Face-Slapping13 min read
I Got Up From the Hospital Bed and Took His Kingdom
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"I said it once: we're breaking up."
"I heard you," he sniffed, voice slick with practiced hurt, "Kiana, we've been together over a year. Don't you know how hard it is for me—being Liam Benjamin—trying to keep my image? Do you expect me to explain every rumor?"
I watched him in the hospital room, the man who had once been my whole sky. Black suit, neat jawline, actor swagger like a brand. He tried to spin the world into his favor with a few smooth lines and the right tone.
"I said it once," I said again. "We're done."
He laughed like he didn't believe me. "Done? What do you mean—"
"Get out." I said it without heat, without begging. The word hit him harder than I expected.
He stood there, stunned for a heartbeat, then anger rolled over his face. "You can't mean that. You can't!"
"I do." I kept my voice even. "And don't you dare come back crying when you're lonely."
He shoved a hand through his hair. "Fine. Fine. Be like that. But you'll come crawling back."
"I won't," I answered. I lifted my chin. "And when you do, remember who let you climb to the top."
He slammed the door and left with drama that would play well on camera. When he was gone the whole hospital room exhaled. My manager, Kiko, folded her arms and scolded like she always did.
"Kiana, you were drinking at a party. You nearly killed yourself."
"I was fine," I said. "Help me with discharge."
She stared like I was speaking foreign language. "Your family—do you even have family here? Are you sure you want to go home?"
I thought about the original story I'd read, the one I'd fallen into. In the book I was a minor star with a tragic arc: I chased a rising actor and died. I didn't want that ending. I didn't want to be the woman who ended because she loved the wrong man.
"Kiko, check the car. I'm leaving."
Kiko's jaw worked. She had worked me for two years, scolding me, patching me up, claiming to be my guard. Now she stared at me like I'd grown horns.
"You're sure?" she said.
"Yes."
The valet opened the gate to a shaded, guarded community. I rolled down the window and watched the guards nod to me. The security recognized me—someone who owned the place. I smiled very slightly.
"Does your brother live here?" Kiko whispered.
"He does," I said, and then I asked someone at the gate, "Is Branch around?"
"Mr. Ibarra's been busy," the guard answered. "Last time he visited was months ago."
Branch Ibarra. I closed my eyes for a beat. In the book he was the mysterious older brother who would later try to save me. In real life, I had a brother whose name opened doors.
The driver pulled up in front of a thirty-story tower. The stairs and glass and palms made me feel like the world tilted to a new axis. I walked through my own front door like I belonged there.
Later, on the private line, I said what I had prepared.
"Branch?"
"My little sister," his voice said, surprised and indulgent, "Kiana? What's going on?"
"I want to quit acting," I said. "I'm done."
"Good." He laughed. "I always thought the camera stole too much of your light. Come home. We have work you can do."
I felt something warm and safe and dangerous flicker in me. The original book said my brother would ruin himself for me. That hadn't happened yet. Maybe I could change the path.
The next morning I went to the studio for what the world thought would be a board meeting. Instead, when I stepped from my red car, the other actors' faces crumpled into surprise and then jealousy.
"Is that Kiana?" a new face asked.
"That can't be her," someone snorted. "She was canceled months ago."
Kiko swept from the car like a banner of protection. "Hello, everyone. Miss Albrecht is here. Remember to be respectful."
I let people see me. No flinching. No apology. For a woman people remembered as weak, this felt delicious.
A splinter of laughter rose when Frida Mercier, an actress who liked to throw shade, sneered.
"Look who thinks she can be a boss."
I stepped forward and pulled off my sunglasses.
"Anyone else?" I said, quiet and cold. "Because from now on you call me President Albrecht of Starway—unless you want your contracts reviewed."
They stared. I raised my chin. "And by the way, everyone's contracted here. Don't test me."
The office erupted into gossip. My press release that day was scandalous enough to crash the social feed. I posted one barely polite message.
"From today on, call me President Kiana. @StarwayOfficial @BranchIbarra"
The world reacted. Insults flew. Fans of Liam called me names. But a curious thing happened: my followers doubled, then tripled. People wanted to see what would happen when a woman refused to buckle.
Inside my new office, I sat with Kiko and scrolled through Liam's file. His contracts glittered. He was protected because the company had protected him. I tapped my finger on his special benefits.
"I want to see his schedule," I told Kiko.
She blinked. "You know what you're asking."
"Yes."
We went through his calendars, his endorsements, his imminent movie. It all fit like a pattern, and I could smell the knot at its center.
At a party that night, I went to see him. Parties were toxic; they were where men like him let their mask slip. I found him and a wing of enabling people: photographers, managers, a woman in a perfect dress. It had been filmed the week before, and I watched the play again—how he led a woman close, how he chattered like he owned her and everything around them.
I walked through the scene. He tried his practiced charm. "Kiana," he said, the world still soft in his voice, "we can be friends, can't we?"
"Friends?" I laughed once. "You mean 'I act like I never dated you and you act like I never existed'?"
"What are you talking about?" he asked, bristling.
"Everything," I said. "And you know what's funny? You taught the world to hate me once. Now the world might watch you fall."
He tried to edge closer. I stepped away and tapped a lighter touch to the glass of his brandy, knocking it. The drink tipped and stained his shirt. The tiny chaos made him flush.
"You'll regret this," he hissed.
"Not if I don't," I answered.
The cameras later captured my walk: Kiana Albrecht stepping through studios like a storm. My brother's company turned things fast. I didn't want to play the victim. I wanted to rearrange the pieces.
I found Preston Carpenter next — a quiet young man with a tear mole near his eye and a face that would stop traffic if he chose. He'd once been a fan who asked for an autograph. He stood at the set the first day, asking small questions, following scripts, carrying props. He wasn't polished. He had no CV, but he had heart.
"Preston," I said when I first heard his name, "you wanted to be in this business?"
He nodded. "I want to act."
"Good. Start now. Learn to punch — metaphorically and literally — because one day you'll be the saw that cuts the rope."
He blinked, earnest. "I will."
The set was the stage where I began to practice small cruelties that the book had promised me. I was director now, and I could shift scenes like chess moves. At the first rehearsal day I told the leading actors we were reworking the scenes. Before they knew it, I was replacing pompous setups with humiliations.
"Action," I said once, and the camera found Liam, all pose and no courage. A scene that had been dull suddenly turned sharp: a slap, a stumble, a moment filmed that would make the world notice.
"Stop!" Liam shouted after a second take. "This isn't in the script."
"I'm the director," I said. "The script changes."
"Who told you you could do this?" he demanded.
"I did," I said, and smiled.
When he left the set that day, his face blue from the slap and his ego bruised, people whispered. He would recover with PR; that's what males in his line did. But I wanted more than bruises. I wanted the world to remember what arrogance deserved.
I started to plan. I invited Preston closer. I gave him lines, small opportunities, gave him attention so he might learn. He took to it like a fish to water. He learned quickly because he had nothing to lose and everything to prove.
"Do you want to be famous?" I asked him once at the hotel, late.
"No," he said, eyes bright. "I want to be seen."
"Good answer," I said, softer than I had been in weeks.
The next phase was public. Fans and critics were a chorus—some jeering, some cheering. Liam's team had history and connections—Laurent Bloom, his manager, moved fast to control the damage. He called, he pleaded; he offered contracts and interviews. He was the firewall for Liam.
"Laurent," I told him calmly when we met, "your job is to keep him safe. I can make him dangerous."
"Don't test us," he said.
"I want him tested," I said. "Please deliver his schedule to me."
He hesitated and then passed the documents. He didn't know if I would read them or use them, but he had to live the bit of his job that required appeasement.
Later, at a formal award event, I turned the world. An award night is a place where people like to be adored. Liam expected applause and light. I expected a stage.
"You can't be serious," Laurent whispered when I arrived. "This place is dangerous for him— for many people."
"I'm serious," I said. "Tonight I show the world something it needs to see."
The gala glittered. Cameras, velvet ropes, the kind of luxury that keeps people polite. I wore black and nothing that screamed; I wanted my face to be all the statement. Liam made his entry with perfect hair and the practiced lopsided smile of a man who had never been refused. The audience stood and applauded, and for a slow second his chest swelled.
I had the clip ready. I had the proof tucked in a digital file because I had watched them in the shadows, because everyone had their own weakness on a string. Liam had strings. He had messages. He had betrayal.
The screen behind the stage flicked. It should have been pictures of past winners. I hit play. A moment of confusion. Then the video unfurled: Liam's private messages, the way he spoke of me to a woman—Amelia Wolff—who was present at the gala and thought she wore armor.
"You're next," he had typed in a message to her. "After belt-tightening, we can move your friend along. She's good at turning heads."
Another clip: a hidden camera of him whispering to a staffer, "Keep her quiet." Another: the woman—Amelia—calling me a "withdrawn ATM" in a voice I could hear clear as a bell.
The audience stilled like a held breath. People whose lives survive on applause froze.
Liam's smile vanished. His jaw clenched. He looked at me.
"You can't do this," he hissed, but the screen continued.
"Turn it off!" he shouted toward the stage techs. His face had gone from composure to panic, and then to rage.
Amelia's face blanched when she saw herself. Where she'd strutted, now the light fell on betrayal. People turned their phones to them. A dozen streams began to upload. The room roared with a new current.
"Is this true?" someone called from the front row. "Are you—"
"Liam, answer for yourself," I said into the silence, my voice carrying over a hush that could have held a storm.
He began with denial—a practiced cascade. "This is fake. It's edited. A setup. Someone is trying to ruin me."
"Show the raw files," I suggested. "Stop lying."
He turned to Laurent. "Laurent, say it's fake. Say it."
"I don't know what--" Laurent stammered.
The first wave of their reactions: startled disbelief, then hurried defense, then the social media crush. People started to crowd around their table. I saw cameras point. I saw hands lift phones. I saw faces I knew watch him with different eyes.
"Please," Liam said after a minute, voice ragged. "It's not what it looks like."
You could map the arc: shock, then sneer, then denial. I watched him play the old game—deny, accuse, plead. It was a familiar choreography. But there was one step he didn't account for: evidence.
A thousand people in that room held their breath as I uploaded more. There was his private ledger where he'd talked about contracts as if they were chattel. There was Amelia's message with its cold line about "withdrawal." The footage was raw.
"Stop!" Amelia shouted, then tried to laugh it off. "Guys, this is a joke, right? Right?"
Her laugh died.
Phones started to buzz. People whispered. A woman at the next table whispered, "Can you believe this?"
"You lied to us," someone said aloud. "You manipulated us."
Liam's face moved again, from fevered to frantic.
"Please," he said, voice shaking. "I... I can explain. I'm sorry, I made mistakes."
"No," I said flat. "I'm not here to accept apologies."
He stepped toward me. "Kiana—"
"Don't touch me," I said. "You touch me, you want the show. I already decided."
He staggered back like something had struck him. People pressed their phones up to the table. That was how it began.
What followed next was not graceful. It was ugly and public in the way a broken thing is ugly. Liam tried to maintain authority. He tried to argue. He tried to laugh it off. The crowd was merciless. He shifted from arrogance to confusion, to anger, to begging in under a minute.
"You're lying!" He pointed at me. "You're lying. You're—"
Someone near him took his phone and showed a thread on the screen of a group chat where he joked about "getting rid of the obstacle after the tour." A dozen hands whipped out their phones and recorded. A woman in a dress came forward and called out the truth.
"You told me you'd leave your girlfriend if I—" she started. Her voice cracked. People stared. The room divided into a ring of phones, light like small suns on a courtroom's floor.
Denial softened under the weight of proof. His jaw twitched. He tried to laugh. Denial turned to surprise. Surprise to panic. Panic to pleading. It was a construction of almost comical rapidity—this was the collapse I had imagined, only faster and more precise.
"Please," he begged finally, on the floor of a million tiny lights of camera phones, "please, I'm sorry. Don't—"
"No one can help you now," I said.
People recorded. People texted. People shared. Someone shouted for security. Someone else took Liam's hand and shook him off. He fell to his knees, the fabric of his designer trousers creasing where he landed.
"Please," he said again. "Please, I'll give you anything. Don't do this. Please."
People around him didn't look angry so much as disappointed. Some cheered. Others pressed their phones closer.
I remember the look in his eyes as he went from arrogant to small. It wasn't suffering as much as incredulity—how could his life have folded into this? That was the real torture: watching a man who had built himself on image realize that images can break.
He crawled to the edge of the stage. Someone nearby hissed. "Get him out of here."
He dropped into a crumpled heap, sobbing like a child. For a long time, there was silence except for his broken sound.
At one point he tried to stand and his legs wouldn't hold. He slid back down, and a crowd parted around him. Phones recorded the whole thing. A woman shouted, "Kneel and apologize!"
"Please," he murmured, "I didn't mean—"
Someone filmed him begging. "Please," he sobbed, and people uploaded it. The clip reached a feed and spread like quick oil.
The punishment that night met all the marks: it was public, immersive, and total. It started with a smile and a click and ended with a man begging in a room full of strangers who would never fully forgive him. I had watched the arc of someone going from powered toward powerless, and the crowd helped write the script.
He got to the state the plot demanded: outrage, exposure, shock, denial, pleading. People took sides. Some filmed; some clapped. The woman who had been with him tried to hide. She had been vainglorious, and now shame ate her posture. She begged the microphone for mercy. People laughed. People snapped pics. "Get out!" somebody shouted. "Don't come back!"
Security finally dragged him away, but not before dozens of cameras captured his humiliation. News channels replayed the fall. I watched the headlines bloom: "Actor Falls From Grace," "Private Chats Exposed," "From Crown to Kneeling." It was the kind of spectacle people circulated for days.
Afterwards, when the room thinned out and the cameras moved on to the next scandal, I walked through the chairs and the broken luxurious setting and let myself breathe.
"Are you okay?" Preston asked softly, having stayed behind as my quiet witness. He hadn't been on stage; he'd been standing at the back, hands in pockets.
"I'm fine," I said. "I did what I had to do."
"You looked cold," he said. "Like you were somebody else."
"I had to be," I said. "Because in that story, I die. I'm not dying."
He nodded, his eyes steady. "Then don't."
The aftermath was greedy. Some called it cruelty. Some called it justice. But either word didn't matter to me—only the fact that the man who'd wanted me small now had to show his smallest self to the world.
Liam's team scrambled for damage control. Laurent Bloom called me afterwards, trying to bargain. "Kiana, think of the boy," he pleaded. "Let us do a statement."
"I don't want a statement," I said. "I want change."
He asked what I would accept.
"Public, honest apology," I said. "And he has to step back from the spotlight for a long time. He must feel that things are different."
In secret, I placed conditions that would stay his rise: contract amendments, transparency with messages, a clause against manipulation. I watched him sign under the pressure of lawyers and cameras. It was the surrender I sought.
For Amelia, the woman who had laughed and taken what wasn't hers, I demanded a different price: her platform. She would lose endorsements; she would lose the invited seats at shows. She would sit in the gutter and watch cameras pass by. She would understand the cost of taking someone else's trust for granted.
When everything settled, the feeds had moved on but the damage lines remained. Liam's career took a dip. People forgave, as people do. But he learned a lesson in the hard way: public trust isn't an account you can spoof.
And me? I sat in my office with Kiko, Preston leaning in a quiet corner like a promise in a postcard.
"What's next?" Preston asked.
"Now we build," I said. "We build with people who can stand the heat."
He nodded. "I will."
As time rolled forward, I kept the pieces in motion. I backed Preston as he trained. I set him up with coaches. I walked on sets and made choices that pushed the industry to look at real skill, not just glossy eyes.
"You're very… precise," Preston said once, sweat on his brow after a long take. "It scares people."
"It's supposed to," I said. "Not everything is a smooth aisle. Some things need cutting."
People began to see a different me: not the sobbing, lost woman from the book, but a woman who used what she had — family, money, influence — to tilt a crooked table.
We filmed. Preston learned. He got better. His lines landed. He learned to carry himself not as a fan but as an actor. The first time he truly broke a scene and made a crowd cry, I felt a strange pride, the kind only people with reasons to be protective ever feel.
"How does it feel?" I asked him after a triumphant day.
"It feels right," Preston said simply. "Like I'm not stealing someone else's spotlight. It belongs to the people who earned it."
We kept arranging the story to make the industry clean itself, to make sure that people who used others as stepping stones were exposed and that the rest were given a chance. That sometimes meant slaps on set. Sometimes it meant humiliations at the right place. Sometimes it meant giveaways to fans and the kind of mercy that rewrote public perception.
At the end of the long year, I stood again at an awards show. Not to humiliate, but to applaud the better actors. Preston stood by my side, calmer and tougher. He didn't need me to prop him up. He'd grown.
"Do you regret it?" he asked me in the limo, after we'd both been named worthy.
"Which?" I asked. "Saving myself? Destroying his image? Starting a new era?"
He shrugged. "All of it."
"I regret only one thing," I said quietly. "That it took me this long to stop letting my life be consumed by someone who never loved me for me."
He reached across and squeezed my hand. It was a small thing. It was enough.
I had come back from the hospital bent on survival. I had taken a company, replaced scripts, slotted a quiet boy where a narcissist had stood. I had made a man beg on a stage and watched the world take the video and make it a lesson that did not spare anyone.
It didn't heal everything: my brother had old grudges. The book's fate still loomed in corners of my mind. But I had found a way out of dying in that narrative.
And if justice—harsh as it was—had teeth, then perhaps mercy could be earned too. I would decide who had to kneel, who deserved to rise, and who to lift along the way.
The city below glittered, and I thought of small fans with names I’d never learn. I thought of Preston’s astonished joy when a scene landed. I thought of Branch, who would argue with me over money and buy me another office anyway.
I fingered my phone and typed a short message to the fans who had called me a monster and then sent me blessings in the same hour. "Call me Kiana," I wrote. "Call me whatever you like. But I am not the girl who dies."
A ping came back within seconds, a selfie with a heart. Simple messages. Simple people. Simple things.
The night closed, not like a book, but like a door latched firmly—no, not latched, bolted. I had locked one ending behind me. I had begun writing a different story.
The End
— Thank you for reading —