Words That Kill

My sister leaves some last words before committing suicide, and everyone who sees those words die. My grandmother is the first to go, and then my father. In the end, even my mother jumps off a 30-story building. The reporters fall over themselves trying to score an interview with me, and the police interrogate me. Countless people want to know what my sister's last words are. However, I keep my silence until my sister's tenth death anniversary. I see a figure before her grave, and I'm agitated beyond imagination. I know it's time for death to take me.

My words can kill. Whatever I say comes true. When I was eight, my cruel adoptive father kicked me into an icy river. I glared at him and said furiously, "You'll drown if you go into water." The next day, he drowned in a stinking ditch where the water barely reached his knees. After realizing I could really kill people, I was so scared I stopped talking and became a mute. A year ago, I was taken back to the Shaw family. In order to stay with the family that I'd finally found after all these years, I absolutely refused to speak. But one day, after Jackie Shaw took a sip of the drink I brought him, he suddenly convulsed and fell to the floor, his face turning purple. A maid screamed in terror, "There's peanut powder in the drink!" Before I could even say anything, my twin sister, Violet, kicked the coffee table, grabbed my hair, and pressed me down hard onto the broken glass shards. "You know Jackie is severely allergic to peanuts! How could you poison him?!" After Mom gave Jackie an emergency injection, she turned around and slapped me hard. "I can't believe I gave birth to a malicious monster like you!" Dad's face was ashen. He splashed boiling tea all over me. "You heartless, vicious ingrate! I can't believe you tried to kill Jackie out of jealousy!" Boiling water mixed with blood dripped down my face, and I clenched my teeth tightly. They had no idea that if I truly wanted him dead, I wouldn't even need to poison him. I just had to speak. Like this. I slowly looked up at Jackie, and my lips moved...

I used to live my life believing that there was something corrupted within me. I had never felt comfortable walking in the searing, bright daylight. It felt as if I didn't belong there. Is that why I felt this sudden attraction to a man who seemed to be the embodiment of darkness? Ashtar Malachious resembled the sum of my sexual fantasies. The shades surrounding him were like a captivating essence. Others called him the predator, the fallen, or the death. I knew that, but my eyes saw him differently. He saved my life in more than a literal way. He seduced me, slowly enticing all my senses. He showed me what a touch could feel like. He let me taste the pleasure I had never thought existed. The one thing he wanted from me was my blood. I knew that if I gave it to him, it would be along with my body, heart, and soul. His irresistible aura blinded me to the dangers that surrounded me. Like a moth to the flame, I stepped closer until the hellfire licked my flesh. Then the wicked flames revealed the cruelest truth—this love kills. In the end, one of us will die.

“I agreed to treat him before I knew I was meant to kill him.” Dr. Cecilia Vale is a therapist, who has spent years learning how to fix broken minds, not destroy them. But when a powerful socialite offers her a job that could rebuild her ruined career and drag her out of a life she can barely survive. She accepts without asking too many questions. Her newest patient is Jude Martinez. A man feared by many, understood by none. Cold, and dangerously perceptive, Jude is not the kind of man who trusts easily. Yet, within the quiet walls of their therapy sessions, he begins to reveal fragments of himself that no one else has ever seen. And Cecilia finds herself drawn in, despite every instinct warning her to stay away. Because behind the smiles, deep conversations, and chemistry-filled banter, they exchange, there is a truth she cannot escape. Jude’s wife did not hire her to help him. She hired her to kill him. With a poison that leaves no trace and a contract she cannot break, Cecilia is forced to choose between her survival and her conscience. But as the lines between duty and desire begin to blur, the man she was meant to destroy becomes the one person she cannot bear to lose. And in a world built on power, betrayal, and blood, love is not just dangerous. It is fatal.

Bru•tal ˈbro͞odl/ adjective savagely violent. "a brutal murder" synonyms: savage, cruel, vicious, ferocious, brutish, barbaric, barbarous, wicked, murderous, bloodthirsty, cold-blooded, callous, heartless, ruthless, merciless, sadistic; More Punishingly hard or uncomfortable. direct and lacking any attempt to disguise unpleasantness. ~ "I will fucking end your life, right here right now." He said as he placed the pistol to my head "Don't test me." He said as he smiled sinisterly while loading the gun.

"Our heart beats only with their permission." For as long as she can remember, the bookworm Synecdoche Rochet, 23, has lived a simple life in Maharlika Nation—hiding in the grasses and grains of District G to avoid the terrifying power of the Embassy and its ruthless Ambassador. In a dystopian world that is controlled with surveillance, Synecdoche Rochet embarks on a mission to get back their rights on their district's valuable resources—the grains. When she discovered her intellectual ability, she found herself drawn to the charismatic Giovanni, the long-lost Ambassador's privileged son together with other intelligent students, Ulap, Token, and Keithwarth. They found themselves being the tributes on the 2nd Maharlika Spelling TwistBee—trapped in the Word Arena. An annually commemorated game where each district will represent one letter in the Alphabet, spell the given English words not verbally, but by beating other competitors who have letter tattoos on their arms. The rules are to Spell and beat them. Within the competitor's reach, the team-up of Synecdoche, Giovanni, Ulap, Token, and Keithwarth isn't a coincidence, it's a conspiracy. What if Synecdoche's age will be reversed? Will they use their intelligence for vengeance? Will they compel love and trust to survive the competition? Is their life the price or the prize? "Even the shortest word has the longest meaning."