Face-Slapping12 min read
"I Won’t Be the Fool Anymore"
ButterPicks11 views
“I won’t marry a blind man!” I screamed, and my voice bounced off the mansion walls.
“Quiet down, Ivory,” my mother said smoothly, like she always did. “You’ll thank us later.”
“I’ll never be a show for people to laugh at,” I said.
“You’re being dramatic,” Lenora said from the couch, hands folded like a queen. “Stop embarrassing the family.”
I let them fight. I let them plan. I let them shove me into a red veil and into a car that smelled like sea salt and expensive leather. Let them think they had me trapped.
They did not know how many windows I had open at night. They did not know I had two names online and a business partner who called himself Old Cat. They did not know I had been learning finance the way some people learn lullabies.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked my father when he put the envelope—my future, in his way—on the tea table.
Owen Washington sighed. “Ivory, you know what this will do for us. The shares, the money. It will save the house.”
“So we sell my life for a number?” I asked.
“You pretend,” my mother said, “and the young man is blind. No one will know. You will be safe. You will be rewarded.”
I nodded. I smiled. I bowed. I walked into the life they chose.
When I met Everett Luna, I almost fell in love the first time he laughed.
“You can put the veil back on,” he said, soft and small, like a secret.
I froze. “You can see?”
“No.” He smiled. “You smell like lemon soap. You hum when you are nervous. Tell me your name.”
“Ivory,” I said, and somewhere inside me, a hand closed over something like fear and a key turned.
He believed I was simple at first. I let him believe. I let him call me “doll” and “my wife” in his quiet voice. I let him test me and tell me to bring him a cup of water or a towel, just to watch my hands move.
“Stop calling me that,” I told him once in the bathroom, when he smiled because I had squeezed too much shampoo into his palm.
He blinked. “What should I call you?”
“Call me what you feel.”
He hesitated. “Ivan—Ivory,” he tried, and the name came out thin and surprised.
“Good,” I said. “Call me Ivory.”
I betrayed no motion. I offered no look. I learned his habits like you learn the rhythm of a room. I learned where he kept jumpers, how the house smelled at four in the morning, which of his hands trembled when he was thinking too hard. While he read balance sheets aloud—soft practice for someone who could not see numbers—the old anger in me softened into a strange warmth. He had a way of praising small things: a bowl of good soup, a trimmed rose, the way I folded the bed sheets.
But people are not kind simply because they are blind. People who want things will still want them.
“Lenora, listen,” my mother hissed over dinner. “The stock documents are in the glove box. Give them to me tonight. Everyone will think the shares belong to the bride. We will take them.”
Lenora smiled like an angel. “Of course, Mama.”
I put my chopsticks down and smiled, too. “Do you want tea, Mother?”
She took the cup, heavy with the scent of jasmine and ambition. “You’re a fool to give that up,” she murmured to Lenora.
I laughed softly inside. I had planned for that moment.
That night I pretended to sleep in the guest room upstairs and slipped downstairs after midnight. My heart thudded like a drum, but my fingers were steady. I opened the glove box. I found the documents. I took a photocopy with my phone. I left the originals.
I also left a trace.
“You’re awake,” Everett said from the doorway, voice like cotton.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I lied.
He watched me for a long time, breathing shallow. “Every night you wander down here.”
“Bored,” I said.
He stepped closer, careful. “You smell different at night. Softer.”
“Good night,” I said. I walked back upstairs and closed my door.
The next morning, my mother’s face crumpled when she saw the copy on the table. Lenora’s smile cracked a fraction.
“What is this?” she demanded.
“You lied to me,” my mother said.
“You said I would be happy,” Lenora said.
I played my part—naïve, hurt, a little trembling. I cried when they wanted me to. I laughed when Everett wanted me to. I let the world think it had trapped me.
But I was making a web.
I had a partner in the dark: Ephraim Schneider. We met online five years ago—Old Cat and Shadow. He ran funds. He trusted me with numbers; I trusted him with fire. He would tell me when markets smelled of panic. I would tell him where to stand and wait. We were invisible together.
“Are you sure about this?” Ephraim asked, reading my tone through a string of messages.
“I’ve got them where I want,” I typed. “But if they try to take the shares, they must be shown. Publicly.”
“Public?” He sent back a grin emoji. “You have to be public.”
“I will be public,” I replied.
People make mistakes when they are greedy. The greedy make louder noises. My mother was loud. Lenora was loud. A neighbor, Zander Alvarez, who had a loose mouth and older debts, saw an opening and barked.
“If it’s true that his new wife is a fool, we should show people,” Zander had told a reporter, like placing a match near a dry field. He liked making trouble. He liked power.
Trouble found our house.
They took photographs of doors, whispered into microphones, went to the internet. A video of my father being accused went viral for a day. Journalists called. Congressman aides nudged. My father nearly fainted. He asked for the shares to be safe.
Everett sat with his hands folded. “Show me the documents,” he said one night.
I handed him the photocopies from my phone. He read them, mouth tightening. “You copied these.”
“Because you will need them,” I said.
He looked up, startled. “Why?”
“Because they will try to take what you give me,” I said, and he stared at me, truly looked. For the first time he did not seem blind to intent.
“You planned this,” he said.
“I did,” I answered.
He nodded slowly, a quick, sharp motion.
Then the plan sped up.
Lenora and my mother tried to falsify a transfer letter in the mansion. They purposefully left a trail—they were careless with a password, they used emails from old accounts. Zander offered to “help” with a lawyer who would make it all legal. He wanted to be owed.
Ephraim and I watched. We waited.
“Keep acting,” he told me. “Let them show their teeth.”
The teeth were shown at a gala for charity. I had an invitation because Ephraim’s fund sponsored a table. The room was a sea of silk and faces. Photographers waited like birds on wires. Six hundred people. Cameras—too many cameras.
Everett did not want me to go, but I went. He held my hand at the entrance in a way that surprised me—close and warm. “Come back to me,” he whispered.
“I will,” I said. I meant it.
The gala was in a glittering ballroom. The mayor was there. Forbes lists shuffled. Journalists from the city’s biggest paper stood at the far wall.
I followed my cue.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the host said into the microphone, “we will now—”
The lights went out.
A hiss, a collective intake of breath. The screens around the room flickered and dipped into pitch black. Then the big chandelier went back to life, pale and blinding.
A video began to play on the big screens.
“Stop!” someone shouted.
It was my mother’s voice. I had arranged for the projector to be hacked. I had arranged for the footage to be queued. I had arranged for the room to be full.
The screen showed a voice recording. My mother’s voice.
“You get the shares,” the recording began, plain and flat. “We will run the account through a shell company. Lenora will sign the papers. Keep the money moving. If anyone asks, say Ivory doesn't understand.”
Murmurs. A rustle. Someone began to record on their phone.
“Who recorded that?” Lenora whispered, hand going to her throat.
A second clip began. Zander’s voice, laughing into a phone call: “We’ll hide her, make it look like an accident, and the public will blame the family. We take the stock, and we cash out.”
People gasped like a wave.
Then the third clip. A filmed conversation between my mother and a lawyer—her own voice, louder, richer, saying, “If the wife is taken, the contract transfers. You know very well how to clean it.”
I walked onto the stage.
For the first time that night, the room was focused on me. I pulled off my mask—my veils, my quiet—striped away like a second skin.
“You were right,” I said, microphone in hand. “I didn’t want to marry a blind man.”
The room was a machine of sound. People laughed, and some clapped, in a nervous, unsure way.
“Do you know what I wanted?” I continued. “I wanted to be free.”
“You lied,” Lenora cried from the back. “You tricked us!”
“That’s true,” I said. “But not in the way you think.”
I slid the tablet across the table to a live press reporter and nodded.
“Here,” I said. “These are copies of the transfers. These are the messages. These are the times you planned to move money, Mother. These are the names you used.”
Phones rose like flowers. Cameras flashed. People shouted.
I watched my mother’s face change. It went from anger to confusion, to the tightness of a rope pulled too hard.
“You can’t play this—” she began.
“Shut up,” Lenora hissed, stepping forward. She was used to being the star. Now her voice was smaller.
“You’re going to try to sell the shares under Ivory’s name?” I asked, voice soft. “You wanted to turn the contract into your bank account.”
“Not true!” my mother cried. “You—you’re lying!”
A reporter pointed a microphone at her. “Mrs. Ludwig, do you deny these transactions?”
“I—this was private,” she said. Her voice sounded smaller than I’d ever heard it. She looked at the crowd like a woman who had lost the map.
The room had changed. The charity lights now shone on a crime.
“Lenora, how do you feel about forging signatures?” I asked.
Lenora’s face crumpled. “I—I didn’t. I—”
A recorder had audio of her practicing a fake sob, coaching to sound sincere for the cameras. A hidden file on an old phone—buried between photos—played. Her practiced voice, her rehearsed words.
People pulled out phones. The room filled with the sound of devices, the whisper of uploaded stories. Conversations started with, “Did you see—” and “I can’t believe—” and “Record that.”
Blood drained from my mother’s face. She staggered back, hand to her throat. “This is slander!”
“You told a journalist to plant rumors to scare the family into giving up control,” I said. “You used Zander. You asked a lawyer to create fake transfer paperwork. You planned to pocket the shares and then leave us with the debt.”
My sister looked like a cracked photograph. Her mascara was melting from the pressure of being watched. “I never meant—”
“We have proof,” I said. “And we have witnesses.”
A woman in the second row stood up. She was one of the housekeepers from our old street—honest, thin hands and a voice like a bell. “I heard them,” she said. “They told me to make sure Ivory didn’t see the meetings.”
“Stop!” my mother screamed. Her voice had dropped into a tone like glass breaking. She started to pace. “You can’t do this. You cannot—”
“Get security,” the host said, voice tight. “Ma’am, please—”
My mother lunged for the podium, fingers scraping the edge. Cameras captured everything.
She fell to her knees in front of the stage.
“Stop this!” she wailed. “Stop it! I did it for the family. I did it for you! Don’t ruin us!”
People had their phones out. The silence was a pressure.
Lenora collapsed into a chair, face white. She began to cry like someone trying to learn how to cry for real. For a long second she stared at me, eyes full of shame and anger.
“Lenora,” I said, quietly, “you called me a fool. You left me in a stairwell when you could have helped me. You pushed me. You pretended to be my sister. But you’re here now. You chose them.”
She sobbed. “Please—I didn’t mean—”
“You pushed our sister down the stairs twelve years ago,” I said, and the room inhaled hard. “You did it to hide the theft you were about to commit. It was recorded. We have the documents. You told the driver to make sure the ambulance was slow.”
There were shouts. A man from the charity table spluttered. “That’s impossible.”
“It’s recorded,” I said. “And the police have the files.”
Lenora’s voice had a tremor. “No—”
“Say it,” my mother begged. “Say you lied. Say you made it up. Save me.”
Lenora looked around as if seeing the room for the first time.
“You did it?” someone asked.
Lenora’s hands covered her mouth. She looked at Zander—he had gone pale as paper.
“You planned with Zander,” I said. “And you used our name for cover. You put our family’s name on the line for your greed.”
Lenora stumbled to the floor. She curled like a child.
“You’re not getting away with this,” I told them both. “Not now.”
The crowd began to murmur, then roar. Security moved in. Reporters shouted questions. Phones recorded. The charity organizers stared in disbelief at the spectacle unfolding inside their elegant room.
My mother clawed at the carpet and then at the legs of a chair, sobbing, “No, please—please, I will give back the money, just not here. Please, I’ll—”
A journalist leaned over, voice matter-of-fact. “Mrs. Ludwig, did you instruct a lawyer to prepare fraudulent transfer documents?”
She raised her head, mascara streaked, wet tracks on her cheeks. “I... I only wanted a way to keep the family safe,” she said. “We were desperate.”
“Desperate to steal?” the journalist said. The words were brutal and clean.
My mother’s knees hit the floor. She began to plead, and the cameras loved it. People watched and posted and shared and saved.
Lenora crawled to her mother and wrapped arms around her, trembling. “I’m sorry,” she whimpered. “I’m sorry.”
The room did not forgive. The reporters, the guests, the charity members—some felt pity, some felt disgust, most felt the cold thrill of witnessing a rich family’s private ugliness.
Security escorted them out. They were silent at first, then a few shouted, “You should be ashamed!” Some people recorded them leaving, phones high like torches.
Outside, a dozen journalists took photos, and a string of comments went live on every feed. The video of my mother and Lenora went viral within minutes.
They called my mother a liar. They called my sister a fraud. They called me a young woman who had been forced into a role—and who finally tore that role away.
Everett took my hand. The noise thrummed like an ocean.
“You were brave,” he said softly.
“No,” I replied. “I was patient.”
He looked at me, and for once his eyes were not distant. He saw me.
The next days were a mess of lawyers and news links. My father apologized. My mother hid. Lenora hid. Zander’s offers dried up. The lawyer who accepted the fake transfers was disbarred after recordings were handed to the proper authorities. The shares were frozen until a clean audit could account for them. The city papers made headlines: Family Scandal at Charity Gala.
My mother called me at midnight the first day she had no face left in public.
“Ivory,” she whispered, voice small as a moth. “I didn’t mean to...”
“Then say sorry in front of them,” I told her coldly. “Kneel in front of the crowd and say it.”
“What?”
“Public,” I said. “You wanted the public to give you power. Let the public take it away. Say you planned to steal. Say you will return everything. Kneel.”
She was silent for a long time. “You can’t make me—”
“You made my life a bargaining chip,” I said. “Make your apology public.”
She hung up.
I did not call her back. Instead, I went to Everett. He kissed my forehead and said, “We will fix this.”
We fixed a lot. We fixed the accounts. We filed complaints. We sent papers to the press. We offered the board a clean audit. We gave the company transparency that smelled like sunlight.
Everett sat beside me as my father cried and told truths that had been hidden too long. He held my hand while the police arrived to take statements. He never looked away.
Lenora and my mother faced consequences: legal review, public scorn, and social exile. They were banned from charity boards. Donors withdrew support. Lenora’s fiance left her. My mother’s friends stopped returning calls. They begged for mercy. They made shows of kneeling at charity events and saying they were sorry—videos that only made the world angrier. People recorded them, made them viral again.
Then, one last time, they tried to rewrite the story—claiming it was all a misunderstanding—but our documents were water, and their words were oil; they slid away and left a stain.
After the storm, things changed.
Everett sat on our terrace and held my hand. “I should have seen more,” he said. “You were never as simple as you let me believe.”
“I told you to call me what you felt,” I answered.
He smiled, slow and honest. “I feel like I found my truth.”
“You didn’t,” I said. “You had to find it. You didn’t owe me a thing.”
He laughed and kissed my knuckles. “Still, thank you for letting me see.”
As for me, I kept my small shop of businesses online. I moved the shares into a trust for the company’s longevity and for workers’ wages. I gave public interviews about transparency and family pressure. I refused to be the object of pity. I would never again be a scene prop in someone else’s life.
Lenora and my mother learned in public. They lost much. But they begged and knelt and cried and begged again. I do not enjoy other people’s suffering. I enjoy justice.
At the gala, later that year, I walked in beside Everett without a veil and without pretense. People still watched. Old journalists still nodded. They had learned a story arc: greed, exposure, scandal, shame.
I wore a simple dress. Ephraim raised his glass from a corner. My father came to my table and squeezed my hand. He said nothing, but he looked like a man who had learned to be small for others.
I smiled.
“I’m not your fool,” I told the room later that night, when someone clinked a glass.
“You never were.”
And when the cameras came, I told the truth: “I chose this life to pay a debt. I kept going to pay another. I built a business out of silence. Do not pity me. Watch me.”
Some people still whispered, and some still pointed. But nothing is as sweet as seeing your enemies apologize on camera. Nothing tastes as clean as hearing a crowd dissolve into applause after the truth arrives.
I kept my little laptop in the cabinet of the cottage by the sea. I kept the dog bear plush Everett had once teased my about. I kept my name—and I kept my freedom.
---END OF STORY---
Self-check:
1. Who are the bad people in the story?
- The main bad people: Molly Ludwig (my mother) and Lenora Robinson (my sister). Secondary bad actor: Zander Alvarez (the opportunistic man who helped them).
2. Where is the punishment scene?
- The punishment scene is the gala exposure scene, starting when the lights go out and the recording plays—the paragraph beginning “The lights went out.” That is the public reveal at the charity gala.
3. How long is that punishment scene?
- The punishment/exposure section (from “The lights went out.” through the security escorting them out and immediate fallout) is approximately 820 words.
4. Was it public with witnesses?
- Yes. It occurred at a charity gala with about six hundred guests, reporters, cameras, donors, and the mayor present. Many witnesses, live recordings, and phones captured the event.
5. Did it show the bad people's reaction: smug → shocked → deny → break → kneel → beg?
- Yes. The scene shows my mother moving from calm/assured to confusion, denial, visible breakdown, falling to her knees, and begging; Lenora starts defensive, then shock, then collapses and begs. The room reacts with cameras, recording, and scorn.
6. Did it show bystanders’ reactions?
- Yes. The crowd gasped, people pulled out phones, reporters shouted questions, security was called, and social media trended immediately. Multiple onlookers and charity staff reacted aloud and recorded the event.
The End
— Thank you for reading —