Revenge16 min read
Under the Lies
ButterPicks14 views
"I said I had to work late," I told myself, though my voice trembled.
"You sounded like you'd rather be somewhere else tonight," Samuel said on the phone.
"You know the project—" I started.
"It’s Valentine's," he cut in. "Be home."
"I will," I said, and the word felt small in my mouth.
He did not come home that night.
A post appeared on someone’s feed an hour later.
"Some people just won't listen when I ask them not to come keep me company," it read. "If his girlfriend finds out, kill me."
I stared at the words until they blurred.
"Who posted that?" I asked, hands gripping the screen.
"Isabela," Samuel said. "She broke up with someone. She wanted someone to be with her tonight. Don't make a big deal of it. I'll be home."
"Was she asking you to be with her, or were you the one who wanted to be with her?" I asked.
There was a long pause.
"Don't come back," I said. "We're done."
The line went dead. I froze, then locked my phone like a ritual of separation.
1
Samuel told me an old friend from university had come back to town and wanted to see him.
We’d been together three years. I’d met most of his friends.
"I didn't know there was another—" I asked.
"I thought she wouldn't come back," he said, and his tone changed so slightly I noticed.
I assumed a school buddy, a male.
When he drove to pick Isabela up, my head tilted for a moment.
She burst into my living room like she'd always belonged.
"You're Laurel, right? I only saw you in Samuel's photos—finally meeting you!" she chirped, linking arms with him.
"I don't think we've met," I said, forcing a smile.
"Oh, honey, Samuel is so lucky," she said, fluttering around me. "When will I ever be taken? I'm the eternal bachelor."
"Because I'm handsome," Samuel crowed. He laughed, and they fell easily into the kind of banter couples have without me.
My heart sank a little in a way I couldn't name.
"Are you sure you don’t mind staying with us?" Samuel asked later, casually.
I froze. "We have a guest room."
"Are you sure?" she asked, bright-eyed toward me.
I didn't want to be the one to forbid courtesy. I said nothing.
2
Isabela moved in.
I had an internship at a law firm; long days and later nights. When I came home tired, they were there, laughing on the couch. She knew details about me—my university major, my favorite coffee—things I'd never told her. How did she know me so well?
"Don't be loud," Samuel told me once, when I tried to be close. "Isabela is next door. She could overhear."
I snapped for the first time. "How long is she staying?"
"She got an offer," he shrugged. "Looking for a place. She'll leave soon."
That should have calmed me, but it didn't.
One morning I woke to the smell of garlic and spice. Samuel was cooking, and Isabela was close enough that at certain angles she looked like she belonged on his shoulder.
"What are you doing?" I demanded.
"Just teaching her how to cook," he said.
"You're teaching her? What about me?"
"She grew up a bit rough; she has no boundaries with men," he explained.
I left and didn't speak for a day.
3
A week later, I sent him out to talk to her. I sat in a tea room and watched my phone buzz. She messaged: Laurel, I didn't do anything with Samuel. Are you sure you misunderstand?
I didn't answer.
He texted: She left.
I felt lighter, until I saw her next post on social media: "Feeling kicked out tonight. Not a great feeling."
I thumbed a heart in a mechanical gesture that felt too small.
4
Things smoothed. He brought flowers to the firm. My colleagues teased me. Sebastian—the senior, terrifying and brilliant lawyer I interned under—raised an eyebrow when he saw the delivery.
"You picked those?" he asked in his clipped voice. "How romantic."
"It was unexpected," I said. My cheeks felt like someone else's.
That evening at dinner, Samuel muttered casually, "I talked to Isabela."
"What did she say?" I asked, brittle.
"She wanted to get closer to us. She didn't mean to make trouble. She apologized," he said.
"Do you believe her?" I asked.
"I think she meant it in her way," he said, as if that explained everything.
I left. He chased me, holding my arm: "Don't make scenes."
"Isabel is out of the apartment," he said later by message. I breathed again.
5
But then a condom appeared in my work file.
"You put that in my file?" Sebastian said, arching an eyebrow.
"It must have been an accident," I stammered. My face burned.
Samuel's face at home when I confronted him was... awful.
"Whose are these?" he said, holding two condoms from my coat pocket.
"Samuel, do you think I am that person?" I cried. "You think I would—"
His silence was an accusation.
He later bought flowers for my firm again, like a thin apology. My colleagues laughed and cooed. Sebastian watched, inscrutable.
"Flowers at the office can make clients think we're unprofessional," he murmured at one point, as if that mattered.
6
The argument escalated. I found a photo on social media—two wine glasses clinking, captioned "Reunion with an old friend." I sank.
Samuel called at night. "I just finished. I'm coming home."
"Are you with Isabela?" I asked calmly.
"She wanted company," he said. "Don't read too much into it."
"Was it she who wanted company, or you who wanted to keep her company?" I asked again.
This time, no answer. I said it.
"I don't want to come back," I told him. "We're breaking up."
I hung up, heart hammered, and then felt strangely composed. I packed in minutes—photos, clothes, the messy archive of a life built with someone else—and left for the firm to avoid being alone in that apartment.
On the way out, Samuel chased me down the street, his face bright with a hope I no longer recognized. He begged, then begged in a way that felt rehearsed. He said he would cut ties with Isabela.
"Fine," I said, because I let myself be weak. "Fine."
7
After that, Samuel tried to be kinder. He was smoother, more careful. But when our five-year anniversary came, he canceled—said a bug needed fixing.
Later that night I saw Isabela's update again. "Don't tell me not to come, some people insist on accompanying me when I need comfort..."
My fingers shook. I called. He didn't pick up. He finally answered.
"I'm at work," he said. "She was upset. I comforted her."
"Who asked to be comforted?" I asked.
"I told you—she was heartbroken. I didn't—"
"Is it her, or you?" I asked.
Silence.
"Don't come back. We're done."
8
It took an hour to stop the shaking. He called and texted until I blocked him and deleted him.
Inside a box I found an old photo of us on campus. The smallness of our history hit like a physical blow.
I was going to fetch work files from the office and spend the night in a hotel. Samuel found me before I left.
"You're going to the office now?" he asked, clumsy with hope.
"It’s work," I said.
He grabbed my phone and saw a message from Sebastian that said: "How long?"
He misread it into proof. In front of him, my past and present became evidence against me.
"You're seeing him," he accused, breath hot.
"It's work," I said.
"You lied," he said.
He shoved my phone. It skidded, cracked. I felt my chest fracture with the sound.
"You chose her," I said, voice flat. "You keep making choices, not because you're kind, but because you want to avoid being faithful."
He laughed like it was a joke until it wasn't. "I thought you were cheating," he said. "Your purchases, the condoms."
"Samuel," I said. "Those purchases? They were on the account you sometimes use."
He said my name like a verdict. "I trusted you."
9
I went home and changed the locks. He came later and left my things outside like a sarcophagus. My friends called; he had already started telling people I'd cheated.
I didn't want the fight to be public, but he had started the narrative: "It was Laurel who cheated." He kept dragging the story, trying to win the pity vote.
I changed the locks, reclaimed my privacy. He came by the office to make public apologies, then apologies for the apologies. Everyone saw. The firm hallway turned into a small theater.
10
I found the courage to print screenshots, social posts Isabela had deleted, and the messages where she boasted and then lied. I printed his purchase records and the email notifications that showed the condoms were bought from a different device—his.
I taped them to the firm table and waited.
That night I called one friend, Daisy: "Can you come to the firm? I need someone to be with me."
"Of course," she said. "What's happening?"
"Just be there," I said.
11
The next day the firm's lounge was full of people—partners, clients, my colleagues. The event was an informal alumni reception; the room humbed with wine and polite laughter.
Samuel didn't know I would come.
He arrived with Isabela, both bright, thinking the room would applaud them. Instead, Daisy and I stood by the coffee table.
"Samuel," I called, and my voice was steadier than I felt.
He looked over, smile faltering. "Laurel?"
"Sit," I said. "Please."
He obliged, confusion creasing his brow.
Isabela planted herself at his shoulder like a flag. "We were just catching up," she said.
"Raise your glass," I said. "Everyone—please listen."
There's a moment before the world answers, the way everyone inhales before a storm.
12
"I brought documents," I said, and set the printed screenshots and messages on the table.
"No," Samuel said, color draining.
"Yes," I said. "Read them."
"She’s making a scene," Isabela whispered, cheeks hollow in its own shade.
"Read," I told them.
Samuel laughed weakly. "Laurel this is—"
"That's your purchase record. That's the screenshot of you telling Isabela that 'her story would make me cut ties if necessary,'" I said. "Those are the posts she deleted. Those are the messages where she admits she wanted me out, and that she bought the devices to make it look like I had cheated."
"You can't be—" he started.
"Watch," Daisy said to the room. "These were saved before she deleted them."
People leaned in. A partner clicked a phone camera, because human beings believe what they can keep. Someone murmured: "My God."
Samuel’s face froze in stages.
13
"You told people I cheated," I said. "You asked her to create evidence so you could leave me with the blame. You used my online accounts, Samuel. You put condoms in my coat to create a narrative."
"No," he said, first denial.
"Yes," I said. "You told her to 'save the screenshots' and to 'post something to make her jealous' and then you signed out of her accounts when the posts started working. You then used my old device to make purchases to be 'found' later."
He went from smug to stunned, clutching at words no longer ready to be thrown.
"Isabela, explain yourself," I said.
She tried to smile. "I was lonely," she said. "I was hurt. I wanted—"
"Avoid responsibility?" I finished. "You wanted to sabotage my relationship so Samuel would return to you."
A wave of reactions rose in the room.
"Who would do that?" someone whispered.
"Sweetheart," a client murmured to his companion. "That's savage."
14
Isabela’s expression crumpled from performance to real panic.
"No—no, I didn't—" she stammered. "I was making a mistake! I—"
Samuel’s face moved through a terrifying sequence: denial, anger, then the flicker of shame.
"This is evidence that you manipulated both of us," I said. "You deleted the posts, then later tried to disappear them completely. You deleted messages. You lied to your friends."
"That's not true!" he shouted, the only raised voice in the room, as if volume could pull truth to him.
"Then stop shouting," I said. "Read your own messages."
15
As they read, people circled. Phones took pictures. The receptionist's eyes were wet. Someone started whispering: "This is courtroom-ready." Another: "How could he—"
Samuel moved, desperate. "You can't do this here," he said. "You can't expose me."
"This isn't expose," I said. "This is truth."
"You're ruining us," he said, for the second time trying to perform injury.
"Wouldn't want truth in public?" Daisy asked. "Because the truth is a little inconvenient for you, so you prefer to spin a story private and tragic?"
Isabela suddenly lunged for his arm. "We can fix this," she whispered.
"Fix it how?" I demanded loudly. "Run again? Blame someone else? Keep ruining people?"
16
People who had once joked with Samuel in the firm looked at him differently now. Clients whispered. Partners who had smiled at his charm now looked carefully, eyebrows knitting. The event had shifted—no longer a friendly gathering but a small tribunal.
Samuel's face went pale. He finally dropped his eyes.
"No one else will assume anything now," he said in a small voice, like a man who had lost the script.
Isabela tried to plead with eyes turned sharkish to soft. "I—I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't unring clocks," Daisy said. "You made a pattern of creating scandal."
The room's tone hardened. Some people stepped away. A woman I worked with, who'd been friendly with Isabela months ago, crossed the room and said, "I won't have someone like that as a friend."
17
Samuel's reactions shifted—first flinty anger, then frantic denial, then the faint outline of apology.
"Please," he said, voice cracked. "Laurel, I didn't mean—"
"You didn't mean to lie? Or didn't mean to get caught?" I asked.
He went silent. The room bristled with the presence of witnesses. People were recording. Someone whispered: "You can delete that, but it’s on every phone here."
18
Isabela’s performance collapsed. She whimpered, then blamed me in a long, flailing sentence that made fewer and fewer people take her at face value.
"I'm pregnant," she said suddenly, as if the word could make the room tilt in her favor.
"You lied to me about that," Daisy said sharply.
"My doctor—" Isabela tried.
"Is there proof?" someone asked.
No one could produce proof. She started to cry, real and loud.
19
A cluster of colleagues moved closer.
"Samuel," said a junior partner I trusted, "you've got offers. The company you've been interviewing with, the one that wanted ethical coders, they won't want PR disasters. Numerous clients are here. I know one won't touch your startup after this."
His face registered fear for the first time.
"Is that... true?" he asked, to the room.
"Yes," the partner said. "They have watched."
Business consequences arrived quicker than personal redemption. Someone else murmured that a mutual friend had been asked politely to "step back" from introducing him to people. Invitations to events stopped mid-sentence as people looked at Samuel like a problem.
20
"Don't make a drama," Samuel begged finally, his voice croaking. "I didn't do it for this."
"You did it for companionship," I said.
"Please," he said, sinking into a chair. "I'm sorry."
The room's responses turned ugly. A few people whispered. Others spat out brief judgments. People who had been his allies looked away. Cameras kept clicking.
Isabela’s face changed from actress to child to shattered woman. She scrubbed a hand across her face and staggered backward, fainting.
21
She hit the floor in a tangle of limbs and fabric.
People gasped. Someone shouted for water. The firm's partner on duty bent to check her pulse. The public punishment in that moment was not only the exposure of deceit but seeing the manipulator fall apart.
Isabela's reaction moved: surprise, then denial — "I didn't mean this!" — then frantic pleading, finally collapse.
"Someone call her mother," a client said. "This is insane."
22
Samuel stood frozen, watched Isabela carried out by two men. His face was hollow. He mouthed apologies to me, then to the floor. It was a prayer without God.
The firm’s managing partner cleared his throat. "We don't tolerate that kind of behavior," he said. "We expect our employees to maintain professional boundaries. There will be conversations about client work. Also, we won't host events involving potential PR issues."
That avoided the legal consequences, but the social ones were already in motion.
23
By the next morning, messages were waiting. Offers were postponed. Invitations rescinded. People forwarded the screenshots. HR made notes.
Samuel called, then texted, then emailed. I ignored them all. Daisy and I went to a café and watched the ripple of gossip like a storm front.
"I'm sorry you had to do that," she said. "But you were right."
"It had to be public," I said. "He tried to write the story alone."
"And he paid for it," she said.
24
Isabela posted a long, shaky apology that read like a drama: "I was wrong. I misled. I'm sorry." People reacted with different emotions: anger, pity, disgust.
She reached out to Samuel afterward asking to reconcile. He refused, abruptly. He had discovered, through the fallout, that many of the people who had defended him had quietly decided their social calendars could do without him.
25
Weeks later, I learned she had gone abroad. Samuel left the city after failing to keep job offers; he worked remotely until he couldn't. He tried to appear on social media like a man reclaiming life—but I watched his follower counts drop like coins.
Meanwhile, I locked the past carefully. I worked, I learned, I fought cases.
26
When the firm gave me the opportunity to handle a divorce case, I threw myself into it.
The plaintiff—a woman in her sixties—wanted the husband to be held accountable. He had been unfaithful and manipulative. My client wanted security and dignity.
I told her, "Don't be gentle. If you don't fight, someone else will take what is yours."
We collected proof: bank statements, a hotel ledger, pictures. We won.
27
It was in the small victories that I regained myself.
Sebastian watched me. He didn't praise me loudly; he didn't try to make me into a project. He just slid files across and demanded precision. In the quiet, he taught me how to fold law into life.
One night, when the rain had made the city glossy, he drove me home. We parked under a street lamp where the world looked like a watercolor.
"You should be more forgiving of yourself," he said.
"Forgiving myself?" I echoed.
He put a folder on my lap. "You need to keep building things."
28
We began with work. He challenged me; I met him. There were small kindnesses: he found me my favorite tea when the supply ran out. He refused to accept flattery when it slid toward my old life. He was steady like that—able to be cruel to arguments and warm to coffee.
One drunken night after a bad week, I kissed him.
"That was my fault," he said later, steady.
"It was mutual," I said.
"Then we'll discuss it later."
29
We moved slowly. Not because of caution, but because we were both careful about not becoming the kind of story we had been forced to survive.
At first I thought we would be an office rumor. We weren't. He became the man who hunted down errors in my brief and then watched me like a lighthouse would its sea.
He proposed at my birthday. Friends and family squeezed in a small room. Balloons bobbed. He slid a ring into my hand and said, "Will you?"
"Yes," I said.
30
The wedding planning felt strange: a chapter closing and another beginning.
A letter arrived on the day I signed the cake vendor contract. It had no return address.
It was from Samuel.
"May your future be happy," he wrote in a tidy, clipped line.
I read it on the stoop of my office, and folded it once before I dropped it into the bin.
Sebastian stood at the door, watching me.
"What's that?" he asked.
"A leftover," I answered.
31
The truth is, the punishment was not a single moment. It was the way everyone around Samuel and Isabela shrank away. It was the whispers, the canceled offers, the lost credibility. It was a public unmaking: colleagues removed him from groups, clients cut contact, friends stopped answering texts. That was the kind of public punishment that matters in a city that sells reputation like property.
His reactions in that public unmaking were a study: puffed confidence, then disbelief, then denial, then outrage, then pleading, and finally a hollow, embarrassed silence as the crowd shifted away. Isabela's arc was similar but ended in collapse—public fainting, a desperate apology, then flight.
32
On the day of my rehearsal dinner, a few people from my work came. Someone raised their glass: "To Laurel, who taught some people how to be better—or at least, how to be honest."
I looked at Sebastian and thought of all the small things that made him steady: the way he'd frown at an inaccuracy in a brief, the way he'd reach into a drawer and pull out a forgotten umbrella when rain started, the thing where he would tuck a paper napkin into my bag "just in case."
"Do you regret?" he asked once, the night after the rehearsal dinner, as we walked home.
"About what?" I asked, breath cold.
"About being with me," he said. "About not being what you expected."
"I regret the person who hurt me," I said. "I don't regret healing."
33
That day in the firm lounge—the public moment—was my vindication and my cost. I had wanted only to be believed. I had wanted witnesses who could make the facts louder than his charm. In that sense, the punishment was a necessity.
The crowd had been the jury and the firm became the courtroom. Cameras, whispers, the collective leaning in—that's what turned private deceit into public consequence.
34
A year later, when I walked down an aisle, it was not because I had learned to trust blindly. It was because I had learned to choose someone who watched me and chose me each day. Sebastian held my hand and whispered, "You made the right calls."
"Sometimes I had to yell," I said.
"You didn't yell. You told the truth. That's louder."
We laughed. Our friends cheered. Somewhere, someone took a photo.
35
A small box of paper sat in my drawer: the printed screenshots, the posts, the purchases.
I kept them not as trophies, but as a map of how I got here.
Years from that night in the firm lounge, if I pulled out those pages, they'd smell slightly of toner and time. They'd show the same progression: smugness, performance, denial, collapse.
36
There are things I remember as sharply as the click of a camera. The way a condom appeared in my file. The way a message said "Don't tell her, it'll be funny." The way people took pictures that night in the firm like evidence being filed. The way Isabela's face went from acting to ruined.
"Did you ever want to go back?" Daisy asked me once.
"Sometimes I miss comfort," I admitted. "But I don't miss the explanation."
37
In the end, Samuel and Isabela paid in different currencies.
Isabela paid with the collapse of her social life and the knowledge that she had hurt someone in a malicious way. She left the country with a letter of apology, a small bag, and a hospital bill for something she later told me she could not keep.
Samuel paid with reputation, with job offers retracting at the last moment, with friends who did not return his calls. He tried to beg, to bargain, to reconstruct stories, but the reeds of his credibility had been cut.
Both of them, in public, lost what they'd used to harm me: their influence and the presumption of innocence in people's eyes.
38
On quiet nights, I sometimes open old messages, not to relive, but to check that the knot has been tied. The knot is there, tight and firm, and for that I am grateful.
"Do you still keep his letter?" Sebastian asked once, when I tossed some old bills.
"No," I said. "I threw it away."
He smiled. "Good."
39
I don't think revenge was my aim. Exposure was a word that fit better. I wanted truth to be visible, because in the world I've chosen—one of filings and witnesses—truth is what saves you.
I went on to win cases, to help women like my client get what they deserved. I learned to be careful and fierce, to prepare evidence and to stand still while the world watched.
One night, near our first anniversary, Sebastian and I found ourselves in the firm lounge. The event was quiet. I ran a finger over the back of a printed sheet—the same one that had been in front of the room years ago. It felt ordinary.
"Do you ever think about that night?" he asked.
"Sometimes," I said. "Only to keep the lesson."
He kissed my forehead.
40
If anyone wonders how to punish someone who lies in private and ruins lives, the answer is simple: bring a quiet, documented truth into a loud room and let witnesses do the rest.
When people change their minds about you, it is rarely because of words alone. It is because the social ledger has shifted. People take notes. They choose sides. They walk away.
41
The last time I saw Samuel was six months before the wedding. He sent me a note: "I hope you're happy."
I stared at it for a beat and then nodded, though he couldn't see me. I tossed it into the bin.
He was a bad part of my history, not my ending.
42
At the wedding, someone whispered: "You were brave."
"Not brave," I corrected, gripping Sebastian's hand as vows began. "Patient. Prepared."
The camera clicked. I walked on.
The End
— Thank you for reading —