Face-Slapping12 min read
The Two Shoes, a Recording, and the Wedding That Fell Apart
ButterPicks15 views
I have been Ivan Bentley's assistant for five years.
"No," I told myself every morning when my alarm went off, "this is a job." I told everyone that too.
"What time is the client dinner tonight?" Ivan asked while flipping through his emails.
"Seven," I answered, placing the last folder on his desk. "I'll be there with the materials."
"You're coming," he said without looking up.
"I can't. I'm booked," I said.
He glanced at me like I had offered him a sin. "You always are."
I laughed on the inside and said nothing. Being Ivan's chief assistant meant there was no private time—only his time. I handled every meeting, every travel arrangement, every little thing. When the company was five people we sat in a cramped room with a broken kettle. Five years later we had fifty employees and a shiny office tower. We grew together, but I kept my feelings folded like paper in a drawer. A drawer no one ever opened.
"Do you have any new shoes?" he asked one day. "Take me the pair you wear at home. Comfortable ones."
"I do," I said. "I'll bring them."
"Good."
When I arrived at his apartment building and stepped out of the elevator, Ivan was talking with a woman whose hair fell in soft waves. She turned to me with a practiced smile.
"This is the assistant?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "Christina Jensen."
"Nice to meet you, Christina," she said. "I'm Valentina Beasley."
"Nice to meet you," I repeated and handed over the shoe box like a small, willing courier.
"Thanks," she said, slipping the shoe on. "My feet hurt after long shoots."
Ivan looked like he was doing something small and considerate, lowering his voice, bending, placing the shoe on her bare foot. "Don't wear heels all the time," he murmured. "They're killing you."
If an outsider had watched us, they'd see nothing wrong. If someone had told me then that Valentina would be more than a "girlfriend"—that she would be the future bride of another man—I would have laughed. But later, even that memory of a shoe would feel like a prop in a play where I had the smallest part.
Valentina arrived at the office like a breeze forced through a doorway—refreshing, welcoming, and carrying a smell of expensive shampoo. "Tea for the team?" she offered with a smile that built alliances.
"Christina," she said to me once during a break, "you have a good eye. Ivan is very particular. You're lucky to know him so well."
"He's hard to surprise," I said. "But he's not impossible."
She watched me with eyes that were too practiced. "You seem loyal."
"Of course," I said. "He has built a lot. I'm proud of him."
"Good," she said. "I like that."
After Valentina started helping with our new influencer business, she did well. She knew how to talk to cameras. She knew how to pick products. She grew followers quickly. "You two have a good synergy," Ivan said at a meeting. "Let's have her handle the influencer arm."
"Of course," Valentina said, smiling like a trophy. She began doing live streams, and the numbers rose fast. But when a batch of toner caused allergic reactions for a portion of buyers, the comments flooded in and the volume of complaints hit our chest like a cold wind.
"How many complaints?" Ivan asked, unused to this kind of mess.
"Not a majority," I said. "Just a number that becomes loud because it's on social."
"Handle it," he said. "Talk to the supplier. Smooth things out."
Valentina touched my arm in the meeting. "Christina, please," she said. "We have to calm people down. You shouldn't take the blame. Let the team handle the crisis."
A week later, my junior assistant, Jayla Santos, sent me a string of panicked voice messages. "Christina, Valentina said she can manage it better. She thinks—she thinks the new girl can do it." Jayla's voice cracked. "She said you were stuck in the old ways."
"She wants to replace me," I told my friend Brianna Baxter that night over skewers and whiskey-laced laughter.
"Chaos equals opportunity," Brianna said. "If she wants to play that game, wait until the wedding."
"The wedding?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Yes. Don't spoil anything until then," Brianna said. "If she's doing this wrong, let her be exposed. Wait for the day they'll all celebrate."
I didn't want to, but I let it simmer.
Then the rumor started: "Christina is pregnant." It was ridiculous. I was twenty-eight, single, and my daily life was work. My body was not hiding anything. Ivan cocked an eyebrow and said, "Is that true?"
"No," I said. "I don't even have time to date."
"You're thirty in four years," he said, a strange softness. "There's time."
The rumor was one thing. The real blow came when a university friend sent a voice message: "Valentina is engaged. To Paul Cotton. The invitation is out."
"That's impossible," I said aloud, staring at the message.
"She's engaged to Paul Cotton and Paul's family is throwing a hotel engagement party this weekend," the friend said. "Please bring popcorn."
I sat very still. Ivan noticed my pale face. "What's wrong?"
"Valentina's engagement," I said. "To Paul. She's getting married."
He didn't look surprised. He looked, for the first time, small and contained. He closed his laptop like someone closing a wound.
"Where is the ceremony?" he asked.
"Hilton. Saturday. Third floor."
We had no evidence besides gossip—until Brianna pulled me toward the supermarket aisle where I spied Valentina with her mother, discussing who to stiff and who to sweeten.
"Go upstairs," Brianna hissed into my ear. She had recorded the conversation. "We have it."
We planned then and there to wait for the engagement. Brianna kept the recording safe. "Play it at the right moment," she said. "When they're all smiling."
Ivan, however, surprised me. "I have a flight to Shanghai tonight," he told me the Friday before the ceremony. "Valentina arranged an investor meeting for me."
"Don't go," I said, out of habit.
"Come with me," he said. "Take my place."
"No way," I said.
"Yes," he said, and I heard the command in his voice.
I thought he wanted to get away. I thought he wanted to escape whatever thoughts had been circling his head. When he closed the door of our office, I saw a part of him I had never seen: a man who was tired of being misled.
At the airport I faked a stomach pain to stop him from leaving. When he stayed, I kept pretending. He took me to the hospital instead of the plane.
"You're so dramatic," he said, nervous and gentle. "Next time tell me. Don't scare me."
I couldn't breathe for a moment, because his hand felt like permission. "I have something to show you," I said finally.
In the taxi I played the recording of Valentina and her mother planning: she would string along Ivan and Paul. "You go to him, I'll go to the other," Valentina said on that recording. "Both are trophies. We won't lose."
Ivan's face changed at the first word. He dropped the phone as if it had burned him. "Take me now," he said, and we went to Hilton.
We burst into the ballroom like two small hurricanes. People looked up from the buffet, from their polite conversations. The string quartet paused. The engagement plaques—Paul and Valentina—hung like paper crowns.
"Ivan Bentley?" Valentina's mother managed, then shamely tried to wave us away, "This is an engagement, please—"
"Valentina Beasley," Ivan said, stepping forward. "My girlfriend."
People murmured like a crowd around a small animal. Paul's jaw loosened.
"This is a misunderstanding," Valentina said, voice thin. "We—"
"There's no misunderstanding," I said. "Watch this." I hit play.
The recording filled the hall like rain. Valentina and her mother's voices came through clear and raw. "Bring him with you. I will keep the other," they had planned. "He must not see everything."
Faces paled. People instinctively reached for their phones.
Valentina was first amused, then startled, then furious. "This is edited! This is slander!" she cried.
"Who recorded you?" Paul demanded.
"My fiancé," she insisted. "My family is being cruel."
"Your fiancé's pocket was just slipped with evidence," I said. "He brought us here."
The crowd shifted closer, hungry. This is what revenge looks like: not a blunt hammer but a focused light. The singer stopped mid-note. Servers froze. Phones lifted like tiny torches.
Valentina's face fluttered through stages. At first she smiled, as if to say she could handle any accusation. Then the smile faltered. "This is illegal!" she shouted. Her hand flew to her throat. "You're lying! This is charade! Ivan, how dare you—"
"How dare you?" Ivan asked, voice cold. "You decided to rope in a man who trusted you. You planned to steal from two men at once. You treated both of us as options. Which part is wrong?"
People around us started to whisper. "She's a liar," one man said. "She used both men," somebody else muttered. A woman took out her phone and started live-streaming.
Valentina's mother had turned an ashen color. "This is a family matter," she stammered. "Please—"
"You told her to play two men," Ivan said. "You told her to keep both, then choose. You told her how to manipulate them. You coached her."
She wasn't prepared to be accused in public. The crowd's hunger turned to moral judgement. A friend of Paul's stood up, red-faced. "Food and status—this is disgusting," he said. "We don't stand for this in our circle."
Valentina's demeanor began to crack. "This is sabotage!" she cried. "I am the victim of pressure. He pressured me—"
"Liar," Ivan said. "You told your mother, on record, how to handle both men. You arranged Paul's engagement and still tried to string me along."
At that point the ballroom had become a courtroom without a judge. People parted like water, letting us stand in the middle. The waiter dropped a tray. The host hurried toward us, speechless.
Valentina's eyes moved from shocked to panicked. She tried to speak, but every sentence exposed more. "I was only protecting myself," she said. "I had no choice—"
"You had choices," I interrupted. "You chose manipulation."
Her panic turned to fury. "You ruined my life!" she shrieked. "You broke our engagement!"
"Which engagement?" Ivan asked. "The one you planned with your mother while telling me you loved me?"
"You can't know that," Valentina said. "It's private!"
"Then you should not have discussed it in public places where someone could record you," I answered. "You laid the ball on the table."
Phones clicked. People crowded closer. I could see Paul's expression turning from confusion to betrayal. He had believed the image Valentina had presented him. The live comments were a rain of judgment. "Exposed!" "Gold digger!" scrolled across people's screens.
Valentina tried to salvage dignity. "This is assault," she said. "You're violent!"
"You're the one who plotted two engagements," Brianna whispered as she pushed through the crowd, holding my phone. "We had this all along."
"I want to know the truth," Paul said, voice hollow. "Valentina, did you intend to marry me, or did you intend to marry wealth?"
Valentina's knees wobbled. She tried to catch someone's hand and found only empty air. Her mother had no words left. "We're humiliated," she said. "You don't understand—"
"Understand what?" a woman in the back asked. "That she thought she could have both men and no one would notice? That she used her look and her grief to manipulate two families?"
Valentina's face went from purple to white. Her mouth opened and closed. She seemed to be counting exits. Then, like dominoes, her defenses collapsed.
"Please," she sobbed. "Please—no—I'm sorry!"
It was not the sorry of repentance. It was the sorry of a trapped animal. She tried to hold herself upright, to protect status like a shell, but the crowd was already chewing it away.
"Will you apologize to Ivan?" I asked.
"No," she sniffed. "I didn't—"
"Will you apologize to Paul?" someone demanded.
"To Paul?" she mocked. "He's just a step to something bigger!"
The room hissed. People made faces. Phones whipped forward. The hosts looked at their broken event and murmured, "This is over. We must leave."
Paul's father stepped forward, tall and severe. "We will not be part of this farce." He gathered his son and walked out.
Valentina's mother grasped her daughter's arm. "We must go," she said.
Valentina began to cry loudly, a sound that was designed to draw sympathy but had the reverse effect under the harsh light of exposure.
The punishment was not a legal one—no judge, no jail—but it was worse for someone who cared about image. The families who once nodded and smiled now turned away. Guests whispered like wind around a broken glass. People who had applauded Valentina's initiative now called her names. A top blog published the video within an hour. The commenters' knives were merciless.
Valentina's reaction changed through the ordeal. She had started with a confident smile, then shifted through confused denial, then anger, then begging. Each stage lost her more of the audience. At first, some guests tried to whisper consolation; that hope evaporated. By the end, people scrolled their phones and kept their distance. Chairs were left empty where noble families had sat.
I watched her shrink and felt an odd mix of relief and remorse. The relief was for Ivan, who had been made to look like a fool. The remorse was for the way public humiliation eats at a person, even when they deserve it. But there was no mercy for a woman who had planned a deception against two families.
After the chaos, Valentina tried to issue a public statement: "I was coerced," she wrote later. "I was pressured."
The internet did not buy it. "Too little, too late," the commenters wrote. "You created your own theater."
The punishment continued in other forms. The influencer agencies that had partnered with Valentina cut ties. Brands that had promoted her on live streams quietly removed their tags. Her follower count stagnated and then dropped. Her once-adoring fans turned to critics. Paul's family demanded their engagement gifts return; they didn't want the trouble. Valentina's mother called for private apologies that never satisfied the crowds.
At work, people whispered. "Did you see Valentina's video?" somebody would say, and the room would go quiet.
Public punishment is messy. It's loud. It is not always fair, but sometimes it is necessary to show the charade for what it is.
After the scandal, Ivan was ill. The stress hit him so hard that he was admitted to the hospital for a few days. I brought apples and sat by his bed. He looked thinner, more human. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?" he asked quietly.
"I didn't want to be dismissed," I said. "I needed evidence."
"You're brave," he said, half smile, half pain.
But the worst part wasn't Ivan's illness. It was Valentina's attempt to rewrite the story. She published an article claiming she had been manipulated by Ivan.
"Ivan forced me," she wrote. "He pushed for a relationship, he demanded, he controlled me."
People read it. Some sympathized. Many didn't. The record of the recording stayed louder.
In the end, she lost her fiancé, her reputation, and the credibility she had sold as authenticity.
After all that, life kept moving. I resigned.
"I am leaving," I told Ivan in the hospital room. "I need to go back home. I can't keep living like this."
"You are leaving?" he asked, surprised.
"Yes," I said. "My parents want me to settle down. I can't pretend I'll be content staying at the office waiting for a life that might never be more than this."
"Do you want the shares?" he asked. "You already have six percent."
"Keep them," I said. "I want something else now."
We divorced not in paper but in distance. The next day, I bought a ticket to my parents' town and walked away from a city that had been a cage I had learned to accept. I went home and met men who wanted to know me but did not understand why I had left a high place. They liked the idea of career but feared the truth behind the title "assistant."
"Why did you leave such a job?" my mother asked at supper.
"It was time," I said. "To try for my own life."
In my small town I went on dates set up by friends. Brianna had lined up someone—a programmer named Paul?—no, a better fit: a gentle man named Carrick Ramirez I met through mutual friends. He listened without offering verdicts and picked up my jokes like soft coins. I laughed again. I allowed myself to be ordinary.
Back in the city, Ivan and I married quickly after that hospital talk. It was a strange, sudden ceremony: roses, a lawyer's quick signature, champagne in small paper cups. There was a time when I had believed marriage would fix everything I had wanted. We had a short delicious honeymoon of mutual care and awkward tenderness. Ivan would make breakfast. "Eat this," he said, "It's for your stomach." He wrapped his arms around me like he meant to keep me in place. I liked it and feared it.
We had moments that made my heart stop in the best way: he smiled at me in a place he never smiled before; he took off his jacket and wrapped it around me; he reached out in a crowd to find my hand; he whispered, "I notice you." Those moments accumulated like small, warm stones.
But after some months, the memories of the public exposure, the guest lists, and the way people had turned on Valentina faded. Public fury moved on to a new scandal. Valentina tried to rebuild her life but failed to recover her old shine.
One evening Ivan sat at the dining table looking at the pair of slippers I had once delivered to him. "Do you remember these?" he asked.
"I do," I said. "They were the first thing I brought you at your place."
"I kept them," he said. "I like the way you move in the morning—quiet but essential."
"That's a nice thought," I said.
When the years pass, I sometimes open the shoe box I gave him and pull out the small paper with that supermarket recording. It is smudged at the edges. I put it back and close the lid.
"Why keep it?" Ivan once asked.
"Because the truth was a thing that had to be heard," I answered.
And sometimes, when I'm alone and the house is quiet, I open my phone and hear Valentina's voice one more time. I don't feel triumph. I feel exhausted relief and a complicated sorrow for the parts of people that choose deceit.
"I learned to stop waiting," I told Brianna on the phone one late night. "I learned to leave when I needed to."
"Good," she said. "You deserve simple happiness."
I think of that moment in the ballroom a lot. I think of the recording, the shoe, the flight I skipped and the rose bouquet that surprised me. Those things are not romantic props—they are markers along a strange, crooked road from being unseen to being seen. The shoe box sits on my wardrobe now. It smells faintly of leather and the day I pressed play on that recording, everything changed.
The End
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