Brian Chick Matos Facebook ad: “His bite wasn't for claiming… it was punishment.”

About this ad

Meta Ad Library ID

1517771763424080

Platforms

Facebook

Relaunches

0

How we count

Ad text

I was sitting in the sterile, quiet office of my newly opened estate liquidation and professional organizing firm when I received my very first client. I had taken this job, or rather created it for myself, during the long, hollow days of my bed rest following my miscarriage. It was supposed to be a quiet profession. A way to deal with the remnants of the past, to organize the tangible grief of others so I wouldn't have to look too closely at my own. I never expected my first assignment to be a direct hit to my own fragile reality. The young woman sitting across my desk couldn't have been older than twenty-two. She had the kind of effortless, expensive beauty that only came from rigorous maintenance and someone else's bottomless bank account. Her designer handbag was casually tossed onto the floor, and her manicured fingers drummed impatiently against the glass surface of my desk. "I need you to clean out the belongings of a living woman," she announced, her voice carrying an air of absolute entitlement. I blinked, momentarily taken aback. Usually, my services were retained by grieving families dealing with the estates of the recently deceased. "Miss, I specialize in estate clearing and trauma organization. Dealing with the property of a living person without their consent is��" "It��s the belongings of that wretched woman who won't stop haunting my boyfriend," she interrupted, rolling her perfectly lined eyes. She leaned forward, the heavy scent of an exclusive French perfume washing over me. "Her kid died, and she practically lost her mind. But she��s still squatting in that rundown apartment on the Southside, refusing to let go. It's bringing terrible energy into our lives. I��ve been trying to get pregnant for six months to give him a son, and my psychic told me her lingering energy is blocking my fertility." She didn't even pause to register the shock that must have flickered across my face. She just kept talking, her tone dripping with disgust. "The psychic said as long as I burn all the things she touched��especially the things related to that dead baby��and set up a banishing ritual, I can completely erase her from my boyfriend��s destiny." This was entirely out of bounds. Ethically, legally, and morally, I couldn't accept a job to destroy a living person's property based on the whims of a superstitious mistress. I opened my mouth to politely but firmly refuse the job and ask her to leave. Before I could form the words, she reached into her designer clutch and slapped a sleek, heavy black metal card onto the glass desk between us. The gold lettering on the card caught the fluorescent light. "My boyfriend is Julian Vance," she said, lifting her chin with a triumphant, arrogant smirk. "CEO of Vance Enterprises. Money is not an issue. Name your price, as long as you make her completely disappear from our lives." The pen in my hand slipped, leaving an ugly, jagged ink mark across my notepad. My breathing hitched, and my chest seized as if the air had been suddenly sucked out of the room. I stared at the black card, recognizing the customized insignia etched into the bottom right corner. Julian Vance. Vance Enterprises. My legally wedded husband of four years. While my mind spun in a sickening vortex of disbelief, the girl��whose name I hadn't even bothered to ask yet��reached back into her bag. She pulled out a small, black wooden box that looked disturbingly like a miniature memorial tablet. She slammed it down next to the credit card. "The psychic had this made," she explained casually. I stared at the tablet. Carved deeply into the dark wood, filled in with an aggressive, stark red paint, was my own name. Elena Vance. The silence in the room stretched out, thick and suffocating. I sat frozen, staring at the red letters of my name. The carving was deep, violently so, as if whoever had ordered it wanted to ensure I was dead and buried in the most thorough way possible. The red paint looked like dried blood against the black wood. Instinctively, my hand moved to my waist, my fingers fumbling to unclip the silver name tag pinned to my blazer. With a quick, silent motion, I shoved the tag deep into my pocket. The girl didn't notice. She was too busy wiping her hands on her silk dress, as if simply touching the wooden tablet had contaminated her. "I know she��s still alive," she muttered, a sneer curling her glossed lips. "But look at her. The way she lives, the pathetic state she's in��what��s the difference between her and a corpse?" I forced my hand to rest flat on the desk, right next to the morbid black tablet bearing my name. My fingertips were icy cold. I drew in a slow, measured breath, forcing the violent trembling in my stomach to subside. When I spoke, my voice was eerily detached, sounding like it belonged to someone else entirely. "If she is still alive," I said slowly, "why would you go to the trouble of having a memorial tablet made for her?" The girl��let��s call her Chloe, for the designer bag she carried��let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "You can send off the living just as easily as the dead," Chloe said, her eyes flashing with a cruel kind of amusement. "She��s clinging to my boyfriend like a leech, using pity to keep him around. So, I found a professional to sever the tie. If I treat her like she's dead, eventually, she will be." I didn't say anything. The sheer audacity, the casual cruelty of her words, formed a heavy knot in my throat. Misinterpreting my silence for confusion or hesitation, Chloe sighed dramatically and unzipped a side pocket of her bag. She pulled out a stack of photographs and tossed them haphazardly across my desk. They fanned out over the glass, bright and damning. "Here. Look at these. This is the garbage we need to burn." I looked down. My vision blurred for a fraction of a second before focusing with painful clarity on the images. One photo showed a wedding dress, hanging in a closet��the dress I had worn during our secret, private ceremony four years ago. Another was a medical ultrasound, the grainy black-and-white image of a tiny bean-shaped life. And then, there were the photos of the baby clothes. Tiny, soft yellow and mint green onesies, still sealed in their clear plastic wrapping, the store tags prominently hanging off the collars. These were my things. All of them. The onesies with the tags still attached... I vividly remembered the day they arrived. It was the afternoon before I lost the baby. I had opened the delivery box sitting on the rug in the living room, taking each tiny garment out and laying them in a row across the sofa. I had sat there for hours, running my fingers over the soft cotton, imagining the weight of my child inside them, imagining the smell of baby powder and milk. "Those are the most important," Chloe��s sharp voice sliced through my fragile memory, dragging me violently back to the present. She pointed a manicured finger directly at the photo of the baby clothes. "The psychic said the baby��s things carry the heaviest curse. They have to be burned to ashes." My throat closed up entirely. It felt as though I swallowed a handful of glass. "Why?" I rasped, the word barely making it past my lips. "Why do you think?" Chloe scoffed, rolling her eyes. "That thing she was carrying was cursed. It didn't have the luck to be born. And because it didn't survive, its bad luck is lingering around Julian, attaching itself to me. It��s the reason I haven't been able to conceive the Vance heir." She said it with such casual indifference, such absolute conviction, that for a split second, my brain couldn't process the words. A curse. Bad luck. When I lost the baby, I had bled so much I thought I was dying. When I woke up in the stark white hospital room, Julian had been sitting beside my bed. He had held my pale, IV-bruised hand, burying his face in the sheets and weeping. He had stayed by my side for seven straight days, refusing to go to the office. He kissed my forehead, his voice choked with grief, telling me over and over again, ��I��m so sorry, Elena. I failed you. I didn't protect you. We��ll try again. We��ll have another baby. I promise.�� I had believed his tears. I had believed his grief was identical to mine. Yet, in the mouth of his young, beautiful mistress, my lost child��our lost child��was nothing more than a piece of bad luck. A curse to be burned away so she could take my place. I dug my nails into the palms of my hands under the desk, welcoming the sharp, grounding pain. I forced my facial muscles to relax, adopting the neutral, inquisitive expression of a hired professional. "Her losing a child," I said, my voice eerily calm, "what does that have to do with you and your boyfriend?" Chloe looked at me as if I were incredibly dense. She let out a short, incredulous laugh. "It has everything to do with me!" She leaned across the desk, lowering her voice as if sharing a juicy, scandalous secret. "If I hadn't warned him, Julian would have ended up being the biggest joke in the corporate world��a billionaire raising another man��s bastard." My head snapped up. The room seemed to tilt on its axis. "Another man��s... child?" "Exactly," Chloe said, looking incredibly satisfied with my shocked reaction. "You wouldn't know, but before that woman announced she was pregnant, she spent an entire night locked in a hotel room with another man. Some corporate rival. Just a few weeks later, boom, suddenly she��s pregnant with the 'heir'." A loud, piercing ringing erupted in my ears. The memory of that night at the hotel crashed into my mind with the force of a physical blow. The sickening smell of stale whiskey, the terrifying realization that the heavy oak door was deadbolted from the inside. The panic that had clawed at my throat. But Julian had been there. When the door was finally broken down, he had rushed in. He had wrapped his suit jacket around my trembling shoulders. He had looked into my tear-streaked face, held my shaking face in his warm hands, and said, ��Elena, look at me. I trust you. I know you didn't do anything.�� Chloe smiled, a bright, vicious thing. "Julian told me he had to play the part. He told her to her face that he trusted her completely." She scoffed, waving her hand dismissively. "But seriously, what kind of man actually believes that? Especially a man with Julian��s status and wealth. Men lie to keep the peace until they can clean up the mess."

Where the ad sends people

jjz003.novelmuster.com

"His bite wasn't for claiming… it was punishment. "