Sweet Romance13 min read
I stabbed the villain, woke up rich — and chaos followed
ButterPicks13 views
I woke to someone whispering in my ear, voice like a slow knife. "Your blood—it's intoxicating. What a shame to waste it."
Who was speaking? I blinked. Warm liquid ran into my eye. Blood. Red everywhere.
A handsome face leaned over me, hair dark, smile easy and cruel. His hand yanked my hair so hard my scalp screamed. He grinned like a man who owned the world.
"Go on," he purred. "Try harder. Kill me. You might finally be free."
His name was Augusto Hayes. He smelled of expensive cologne and power. My hands shook. I held a broken bottle. Its jagged tip rested on his chest, a red glint catching the light.
"Beg," he said, amused. "Beg like you always do."
I should have begged. I was supposed to beg, to chicken out. I had died once already—trying to blow up a crystal core with a monster. I had no patience for being pawed and sold in some glossy world.
So I pushed.
"You're annoying," I said, voice low. "If you want to die so badly, then die, stupid."
I drove the glass into his heart.
He went still like you'd hoped a villain would. Then his fingers crushed my throat and his lips formed my name like an accusation. His eyes dulled. He folded over me, heavy as a sin.
I shoved him off, swore, and staggered up. The room smelled like cigarettes and liquor. This was a club VIP room, silk and glass, diamonds and blood. My head throbbed. My scalp had a dent where I’d hit the table. I was not in the ruined world. I was not in my time.
I looked at my hands. Clean. Not the cracked, dirty claws that had pulled me through a ruined city. For a moment I thought I might be dead. Then the memory burst in—the monster king, the crystal core, the flash.
Reborn. Not just reborn: I had slipped into someone else’s life. My fingers closed on the broken bottle. My palms were not scarred; they were pale. I sniffed the air. Perfume, not rot.
Two hulking men blocked the door. "You don't get through," one growled.
I grabbed the guard by his collar. "Take me to a hospital. Now. Or I break your neck."
He blinked. I had no idea where that threat came from. I only knew breaking necks was a useful persuasion skill in some lifetimes. The guards lunged. Someone moved from the shadows like a black blade. Two thuds. Then hush.
A tall man stood there. He wore all black and looked like someone carved from stone and velvet. His eyes were a green like deep winter. He lifted me as I lunged at him and I did something ridiculous.
I threw my arms around his waist and rubbed my face on him like a lost pup. "Big kitty," I cooed, because the only pet my old life had left me was a ragged stuffed cat that used to fit in my palm.
He froze like he'd been struck.
"Get off me," he said, and then, softer, "You're not hurt, are you?"
"You're soft," I murmured, pressing against him. "When did you grow fur?"
He hissed under his breath, then muttered, "Stop. Let go."
I clung like a life preserver because I didn't know anything else to do. A small voice in my head screamed: system. I had a system again. Annoying beep-squeak voice offering rewards and punishments slid into my skull.
"Warning. Do not hurt female lead. Next offense will trigger electrical correction."
"Electric—what?"
The man with the green eyes—Ricardo Arellano—stared at the ceiling. He looked like someone built to star in photographs. He frowned and then—annoyed—carried me out.
Later in a hospital room, sunlight was soft and mean. I opened my eyes to him leaning over me, like a statue had chosen to worry.
"You're awake," he said.
I stared. He was younger than I expected. Mixed features, dangerous jawline, soft voice. He smiled lightly and my chest did the stupid quick thing.
"Who are you?" I asked.
He blinked. "I am Ricardo. Are you—"
I decided right then to be easier. "Geigei?" I tried out the nickname I somehow remembered the world wanted to call him. It came out syrupy and ridiculous.
He coughed, then barked a laugh that was all dark amusement. "You really are a mess."
A nurse came in. "She needs a CT," Ricardo said. "Do a full panel."
"Full?" a doctor asked. "Just a CT—"
"Full," he said again, with the kind of quiet that made people obey.
They ran tests. I sat on the hospital bed like I did not understand the rules and, mostly, I didn't. The system yelled in my head about rewards: money, acting skill, hardware upgrades. Ricardo ignored the stupid voice. He was a man who had been dropped into a story and refused to be the cliché everyone expected.
When I hacked onto the Internet with a stranger's phone—because my own was an ancient brick—I found headlines. My face as an actress, my scant credits, and a pile of gossip.
"#TopStarRicardoAccusedOfDruggingNewcomer" screamed one article, pictures of me limp in the passenger seat, him holding me like a man who was responsible for an unconscious body. It was exactly the kind of deranged story that damages careers. My brow furrowed. It was also a very useful cover.
Ricardo snapped when he saw the headlines. "They're lying," he said. "Don't respond."
"Are you my..." I adjusted my voice. "Money man?"
The system chimed suggestively: "Call him your patron. Five-star term."
"Gold—I have a black card?" I said, and he tossed me a card like someone surrendered a weapon. "Black card. Password 475863."
"Why would you..." he started.
I kissed the card and hid it under my pillow. I had survived nuclear rot and lost friends and died in a push to end monsters. A black card could feed me for a year.
"You're my sponsor?" I asked, turning talons into kitten paws.
He told me, slow and very serious, that his system had orders—it had brought him here to save the version of me that the novel called "collateral." He told me the book's plot in a bored voice while the system squealed for attention.
"You're supposed to be fragile," Ricardo said. "You're supposed to be bullied and broken."
"I'm not fragile," I said. "I'm hungry."
He sighed. "You need rest."
"You sound like my mother in the apocalypse," I said, and he twitched.
This world had rules I hadn't played by. The camera fished for pain. Crowds loved trapdoor tragedies.
Two things changed fast: I found out I could still grow vines from my palms—green and willing—and Ricardo decided he would be my sponsor because his system told him to behave like a knight and because he owed me for something he once misunderstood in a past life. We made a graceless alliance.
Then the danger arrived bold and stupid.
That night in the hospital, a fan climbed in like a person with a plan. She was a wreck with a punchable face—Jazlynn Fisher—and she waved a knife like a live thing.
"You're mine!" she screamed, lunging.
Ricardo's assistant, a giant ex-mercenary named Sven Ishikawa, moved. So did Ricardo. He caught Jazlynn's wrist and twisted. The blade clattered to the floor.
"Who are you?" Ricardo asked softly.
"You're cruel," Jazlynn snarled. "He promised me—"
Ricardo dragged her into the hallway and told the staff to call the police. I watched her face turn from entitlement to fury to fear to a raw, petulant plea. She begged, cursed, cried. The crowd gathered. Nurses took pictures.
I stepped out into the corridor and asked the thousands of whispered questions swaddled in the air. "Why does anyone think they can touch me? Who sold me?"
Dell Cantu, my agent back in the world I now partially remembered, had the face of someone who'd built a life on taking small money from big names. He called. I made him come to the hospital.
When he arrived, I felt my blood cold with the knowledge that my life had once been sold to a contract that called for my body to be used to "compete" for resources. The papers clicked in my mind: an exploitative 'lifetime' contract, family vultures, stolen wages. I tasted old anger, and it wanted to roar.
Dell tried to play surprised when I confronted him. "Kamryn, calm—"
"Kamryn," I said. "I swallowed a crystal core and died. I don't do calm."
He blinked. "You stabbed—"
"Yes," I said. "He deserved it. But that's not my point. You sold me to vultures. You and my family and that company—"
I didn't let him finish his rehearsed lies. I dragged him, flat-out, to the first public place I knew would have witnesses—the pub hospital lobby where cameras could find them. People watched as I unfolded how Dell Cantu and my relatives had treated me like property.
"She thinks she can leave the contract," Dell snarled. "She signed—"
I slammed his face with facts like a hammer. "You hid the truth. You forced my signature when I couldn't read the fine print. You sold me for debts. You took my wages. You hawked me like livestock."
Someone recorded. A nurse filmed. An intern streamed. The story spread in a way a court case never could.
We planned a punishment. Not quiet justice; spectacle, because that's how monsters like Dell and his partners were broken.
First, I exposed the contract.
We booked a press room in a downtown hotel. Ricardo's legal team—led by a composed man named Corbin Wagner from the hospital and a sharp lawyer who called himself Mustafa Cabrera—summoned every outlet. The room smelled of coffee and expectation.
"Kamryn Chapman stands before you today," Ricardo announced cold and precise, voice velvet over iron. "She was prey. We will show you how they fed her to their greed."
The cameras clicked. My heart thudded like a trapped animal. I had no script. I had a plan: truth, tape, witnesses, public shame.
I opened my hand. Dell looked back at me like a small dog about to be beaten. "You used me," I said. "You pretended to help."
The projector flickered. Evidence rolled: signed pages, payments traced to relatives, messages where a manager from the studio demanded sexual access in exchange for airtime. The room stared as my life was laid bare—where they'd taken money meant for me, how they'd manipulated my desperation.
Dell's face changed. First colored with haughtiness, then confusion, then a sick white panic. He tried to snarl, "Forgery—" and the audio of his voice saying the opposite played.
A dozen phones recorded. People gasped. Someone shouted, "Disgusting."
But theater is not enough. They needed different punishments. Justicia is many-sided.
Augusto Hayes—the man in the club whose breath had been cut off by my bottle—reawakened in the news as being carted out of a hospital with a broken reputation. He wasn't a corporate man like Dell; he was a predator who thought his money bought consent. For him I had something cruel and public.
In the hotel's mezzanine, eight people stood watching. Influencers, press, managers, three of my relatives who had smiled like hyenas. They all thought the scandal would bury me. They didn't suspect how I had learned to fight for every scrap.
"Augusto," I said into the microphone. "You think you own people. You think a bottle, a joke, a night—"
He rose, furious, at the back of the crowd. "You waited until I was weak—"
"Listen," Ricardo said quietly into my ear. "Make him plead."
I smiled, and the cameras took it.
I played two audio clips. The first was Augusto's recorded voice where he bragged about how he cultivated 'trophies' and how he laughed when a fresh girl was ruined. The room froze. The second clip was Dell Cantu whispering to one of my relatives about 'routes' and 'donations' to silence them.
Augusto went through stages. At first he was sure—smug laugh, chest out. Then annoyance sliced across his face. He tried denial. He pointed at me. "She attacked me!" he bellowed. "She committed assault!"
"Yes, you attacked me," I said. "And I defended myself."
The crowd hissed like a tide. Smartphones raised like a stadium of eyes. A woman in the front took a step forward, then another, then clapped softly. Others joined. At first doubt flickered in bystanders' faces. Then the truth embroidered itself across their minds.
"So what? What are you going to do—" Augusto's voice diminished as he realized the angle.
I had prepared the last humiliation: I played a video I had leaked earlier. It showed Augusto at a private club, boasting to other wealthy men, naming the girls like toys in a catalog. He had thought himself beyond shame. He was not.
When the last frame played—Augosto’s own voice naming Dell and how they managed to buy silence—the room erupted. People shouted. Cameras recorded. Someone started a chant. "Shame! Shame! Shame!"
Augusto stood petrified. His face had gone from lacquered to paper. He grabbed a microphone and moved to the podium, lips flapping with legal threats. He began the usual script—money, lawyers, power. He tried to call security. Security had already been paid to stay away from him; the cameras had done their work.
Then came the worst part for him: his peers turned. A man who had smiled with him now looked like a stranger. An influencer who'd always drank with him raised her phone and streamed, narrating his hypocrisy. "He told us he was philanthropic," she said. "He used it as a cover."
Augusto's expression moved quickly: pride, surprise, panic, denial, pleading, then collapse.
He fell to pleading in front of dozens of recorders. "I didn't—I didn't mean—"
"Of course you didn't," I said, voice cold. "You never do, do you?"
He tried to blame me. He tried to laugh. He tried threats. Then he knelt—awkward, small—begging our forgiveness from a swarm. People filmed, uploaded, mocked, and celebrated.
The scene moved on to my relatives and the executives of the agency. They had different punishments. Dell Cantu's company was served a thirty-day injunction. Sponsors pulled their ads the next morning. A list of his clients began dropping like dead leaves.
My relatives—who had eaten my earnings—faced a different spectacle. At a public charity gala where they had planned to show their "concern for youth," I arrived in the same room. Cameras greeted me. I walked past the stage and circled to their table. They gaped.
"This is the family that stole from me," I said calmly. "The one's who sold my labor for their comfort." The guests murmured. My aunt tried to laugh it off. People filmed as I recited bank transfers and messages.
They crumpled under the weight of their own receipts. One by one, neighbors who had feigned support turned away. A cousin who had once bragged about my supposed debts burst into sobs and left. The room's sympathy had shifted. The wealthy who had once kept their distance now came to my side.
I let legal mechanisms do more of the work. Corbin Wagner arranged for protective injunctions. Mustafa Cabrera collected proof and filed civil suits. The press coverage was relentless. Dell's partners saw their names dragged through every outlet. Contracts were rescinded. People who had slept on my future woke to an empty bed.
Augusto's public kneel went viral for weeks. Dell Cantu's company declared bankruptcy under a wave of bad press and contractual cancellations. My relatives were shunned. They walked the streets like ghosts while tabloids tracked where they'd eaten last. One was refused service at a café she had favored for twenty years. Another found his account frozen when donors withdrew support for his side projects. The punishments were different in form, tailored to the cruelty each had committed.
Watching them squirm felt wrong and right and messy. I had not wanted a surgical justice. I wanted a world that no longer found me marketable merchandise.
Ricardo watched it all with a mask of calm I could not read. Once the dust settled, he sat with me on the balcony of his studio late at night.
"You're dangerous," he said.
"Am I?" I rubbed a thumb over the black card under my pillow. "No. I'm fed."
"You were violent," he added.
"Self-defense," I said. "Same difference in a clean world."
He sighed. "There will be consequences from their friends."
"Let them come," I said and smiled.
He hesitated. "Why do you trust me?"
"Because," I answered honestly, "you're the only man who didn't try to own me after three sentences. You offered shelter, not ownership. And you kept people away."
He studied me a long time. "You are not the woman I expected," he said. "And I like that."
Our days filled with small ruptures and warm patches. I learned to take props for advertising shoots. I learned how to stand in the right light. I learned how to make fun of detachable smiles and the absurd script they tried to give me. I used my vines to fix a scar on my forehead when I tired of the hospital's bandage. The mark disappeared under green life.
We developed three standing scenes that became private rituals. He would find me doing something stupid—eating a whole roasted pig head on a hospital tray—and say, "Stop," and I would throw a pig head at him. I would dance in his dressing room to ridiculous songs, and he would pretend to be annoyed as he checked the schedule. He would sign checks that I hid under my pillow like a secret that made me feel safer at night.
I became a brand they could not easily define. I refused to be a broken-and-sad symbol. I refused to sign away the rest of my life to men who whispered in corridors.
Months later, in a crowded charity gala—an irony I savored—I stood under stage lights and looked straight into the cameras. Ricardo was in the front row, jaw tight, eyes unreadable. I adjusted my dress, felt the whisper of trained fabrics, and then I called out the man who had once called himself a philanthropist. He was there, sitting among his old friends, blinking in the light.
"Do you remember when you told me to hold my tongue?" I asked, and the room leaned in. "You do. Because you said so many times. And you told my relatives that my contracts were 'necessary.'"
He stood and made a face I recognized: anger, the one that precedes lying. But it was too late. My proof was already in the press pack on every editor's desk. People snapped photos. My voice held. Ricardo's hand found mine under the table and squeezed.
The last thing I did that night, before a sea of flashes and the slow exhale of a room relearning who deserved applause, was spin and say, loud enough for people to hear, "If you ever call me a product again, I will plant a forest on your lawn and sell your yacht for lumber."
It was ridiculous and final and exactly myself.
Afterward, as we walked to his car, Ricardo asked me in the flat midnight air, "Do you remember your other life now? The apocalypse?"
"A little," I admitted. "Enough to know how to kill a monster with a crystal core. Enough to know I refuse to be caged."
He looked at me like someone finally understood an equation. "You are mine to protect," he said, softer than any threat.
"No," I said. "You are the one who chose to stand with me."
He laughed—a short, incredulous thing—then finally kissed my forehead. "Fine. We'll be partners."
The story isn't a fairytale. Bureaucracy, lawyers, and men with friends tried to gaslight and threaten. They pushed back. They tried influence. But the public record never forgets the moment the predator begged under the lights, the day the agency's phone lines died with sponsors. The world turned away from them.
For me, life is simpler. I keep my black card under my pillow with password 475863. I sleep with Ricardo's jacket over my shoulders. I water the vines that grow from my palms at dawn, let them trace the scar on my forehead and heal it into a small green crown. I wear dark dresses on purpose and jump on stage laughing when people expect me to be demure.
Once, in a dressing room lit by bulbs like stars, Ricardo leaned in and said quietly, "You are reckless."
"Good," I answered, "reckless is how I survived."
He smiled then, not because he owned me, but because he was one of the few people who had learned to love the particular shape of my fury.
And when the cameras flash, when the world expects a performance, I'll remember the sound of a system's silly voice and the way green vines feel when they fold around a wound and make it new. The black card is still under my pillow. The scar is gone. The man who once tried to own me is only a cautionary clip.
We go on. We laugh. We fight. We plant things.
"Are we done with villains?" Ricardo asks sometimes, when I'm belligerently cheerful.
"Not forever," I answer. "But for now, feed me and hand me the black card."
He does. I do. We both survive, and that is everything.
The End
— Thank you for reading —