Entertainment Circle17 min read
"Stop the Blade!" — Fake Girlfriend, Real Stakes
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"I shouted, 'Stop the blade!'"
I didn't know why my voice came out so loud. I didn't know why my hands were wet with someone else's blood.
The stage light burned hot. The heads rolled on cue. People cheered and then some of them screamed. I was kneeling on a cold stone floor in an old scene, and then I opened my eyes in a narrow bed, the room smelling of instant noodles and cheap detergent.
"Who are you?" the woman in the doorway asked.
"Who am I?" I said. My throat felt wrong. My name did not fit. The memory of them—the three brothers, the courtyard, the blade—sat heavy in my chest like a rock.
They had told me my name was Brianna Wolf.
"You're awake," Elliana Valdez said. Her braid was messy, but her eyes were sharp. "You fainted when I told you the news. You fainted and didn't answer any of my calls."
"I fainted?" I touched my temples. Memory not mine and memory mine stitched badly together. "Where is—"
"Elliot called," Elliana said. "He's outside. Greyson Cruz is here. Relax. You're on set."
Greyson.
My body moved before my mind did. I saw the open tablet Elliana shoved in my hands. The first image was him: cool angle, soft jaw, his arm around a woman, the headline bold and mean. Fans had already started burning in the comments.
I had no idea what a "fan war" felt like until I saw it live. My new phone lit up with angry red dots. Someone was calling me by a name I had never heard before. People called me a faker. They called the woman in the photo a liar. The world wanted to set me on fire.
"Your contract," Greyson said later, folding two pages in his hands like a scalpel. "You signed it."
"I signed what?" My voice was flat. I did not want to cry. For two nights I had not eaten. My head had felt like an oven. The fill-in memories said I had signed a deal to play his fake girlfriend. The rules: show-off, stand-by, photo-op, keep distance. The penalty clause was a column of numbers that read like a sentence: pay or lose everything.
Elliana mouthed "twenty thousand" when I blinked.
"Twenty thousand?" I guessed.
"Two hundred thousand," Greyson said. His voice was soft and cruel. "And more if you break the main clause."
"Why would I—" My chest tightened.
"Because there are cameras everywhere," Greyson said. "Because you will be my shield. Because your face is calm and no one expects trouble from you."
He watched me like I was an experiment. I watched him like I was a wound.
"Can I back out?" I asked.
"You can," he said. "But you can't pay it."
"I have nothing," I said. The words were honest. The body in this shell had been poor, gaslit, bruised. I learned quickly what fans called "public heat": a fire that could roast careers.
"We'll start tomorrow on the drama set," Greyson said. "You move into my place. Elliana becomes your assistant. Elliot will handle your career if you let him."
I looked at Greyson. I looked at the contract. I looked at the small bronze box he placed on the table when the director Grant Wood walked in and clapped.
"This is the job," Grant said. "Wrap it like a story. Keep it clean."
"Keep it clean," Greyson echoed. His face was warm when he smiled, but the way his hands held the contract was like prison bars.
I signed.
Day by day the fake grew a shape. Fans screamed. Photographers camped. A woman named Giavanna Simpson, the drama's lead, did not hide her dislike when I came onto set. "Who let you in?" she hissed once. "You have no right to be here."
"Maybe I do," I said. My voice surprised me. I was learning to keep my face steady. I was learning to take a slap and not spit back.
Greyson watched from a distance more and more. When cameras were gone he came close to check my cuts. He made tea in the small apartment. He held a bandage while I trembled. He made me laugh once, soft and quiet, and then I felt something new—safety.
"How many times did you try?" I asked Elliot Carr when he handed me a paper with old complaints.
"You mean suicide?" he asked. He hated the word as much as I did. "Three times. Before the drama."
"Why didn't Elliana know?" I asked.
"She was the only one who stayed," Elliot said. "But she didn't know everything."
I thought of my brothers, of the cold courtyard and the blade. My bones ached in a way memory could not explain. The old life nulled me, but the new life pressed me forward. I started training like the first Brianna had. I took classes at night. I went to the gym before dawn. I learned yelling “cut” meant save the take. I learned where the lights hid shadows that made a body look brave.
A week later a car chased us across a bridge.
A small black sedan was right beside ours. The passenger shrieked and lobbed something at Greyson’s car. A rag doll with a painted mouth crashed into the window by my throat and glass sang. "Stop the car!" Elliana shouted.
I grabbed the dummy and kicked it out the door. The driver swerved. The other car rammed us. The bridge was narrow and wet. I saw the girl's voice in the other car, a scream: "You will not take him from us!"
"Drive!" Greyson shouted. Elliot crushed the accelerator. Someone screamed. The back wheel exploded and the whole van lurched. I felt the world tilt slow and gray.
I pushed Greyson and Elliot off me as the second impact jolted the van. Flames erupting from the other car paint the sky. For once I moved fast enough. I dragged, I lifted, I felt broken metal give. The people in the other car crawled out; a girl kept screaming invectives at me. I didn't care.
Then the second explosion threw heat at my back. I felt metal carve into me. Blood hot and new soaked the white shirt. Someone pushed an oxygen mask into my face. Greyson's hand was on my shoulder. "Stay," he said. "Stay with me."
We went to the hospital. Cameras had already streamed the crash. The world called it "a fan attack." Fans cried for Greyson. The other fans called for justice. I didn't cry. My back ached and the old memory of falling off a roof earned a place in my head.
In the hospital I learned more: my company never defended me. They did not fight for our safety. They did not answer Elliana's calls.
"Someone set the car," I told Greyson when he came by on the third day. He was pale and tired. He had a bruise on his arm.
"Who?" he asked.
"People who want you more than people want life," I said. "People who would burn."
Greyson looked at me like I had pulled a thorn out of his chest. For the first time the distance between the characters we played and the people we were collapsed. He took my hand. His fingers were long and sure.
"You're in danger," he said. "Leave the set. Go somewhere safe."
"I'm part of the set," I answered. "You and I—this contract—it's a chain and a shield."
He let out a slow laugh. "Are you signing up for prison or protection?"
"Both," I said.
We moved in together. The cameras called it "cohabiting for the arc." Elliana became my assistant. Elliot pretended to be pragmatic. Grant pretended that the whole thing was promotion.
At night Greyson would watch me practice sword stances on the rug. I would fall into a pose and he would say, "Again." We traded small confessions. He told me about awards nights he hated. I told him about cooking dal in a dorm once. We teased. We argued about silly things. He tried to teach me how to sign an autograph. I showed him how to tie my hair in a knot the way my brothers used to do.
And then the voice came in my head—not my thoughts but someone else's, clearer than before.
"I was stabbed," the voice said. "I did not die. I need you to find the man who hurt Mina."
Mina? I had no Mina. The name slid like a stone. It fit the space above my ribs and lodged there.
"Who sent you?" I asked aloud.
"You know him," the voice said. "He wears suits and grease. He is called Gustavo Ferguson."
I froze. I thought of Gustavo Ferguson as the powerful studio exec everyone thanked at press junkets. He was the hand behind many careers—luck, casting, promotions. He smiled at charity events. He wore cufflinks and a watch that clicked like money.
"You're sure?" Elliana asked when I told her.
"Yes," I said. "He's the man who took her."
"Who?" she said.
"My friend. The other body lived this life," I said. "She said he left her to die. She said she never got justice."
Elliana's eyes sharpened. "If there's proof, we go public. But it's dangerous."
"Do you have a better plan?" I asked.
"No," she said. "We have to be very careful."
I learned to hide evidence while paining my nails. I learned to sign fake check-ins and pretend to forget names. But I was learning faster than any stunt double. Every night, before giving my head to sleep, I asked the voice more.
"What happened?" I asked.
"She was honest when she could not be honest," the voice said. "He was offered a secret. He took it. He ruined her. He thought she'd disappear."
"Where is proof?" I asked.
"A small mirror," the voice said. "A bronze charm with one word carved: JUN. He kept it—he thought it was meaningless. He came to the ceremony and he left it where no one would look. But you will find it."
My chest tightened. JUN. In my new life I had found a little bronze box on set before, a tiny mirror inside with one carved character. I had carried it tucked inside my armor. I had thought it pretty and small and useless.
"Greyson?" I said later, soft.
"Yes?" Greyson's voice was low.
"This is going to get ugly," I said. "We can't just use the usual channels. He has lawyers. He has friends."
Greyson rose like an oath. "Then we will make it ugly. We will make him fall in front of everyone."
I did not know if I could do it. The voice had asked for one thing in return: "Get them to kneel. Let everyone see."
So we began to build a plan.
Step one, get closer. Not fake closeness. Real presence. We worked the events, the talk shows, the photo ops. Greyson put his name in my mouth in interviews, called me "Bri" once, and a thousand people noticed. The fans who hated me became curious. The trolls who called me names started saying, "She seems kind." A trickle of good became a river.
Step two, find the hidden small mirror's owner. I followed the breadcrumb of where the bronze piece could have come from. I traced the casting calls. I called in favors. Ricardo Taylor—the man who walked his big dog into our shoot like some memory out of my old life—came across my list. He watched me with eyes that held a history of someone else's laughter. He owned a development firm that sometimes worked with the studio.
"Did Gustavo ever buy from you?" I asked Ricardo in the garden after he had left us a fruit plate.
He looked at me, then at the bronze box I slid across the table. "Where'd you get that?"
"It's mine," I said. "It was household trinket. It belonged to someone who died."
Ricardo frowned. He touched the bronze and did a small, almost invisible jerk. "This is antique," he said. "Where did you find it?"
I told him the truth: on the set, in a small wooden chest with the set props. He hesitated and then spoke slowly. "This metal was sold to studios sometimes for set dressing. Gustavo had a private collector. He collects things that belonged to certain families."
"Which families?" I asked.
Ricardo's jaw tightened. "Some people like him, some people he buys guilt from."
It was enough. We had a thread.
"Elliot, Elliana, Greyson and I—" I said, gathering the small team in Greyson's living room and placing the mirror on the coffee table. "We go public at the gala. He will be there. Gustavo will be proud. He will stand on stage. We'll play the tape."
"Tape?" Elliot said. "You need proof. Recordings. A confession. He'll sue for defamation."
"No," Greyson said. He looked like a man who had played many kings but had not had his own right to rule. "We don't need to defame. We need to expose. We need witnesses. We need a stage."
"Do you have anything else?" Elliana asked.
I opened the bronze mirror. Inside, under the tiny glass, a hairline scratch looked like a map. There was a smudge that followed an address I had recognized from past memory—an old restaurant name. That's where the photographer who blackmailed Mina used to meet Gustavo. That's where Mina had been lured that last night.
"I'm going to the restaurant," I said. "I will find anything left. Receipts. Photos."
They tried to stop me. Greyson's voice shook when he said, "We will go with you."
I shook my head. "No. If we move as a pack, they will watch us. If I go alone they will think it's nothing. If I go with a camera, they will run. If I go alone, I might get nothing. But I go alone and I can tell the story in the way I want."
Elliana clutched my hand. "No one goes alone."
"Then I'll send only the smallest proof and a single recorder," I said. "If I'm gone more than five minutes, you call."
I walked into the small kitchen that night, the bronze box heavy at my palm like a promise. The restaurant smelled of spice and oil. A waiter knew me—it was a place for the studio people, cheap but private. I pretended to be a lost assistant. I almost walked right past a coat left over a chair. I didn't see a man at first until a voice said my name.
"Oh," he said. "You must be brave."
I turned. Gustavo Ferguson sat at a private booth, a wineglass in his fingers. He wore the smell of money. He smiled like a man who taught others to smile.
"Can I help you?" I asked, pretending to be small.
"You look tired," he said. "You look like someone who drinks too much of the set. Can I buy you dinner?"
I sat. My legs knew the moves. My hand slid the bronze mirror from my sleeve and showed him the carved JUN inside. "Do you know this?" I asked.
He blinked. The smile did not vanish. "I've seen many things," he said. "Things like that are trinkets."
"Isn't it yours?" I asked.
He laughed. "No, love. I don't touch trinkets. I buy futures."
I fumbled the recorder into my pocket. I set the mirror down. I poured the wine he offered and let the conversation move like a game. I asked him if he had once met a woman who had been offered a quiet exit. I asked if he ever thought to keep pieces of people for quiet proof.
"You're a strange girl," he said. "This whole industry is strange."
He reached for the mirror as if to take it. My hand moved fast. I held on. The wine glass shattered on the table. He frowned. Suddenly a different side moved. "You shouldn't play with what you do not understand."
He said the name "Mina" under his breath and then the room collapsed. He had thought he had killed the fear. He had not expected the recorder I had pressed under the table to click on and pick up his voice when he said the name and then laughed and then explained how he made people go away.
I stood. "You killed her," I said. "You left her to bleed because she would not cooperate."
He smiled, bloodless. "And what, little actor, do you want with that claim?"
"Justice," I said. "And a stage."
I ran out with my heart pounding. My phone buzzed like a grenade. Greyson's text read: "Now."
We had what we needed. Not enough for law yet, but enough for heat.
We built the trap.
At the award gala the next week, the room was polished. Gustavo was on the board of the film awards. Hosts toasted him. He smiled like a queen.
"Timing," Greyson murmured. "Remember, when I take the stage, you point cameras."
Elliana had planned everything. Elliot had called a reporter who owed him a favor. Ricardo had whispered to a camera operator to play a tape live if needed.
"Ready?" he asked.
I nodded.
Greyson walked up to accept his small trophy. He turned to the camera, and then he said the words: "Tonight is not about me."
The room blinked. The broadcast cut. Greyson held up the bronze mirror. He told the short story—the studio's cover-ups, the crash a week before, the fan attack, the dangers so many of us ignored. He called Gustavo a guest, not a man.
Gustavo's face froze.
"Play it," Greyson said.
The feed switched to the restaurant. The room heard Gustavo's voice clearly as the recorder Elliot had placed played the cold laugh and the words that named things, forensics, the plan.
"You are a liar," Gustavo said into the microphone he picked up. "This is a stunt."
"Play the second file," Ricardo's voice said from the sound board, and a second clip played: an old message the real Mina had given a friend, naming Gustavo's threats. Mina's voice, thin and real, said, "If anything happens to me, tell them it was him."
A ripple moved through the room. Cameras of other reporters turned. Phones came out. People leaned toward the stage like wolves smelling blood.
Gustavo's palms grew white. He rose to defend himself. "This is slander," he said. "You have no proof."
"Your watch," Greyson said. "Your receipts." Somewhere, a staffer placed a stack of photos on the stage. They were invoices. A tourist receipt. A taxi note. A photo of Gustavo leaving the restaurant that night with a stain on his cuff. The bronze mirror. The little box he had given to an assistant that was now traced to his private collection. The room hummed with the sound of a jury.
Gustavo's color left his face. He staggered.
"You're going to pay everyone for what you do," I said into the mic. "You're going to kneel and tell the world why you thought you were above anyone."
He made a final move for the microphone. Greyson's hand closed around it first. The director of the gala, Grant Wood, walked up to the edge of the stage unable to stop the tide.
" Security," Gustavo barked. "Remove them."
Cameras recorded everything.
Then the change happened.
Gustavo's wife—yes, Gustavo had a wife—sat frozen with an empty glass in her hand. A dozen online feeds had already picked up the tape. The audience who had been cheering for him two minutes ago now stepped back like people startled by a snake.
Gustavo's voice rose to a scream. "You will pay for this!" He lunged for the microphone, then his face lost all pretense. He tripped over the podium cord and stumbled. The room gasped. He clawed at the table, trying to regain his balance. A reporter shoved a camera forward and the lens flashed a thousand times.
He fell to his knees.
The room shifted into a sound that was part horror, part awe. People reached for their phones and for the live feeds. The news anchors spoke over each other.
"He's kneeling!" someone shouted. "He—He asked for silence."
I watched as Gustavo's face changed. The smooth man of glossy ads became a wounded, ordinary man. He started to sob.
"This isn't fair," he shrieked. "This is not fair!"
"Tell us why," Greyson said. "Tell us why you thought you could take her."
"My company—" Gustavo tried to rise. He could not. "I had deals. I had to—"
"You had choices," Greyson said. "Tell everyone."
The room crowded. Phones recorded. Gustavo's hands trembled. He looked up at the cameras, the bright lights like truth.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought if I paid, it would go away. I thought if I..." His voice broke. He fell forward and clutched at the stage and then the room erupted into noise—people recording, people shrieking, people whispering. The gala manager called security, but there was no formal arrest yet; the feeds were his judge.
Then the real punishment began.
His name trended worldwide within minutes. People dug up donations he had diverted. The board he sat on distanced themselves. Sponsors pulled ads. His firm issued a perfunctory statement. His wife filed for divorce by midnight. Investors called together an emergency meeting. Within forty-eight hours, he was off the board and stripped of his titles. Within a week, police called him in for questioning on the basis of evidence we had pushed. Online, threads compiled receipts and messages and witnesses. People who had been quiet until then dropped names and stories. Trades printed lists of everything he had touched.
But the worst came in public.
At the press hearing, thousands of people crowded. A woman who had been silent for years stood up in a microphone and said Gustavo had done worse. Another lawyer named a pattern: paid settlements, secret rooms, quiet silences. Photographs emerged—Mina at a car with Gustavo's cuff imprinted in ink. A friend of Mina's uploaded a voice memo where Mina had begged for help a week before her death.
He begged and then he protested. He fell to his knees in one hearing and in another. He cried on camera. The press took the footage and looped it so his face was everywhere, pleading. His bank accounts faced audits. His property managers froze several of his holdings pending investigation. His phone rang with people who wanted to sue. His partners cut him like rotten fruit. His social name patterns dissolved in a day.
Outside the old industry parties, people recorded him. A neighbor found a video of him sobbing in his car, his expensive watch stripped, left on the curb. His employees left him like leaves from a burned tree. The board of trustees resigned. A foundation he helped start removed his name. He lost everything he had used to buy silence: power, money, respect.
On day seven, cameras followed as officers led him into a hearing. Protesters lined the doors. Someone had printed posters. "You took her," they said. People who had been quiet now shouted.
He was arrested on charges after a formal complaint from the victim's friends and due to mounting evidence and new witness testimony. The law took its slow, grinding time, but the court of public opinion had already finished: he had been publicly stripped.
When the judge read out that he would be remanded pending trial, Gustavo collapsed and wailed, "No! This can't be my life!"
People in the hallway recorded him on phones. Some cheered; some looked away. Women who had been hurt gave testimony. His wife revoked his name on their accounts. Friends wrote public goodbyes. His name bled across headlines: "From Winner to Warned." Every ad he had been in was pulled. Donations he had sent unexplained were audited and returned to verified charities.
I stood at the back and watched him break. I felt an ache. I did not celebrate. I felt a hollow relief.
Greyson came to me after the hearing, his eyes raw, his lashes red. He took my hand in front of everyone.
"You did it," he said. His voice shook.
"We did it," I corrected him. "We did it for Mina."
He pulled me forward in a small circle where reporters would not bother. He leaned down to my ear and said, "We did it because you would not let her be forgotten."
I remember the first time Greyson kissed me.
It was quiet; the cameras were off. We sat on a couch in the studio late at night. I had not slept properly in days. He held my hand like I was a fragile thing.
"Say it," he said.
"What?" I asked.
"Say you want this. Not the contract. Not the fame. Me."
"I can't say for sure," I said.
He frowned. "Try."
"I want to be near you," I said. The words tasted true. I had never trusted anyone in this life. But I trusted him. I could feel the difference between a man who wanted a headline and a man who wanted a life.
He kissed me then, long and gentle, the way a storm finally breaks. It was not a fake kiss. It anchored me. I felt whole in a place that had been hollow.
After the case moved forward, after Gustavo's press fell apart and the system turned its gears slowly, the studio still wanted the drama to roll. The public wanted Greyson. They wanted us.
We kept playing the couple. We kept playing the lovers. But in private we built something quieter: late-night tea, warm hands, a small ritual of checking each other's phones like children. We took walks where no one could see us. We made a game out of breakfast. One morning I woke up, and the small bronze mirror was on Greyson's dresser.
"Where did that come from?" he asked.
"It's from Mina," I said. "It was in a chest. It is a small thing, but it belonged to someone who could only be named in whispers."
"Can I keep it?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "Keep it near you so you remember why we did this."
He placed it under a lamp like a little flag. "This will be our small proof," he said.
The trial took months. It was ugly and slow. Witnesses turned up. People testified. We watched and flinched. The small bronze mirror alone could not convict, but it connected things. In court it was evidence among receipts and witnesses and digital proof. Mina's friends testified. People cried. We cried.
When the verdict finally came, the room in the courthouse was packed. The judge read quietly and then the words came: guilty.
Gustavo's face crumpled. He screamed. The reporters recorded the moment. His legacy was gone. People shouted on the courthouse steps. A woman came up to me and said, "Thank you." She hugged me, and I could smell incense and peppermint and the hard joy instead of soft relief.
Afterward, the studio had to answer for its silence. A dozen executives were forced out. Policies changed. Elliana's emergency team wrote new safety rules. Elliot got a new client list. Grant apologised publicly and donated the gala funds to a memorial for victims of exploitation.
People cheered for change. It was small and huge at once.
Greyson and I stood on a small balcony outside the courthouse. The sky was thin and white. People below waved banners. Screens showed the verdict.
"You kept your promise," he said.
"I kept hers," I said. His hand closed on mine. "I kept mine."
We moved forward slowly. The "fake girlfriend" headlines slid into "Greyson and Brianna linked, quietly dating." The public gave us small permission to be ourselves. We filmed the last scenes of the drama and then, because the story had to have a chapter end, I turned down a studio contract that would have sold us both out.
"Elliot?" I asked one night, signing a small paper that said I could leave my old company after six months.
"Do it," he said. "You earned it."
At the last wrap party, Grant gave a speech. Greyson stood to my left, shoes dusty, hair long. I held the little bronze mirror in my palm.
"I want to thank people who taught me how to hold a sword," I said. "Thank you to those who taught me to sing. Thank you to those who taught me to bend. But most of all I'd like to say this—this small thing in my hand doesn't belong to me. It belongs to a woman who had no voice. We made noise for her. That noise grew into law and into hope."
"Who was she?" Grant asked.
"No name they would let her keep," I said. "Only a mirror."
Greyson squeezed my hand.
I placed the little bronze mirror on the stage lights, where the beam would warm it and the cameras would sometimes catch it. It was an odd place, but it was public and private at the same time.
"This is where she lives now," I said. The light warmed the mirror. It made the carved word JUN shine small and bright.
"She is home," Greyson said.
I looked out at the people I had come to love—Elliana, Elliot, Ricardo, Grant, even Giavanna who had softened over time—and I felt the life inside me click into a new rhythm.
"I am not the same Brianna as before," I said. "I took someone's life and made it better. I keep the small things of people who died. I will not be silent."
Greyson kissed my forehead. The cameras caught the warmth. The fans cheered. The world watched. The mirror caught the stage light and threw a small bright sign into the lens.
We walked away from the set into a life that would not be scripted. I still had scars—on my back where glass had found me, in muscles that memory made ache—but the pain now was part of the map.
"Do you still think about them?" Greyson asked late, when we sat on our roof and watched the city lights.
"Every night," I said. "They are the reason I lift my sword."
Greyson leaned his head on mine. "We'll lift it together."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
I held the little bronze mirror in my hand like a coin and then I set it on the roof tile between us. The city hummed below.
It was a small thing in a big world. It was warm under my palm. It had a single word carved on it that meant more than any headline.
"Goodnight," I said.
"Goodnight," Greyson answered.
Under the stars, I felt for the first time that I had more than one life to live. I had the old voice inside me and this new body. I had the power to speak. I had a man who had learned to protect me not for press but for me. And I had the mirror that held the name of a woman who could not speak for herself.
The blade had fallen once. We stopped the next blow.
The End
— Thank you for reading —