Just a little pay back

Saturday began with Sam already in the house.

He worked from home again. The sound of his voice on calls drifted through the halls, and every time I passed an open doorway his eyes followed me. By mid-morning the comments had started-quiet, pointed remarks about how calm I seemed, how often my phone lit up, how strange it was that people had begun pairing my name with his brother's in the same breath.

Was he expecting me to be hysterical? I did fire back at him a few days ago. 

I did not answer. I took coffee and a plate of food to the studio and locked the door.

I stayed there through lunch.

The space still smelled of turpentine and dust. I walked the length of it while I ate, measuring with my eyes. A toilet could go in the far corner. A narrow changing area beside it. A simple mattress for the nights the house felt impossible. The thought of making the room more completely mine settled somewhere under my ribs and stayed there, warm and private.

I will soon have this place to myself.

Gossip had reached even the quieter corners of the family orbit: that Ben was the dream husband, that some people suspected he was the brother I had actually married.

Crazy internet and their theories. When they don't get enough information, they just create information.

The families kept the details sealed, but the rumor itself moved freely. I hated how much the idea steadied me. I hated more that it made me smile without permission.

The butterfly drawing was nearly finished. 

I had started it the same night Ben sent the photograph. A single damaged wing, the body angled as if it had only just stopped struggling. The lines were cleaner than my usual work, the colors restrained. For once the piece did not feel like it was fighting me. It felt honest. I worked through the afternoon with a low, wordless singing under my breath, the kind that only appears when the hand and the mind agree. When the last glaze settled I stepped back, felt the rare clean pride of something completed, and took a photograph.

I sent it to Ben without a caption.

I was still looking at the screen, the corner of my mouth lifted, when the studio door opened.

Sam stood there. His gaze dropped to the phone in my hand and the expression on my face. Something ugly moved across his features.

"Which man are you texting now?" he asked. "Or do you even bother choosing?"

I locked the screen. "Get out."

He stepped inside and shut the door. "You walk around this house smiling like you've already been chosen. People talk about you and my brother as if the rest of us are scenery. You're a slut who can't even hide it properly."

The word landed flat and deliberate. He moved before I could answer-grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise, spun me, and shoved me aside.

 His other hand found the large canvas on the easel, the one I had been building for weeks, and drove his fist through the center of it. The sound of stretching linen tearing was louder than I expected. Paint and fabric collapsed inward.

I hit him. "You bastard!" 

The slap cracked across his face hard enough to turn his head. Heat flooded my palm.

"You don't get to destroy my work," I said, voice shaking with more rage than fear. "And you don't get to call me names while you're the one sneaking around. Who was the woman on the terrace, Sam? The one you were kissing in the dark. Was it Lena?"

His cheek reddened. He laughed once, short and disbelieving.

"You're inventing things now."

I unlocked my phone and held up the photograph. Grainy but it was my evidence. His back. A woman's hands. The angle unmistakable even without a face.

He stared at it for a second, then snatched the phone, turned it over, and smashed the screen against the edge of the table. Glass spider-webbed under the blow. He dropped the pieces.

"AI," he said. "Or a convenient shadow. No face. No proof. You're a liar."

"I heard you on the island." The words came out steady. "You told her she couldn't come to the honeymoon. You said it was family custom. You used her name. Lena. And I saw her fvcking call!"

Something in his expression flickered. Then it shut.

I stepped closer anyway.

"Your paranoid act isn't cute. If Ben wants me, it will be because you aren't good at a single thing in this pathetic life of yours."

The room went very quiet.

Sam stood still for a long moment. Then he laughed-low, almost soft, the sound of someone who had decided to stop pretending the conversation was about jealousy alone.

"Lena," he said, tasting the name. "She was supposed to marry Ben years ago. She refused. Said she wouldn't belong to a violent beast. That was her word. Beast."

He walked toward me slowly.

"So if you think you have something with him, understand what you are. You're payback. A convenient answer to an old humiliation. That's all."

My stomach turned.

He stopped close enough that I had to tip my head to meet his eyes.

"You put so much hope in him," Sam said. "Maybe you should ask yourself who told me to marry you in the first place."

The sentence hung in the air between us.

He looked at the destroyed paintings, then back at my face, and smiled without warmth.

"You were a failed prank, Katherine. Nothing more."

He left the studio without closing the door.

I stood in the wreckage-torn canvas, broken phone, the butterfly piece still resting on the smaller easel like it belonged to a different day-and felt the clean pride of an hour earlier curdle into something colder and far more complicated.

A failed prank? Payback? 

Lies!