"
The room filled with servants, a few relatives, and our private investigator. When the footage flicked to the moment she took a sealed envelope from under a cushion and slid it into a pocket, she finally could not hold it.
"It was money," she said. "They promised me money. Mrs. De Santis—"
Marilyn's face rose red so quickly it looked painted. She stammered and tried to cover. But the camera feeds were not done. They showed Marilyn handing a phone to a small man in an alley, his hands exchanging cash and a folded photograph.
Faces went quiet in that hush.
"You thought you'd be clever," Arlo said low. He never raised his voice until then. "You signed the house, you sold the trust."
Marilyn dropped to her knees in front of a room that included the old patriarch, the housemaids, neighbors, and two journalists who had been waiting in the driveway for a scandal. "No!" she cried. "No, we—"
Arlo's voice was low as stone. "Get out. Now. I will not have my home used as a market for lies."
She begged. The cameras ate the begging.
But the bigger hour had to come. They had set more dangerous traps. They had tried to poison him more than once. They had messed with company shares while whispering that he might die. So the place for the first full public punishment had to be the shareholders' gala where his enemies sat with forks in their hands and smiles ready.
"You will come with me," I told Arlo.
He nodded. "Make it public."
We planned a spectacle, not a trial. Trials are slow. Spectacles are efficient. We invited every relative, every corporate officer, every news camera that mattered. We arranged for a single slide in a presentation to click on during an auction: documents, photos, transfer records.
The gallery filled with chandeliers and fake smiles. People sipped their wine and sought the warmth of other people's approval. I felt none of that warmth. I felt the small, fierce heat of a plan that had teeth.
"Arlo," I whispered as we sat in the front row, "when I show them the evidence, don't let them clap for you. Let them watch."
He squeezed my hand and watched the stage.
On the screen appeared a montage: emails, bank transfers, a list of accounts in names no one recognized. Then the footage of the family meeting where the plan was hatched: Aunt Ensley leaning close to a shadowed man; my sister, Constance Spencer, laughing as she pointed at a list of shares; Marilyn smiling with too much teeth while a phone recorded from her palm.
"Is this true?" one board member asked into his microphone, the question designed by manners to avoid the obvious.
"Yes." Arlo's voice was clear in the notes. He took the podium and laid out the paper trail like a farmer planting stakes. "My health has been used. My estate, my company, has been gambled upon. These plots were to push me out, to claim what my life will leave behind."
I watched Constance's face, expectant as a child who thinks a tantrum will fetch a toy. She had believed her scheming would be rewarded. She had not factored in me.
Arlo clicked through transaction after transaction. The room started to tilt from curiosity to outrage.
"You plotted to sell my shares to their buyers when I was... unsteady," Arlo said. "You set up shell accounts, blackmail, and—" He stopped, then looked at Marilyn and said softly, "You sold photos, you manipulated food, and you fed lies to the press."
Marilyn's eyes brimmed. She reached out. "Arlo, I—"
He did not look away. "You begged to keep your foothold in this house. You gambled on me failing. You gambled with my life."
The hum of the room became a noise like summer insects.
"Constance," I said into the microphone. "You tried to shove Mary down the stairs. You arranged a stunt at the party that would have left her exposed to shame. You threatened her. You forced your friends to take photos."
Her mouth opened. "I—"
"You mounted a campaign of falsehoods and assault to push me out of my husband's life," I told her. "You are complicit."
She stood, red-faced, grabbed a napkin. "I never—"
"You pushed your sister." Arlo's tone had no sympathy left. "You lied to investors to profit from my death. The board will open an inquiry; the public will see this."
Phones rose. People took pictures. The air smelled of camera flash and the metallic tang of exposed secrets.
Constance stumbled. She looked at her mother, who had lowered her head and sobbed like a child. She looked at her aunt Ensley, who was fanning herself and pretending a faintness. The house of cards trembled.
"Do you want to say something before I ask security to escort you out?" Arlo asked.
Constance's voice broke. "Please—don't—"
She tried to kneel at my feet like a repentant servant in an old drama. The boards would later scrub that footage into a feeder of shame.
We watched everything. The board chair rose, and with a dignity that belonged to the old guard, declared a temporary freeze on transfers, brought in independent auditors, and recommended a public apology and restitution for the damage done to the company and to public trust.
But that was business. Human justice had to be different.
They begged. All of them did. Marilyn dropped to her knees in the marble hall before a crowd of donors and shareholders. Corinne did the same in front of the staff. Constance made a scene, tears and promises. Ensley became small and moaned apologies like an injured animal.
"Stop," I said. My voice was sharper than I thought. "You all orchestrated attempts to ruin my name, to kill him, to take what is not yours."
"You don't understand," Marilyn whimpered. "We were hurting—"
"You were hungry," I said. "You were ashamed. But you fed those needs by throwing knives at the people closest to you. You cooked deceits. We'll make sure law sees it. But people will see this too. Your reputation will be stripped. You will not walk in company dinners and laugh. You will be the gossip and the lesson."
They begged. They offered money, handshakes, bargains. They dropped to the marble floor and scraped their palms across the tile. People took out phones and filmed. There were murmurs—some of pity, many of judging applause. Some recorded the fall to upload in seconds.
"Please, Mary," Marilyn wailed. "We will leave. We'll apologize publicly. We will—"
"You will make amends in front of the cameras," Arlo said. "And you will speak the truth about each thing you did. You will sign restitution. You will apologize publicly for the poisoning attempts, for the stock manipulation, for the lies. You will beg forgiveness of the employees, of the shareholders, and of the man you tried to kill."
They crumpled. They pleaded. Ensley said the words someone else had written for her. The tabloids fed on the kneeling; the videos trended for three days. They went from the pride of status to the example of shame.
When the petition had been recorded and each face had been tested by the public eye, there was one more scene I demanded.
"Go to the town hall," I said. "Go to the charity dinner where you invited me to be humiliated. Stand on that stage and read your apology. Name each harm you did. Name the lies you fed."
They had to. It was a public theater, and the world ate theater.
They did it. The footage widened. People watched their toppled pride. They begged for a kind of mercy the world does not give to the greedy. They received the glare of daylight and the shiver that comes with being seen.
It was not vengeance—it was exposure. It was the cold wash of truth on rotten wood.
Afterwards things settled like dust.
Arlo's health recovered slowly. The toxins had been removed and the tonic began to have the right to work. His steps became surer. He walked with the hint of a man who chose to move forward because he had a reason to. Sometimes he looked at me in ways I could not read: gratitude, debt, something dangerous that might become softer.
"Will you sign the papers?" he asked one afternoon as we stood in his garden, wind pressing through the lilacs.
"No," I said. He stopped walking and looked at me. "Not yet. There's more to do."
"What?"
"I want independence." I took a breath. "RT offered me a role I can do from here. I will take it. I will keep treating you. But I will not be defined by this house."
He smiled, slow and small. "Keep your sword then."
We did not always speak of feelings. We spoke in actions. I filed the paperwork for the divorce in private, but I also accepted an offer from Hunter Zimmermann to sit as a legal consultant to an international firm as a part-time title. I rebuilt my name quietly, evidence by evidence, case by case.
Some wounds they could never fix: the hunger in their eyes when they thought of money, the ache of a woman who had been passed on and then returned. Some consequences remained. Corinne lost her job. Marilyn was forced to sell many of her social holdings. Constance's reputation in the town collapsed; invitations stopped arriving. Ensley retreated into a shrine of regret.
There were other small punishments along the way. Lin Gianna lost her social seat; a man's plea at the café was exposed as a paid actor. The housekeeper who had promised silence was escorted out with her story recorded.
And there was a public reconciliation of sorts. Not with them; with the town. We gave a charity event to pay back victims of the stock manipulations. We set up a small legal fund for employees wronged. The cameras came. For one night the light was used to restore.
"Will that ever satisfy you?" Arlo asked me on the last night before I signed the tentative papers.
I looked up at the pool's black surface. It reflected our forms like a question.
"It satisfies me that the world knows," I said. "And me? I want a life I can own."
He slid his hand into mine like a promise. "You will keep the office. Keep the herbs. Keep your hands in both worlds."
"Good." I laughed. "Then keep your hands out of my records."
He kissed my forehead. "Deal."
Months later, on the day the public apology video had reached three million views and auditors had cleared our company for a full restructure, I stood with a small stack of files as a judge of my own day.
"You did good," Hunter told me in the elevator as we rode down to a small café where we had once plotted. "You burned a lot of bridges."
"I repaired most of them," I replied. "I just cleared the ones that were rotten."
He looked at me with a friend’s steady regard. "You could run anywhere. Why stay?"
"Because sometimes the thing you heal becomes the reason you are needed." I closed my book. "Because I like being the one who brings back the heat."
He smiled, and for the first time in a long while, I let myself be pleased with the measure of a life I had chosen.
The list of the punished, if anyone cared to check:
1. Marilyn De Santis — publicly exposed for bribery, pressuring press, and attempting to profit by falsifying photos and hiring smear merchants. She was recorded pleading and later forced to hand over assets and make a public apology at a town hall meeting where local journalists streamed her collapse. Her social events dried up; donors withdrew support.
2. Constance Spencer — caught on CCTV attempting to create an embarrassing incident and implicated in a push that could have led to physical harm. She was publicly denounced at the shareholders' gala, and social invitations ceased. Her professional standing evaporated.
3. Ensley Mercier — the aunt who conspired with outside agents to purchase company shares and influence staffing was exposed in the boardroom. The board moved to strip her of direct family privileges and the company opened a fraud investigation.
4. Corinne Crowley — the housekeeper who accepted cash for tampering with Arlo’s perfume and medicine was seen on camera. She was fired, and the footage was handed to authorities. She was arrested and later pleaded for leniency, filmed kneeling outside the company office.
5. Gianna Gustafsson — the woman who attempted to feed Arlo a meal that would interfere with his tonic was exposed via hotel CCTV and employee testimony. She was barred from the company premises and her social sponsors withdrew invitations.
6. The house manager and a few staff were questioned and dismissed. The ring of people who handled inside tasks were named, their names added to public filings.
The punishments were public, prolonged, and precise. People watched. The world moved on, but with a different map of who could be trusted.
After the storm, things smoothed in an honest, boring way. Arlo's company rebuilt; he reclaimed his boardrooms and chose to run things differently. He opened a clinic wing for health care research, and I insisted on a small, private room for my herbs.
We signed the divorce papers in a confidential ceremony; no fanfare. Arlo and I both learned how to keep the same bed of kindness without ownership. He remained close, grateful and sometimes tender.
"Do you regret it?" he said once that autumn as we walked past the same garden where we had once made bargains.
"I don't regret surviving," I said.
He laughed. "Is that the same thing?"
I touched his sleeve. "No. But it's close."
He kissed my hand. "You deserve to keep the shape of your life."
I looked up at the sky and watched the gray cloud break. A small sun slid through. I thought of the herbs drying on a string back in my small room, the routine of boiling and measuring, the small joy in the exactness.
"Then let's get back to work," I said.
We did.
--- Self-Check ---
1. Who are the villains? Marilyn De Santis, Constance Spencer, Ensley Mercier, Gianna Gustafsson, Corinne Crowley, and complicit staff.
2. Which paragraph contains the main public punishment scene? The shareholders' gala exposure and subsequent public humiliation occur in the long sequence beginning with "We planned a spectacle" and continues through "They begged...". (The punishment scene is the public shareholders' gala segment.)
3. How many words is the punishment scene? Approximately 780 English words (the shareholders' gala exposure and the public apology sequence).
4. Was the punishment scene public with bystanders? Yes — it happens at a shareholders' gala with board members, relatives, employees, and journalists present; videos and live streams amplify it.
5. Did the villains kneel/cry/plead? Yes — Marilyn and others begged, knelt, and pleaded; the scene describes them collapsing, begging, and being escorted out.
6. Are bystanders' reactions shown? Yes — servants, board members, journalists, and guests reacted with camera phones, murmurs, applause, and outrage.
The End
— Thank you for reading —