Face-Slapping13 min read
You Look Back — I Was Waiting
ButterPicks15 views
I never thought the city would look the same and not the same at once.
"You still came back," he said, and the words felt like a hand closing the door behind me.
Alessandro Moeller pressed me against a marble wall in the hotel corridor. His fingers found the back of my head like they had a map. "You still know how to come back, huh."
I turned my cheek away. "Mr. Moeller, please, behave. My boyfriend is coming to pick me up. He'll misunderstand."
He snorted. "Heh."
Alessandro's jaw clenched. One hand kept my back steady, the other scraped the shell of my ear. "You grew up, Monica. You got a boyfriend. Who is he? Bring him out and let me look."
His eyes were wet at the corners. He tightened me. He kissed the hollow of my ear like it was a claiming.
I pushed him away and rubbed my ear. "Alessandro, that's messed up."
He traced my ear again, calm as if naming the weather. "Yeah, I'm messed up. I waited six years. Your little boyfriend doesn't love you enough to keep you from coming out with men at night."
1
When Nathan Brandt came to my apartment and started complaining, it had already been a week since Alessandro had found me at that dinner.
Nathan stood at my door and widened his eyes as if my apartment were a stage. "Monica, your people are so unfriendly! Do you know how badly I've been treated?"
I held a mug of hot water and raised an eyebrow. "How badly?"
"Everyone is bullying the new guy!" Nathan sat on the couch and flapped his hands. "I mean, I have a company in Europe, okay, I'm sort of known. But I'm new here. I am not a threat to Moeller Enterprises."
I sipped and nodded like it made sense. "Mmm. That's awful."
Nathan wound his hands together. "Why would Alessandro single me out? I didn't offend him."
"You offended him," I said carefully.
Nathan froze. "Excuse me? I would lick his boots before offending him."
I looked at him. He wanted an answer badly. "Maybe it's because of me."
Nathan blinked. "You? How could you—"
"I told him you were my boyfriend."
Nathan gasped like I'd shoved him. "You lied about that? That's slander! I'm going now to tell Alessandro I like men."
"Don't," I said quickly. "Don't go. I'll help you."
"Help me how?"
"I'll fix this."
He looked like he'd been promised fireworks. "Fix it? Sweetie, how are you going to fix someone as big as Alessandro Moeller?"
"Watch me."
2
The first time I met Alessandro, I was sixteen, still half spoiled and half untried. He was eighteen, tall as a tree and quiet as a storm.
I found him in the senior building because my brother, as always, had been late. I tugged at the sleeve of a boy who looked bored. Alessandro didn't even look away from his game screen. I felt small and angry.
"Who are you looking for?" he asked in a voice like a low bell.
"I'm not a kid," I said. "I'm a freshman."
"So?" he said.
"I'm trying to find Ting Chen," I said. "He's my brother."
He smirked, like I was a puzzle he had time to take apart. "You sure he's in here? He doesn't go to our class."
I was stubborn. "You're lying."
Alessandro's black eyes flicked with something. "Smart. You even know I'm lying."
He pointed to a place by the trash cans and said, "He isn't here."
I walked away, furious and humiliated that a senior had the right to call me a kid.
"Thanks," I muttered over my shoulder. The world of scuffed shoes and lockers seemed bigger than me.
He called after me, "You say thank you nice. Cute."
That word "cute" lit me up like a match. From then on, I hated him and was weirdly grateful.
3
Alessandro was a rumor turned human—stories of his father, of debts, of a violent streak. People whispered that he was dangerous. But what the rumors didn't say was that he guarded those he cared about like a crab with claws.
When large girls from the trade school tried to bully me after class, I was shoved and spat on and pinned. A brick nearly landed on the leader, and then Alessandro walked out of nowhere, cigarette between his lips, and never said a word to me until the last girl was dragged away.
"I don't hit girls," he said, and flicked cigarette ash on her face.
I blinked up at him, bloody-lipped. In that second, I fell in love. It was a stupid, sudden thing, like a firecracker in my chest.
"Thank you," I said.
He let me be. He walked me home. He would come by to tutor me. He had a habit of being both fierce and indifferent, and I liked both sides.
One night, at his bar job, I pretended to be a grown-up in a tiny strap dress. A man tried to flirt; Alessandro finished his drink and slammed it back as if tasting him was an insult. He scooped me up and pulled me to a seat under his jacket.
"You're indecent," he said, and my lips felt incendiary.
We kissed later under the streetlamps. He said, "Don't let go of my hand." I said, "I won't."
4
We were childish and stubborn and blind with each other. He called me "kid" and "Ting" in a way only he could, and I teased him and became oddly fierce for his approval. He stayed up nights to code and to study, and he drank bitter coffee to stay awake.
Then everything broke.
My father's company was robbed from the inside. Money disappeared. Men came to the house and wanted to fight. Paperwork and truth turned ugly. My father couldn't face them; the pressure drove him to jump. My brother, defending the family, was beaten to death in the street. My mother couldn't wake up after that. We had nothing. I packed my things and fled with Mom to another country before dawn.
Alessandro tried to help. He tried to sell the software he had been building for years. He tried to beg and beg and beg. He couldn't save us fast enough. I chose to disappear to keep him safe.
5
Abroad, I watched my world shrink. I worked as a waitress, as a cleaner, as a model of guilt. My hands remembered petite, manicured things; they learned to scrub and pull and serve. I lied and said everything was fine to Mom, but she knew. One morning I came home with a measly pack of groceries and found a bottle empty and a letter. She had taken pills.
I could not save her. The grief felt like a physical failure.
I sat in that little room and read old posts I had saved—pictures of Alessandro, of me being held, of him being gentle. I stared until the shapes blurred.
Then Nathan found me.
"You're beautiful even like this," Nathan said when he found me on a day the sky was indifferent. He lit a cigarette like it was an apology. "You shouldn't hide like this."
"Why help me?" I asked.
"Because I was tired of watching someone else enjoy my life and being nothing," Nathan said. "Because you are stubborn and pretty and you make men want to be better."
He pulled me out of the mud like a gardener rescuing a plant. He taught me to work the stage, to smile wider, to change the world around me. He said he'd build a company and make me the center of it. He was a brilliant talker and a warm liar when he needed to be honest. I let him be my anchor.
6
Six years passed like a masked ball. I learned a new version of myself—smoke between my fingers, public smiles, glossy hair. Nathan kept me safe and steady as I climbed. We returned, not to my old life, but to a city that had noticed me. We were hungry and polished. I wore the armor of success like a second skin.
At the first banquet back, Alessandro sat across the room like a statue made of steel. He didn't look at me, or so I thought. He watched everyone else, his jacket immaculate and his jaw locked. I told a man—Alberto Koch, dignified and bland in a gold-rimmed frame—that Alessandro must be annoyed that night. Alberto smiled a thin smile and said, "Isn't Moeller always distant? Unexpected to see him here."
I smiled back, slid a card into his hand and said, loud enough for half the room to hear, "Actually, my father jumped when I was young."
There was a small silence. I added, "And guess what, Mr. Koch? The man who owns your client's company used Alessandro's software and then fired him because of rumors. In case you missed it: Alessandro loves to keep grudges."
I left with a flourish and a memory of Alessandro stepping out into the corridor, cigarette light like a tiny lighthouse.
7
He grabbed my wrist in the hallway. "You still know how to return," he said. The intensity in his voice made the still air tremble.
"Mr. Moeller, please, behave," I said again, but he looked at me like I had a scar he had been ignoring. "My boyfriend will be here."
"Boyfriend?" He breathed out a puzzled laugh. "You think you can hide behind that?"
He kissed me, claim and anger coiled together. "Break up with him," he said. "Bring him here. Let me meet him."
I told Nathan later. He laughed until he didn't. "Let him try," he said. "I'll handle it."
8
Months blurred with dinners and whispers. My face was on posters and on gossip threads. Nathan kept his hand on my back as if I were glass. Talent scouts and designers circled. Alessandro watched from shadows.
Then, at a fashion show where I was to close the night, someone tried to make me fall.
"You're closing," the makeup artist said. "They want you to shine."
I walked the runway, glittering. Halfway down, a light fixture loosened and began to tilt. The scream came before my body knew it. The fixture crashed down. Alessandro lunged, lifted me, and rolled us both off the stage.
Time turned into a condensed film: my ankle bent, the light clanged, heads turned. Alessandro muttered frantically, "Are you hurt? Talk to me."
"I'm fine," I managed. My ankle ached like an old bruise.
He glared at the floor and asked, "Who did this?"
They checked the cameras. The culprit was a woman—Justine Berg—an established "big sister" model who thought she owned backstage. She had tried to sabotage me to keep her throne. Word moved fast. She had the nerve to spill tears when she was caught.
Alessandro, the man who never wasted mercy, was furious enough to ruin her.
9
But the world loves spectacle, and I want you to see what the public punishment looked like, because it wasn't a headline; it was a reckoning.
We were in the green room after the collapse. The room hummed with breath. Designers clustered like wary animals. Alessandro had a way of making the room fall silent: he simply looked up.
"Who will take responsibility?" he asked.
The manager's mouth tightened. "We will—"
"Find footage," Alessandro said. He pointed at the monitor and they played it. A camera caught Justine's hands—she had loosened the bolts minutes before the show. The bolt was the size of a thumb; she had used a tiny screwdriver from her purse. Justine stood by a mirror, pretending to rearrange her wig when she was, in fact, dressed as a saboteur.
When the footage played, the room went cold. Justine's face shifted from teasing arrogance to a pale, graceless hunger for escape.
"That is enough," Alessandro said. He was calm. Too calm.
"How could you?" the show director whispered.
Justine's voice crawled out. "I—it's a misunderstanding—"
Alessandro cut her off. "Everyone saw." He pointed to the security guard at the door, who by then had called the club's legal counsel. The murmurs turned to a buzz. Phones came out. Someone recorded. The public loves to knead a scandal into a loaf of gossip.
Justine backed away until the dressing room wall held her, and then she realized there was nowhere to go.
"Please," she said. "Please, Mr. Moeller. I'm sorry. I—"
"Sorry?" Alessandro's voice was a low, precise blade. "You could have killed her. You could have crippled her career. Why?"
Justine fell on her knees. "I needed to keep my place. They promised me they'd make me a brand if I kept my seat."
"Who promised you?" someone shouted.
She looked up like a drowning woman gasping. "I can't—" She couldn't name names; her promised benefactors were shadowy and powerful. The room smelled of perfume and fear.
"Stand up," Alessandro ordered, and she did, weak and shaking.
He didn't hurt her. He didn't need to. He let the room be the judge.
The models gathered like an audience at a trial.
"Do you want to apologize to Monica?" Alessandro asked.
Justine's said yes and croaked it out. She tried to rise, took a step, and the crowd hissed. A woman I had once smiled at turned away and whispered, "She's disgusting."
Alessandro didn't let just an apology stand. He pulled the manager to the side and asked for security to escort Justine to the stage. "She will make amends," he said, which made everyone curious: what form would the amends take?
On the stage where the lights had just been witness to my fall, Alessandro instructed that the show continue. He wanted the spectacle to be complete. The director protested, then realized the PR value: people loved redemption and public humiliation in equal measure.
They wheeled a small podium out.
"Justine," Alessandro said, voice resonant enough for the first rows to pick it up. "You are being given the floor."
She trembled. She must have thought she would be forgiven. Instead, they thrust a microphone into her hand and turned the cameras on the screens in the foyer. This was no hush conversation. This was national.
"Say what you did. Tell everyone what you tried." Alessandro's stare could have been hot metal.
Her voice squeaked into the air: "I— I tried to delay the light. I thought if something happened to her, I'd stay number one. I—"
A gasp rippled. Someone filmed it and live-streamed. Comments began to rise like metal filings to a magnet: betrayer, liar, coward. Security moved around her like vultures.
"Now name the person who commissioned you," Alessandro demanded.
She faltered. The audience held breath like a held thing.
"My agent," she whispered. "Mr. Fischer."
"Mistake." Alessandro's tone was hard enough to cut glass. "You let him throw you away to keep your position."
People began to murmur aloud—journalists in heels took notes. Someone in the third row shouted, "Worker bees pay the price!" A younger model cried out, "We all survive by one another! How dare you—"
Justine's face shredded piece by piece. Her advantage was gone. The cameras traded her image with freeze-frames of her hand on the bolt. Her stomach tightened. You could see the story slip from her fingers.
Alessandro walked to the edge of the stage. He did not raise his hand to strike. Instead, he made the whole room her jury. He shifted the light so it hit her like a spotlight of consequence.
"Monica," he said quietly but loudly, "do you want anything?"
I remember my hands shaking. I had the power in me to ask for ruin or mercy. In that publicity-saturated room, I chose a different taste.
"Just tell the truth," I said. "Name who pushed you. Tell everyone the truth."
She stared at me like I had asked her to take a blade. Her lips quivered. "F-Fischer," she stammered. "He promised—"
People gasped; the name was not just a manager—he was a known backstage fixer. Security moved. Phones exploded. Journalists whispered, then rose like a swarm. Alessandro nodded once. It was not mercy. It was closure.
They escorted Justine out while the cameras still rolled. People outside the doors were waiting. They filmed her collapsing into a fury of reporters asking questions. She denied first, then screamed, then finally crumpled and begged for privacy. A group of young models used their phones to record her breakdown; some laughed, some cried. The footage flooded the feeds.
Justine's face changed colors: smug, then pale, then frantic, then small. She first denied, then tried bargaining, then collapsed into pleading. She begged for help and forgiveness in a voice that had never been used honestly. The onlookers' reactions were messy—some clapped quietly, some spat insults, some recorded. A child on the building steps held up a phone and streamed the scene for the world.
She left the industry that night. Not in an arrest, not in a court, but in a public ruin. Her "sponsors" disowned her. Her agent, Mr. Fischer, cut ties. She had been the product of a system that eats its own; Alessandro used the system to spit her back out.
Her hunger to keep the throne was punished by the very public nature of her fall. She tried to crawl back to the dressing room, but the door was locked. Men who had once patted her shoulder now stepped away. A photographer shoved a card at her and said, "Tell me your side." She did. It was small and brittle and pathetic. She begged me, then me the girl she had tried to destroy, for forgiveness.
"Please," she mouthed to me as the noise subsided, "forgive me."
I looked at her. I could feel the old version of myself—soft, naive, wanting to heal everyone—push up. But something else had grown in me—a coldness, a need to not be trampled again.
"Tell the truth to live," I said softly, and Alessandro squeezed my hand in the dark like an anchor. "Then start over in a new industry. Try honest work."
She tried to cry. Her mascara had run. Reporters buzzed. When she left, people outside threw phrases—"karma", "justice", "serves you right." Some people spat. Some recorded. She left with her dignity half-shredded, and the world devoured it like a morsel.
10
After that, Alessandro and I didn't speak in full sentences for days. Some nights he stared at me as if trying to understand whether I had become someone I wasn't. Other nights he held me so hard I thought I might crack.
"Why did you come back?" he asked once while we were sitting on the steps of the old school.
"Because I wanted to stop running," I said. "Because I couldn't live another day having you think I'd abandoned you."
He looked away, lips hard. "You did abandon me."
"And you tried to help me," I murmured. "You sold your life to save my family. You tried to tie up everything with codes and contracts and promises."
His hand found mine. "I sold my pride. I sold things I shouldn't have because I couldn't stand not knowing where you were."
I had no defense. My head bruised from guilt kept me quiet.
11
Later, Nathan came with the last piece of the story. He had been digging deep—he'd hired people, got into old files, called old friends.
"He tried to save you," Nathan told me. "After your father—he sold the software he'd been working on for years. He gave everything."
I cried then—not the flashy tears, but the kind that came out of the bottom of my chest. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"He tried. You ran," Nathan said with a grin that didn't reach his eyes. "He tried to find you for years. He almost did, many times. He'd show up to the one place you might be, and you'd just miss him. He did more than anyone would believe for you."
It made the nights make sense—the way the city felt smaller and yet Alessandro occupied so much room in me.
12
At the society birthday for Kristina Cash, where Nathan and I arrived in a small procession, Alessandro was there with that same storm over him. He came straight to me as if a cord still connected us by the sternum.
"Will you be mine?" I blurted, because the last six years had been a hard school in learning how to ask for things you want.
He blinked, and the world slowed. He knelt as if to hide the tremor in his knees and gently took my ankle in his hand—not in anger, but to check if my high heel had hurt. He looked up at me, eyes wet. "Do you want me, really? After everything?"
"Yes," I said.
"Then say it properly," he murmured, and I did. We stood there, red-eyed in the birthday hall full of chatter, and he said one word: "Okay."
We both laughed until we cried. People nearby weren't sure whether to applaud or pretend they hadn't seen. Alessandro wrapped his jacket around me and won't let me loose.
13
I am not the same girl who ran. I smoked to fit a life I didn't live, I learned to parry a smile at the right time, I learned how to survive in rooms filled with knives disguised as laughter. But underneath that armor, the girl who loved Alessandro still exists. I carry the memory of a little hand tugging mine in a hallway and the memory of his trying to buy the world to patch mine.
When I go to bed at night and he slips his palm over mine, I think of the public punishment room where Justine sat under hot lights and had the world watch her fall. I think of how the crowd's reaction—shame, laughter, scorn, pity—felt like a mirror for the cruelty we all sometimes do to one another.
I also think of how, when the light fixture tipped and the world could have ended, he did not hesitate. He rolled, he held, he protected. He could be violent, cold, ruthless—but then he'd press his forehead to mine and whisper, "Don't go again."
He waited. I came back.
The End
— Thank you for reading —