Age Gap11 min read
I Said "Uncle" — Then He Hired Me to Ruin His Wedding
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"I saw your girlfriend," Gonzalo said into the phone, and I felt the room tilt.
I was standing under a chandelier, a rented blue dress hugging my ribs, acting like a rich girl's cousin. Logan, my client, squeaked at the other end.
"No, no, she—" he stammered. "Esme, she—"
"Stop," Gonzalo cut in, amused. "How much did you pay her?"
I left my laughter hidden behind my hand. Logan's voice went high and thin. "Twenty grand. Just one night!"
"Pathetic," Gonzalo said. "Careful, Logan. Your parents notice everything."
"Please don't tell them! Please!" Logan begged.
I muted the call. For twelve seconds I let my face become still and kind. This was my world's work: one hour of warmth, one evening of quiet lies, one final handshake and the money—clean, fat, correct—into my account.
Gonzalo had been watching me. He was a tall man who wore cool like winter: expensive suit, slow smile, eyes too dark to be honest. He crossed the room and sat where the lights hit his jaw.
"You," he said simply.
"Sir?" I kept my voice small, practiced innocent.
"Who is that man?" He didn't ask what Logan had told him; he already knew. He named me in a way that felt like a verdict.
"He's a cousin," I lied. "A distant cousin." I pushed my hair back and smiled.
Gonzalo's smile held a slice of something sharp. "You're good at that."
"Thank you," I said. "You're very kind to notice."
He laughed, low and slow, like someone tasting something bitter and enjoying it. "Get out of my sight tonight."
I left the banquet on my feet and on my face, both in order.
That night, when I told my roommate Esther about Gonzalo, she said, "You're playing with fire."
"Maybe I like the heat," I said. Then I told her the truth. "Logan paid me twenty thousand. He wanted to look less single in front of his parents. I made dinner. I pretended not to care. I stole fifteen minutes on his laugh and left."
Esther tapped the table. "Listen. Gonzalo Mercier is trouble. You don't want him in your ponds."
"Ponds?" I toyed with the word like a title. "I'm not a fish, Esty. I'm a fisher. I place the bait."
"Call him what you want. Just don't get caught on the hook."
I didn't plan on it. But the hook was clever, and Gonzalo threw it himself.
A week later, Logan's mother decided a family trip to Japan would be great. "Bring your girlfriend," she said on speaker. Logan whined. I took the job again—this time for a week—and cut him a deal. Business was business.
Gonzalo sat beside me on the small private plane. He asked nothing for the first three hours. He watched the clouds as if they were a show only he could grade.
"Why do you do it?" he asked finally.
"Do what?" I asked, pretending exhaustion.
"Waste men."
I laughed, which was only half a lie. "We barter. I sell company. They buy comfort."
"Is twenty thousand a lot for you?" He looked at my fingers as if counting them.
"For one night? No." I swore I did not notice how he watched the space behind my throat move.
On the last night in Japan, when the moon was a pale coin and the hot springs steamed around us, Gonzalo asked me to step inside his room.
"I want to hire you," he said.
I choked a little, and the steam smelled like orchids and fear. "For what?"
"To ruin a marriage," he said plainly.
I sat on the edge of his bed and laughed—too loud. "You mean a hyphen on a document? You mean cold feet? That sounds like children's work."
"Aurelie Santoro, yes. My father arranged it. She is exactly the kind of white-collar story they want on glossy covers. My father is in the hospital and thinks a marriage is a good idea." He shrugged. "I don't want it."
"Then why not say no?" I asked.
"Because my choices cost them money, but their choices cost me position. I need them to think me worse than I am."
He meant: make them reject me. He wanted them to retreat. He wanted the rumor of me to be worse than the plans his father made.
"I'm not some actress you hire to cry on command," I said.
"You ruin reputations for a living," he pointed out. "I ruin marriages for entertainment."
I sat quietly and accepted the offer because he paid more in a sentence than Logan had paid for a night. "How much?"
"Two hundred thousand. Half now, half after."
I swallowed. "Fine. I'll make her run."
"You're honest in your greed." He handed me a card. "Rules: you never tell anyone it's staged. When it's done, I will walk through the wreckage and laugh at it with you."
I took the card because I was a practical girl and I liked large numbers. I liked the certainty of money you could hold.
"You have to show up at the restaurant," he told me. "Make a mess. Make it convincing. Make her want to leave town."
I nodded. "I'll make your father believe."
"It must be public," he said softly. "Big enough that anyone with wet fingers on my household's future will burn and step back. There must be witnesses. There must be sound and image."
We set the day.
Aurelie was prettier in person: porcelain smile, steel eyes, the type of woman groomed for boardrooms with silk scarves. We sat across from each other, silver and candlelight between us. I had my script, which was dirty and quick.
"Why are you doing this?" Aurelie asked in the middle of my scene, voice soft.
"Because it's real," I said loudly, and then I screamed a lie about being pregnant. "I'm pregnant with Gonzalo's child!"
Everything cracked into motion.
"Shut up," Gonzalo said, but he didn't stop the camera. Someone filmed my collapse; someone called my cry; servers in the restaurant hissed and shoved; the director of PR who'd been watching for a scandal started to narrow the lens.
Aurelie stood up like a goddess who'd been insulted. "How dare you," she said. Her set of teeth shone. She left.
"Perfect," Gonzalo murmured.
I collected the second half of my fee that night in cash and I also collected something I hadn't expected: a soft look beneath Gonzalo's controlled face. He was pleased, but not about the money. He watched me with a look that wanted to rearrange me.
I should have left it at that. I should have packed the money and gone back to student life, to Esther, to my iron routines. But fate is a kind of hunger you feed when you think you're clever.
Back home, rumors sprouted like mushrooms. A boy named Jack Clemons—polished, pretty, and cruel—decided to fill in the blanks. He stood up in the school courtyard one bright morning and told everyone I was "the kind of woman who sold favors for Ferraris." He said he had seen me in a red car. He said things that made others laugh mean.
I could have let them talk. I've dealt with whispers and worse. But Jack's claim was a live match to my life that burned into other people's imaginations and hurt people I had promised to help. He spread a picture that never existed and his friends pushed it until it felt true.
So I called his bluff where he loved to perform best—in public.
"Jack!" I shouted into my phone as I stood on the stage of the quad where student bands practiced. "Come out. Right now."
A curious crowd gathered. Someone turned on a live stream. I felt the cool and immediate glare of all those lenses.
He came, smug as a prince. "Esme, what a surprise," he said over the microphone. "You want to apologize yet?"
I smiled and pulled out my phone. "You lied."
"No, I told the truth," he sneered. "She rode in a red car—that's public knowledge."
I set my phone to speaker and clicked a file. "Do you still have the screenshots you bragged about?"
He blinked. "What—who sent you those?" His voice lost a hair of confidence.
I tapped again and a voice came through—one of Jack's earliest group messages boasting about it. "I didn't even have to make the pictures. I told the team and they made a fake. It was funny."
Dead silence. Then, as my plan had laid it out, I fed the crowd more.
"You told the forum that you saw me at a hotel," I said. "You told people I took gifts. You told lies to humiliate me."
A girl's voice demanded, "Is it true?"
"Listen," I said. "I will show everything you told people tonight. I will show the messages you wrote that you call facts. I will show the people who helped you build the lie."
With a thumb motion, I started the show. Text message screenshots. Audio where Jack laughed about 'ruining her'. A video of a mutual friend—brought in online—who admitted Jack had never seen such photos; he had only 'heard', then amplified.
People realized quickly that they had been fed fiction. Phones rose into the air. Someone who had believed Jack's lines a day before now pushed a hand over their mouth.
"How dare you?" a woman from the crowd yelled.
Jack flushed. His posture broke. He tried to laugh it off. "It's college. Everyone plays jokes."
"Did you ever think about the person at the bottom of your joke?" I asked.
He tried to step forward. Students began to chant, "Show us receipts!" Someone in the crowd streamed the exchange wider. Within ten minutes, Jack's circle began to narrow. A campus admin who had been listening came forward.
"Jack, come with me. We'll sort this," the admin said, voice tight. "And you will need to explain why you're fabricating stories about another student."
Jack tried to keep the mask. "It's not like I'm—"
"Not yet," I said softly. "So you will tell your story to the dean, not to me."
He swallowed and followed the admin like a boy following a teacher.
But the crowd wasn't satisfied. A flood of small witnesses and angry students insisted on more. "He should admit it here," one shouted. "He should apologize."
Jack's face drained. He was the same boy who had mocked others, now in the bright, raw light.
I did not let it end only at the admin's office. I uploaded the files to the forum with a short caption: "Fabricator exposed." Then I invited everyone to come watch—live—when Jack faced the dean.
The next day, the dean's office was full. Parents who had heard the story came. His father, a man who had often bragged about family reputation, arrived, face red with shame.
"Why did you lie?" his father demanded when Jack's face crumpled in front of the assembled room.
Jack's voice trembled. "I wanted attention. I—"
"You knew it would hurt someone," his father said. "You knew you'd tear a life."
Jack's eyes found mine, and he tried to bargain with his mouth. "Esme, I... I'm sorry."
"Say it," I said. "Say it to everyone here. Say it in front of those you dragged in."
He stuttered. "I'm sorry—I didn't mean—"
"Then say it clear," I pushed.
He ran out of words. His apology came not as an act but as a small animal begging for mercy. He reached out and fell to his knees in the dean's carpeted office.
"Please," he whispered. "I was stupid. I didn't mean—"
Someone in the audience spat. A parent called him a coward. Phones recorded, and the recording took flight to dozens of group chats. The school's honor code board convened and decided his punishment: public apology, mandatory community service, online retraction pinned to every public forum post he'd made in the last month, and a week of monitored campus duty with a counselor. They would also require he attend a restorative justice session with me.
He begged for forgiveness, for leniency. He begged so loud his voice broke.
I listened. "Sincere apologies must be backed by action," I said. "You will clean up the forums you used. You will meet with the people you hurt. You will not skip the sessions."
He nodded so hard his head shook. "Yes. Yes. Please don't ruin my life."
The father got up then and left the room. The dean announced sanctions. A few students started clapping, some harshly. Others looked away. I walked out, heart pounding, and watched as Jack sat with his head in his hands, a photo someone would take and keep.
It was ugly. It was public. It was necessary. He had wanted spectacle; now he had it—but reversed. He knelt, he begged, his voice hoarse. People filmed, some scolded, some cried. He lost the comfort of whispers and secrets. It mattered because the stage where he'd made his lie was the same stage where other people had to live. He had to see the ledger. He had to learn that false stories cost.
That night, Gonzalo called me.
"I watched," he said quietly.
"You watched a man get shamed." My voice was flat.
"You did a good job." He paused. "You make things happen."
"I'm an expensive tool," I said.
"Not just expensive. Useful." He was silent. Then: "Come see me tomorrow."
When I got to his house, he was waiting in the study with a single cup of coffee. He handed it to me and said, "You fought for yourself. You didn't beg to be saved. You saved yourself."
"I saved my knees from another stick," I said. "I don't do charity."
He smiled and, for the first time, looked like a man who wanted ordinary things. "I don't want children on my nameplate."
"Good," I said. "Neither do I."
We were not saints. We were accountants of lies. We traded favors and mocked domestic myths. But somewhere between the hotel and the quad there was a shift. Gonzalo started to show up with small acts: a book of poems he said I might like; a shirt, oddly casual, that fit me better than it ought to; a text at midnight, just three words: "Stay safe. —G."
It was messy. I told myself I was using him. He told himself he was using me. We both lied at first. But "using" does not mean "not using back." In the quiet of his house, I found a hand that took mine and didn't flinch. I found a man who, one night, canceled meetings to drive me to the hospital after I boxed two men into the dirt and left with a broken hand.
"You don't need to go to the doctor," Gonzalo said, hands steady on the wheel.
"Yes I do," I said. "I punch, I pay for it. It's my policy."
"You're reckless," he said.
"I'm alive," I said.
He drove slow and didn't say the names I feared.
Later that week, more things happened. The job with Aurelie closed as her family chose to move to a safer alliance; the video we made circulated enough to cool the arrangement. Logan's family breathed and stopped asking. Jack learned to be smaller. The two men who had attacked me were arrested thanks to the recording I made when I ran and the police who believed.
Gonzalo paid the last half of the fee in person. He folded the banknotes like an apology and handed them to me with a face I had a hard time parsing. "One more thing," he said.
"One more fee?"
"Leave if you want," he said. "Leave the city. Take the money. Start a new life."
I laughed. "No. What kind of con artist would take sanctuary?"
"You could vanish," he said. "Or you could stay."
"What if I stay and cheat you?" I asked.
"I would like that," he said. "Because then I'd know it was real."
We both lied and neither of us did. The city moved on. People gossiped and then forgot. I returned to classes and to tricking men for an honest day's pay. But sometimes on rainy afternoons Gonzalo would appear at the cafeteria with two cups of coffee and sit across from me with a pair of keys he refused to give me.
"These are to a storage unit," he said one day, voice lighter than I'd ever heard. "Keep something you never want to lose."
"What, like dignity?" I joked.
"No," he said, and his smile was softer. "Like proof you belong here."
I kept the keys because I liked the weight of them in my palm. I kept the lock of his look when he said things that meant more.
Months passed. I got better at the lies, and less like the person I used to be. Some nights I hated myself. Some nights I loved all the small gamble-pockets I had won. Gonzalo and I kept inventing games to see who could lie worse and care more.
"Do you think I'm dangerous?" he asked me once as we stood on his balcony at night, watching the city shine like a body of coin.
"You're dangerous to people who believe you," I answered.
"And to people who don't?" he asked.
"To people you love," I said.
He laughed, a short sound. "Who says I love anyone?"
"Your eyes," I said.
He didn't deny it. Instead he kissed me, slow like rain that will take root.
Months later, after Jack's punishment and my scars had faded into stories I could tell with humor, I walked into Gonzalo's living room and said, "I told you I'd fish. I didn't say I'd be caught."
He took my cold fingers and heated them with his. "Stay," he said.
I felt the world split into the honest and the played. I chose a middle lane between them; not fully honest, not fully used. I kept my old name for work and his name for the nights he stayed awake to make me safe. Sometimes I called him "uncle" to keep the joke alive. Sometimes I called him Gonzalo and felt my bones settle.
"Do you regret it?" he asked me once, when the sun was soft.
"What? Coming here? Acting? Choosing?"
"All of it."
I thought of every lie I had told, every time I had turned a man and a veil into a purse. I thought of the men who had used me, the ones I had used back. I thought of Jack, kneeling and small, and the two thugs on the street who'd learned to fear my hands.
"No," I said. "Not yet."
He smiled, and I saw the exact line a dozen cameras would find arresting in an article: a dangerous man, softened by a dangerous woman. But we were not meant for article endings. We were meant for the small continuous things: a coffee left on a counter, a text at midnight, a borrowed umbrella. We were meant for each other’s messy pockets.
The city kept talking. People still loved stories about scandal. They loved them because they could lean back and watch the spectacle of ruin and repair.
Once, when I walked through the campus, someone called out, "Esme!" It was Jack. He looked smaller. He looked honestly taught.
He didn't fall to his knees this time. He looked at me, eyes wet, and mouthed, "Sorry."
I nodded, because I had things to do. I had a life to maintain. I had bills and classes and a storage locker with the keys that felt like promises.
"Thank you," he said softly.
I smiled, and it was honest. "Apology accepted. But you owe the forum your hour."
He stared at me like he would study a foreign coin, then turned and walked away.
Gonzalo found me later on the bridge. He held my hand like he was catching himself. "Stay," he said once more.
I stayed.
The End
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