After Discovering the Hearing Aid's Secret, I Left

1.

Raymond James had a hearing problem. When I talked to him, only half of it got through.

Ask him to help around the house and he only ever did the first half of the job; the finishing always fell to me.

He shorted the weight on groceries and left tasks half done.

Every time he heard it wrong, Raymond apologized.

"Sorry. The hearing aid's old. It isn't very sensitive."

Then one time in bed, when things got too rough, one of his hearing aids fell out.

It landed on my face, and from it came a burst of laughter.

"Come on, Raymond, put your back into it. We still can't hear anything over here."

I shoved Raymond off me and picked up the thing shaped like a hearing aid. It was an earpiece.

"This hearing problem of yours. You've been lying to me the whole time?"

Raymond admitted it without a flicker of shame.

"It's more of a thrill this way."

A yelp came through the earpiece.

"She didn't just figure it out, did she?"

Only then did I understand. Three years with him, and it had all been for a bet.

I looked at Raymond, quiet.

He'd come clean. So I was done acting too.

1.

I called it off right there. Raymond didn't try to stop me.

He sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette.

I have bronchitis. I can't stand cigarette smoke.

I coughed until it hurt. Raymond acted like he didn't see.

"You should know I've got better options than you."

"But leave me, and can you find anyone better?"

The smoke blurred his face, and I said nothing.

As a boyfriend, Raymond had honestly been perfect.

If I got cold at night, all I had to do was call out, and no matter how tired he was, he'd get up and tuck a blanket around me.

If I mentioned wanting dumplings in passing, he'd cross half the city and stand in line under the blazing sun to get them for me.

He seemed to read what I was thinking, and gave a cold laugh.

My last illusion was ripped away without mercy.

"Everything I did while chasing you, the guys fed me through the earpiece."

"You didn't actually think you were worth me putting in the effort myself, did you?"

Watching this face I'd loved for three years say all this with no expression at all,

even braced for it, my chest still gave a helpless twist of pain.

The smoke stung my eyes. I forced the words out, needing to hear it again.

"So all that pain about your family, all the good you did for me, none of it was real?"

Raymond gave an indifferent smile.

"If I didn't play it that way, how would you ever let your guard down for me?"

"You're pathetically stupid, you know. A lie that clumsy, and you still swallowed it."

My nails dug deep into my palm.

The reason I'd believed those lies was that my own family really was exactly like the story Raymond invented.

The pain he made up had actually happened to me.

It was that shared suffering that made me lower my defenses and let Raymond in.

I stared into his eyes, trying to find an answer there.

"Why me, of all people?"

The smile left Raymond's face for a moment.

When he spoke again, his tone had shifted entirely.

"Because that night at the bar, you were the one waiting on our table."

Such a careless reason.

Not even that I resembled her somehow. Only that I happened to walk by that day.

Just a bet. It didn't need much of a reason.

So the first time Raymond and I met was much earlier than I remembered.

I'd thought we met when he came to apply at the coffee shop where I worked part-time.

Somewhere in the small talk, I'd been amazed to discover it.

With the matching pasts and the shared interests, we were soon telling each other everything.

Now I could see that meeting had been a carefully planned hunt.

I stood up in silence and picked my clothes up off the floor, putting them on one piece at a time.

I looked back at Raymond one last time.

"Raymond, people who betray love get what's coming to them."

Raymond lit another cigarette, his smile careless and mocking.

"People who don't take love seriously don't end well either."

"Bianca Sullivan, let's just wait and see. Which one of us gets what's coming first."

Raymond's words stopped me cold.

Because at the very start, I hadn't been all that sincere about this relationship either.

I got together with Raymond only because I needed someone to help carry my exhaustion.

Someone who could give me a little emotional support, someone who'd bring me warmth the moment I needed it.

It was only after the breakup that I understood how much more terrifying the James family's power was than I'd ever imagined.

I used to think how alike we were. Only now did I see how wide the gap between us really was.

His scandals were splashed all over Metro City.

The woman on his arm went from an it-girl actress to a fresh-faced new model, then to some heiress.

I turned off my phone and wiped the dust from the frame beside my hand.

The face in it looked exactly like Raymond's.

That was the second reason I'd stayed with him.

The alarm on my phone went off, right on time.

Half an hour until my evening shift started.

I gathered my things and left.

After tonight's work, I'd hand in my resignation to the manager.

I'd only taken this part-time job to buy Raymond a new hearing aid.

But just last week, when I finally used the money I'd saved so long to give him the new one.

He'd looked over the packaging and taken it with a strange half-smile.

"You've worked so hard, baby."

Only now did I understand that odd expression on his face.

Everything I'd worn myself out doing was, to him, nothing but a one-woman circus, a fool loving no one but herself.

I'd barely changed into my uniform when a coworker shoved a tray into my hands.

"Bianca, my stomach's suddenly killing me. Can you take this up to VIP Room 666 for me?"

I walked into the room and saw that familiar hearing-aid box on the table.

The packaging had been torn open and left in a mess, the hearing aid tossed carelessly to one side.

Raymond sat at the table with a woman beside him.

A face I'd never once seen in any of the tabloids.

One hand toyed with the hearing aid, the other was wrapped around Natalie Fox's waist.

The group was talking and hadn't noticed me come in.

"A cheap hearing aid. How's that supposed to compare to the earpiece Natalie gave him?"

"The one you gave him? Raymond wore that for three whole years!"

They traded glances, eyes full of mockery.

"That girl worked herself half to death just to buy Raymond a hearing aid."

"She actually thought he wasn't answering her because the aid was broken."

"When really Raymond just couldn't be bothered with her, faking the whole hearing problem!"

Raymond looked up then, and our eyes met across the room.

His hand stayed where it was, at Natalie's waist.

"Now that Natalie's back, you're not going to keep pretending, are you, Raymond?"

"So what are you going to do with this hearing aid?"

Raymond's voice was flat.

"Throw it out."

He waved me over and tossed the hearing aid into my arms.

"Here. It's yours."

I didn't take it. I let it drop to the floor.

Raymond's friend recognized me, eyes flicking back and forth between me and him.

"You aren't you"

Raymond looked at the hearing aid on the floor and lazily lifted his eyes.

"That hearing aid cost thirteen grand. This part-time job pays you thirty an hour."

"And you're just going to leave it on the floor?"

Natalie covered her mouth and laughed from the side.

"Don't tell me she's got other income now and can't be bothered with pocket change like that?"

I looked at her coldly.

"You spread lies about me for no reason, I can sue you for defamation."

Natalie laughed louder.

"Lies?"

"Miss Sullivan, I'm not talking out of thin air."

Right in front of me, Natalie reached into Raymond's pocket and pulled out his phone.

"I'm sure no one here will have any trouble recognizing whose voice this is."

3.

She tapped the file, and a low, suggestive sound filled the whole room in an instant.

I lunged forward and grabbed Raymond by the collar.

"You recorded it?"

Raymond stayed perfectly calm.

"Natalie isn't always with me. To make her feel secure, I had a recorder built into the earpiece."

"That way she can know what I'm doing anytime she wants."

The noise on our side drew the manager over.

After a short struggle, they had me pinned.

In the chaos, the hearing aid dropped to the floor.

I was shoved down, and from where I lay I saw a shoe come down on it.

That hearing aid, the one I'd traded countless hours of part-time work for, was ground into a scatter of fragments right in front of me.

Natalie kept pushing.

"Manager Dickerson, an employee with conduct like this, you're really going to keep her on?"

"Anyone who didn't know better would think this was some shady place you're running here."

Manager Dickerson hedged, mumbling that he would certainly discipline me severely.

"Fire me. I have no problem with that."

"But these trumped-up charges today, I won't be admitting to any of them."

I finished and turned to leave, but Natalie blocked my way.

"This isn't over yet. Where do you think you're rushing off to?"

She pointed at the scratch on her leg.

"My legs are insured for fifty million. You hurt my leg, so how are you going to pay for that?"

I looked at the nearly healed cut on her leg, and without thinking I turned toward Raymond.

"That wasn't me..."

Natalie planted herself in front of him.

"You want him to plead for you? Take a look at what you are first."

"You were a bet, nothing more. You don't even rate as my stand-in."

Raymond wrapped an arm around Natalie as if to soothe her.

"We were together three years, after all. I don't want to make this hard on you."

"Kneel down and apologize to Natalie, and we'll call it done."

Two bodyguards stepped out from the corner and pressed me to the floor.

Raymond's friends laughed and held up their phones, countless cameras aimed at my bloodless face.

"Come on. Apologize to the camera."

When I wouldn't open my mouth, Natalie slapped me across the face.

"Give her too much kindness and she starts thinking she's somebody."

"Fine. Then we'll open your mouth another way."

She glanced at Raymond. He held up his phone, and on the screen was a photo of my grandmother.

"Bianca, that hospital where your grandmother's being treated? I own a few shares in it too."

I heard the threat in his voice.

"You know full well Natalie set me up on purpose!"

Raymond rose to his feet, expressionless, looking down at me.

"Nat doesn't need a reason for anything she wants to do."

"For her, I can give up on being reasonable."

He stroked the top of Natalie's head, gentle about it.

"Don't be impatient. Whatever she owes you, she'll pay back sooner or later."

"It won't be long before I have her begging to apologize to you."

Raymond lifted a hand, signaling the bodyguards to let me go, then walked off with Natalie on his arm.

4.

The grip on my arm loosened, and I finally got a thin scrap of air.

Then someone else blocked my way.

Adam Dickerson slid a bill across the table toward me.

"This is the list of everything damaged tonight. Settle it before you go."

On the list, along with the shattered cups and glasses, was the entire tab from Raymond's room.

I pushed the bill back and pointed at the line for the room charges.

"I'm not paying for that part."

"You should go to Raymond for it."

Adam slammed a hand down on the table.

"If you hadn't gotten Mr. James worked up, why would he have walked out without paying?"

"And now you want me to go collect from Mr. James? You're trying to send me straight into his line of fire!"

Adam played it out to the bitter end. He dragged it into the dead of night, forced me to pay, and only then let me leave.

The moment I stepped out the door, the hospital called.

"Is this a family member of Gertrude Whitney?"

"The patient's condition has changed. She needs emergency surgery!"

I thought of Raymond's threat and clenched the phone hard.

"I'm on my way right now!"

I got to the hospital as fast as I could, but Grandma's surgery didn't start.

The staff's tone left no room.

"You'll need to pay five hundred thousand first, or the surgery can't begin."

"Five hundred thousand?"

I repeated it, unable to believe it.

I'd just been forced to pay that fine. All I had left on me was two hundred dollars.

"Please, I'm begging you, work with me. Start the surgery first, and I'll borrow the money right away"

"I won't hold back on the money, this is a person's life, I'm begging you"

My pleading was cut off, cold.

"Pay first, then surgery. That's the new rule the higher-ups set an hour ago."

"So stop making this hard for me."

I borrowed from every lending platform I could find, and I was still fifty thousand short.

The fine I'd paid half an hour ago was exactly fifty thousand.

The nurse kept pressing me, and I stared in silence at the four hundred fifty thousand on my phone.

A passerby in a face mask went by and pressed a card into my hand.

Looking at the few large words on it, my fingertips went white where they gripped it.

After a few seconds of hesitation, I made up my mind.

With shaking hands, I dialed the number on the card.

The other end used a voice changer, a faint hum of static passing through my ear.

I found a room, and following his instructions, numbly took off my clothes one piece at a time.

I chose the photos, hesitated for a beat, and still pressed send.

Fifty thousand landed quickly.

I took the money and rushed to pay off the surgery fees in full.

The moment my strung-tight nerves went slack, something felt wrong.

I opened the transaction record and found that the fifty thousand transfer had come from a private account.

Raymond's warning rang in my ears again.

But I couldn't afford to think about any of that. I only prayed Grandma's surgery would go smoothly.

The red light over the operating room stayed on for a long time, and in the end they wheeled out a stretcher draped in white cloth.

"We did everything we could to save her, but the surgery started too late"

I couldn't hold it in, and the sob broke out of me.

"No, this can't be"

A few people walked past, and the way they looked at me was strange.

They didn't bother to hide the contempt in their eyes.

"Isn't that the woman from online"

"If it were just the audio, I'd still believe she got tricked, but now even the photos are out"

"Right! A woman who takes those kinds of photos on her own, what kind of decent person could she be?"

I turned toward the sound, confused, and the muttering only grew louder.

"Her grandma didn't drop dead from the shock of seeing those shameless photos, did she?"

Raymond stepped out of the crowd.

"Nothing's confirmed yet. Don't rush to conclusions."

"After all, she just lost her grandmother. She's in a very bad state."

The words looked like he was defending me, but they read more like him quietly confirming every rumor.

I rushed at him and shoved him hard.

"You killed my grandmother!"

Raymond pushed my hand aside, smiling.

"Miss Sullivan, you shouldn't say things like that."

He leaned close to my ear and lowered his voice.

"Bianca, who do you think gets their comeuppance faster, you or me?"

Before I could answer, a slap landed across my face.

Natalie came in like a storm.

"A born whore, of course. You got your own family killed and you still have it in you to seduce other men!"

Raymond stood there without moving, and didn't explain.

He let Natalie grab my hair and drag me into the center of the crowd.

The slaps came one after another, the sound growing crisper each time.

The onlookers got worked up and started grabbing whatever was in their hands to throw at me.

My hair hung loose over my face, and with the swelling, my vision blurred more and more.

Until that familiar face appeared, shielding me from the front.

I thought Raymond had finally softened.

The next second, I heard his voice ring out a few meters away.

"Who are you? What's your relationship to Bianca?"