Humiliation

My life could be summed up in one word nowadays: **humiliation**.
Even though I accepted the risk when I first chose to ask Anton Alonzo for help, I never expected to be humiliated this deeply. Maybe, somewhere inside me, I still wanted to believe he was a misunderstood man who would help me if I asked sincerely. I was wrong.

I never expected Anton to shatter me like this. I expected coldness, maybe dismissiveness, even arrogance — but not this deliberate, precise humiliation.
What hurts most isn’t that he rejected me.
It’s that some part of me believed he wouldn’t.
I don’t know why.
I don’t know when I started thinking he had a conscience, or a hidden softness, or that the small things he did meant something real.
Maybe I saw what I *wanted* to see.
A version of him that only existed in the slivers of silence between the madness — in the way he’d unexpectedly soften, in the way he’d look at me like he was trying to understand something in me that even I didn’t understand.
I’m not a delusional idiot—there were signs. Signs that kept me from believing he was a bad man, things I thought I saw when no one else was looking… moments when we were alone, when he looked straight into my eyes like he was seeing the real Alice. Even during our absurd conversations, there were flashes where I felt I was seeing a real man with real feelings. But I never expected to be rejected and humiliated this brutally.
From day one, he lifted me up little by little—taking me to special lunches, licking my finger when I cut it, flying me to Hawaii, swimming with me, kissing me again and again, punching Daryl for me, taking me to the bazaar, speaking to me as if I were his equal, buying me that damn dress and taking me to the ball, arguing with his brother over me, and finally flying me to the hospital in a helicopter. And when I reached the top of this delusional skyscraper, he let me fall. Now I’ve smashed against the ground.
He was always unpredictable, and every time I made excuses for him. But not this time. No matter how hard I tried to believe he had his reasons, I couldn’t find any. He could have listened. He could have found a way to ensure the payback. Nobody is obligated to lend money, of course, but he could have turned me down with at least a little humanity.
So I sat on the floor of my bedroom-slash-living room in my underwear—because I couldn’t bring myself to get dressed—drinking the cheap wine I’d bought on the way home and crying over my miserable life.
I drank the whole bottle, hoping the misery would lift, but it didn’t. It collapsed onto my chest even heavier until I felt suffocated. My phone rang somewhere in the apartment, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Look at you, Alice. Your dream was sipping good wine in a Central Park apartment while watching the city. Yet here you are, drinking cheap wine on the cold stone floor of your efficiency apartment, crying because you spent five dollars on a crappy bottle instead of saving for your father’s debt. This was the lowest I could get—the bottom of the skyscraper I fell from.
Then someone knocked on the door. At first, I thought I imagined it. Maybe the bottle had fallen and I mistook the noise. Because who would come for me? But then I heard it again. I forced myself to my feet. The knocking continued.
“Wait! I’m coming!” I yelled, grabbing the only thing within reach—my short robe thrown over a chair. I pulled it on, tied it haphazardly, and opened the door without even checking the peephole.
“Hello, love. Can I come in?”
Matt stood there, cheeky as ever, like I hadn’t just disappointed him in front of his brother earlier today.
I managed to string together something resembling a sentence.
“Whaaa are you doin’ here?” Okay—maybe not a full sentence, but close enough.
Matt slipped inside immediately, as if I’d invited him, and noticed my pathetic setup on the floor—the toppled wine bottle and crackers.
“Oh? Someone was having a party. Was I invited?” he teased.
I shut the door and followed him. If he wanted to come in, nobody could stop him. And honestly, I couldn’t bring myself to care about Anton anymore.
“Whaaa do you want, Matt?” I slurred.
“Not the greatest day, I assume?”
“No.” I sat beside him after he patted the cushion. Maybe I was too drunk to resist.
He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, looked into my eyes with his green jade stare, and asked,
“What is it, love? Why are you so sad?”
And then I cried. I cried and cried, like an ocean was trapped inside me and the only way to breathe was to let it spill out. He said nothing. He just held me, no empty consolations, no judgment—only presence. The only thing that made me feel even slightly better.
Eventually, I lay across his knee, still sobbing while he gently stroked my hair, until the tears finally stopped.
“You know what I like about you the most?” I asked.
“What?”
“Your assurance. You don’t need big gestures. You just… make me feel seen. Heard. Thank you, Matt, for not giving up on me.”
He smiled and then gently asked again,
“What happened?”
For a moment, I thought about telling him the truth. He was much kinder than his brother—and just as rich. Three hundred thousand dollars was nothing to him. I could save my father, escape Anton forever. Maybe I had gone to Anton only because I felt guilty about how I treated Matt last week. 
But before I could speak, he interrupted.
“You know what I like about you the most?”
“What?”
“You’re real.”
“What does that mean?”
“You have every color, every emotion. I can see love when you look at a flower. I can see hate when you look at Daryl…” I smiled faintly. “I see joy when you eat sushi, or the disappointment and pain you’re feeling now.”
“Isn’t that… basic human stuff?”
“No. Believe me—no. I’ve known many women, and all of them were fake. They pretended to enjoy things, pretended to love me, pretended to be happy. Fake smiles. Fake orgasms. Fake everything. Nobody cared who I was, or what I liked. All that mattered was my last name. Being an Alonzo.”
I went quiet. I knew this was a big confession for him—even if the timing couldn’t have been worse. He mistook my silence as encouragement.
“I’ve never met a girl who turned me down before. Never been rejected over and over—until you. Yet somehow, I always end up at your door. You’re the only person who doesn’t try to take advantage of me. You could’ve. God knows I would have drowned you in gifts if you’d let me. But you have self-respect. You’re the only person I know who isn’t trying to take a bite out of me.”
He leaned down and pressed a small kiss to my forehead.
“Thank you for being the only real person in my life.”
I looked away. I was grateful I hadn’t mentioned money earlier. If I had, he might have seen me like all the others. The good news: he still thought highly of me. The bad news: now I was truly out of options.
With the weight of the day and the wine settling in, I grew hazy. Matt kept running his fingers through my hair until I drifted into a restless sleep on the couch, my head on his knee.
I don’t know how long he stayed. I vaguely recall him murmuring to someone—maybe on the phone. But when I woke up, sunlight filled the room, and I was lying half naked on the couch. My robe must have slipped off during the night.
Come on, Alice. Rise and shine. You’re one day closer to your doom.