Face-Slapping11 min read
My Brother's Mistake, Her Hidden Face, and the Man Who Stayed
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I did something nobody expected: I took my brother's Maybach keys and sat in the leather seat.
"Get out," he had said on the phone.
"No, you get out," I texted back silently.
When the dorm gossip started, my roommates turned on me fast and loud. I screenshot the first message and sent it to my brother. "Don't be shameless, stealing other people's men," one of them wrote.
"You're making this a drama?" I showed Desmond the screenshot.
He replied with a string of emojis and a single sentence: "He's mine."
That should have been enough warning.
Desmond Cabrera was twenty-one, soft-faced and easy to manipulate when love came calling. He sent me money like it was nothing—ten thousand here, twenty there. When I finally asked why he kept borrowing from me, he fumbled like a child and said, "She's poor, she needs help."
"Her poor life comes with a ten-thousand-dollar bag?" I asked.
He blinked. "She said it's just... sentimental."
Frankie Li, the girl, handled that designer bag the way someone handles a trophy. She tossed it to a roommate like spare change. "My boyfriend makes it easy," she said one afternoon, smiling a slow, practiced smile that tried to be humble. "He'd give me the moon if I wanted it."
I couldn't swallow it. I had not raised my brother to be a bank with a beating heart.
"You're being cruel," Helene Webb snapped from her bed, fingernails clicking on a phone screen.
"You're jealous," Karla Gross chimed.
Frankie looked at me with soft eyes. "Or maybe she's jealous."
When Desmond texted me from across campus—"Sis, is Frankie okay? Is she being nice?"—I stuffed my phone in my pocket and walked out of the room.
"You're planning to meet?" he asked later, in a cheap noodle place, slurping with the innocence of a boy.
"I'm checking," I said. "I'm curious to see if your girlfriend is what you're making her out to be."
He ate like he hadn't a care in the world. "She teaches me to be simple. She says simple is better."
When I returned to the dorm later that day, my suitcase had been rummaged through. Clothes folded into piles had been tossed onto the floor, some shirts shoved into the trash can.
"Whose idea was this?" I asked, facing Karla, who was sprawled on her bed, thumbs flying over a game.
She shrugged. "Not me."
"Then you know who," I said, and Karla's eyes flicked toward the top bunk, toward Frankie, who still wore that air of sweetness.
"You're accusing us of theft?" Frankie said when she finally came in, wearing a new two-thousand-dollar dress and the kind of insolent comfort that comes with being lavishly supported.
"You accept things and treat them like props," I said. "You hand others your gifts and call it charity. And you say my stuff is trash."
She laughed. "It's mine. He gave it to me. Don't be dramatic."
I recorded what I could. I hid a small recorder in our room’s corner. Her words came back to me often in playback: "Your clothes are trash. My boyfriend buys these for me. Don't be so poor."
I saved every receipt. I counted every transfer. I counted the hours my brother stopped answering and started dotting his days with Frankie’s needs.
One night, I answered a message with "Give me twenty thousand and I'll consider not making this public." It was a test. He answered, "What?" and then a string of pleas. He was still mine to scold.
When Desmond's bank card got frozen after my call to our father, he suddenly had a new hero: me. He showed up at the noodle place, then volunteered with Frankie at a community home, wore plain clothes, and smoked frowns at anyone who said anything. But his loyalty slipped like quicksilver when Frankie blinked at him with her practiced helplessness. She was a small velvet hammer, soft and crushing.
The night everything changed, rain hammered the city. I had no umbrella. A hand settled over my head with a quiet authority and a polite, half-amused voice said, "You should have told me you were back."
"Tomas?" I said, surprised.
He held the umbrella lower. "You look wet."
"You're always like this," I said, but he put me in his car like a gentleman and said, "I'll take you to a dinner, and then I'll take you home."
The private dinner hall was full of people who walked the same dangerous circles of wealth and taste. I saw Frankie there before I realized what I was seeing: perched on the thigh of a flashy man, laughing with reckless abandon. He touched her the way entitled boys touch women in private. I felt like I had been punched.
Tomas Lawrence, who could be infuriatingly distant some days and deeply careful the next, crossed the room and sat me beside him. He watched the room and said quietly, "They look for any weakness."
"I can't believe he'd sit with her," I whispered.
"He will answer to what he does in public," Tomas said. "Not because of me, but because he has to."
At Tomas's table, I tried to be calm. Frankie saw me come in and her face—just for a beat—was not the practiced sweetness but pure shock.
"You're here?" she mouthed.
"Family reunion," I smiled.
Then the show began. Brent Ford, the boy who had been sitting possessively close to Frankie, stood when Tomas entered and said, "Second uncle, I didn't mean—" He had the color of a man caught red-handed. Tomas raised his glass, cool and controlled. "Sit," he said. "Sit and answer."
My plan had been to let the truth grow until the bubble popped. But when the room gathered and people shuffled in, I realized I had a better plan: show the evidence, let the witnesses see and hear, and let the school and the men who had the power decide in public.
I stood and turned on the recorder.
"What is this?" Frankie whispered.
"Listen," I said.
"She wants attention," Helene muttered.
"She blackmailed me," Frankie lied.
"Isn't that exactly what you did in the dorm?" I asked, and played the audio.
The playback made the room tilt. Frankie’s voice—so sweet on stage, so sharp in private—filled the space. "My boyfriend can buy me anything," the recorder captured. "If you complain, he'll make it worse. You should beg me."
Brent blanched. The room's gossip teeth set. Someone gasped. A woman in a glittering dress whispered, "Did she really say that?"
Tomas's hand on my knee steadied me. "Play the next one," he said.
I did. It was the recording of the private messages, the receipts, then a clip Tomas had coaxed out of an associate: a short video of Brent and Frankie in compromising closeness. The hall, which had been full of small talk a breath before, went cold.
"Who recorded this?" a man demanded.
"I did," I answered, and that made my voice sound very small in the large room.
"You're accusing our friends," another murmured.
"I'm accusing the girl who lied in the school group and ruined my name," I said.
"What do you want?" Frankie asked, suddenly less queen than cur and furious.
"An apology and the money back," I said. "And for you to face the consequences."
The school had people present—some board members, a dean who had been coaxed by Tomas, and the professor who had sympathy for students protected by powerful alumni. The murmurs grew into a hum of agreement: evidence in hand, a record, witnesses who were willing to speak.
They did not dismiss the matter.
The punishment scene that followed lasted long enough to be carved into everyone’s memory. It began in the banquet room and moved to the school’s main hall. The dean had called for an emergency meeting; within an hour, the room was full. Students sat as if at a play. I was asked to present everything. I did so in a voice that did not tremble.
"Frankie," the dean said once everyone had settled, "we received accusations of defamation, harassment, and of exploiting students' reputations for personal gain. How do you respond?"
Frankie’s cheeks had gone paper-white. "I—it's a misunderstanding," she said. "I only tried to protect myself. She provoked me online—"
"Play the audio," Tomas said, and the room shushed.
The recorder played. Frankie’s words, taken as casual cruelty, sounded premeditated when heard by a crowd. Her earlier confessions against another boy—Brent—were then brought up with photographs and a short fragment of video that one of Brent's acquaintances reluctantly shared when he realized how deep this had gone.
"Why did you record and broadcast?" Frankie cried suddenly loud. Her voice cracked, and she tried to blame everyone but herself.
"Because we collected proof of what you did," I said.
There were tears in her eyes, but the hall was not softened. A student who had once admired her stood, then another, and soon a small chorus of voices rose. They spoke plainly: about the room, the messages, the ways she had manipulated friends, the lies in the school group that had ruined my reputation.
"We trusted her," Helene said, voice low. "She used that trust to build a persona. She lied to us."
"She humiliated me," a shy freshman said, "and I defended her without knowing."
The dean finally spoke: "The school cannot condone harassment and the weaponization of reputation. After reviewing the evidence, we've decided to expel Frankie Li for conduct that violates our student code. She will also be reported for defamation and ordered to return funds proven to be gifts purchased by another student."
Her face crumpled. For the first time, the arrogance had left her. She had moved from entitlement to denial to a fragile, trembling plea. "I never meant—" she started, then stopped.
"No, you meant," Brent said, voice flat. He had been forced into the light and had to defend himself too. "I was part of it, but so was she. We both—"
"Stand back," Tomas said, mild as a storm. He had been my shield from the beginning, but watching him now, I felt something new: a protector who could command doors to open and people to stand down.
The dean continued: "There will be a public record of this hearing. We won't let the matter rest solely on private apology. Her conduct has effects beyond our walls."
Frankie's reaction changed again—first indignation, then frantic denial, then a hollowing out as she finally recognized the weight of everyone’s gaze. Her hands clutched her jacket. She sobbed, high and thin, and the room watched. Some students whispered into phones, some filmed, some simply stared.
Several voices in the back—other girls she had wronged—called out facts. "She set me up." "She slandered my name." One of the roommates I had once argued with stood up and said, "I was part of the group that followed her. I didn't know. I regret it."
The crowd's reaction flashed: from disbelief to righteous anger to a hush that felt like a closed verdict. People took out phones; some recorded; a few simply shook their heads at the end of a story they had loved to tell.
"Why are you doing this?" Frankie asked me finally, raw. "Why won't you let me explain?"
"Because you've explained—too well," I said. "Your story depended on everyone believing you were the brownie-sweet saint. The evidence shows otherwise. You made money from others' pity. You ruined reputations when it suited you. You took Desmond's money and treated it like an investment."
She staggered, eyes wild, and people stepped back. "Please," she begged. "Please, I'm sorry."
The dean's voice cut in: "We will notify the authorities about the financial claims and the harassment. The school will also work with any affected students to repair reputations where possible."
As the meeting ended, the aftermath spread like ink. Students who once followed her like moths threw cold looks. The ones who stood by her faltered; a few dared to reshuffle their loyalties. Her public unmasking had been complete—a gradual reversal from adored to ostracized.
Frankie's breakdown had phases: first fury—"You can't do this!"—then denial—"It was all a mistake!"—then bargaining—"I'll return the money!"—and finally, the collapse into pleading. The crowd watched each stage, phones out, faces reading like open books.
They recorded her being tall and vicious to being small and pleading. A dozen videos hit the school's chat in minutes. A wave of comments grew ugly, then colder, then clinical: "Expelled. Served." "Karma." "Unfollowed." The very same people who once defended her now cheered a sort of public justice.
Throughout it all, the men who had lent her glamour—Brent included—saw their own reflections in the fallout and shrank back. "I didn't know the extent," one muttered. "I didn't force anything."
Despite that, the crowd had seen enough. The punishment was public, final, and irreversible to many: a formal expulsion, a requirement to return funds, and a long record. The humiliation was not just in missing graduation; it was in every face that turned away.
After the hearing, Frankie found me in the corridor. She reached for me with both hands. "Do you know what you've done?" she asked. "You destroyed me."
"I exposed you," I said. "Your choices destroyed you."
She looked at me with a new kind of horror, as if she had stepped off a roof and realized she had no wings. People around us paused, then moved on, and her world narrowed to the size of her trembling hands.
The punishment changed Frankie. She went from composed to frantic to hollowed out. Her friends who once sang her praises now refused to take calls. Strangers who had admired her on campus feeds now sent venomous messages. She attempted to film a livestream to regain sympathy, but the clip we released—quick, honest, and damning—played right into the room. She lost the network that had fed her image.
The crowd's reaction had been varied: some filmed, some cried, some simply left the room. I watched faces that had once liked her posts now look at me with a small nod. Helene, who had called me jealous, came and hugged me that night. "I believed her," she said. "I believed her because she was loud."
Tomas stood by me the whole time, cool, and when we left the hall he put an arm around my shoulders. "You did the right thing," he said. "You didn't just protect yourself—you protected others."
"Desmond will hate me," I said, and my voice shook.
"Then let him hate for a while," he said. "He'll understand when he sees the receipts."
He kept his word. The video, the recordings, the receipts—everything—circulated beyond the school. The internet is a fast and ruthless court. Frankie shut down accounts, pleaded on pages, begged friends, and eventually ran out of the stage she had built. She had misread the currency of sympathy and spent it all.
When the dust settled, I made my demands: the money back. Desmond made his own reckoning: a long, lonely night in a rented room later, he came to my parents and admitted what had happened. "I was stupid," he said, hands shaking. "I thought I was helping."
"You cost me trust," I said. "You cost you a lot, too. Pay me back twenty thousand and start earning your own life."
He did it. He listed every item, every date, every transfer, and reluctantly repaid me within a week. He also quit calling me "sis" the way he used to for a while, as if his shame had changed their language.
And Tomas? He did not leave. He waited in ways that were small but heavy. There were three moments—small as breaths—that made me remember why he was the man I would trust.
First, one rainy evening he smiled at me. He never smiled much, not like other men. He had a gravity that swallowed light. But he chose my laugh and made it safe. "You look better when you believe in your own voice," he said, and that smile did something to the room.
Second, when my phone died after the hearing, he took his jacket off without hesitation and draped it over my shoulders. "You won't catch a cold," he said, and his fingers brushed mine like a promise.
Third, when I finally decided to leave the country to finish my doctoral work, he gave me a set of keys. "Keep them," he said, "for when you come back." The simple act left me stunned. I held those keys in my palm like a talisman.
We fell into the slow warmth that some people call later love. Tomas was eight years older, patient in a way that felt like a shelter. He listened when I spoke of experiments and papers; he held my hand when I spoke of a brother who had learned the hard way. I loved him for the constancy of his small mercies.
One night, in a quiet room that smelled of apple peels and old books, he told me, "I want to take care of you."
"How?" I asked, half laughing.
"By being there," he said. "By being honest."
"That's dangerous," I said.
"It's the least dangerous thing," he said, and when he kissed me, the world made sense.
Desmond came back into our lives gentler, humbled. He worked, he learned to manage money, he learned to look for the truth. We healed like a slow stitch.
As for Frankie, she rebuilt a life far from our city, working under different names, repaying debts in small wages. The world had taken what she treasured—attention—and left her plain. She would not rise the same way again.
I boarded that plane with a heart full of cold and warm pockets of light. Tomas stood at the arrivals gate months later when I returned, and when he hugged me I felt all the rooms I had been through finally hush. He said, quietly, "Welcome home."
I took his hand and, for the first time in a long while, believed him without reservation.
The End
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