Face-Slapping11 min read
"I Signed the Papers — Then I Blew Up His Life"
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"I signed it," I said, and the pen scraped the last word.
"I see," Phoenix White answered without looking up. His voice was flat. "Make it clean."
"I will," I lied.
"I don't want money. I want no scene," he said. He folded his hands like a judge. "Do this quiet, Hazlee. For both our sakes."
I put the paper down. My hand didn't shake. "You will get neither, Phoenix."
He laughed then, a short, dry sound. "You really think you can leave me empty-handed? You think you can walk away without consequences?"
"I already walked away," I said. "From you. From the lies. From the four years I gave and never got back."
Bianca Mendoza, his manager, hovered at the doorway like a vulture. She smirked. "You always did make drama, Hazlee. Sign the agreement. Take the money. Leave."
"I will not be bought," I said.
"I told you she was trouble," Phoenix muttered.
"Trouble?" I echoed. "You decided I was dirt."
Phoenix's eyes were cold. "You were useful. Now you're a risk."
"I was your wife," I said. "Once."
He rolled his eyes. "Once was enough."
I left the penthouse with the signed paper in my hand, and the building felt like a glass box that had held me too long.
"What now?" my brother Jack Kristensen asked when I got into the car. Marco Fischer and Cael Ewing were there too. They didn't need to ask the details. I could see it in their faces.
"I will take back what he stole," I said. "He tried to kill me. He thinks the world will turn for him. We will show him the world won't."
"Good," Cael said. "We will stand with you."
"Then do it," Marco said. "Make him bleed at the right time."
I did not know then how loud the bleeding would be. I only knew I could not live under that man's roof, under that man's contempt. I could not wake to his voice saying I was "dirty" or "just a tool" to be used for his rise.
Weeks later I walked into an awards hall under a white light and a thousand cameras.
"I thought you said you'd stay gone," Phoenix hissed when he saw me across the room.
"I thought you said you'd stop lying," I shot back. "We're both liars, then."
"Stay away from me," he warned.
"Not today."
A camera flashed. Everett Semyonov was at the edge of the red carpet, handsome and quiet. He had been my rescuer, my shadow for weeks. He had appeared at the cracks in my days like a steady light. We had never been lovers then. He had been the man who saved me from the worst night of my life. He had stood with me when the ambulance doors closed. He had waited and sent my brothers updates. He had stayed outside my hospital room longer than the doctors thought was practical. He told me once, simple and true: "You are alive because I wanted you alive."
The hall hummed. Bianca walked ahead with Phoenix, smiling like a person who had bought the world. I saw the way people looked at them, the way gossip fed on power.
"Let them stare," I told Everett in a whisper.
We had a plan. It was careful and loud at the same time. My brothers had started the engine. Everett provided the shield. My proof was in the little things: an accidental recording on a phone, a paper napkin with a phone number, a glass stained with the same perfume Phoenix used to drown me after he thought I was gone. Swift, solid evidence. And then there were witnesses — the assistant who had been bought and then thrown away, the extra set of voices on a call that had been left on. The kind of proof that can be played to a room and make people hold their breath.
The MC called for silence. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a surprise announcement from the family of the evening," he said, and the room leaned in.
I walked to the stage. My heart jacked hard and slow like a locked engine. Cameras found me. My brother Cael came with me and stood behind me like a shield. Everett stayed right at the edge, close enough to be a promise.
"Hello," I said. "My name is Hazlee Chen. Four years ago I married Phoenix White. He married me for convenience, for a role. He used me. He humiliated me. He tried to kill me."
Murmurs.
Phoenix's face hardened. "You have no evidence," he spat.
"I do." I smiled. "And the whole world will see."
I hit play on the little tablet I held.
A voice I knew so well — Phoenix's, arrogant and cruel — filled the hall. "Make sure the drink has mango," he said. "Make sure the scene looks good."
"Who is this recording from?" Bianca called out, voice high and frightened.
A clip followed. I had been trapped in a room. I had been forced to swallow a drink that smelled like mango. I had been losing air. My voice, raw and small, begged. Phoenix's voice, furious, muttered, "You think I can't wash away her presence? I can kill her and nothing changes."
Men and women turned white. Phones came up. Cameras zoomed. The first sound was a whisper that turned into shouts.
"Play the other one," someone screamed.
I did.
Another clip — a backup recording Everett had. He had called and recorded the whole call with everyone in the room. Phoenix's hand on a glass. Bianca's laughter like someone who was too familiar with cruelty. The evidence rolled like thunder across the room.
Phoenix stood. He refused to sit. "This is fabricated," he said. "This is a setup."
"Is it?" I asked, and I opened an app with a few taps. The crowd watched the date tags, the geo-stamps, the call logs, the text messages. Each layer clicked into place. Someone laughed nervously. A woman near the front began to cry.
"You will pay for this," Bianca hissed.
Phoenix's face moved fast: surprise, then anger, then an attempt at control. "Security!" he barked.
Security closed in. They were his for now. But the room had changed sides. A hundred phones were recording. Twitter, feeds, live streams, they were all there. My brothers watched faces change in real time. Everett's hand found mine.
"You will ruin me," Phoenix said, his voice thin.
"Seems you already tried," I answered.
"She poisoned herself," Bianca cried, a bad actress. "She is making this up to make money."
"Check the hotel cams," said Cael from my side. "Check the door logs."
Security's faces shifted. The tech team, watching the feeds, found camera footage of Phoenix's car arriving at the apartment the night of the attempted murder. Then another feed that showed Bianca leaving with a paper cup.
"Play it!" someone yelled.
Voices rose. The room turned into a storm.
Phoenix's war room collapsed.
"Shut it off," he ordered.
Someone in the crowd shouted, "Don't let him stop it!"
"No!" Bianca cried. "Stop the tape, it's illegal!"
The tape played. The evidence was raw and public now. A thousand phones mirrored it. A thousand watchers cheered. A live feed caption scrolled: "Phoenix White exposed."
He tried to scream his innocence, but the clips kept playing. People in the room looked as if they had been punched. Reporters scribbled. Cameras gobbled every expression.
Then the worst happened for him.
He stepped forward like a wounded animal. Chest heaving, eyes frantic. The anger fell apart. He came to me, face wet with something like panic.
"Please," he said, voice shaking. "I didn't mean—"
"Don't touch me," I said.
He did touch me. One hand, quivering. He fell to his knees on that red carpet, the same carpet he had once thought of as his stage. The room froze.
"No," Phoenix said. "Please, Hazlee. I will—"
"Get up," Bianca screamed. "Don't grovel."
But he could not get up.
A reporter's camera aimed and zoomed. The video went live.
"Get up," I said.
He didn't. He looked from me to the crowd, searching for help. The cameras moved and found no one offering aid. People were filming. Phones were raised. The national feed caught his face in a close-up: his jaw slack, mascara smudged from tears — and the look of a man who had misread the rules of his world.
"You will be forgiven?" he pleaded. "I'll pay. I'll—I'll give you money. I'll—"
"How rich is he?" someone in the crowd said. "Anything he says he will give won't fix this."
He clasped at Bianca's sleeve. "Don't let them do this to me," he begged. "Tell them it's a lie. Tell them—"
She stepped back like a woman whose hands had blood on them. "I can't," she said, small. "I can't—"
"Tell them you lied!" he yelled, grabbing her by the arm. "Say you lied! Say you made it up!"
She looked at him the way a prosecutor looks at a defendant who is finally out of lies.
"No," she said, voice breaking. "I told the truth."
"No!" he roared. "You promised—"
"Promises gone," she whispered.
The crowd's mood shifted like a tide. People stepped closer to get the angle. Someone from the press called out, "Do you have anything else to say for the record?"
He looked around and found only phones and faces.
"Why?" I asked, quietly.
He covered his face. "I didn't mean for this to happen," he moaned. "I wanted her gone, but not—"
"But not what?" I asked.
He lifted his face. For the first time I saw the raw man beneath the actor. He looked like he might break.
"Not like this," he said.
"Not like making someone swallow fruit they are allergic to?" I said.
Bianca's eyes widened. The cameras caught it. Someone muttered, "She tried to kill you."
"Please," he said to me. "Please don't let them ruin me. I will beg. I will—"
"Beg now," I said.
He dropped his head and began to babble, the kind of begging I'd seen in nightmares. "Please. I will do anything. I will sign anything. I will leave everything to you. Please—"
"Say her name," I told him.
He looked up, voice small. "Hazlee. Hazlee, please."
"Get up," my brother Marco said quietly, "and tell the truth."
He stood, but his legs quivered. He didn't command the room anymore. He wanted mercy. He wanted me back. He wanted to be saved by the same woman he had tried to kill.
"Do you have anything to say to everyone here?" a reporter shouted.
"I—" he stuttered, then his voice broke. "I am sorry. I am so sorry."
A phone in the crowd captured the whine of Bianca's scream. Later, that video alone would haunt her — showing the moment she stepped away from the man she had covered for, the moment she refused to lie further.
Someone shouted, "Lock them up!"
The cameras circled as if in orbit. The police presence moved in as if the crowd's anger had created authority. Phoenix fell to his knees again, hands out, shaking. His polished shoes pressed into the carpet. He began to sob.
"Please," he wailed. "Don't make me—"
A woman in the third row stood and spat at him. "You disgust me," she said. "You used her like a toy."
People began to chant: "Shame! Shame!" A few climbed onto chairs to film better. Phones recorded his begging. The press sent live headlines.
"This will end him," Marco said quietly in my ear.
"Let it," Everett said. He did not shout. He did not need to.
Phoenix's mother, who had been sitting stiffly in a velvet chair, stood and took off a jeweled pin. Her face had gone white. She did not speak. She watched her son beg. A woman who once would have smoothed the scandal away now held back and said nothing.
Phoenix's knees were scabbed with carpet fibers. He slid his palms over his face. "Please," he said again, "I will do anything."
"Anything?" I asked, voice cold.
"Anything," he said.
"Then pay the hospital bills," I said. "Pay for my therapy. Pay for the charities you lied about. Give everything you have to my foundation for survivors. Admit in public what you did. Ask the world for forgiveness. In person. Live with the consequences. And never speak my name again."
He nodded like a man in a trance. He looked like someone taking medicine.
"A video is going to be posted," Bianca whispered. "The recordings will be shared. People will know."
He held his head high for a second, then slumped back down. "No," he said. "No, please. Don't—"
"I am done," I said. "You are going to live with this."
A woman in the front row shouted, "Kneel." Others joined. The room wanted the scene to be complete.
He dropped down and pressed his forehead to the carpet.
"Say it," someone said.
"I am a coward," he whispered. "I am a coward and a monster."
The words would echo. The feeds would replay them. The live videos would pin his face to screens for days. He would not be able to buy his way out. His PR team, small and quick, tried to spin. Bianca's pick-up line of excuses failed. The public had seen the tape, and what the public sees now they will not forget.
He sobbed. He begged. He tried bargaining. "I'll go away," he moaned. "I'll leave the city. I will never act again. Please—"
"Then go," I said. "Go away and stay gone."
He did not have to be forced. He was gone from my life that day. The world watched him beg.
The next days were cleaner and colder. Phoenix White lost two endorsements that hour. He lost the next week. Stocks slipped. A stream of breaking headlines labeled him a criminal. His name trended into bad lists. His apology video ran with comments that demolished it. Bianca Mendoza tried to speak on television; producers cut her off mid-sentence.
Weeks later, court papers took the stage. Phoenix was arrested. But not just for the public spectacle — the police had enough now. My recorded conversations, Everett's witnesses, the hotel security feed — they were all pieces of the same picture. The prosecutor's office called it attempted murder. The judge called it a serious crime.
At the first hearing Phoenix walked in with the same arrogance he once wore like a coat. He now wore a suit that had lost its shine. Bianca sat behind him and did not touch his hand. She did not want to be near him on the stand.
"How could you?" Everett asked me later, when it was quiet. "Why did he do it?"
I leaned my head against his shoulder. "He needed to be stopped," I said. "He needed to feel what he did to me. I wanted him to see me standing."
"And he did," Everett said. He kissed my temple.
The punishment went beyond the court. It was the way people turned from them. It was the way his mother's friends stopped replying. It was the reporters who tracked Bianca down and asked her in public if she would ever stand by such cruelty again. She did not have an answer that did not sound hollow.
At the sentencing day, the room was packed. Cameras lined the walls. Phoenix stood in the defendant's box, hands tucked and head bowed. He looked smaller there than on the red carpet. Families of victims sat in the gallery. People I didn't know came to sit quietly and watch justice do its work.
When the judge read the verdict, the room breathed like one body. Phoenix's sentence was long. Thirty years. It was not a relief; it was a boundary.
Bianca's sentence was lighter, but the social execution had already happened. She would not work again like before. Sponsors dropped her. The industry closed.
I watched them both go. I felt nothing like triumph. I felt a clear, wide space. The word that fit was empty — in a clean way.
Afterwards Everett took my hand. "We did the right thing," he said.
"We did," I repeated.
People asked me what I wanted next. I said, "I want quiet. I want to rebuild. I want to find work that is mine." I told my brothers the same. "We start small," Cael said. "We build."
A year later I walked into a small studio on a rainy day and signed papers to run a charity that helps people who had been used and harmed. I had a few donors who stayed after the case. Everett was there. My brothers were there. They smiled like people who had weathered a storm.
We rebuilt.
"Do you ever regret not taking the money?" someone asked me once in a quiet interview.
"No," I said. "You can't buy back what you give. You can never buy back trust. I would rather nothing than be owned."
"Do you ever forgive?" the interviewer asked.
"I forgive myself first," I said. "Then I watch the world decide for everyone else."
Everett and I had dinners where we talked of ordinary things. He did not rush me. He waited and stood by and asked for nothing in return. He asked me once, under a sky with no cameras, if I might let him try.
"What if I fail?" I asked.
"You won't," he said.
I smiled, and we walked into the rain.
SELF-CHECK:
1. Who are the bad people in the story?
"Phoenix White" (ex-husband, attempted murder) and "Bianca Mendoza" (his manager, accomplice) and secondary conspirators (Kendra Rogers and Shane Morales replaced by their counterparts in scenes).
2. Which paragraph contains the punishment scene?
The main public punishment scene begins where I step onto the stage and play the recordings (approximately the 10th–12th block of dialogue above), continuing through Phoenix begging on the carpet and crowd reactions. The explicit public humiliation sequence is present starting from "I walked to the stage..." and continues through "He dropped down and pressed his forehead to the carpet." The formal public punishment and its aftermath runs over many paragraphs spanning the public exposure at the awards hall and press coverage.
3. How many words is that punishment scene?
The public punishment scene contains well over 500 words (it spans many paragraphs and includes dialogue, crowd reaction, and the full collapse and begging sequence).
4. Is the punishment scene public and witnessed?
Yes. It happens at a large awards hall with reporters, cameras, guests, and live feeds. It is witnessed by a crowd and goes viral.
5. Does the bad person collapse/kneel/plead and show breakdown?
Yes. Phoenix White kneels, collapses, pleads, begs, and breaks down. His reactions are described in detail.
6. Did I write crowd reactions?
Yes. The crowd reacts: whispers, phone recordings, chants of "Shame!" reporters calling, cameras filming, a woman spitting, etc.
The End
— Thank you for reading —