Bias After Death Short Stories & Novels

My mother and sister never liked me. The only son they ever truly cared about was my older brother, Lucian Vieri. Before she married me, Serafina Valcieri, the only daughter of one of the most feared syndicates in the country, was always the one who stepped in when I was cornered, mocked, or blamed for things that were never mine to carry. She never said much. She just made people back off. Then she married me. Then, not long ago, Lucian shoved me off a ski slope. I said he meant to kill me. My mother called it an accident. My sister said he had only been trying to save me. Only Serafina believed me. When I woke up in the hospital, I heard voices outside the door. “Who told you to do it like that?” Serafina said, her voice low and cold. My mother answered in a panic. “Lucian’s leukemia can’t wait. If Cassian learns the baby isn’t his, everything falls apart.” Then Serafina said the words I still can’t forget. “I chose him, and I married him for my own reasons. But Lucian still needs this child. If anything had happened to Cassian, none of you would have walked away from it.” I stood there in silence, listening to every word. The child my wife was carrying was never mine. It had been conceived through IVF to save my brother. And the marriage I had trusted from the beginning had never belonged to me alone. I had spent my whole life coming second to Lucian. I just never thought Serafina would be the one to prove it. If no one truly wanted me, then I would leave.

Just days after being discharged from the hospital, my husband’s adopted sister, Wendy Crowley, went live. Crying on a rooftop, she accused me of causing her miscarriage. "The ultrasound already showed it was a boy… and that woman took his life! "She can’t have children herself, so she couldn’t stand that I could. I want her to pay for my child’s death!" My husband, Tristan Crowley, believed every word. "Wendy, I failed to protect you. If I’d known she hated you this much, I would’ve locked her away long ago." The livestream sparked outrage. Everyone demanded justice. "This is murder. She’s rotten to the core!" "Where’s the law? Lock her up immediately!" However, when Tristan and Wendy tracked me down–still streaming live–everyone watching… broke down in tears.

When I was three years old, my parents became infamous in our social circle as a mutually destructive couple for a misunderstanding that led them to cheat on each other. To get revenge on each other, they didn’t hesitate to hurt me just to hurt one another. Over the next five years, my mother beat me until my bones broke three times. My father “lost” me on purpose five times. And once, during one of their arguments, they threw me straight into the ocean. Eventually, they grew tired of that life, but instead of stopping, they changed the game. They got divorced, and each of them adopted a new child, showering them with affection as if it were some kind of competition As for me? I became the unwanted piece of trash. The only time I mattered was when they thought of each other, and they needed someone to take their anger out on. The only thing that kept me going was a small locket pendant they gave me when I was born. Engraved on it were the words: peace and joy. It was the only source of comfort I had. That was until I turned ten and someone tried to take this last piece of something that felt like it belonged to me away from me. I fought back with everything I had, and for that, I was beaten until my spleen ruptured. By the time my parents arrived, the ground was soaked in blood. However, their faces twisted with disgust. “Daisy, how did you end up like this? You’re just as disgusting as your father.” “What did you say? Say that again! Just look at her, dressed like that. If anything, she’s just as shameless as you!” My cries for help were drowned out by their argument. My body grew heavier and heavier, and before I realized it, the world went quiet. They finally stopped arguing, too.

I broke up with my boyfriend the year he was at his poorest. A year later, he was famous, and he married a prettier, livelier girl than me. On a late-night show, a host asked him whether a grand slam of awards this early in his career left any regrets. He pulled Mia closer. "I want to know how she's been. Since she left me." The host paused. "She's been... not well at all." Adrian finally smiled. "Then I can stop thinking about her." "But Ms. Whitman left behind a box of tapes before she died." Adrian's smile locked into place. On the tapes were every day and every night of my life, from the day I walked away from him to the day I stopped breathing.

After my family goes bankrupt, my younger brother, Simone Novello, is diagnosed with ALS. Just as I think I can't do anything anymore, Don Luigi Sartori decides to propose to me. Five years into the marriage, not only have I obtained all of Luigi's love, but he's also groomed my body to the maximum in bed. Thinking that this is a sign of love from Luigi, I cooperate with him even more passionately in bed. But when I'm delivering wine in a clubhouse one day, I witness Simone, who's supposed to be wheelchair-ridden, chatting with Luigi with a smile while clad in a high-end suit. "Simone, you've been pretending to be afflicted with ASL for five years just to punish Caterina for scolding Maria back then. Now that Maria is in a good mood and plans to return to the country, shouldn't you stop punishing Caterina then?" Simone sneers at Luigi. "I'll have my doctor inform her that I will recover after some time." "ASL is a deadly and incurable disease, you know. How can you possibly recover from it? Will Caterina even believe that excuse?" Simone flashes Luigi a confident smile. "Caterina is stupid, remember? Since when doesn't she believe anything we spout? Anyway, we'll just make it up to her in the future." I lower my head, feeling my tears rolling down my cheeks quietly. The thing is, Simone, there's no more future for me. Your ASL is a lie, but the deadly disease plaguing me is real.

Everyone knew that Daniel Cardea kept the most obedient mistress. I had no temper, no dignity, and no spine. I stayed ready to kneel at his feet. This lawyer, the best in all of Silverton, trapped the rest of my life with a single contract. He felt certain that no law could help me break it. He was right. The law governed the living, not the dead. On his 30th birthday, I planned to give him a carefully prepared gift. I planned to end this indefinite contract with my heart once it stopped beating. February 16, 2026. It was three days until Daniel’s birthday, three days until the surprise arrived.

Three years ago, my husband, my parents, and my adopted sister faked their deaths to test whether I had married into the DeLuca family for love or for power. They cut off my money, took my home, and left me and my son with nothing. Three years later, they came back. My husband stepped out of a black Rolls-Royce, looked down at me, and said, “Evelyn, you passed the test.” What he didn’t know was that my son was already dead. And I was dying too.

As Gamma of the Creed Pack, I'd held the Northern Border alone for three full years. Every time I called in to ask when I could come home, my mate — the Alpha of Creed — picked up the phone himself. He told me the rogues weren't cleared. He told me the rival packs were still circling. He said, "Nora. One more year. Once we have completely eliminated all our enemies, I will hold the grandest mating ceremony for you. I swear it on the Moon." I believed him. When I dragged myself out of a pile of dead rogues with a silver arrowhead still lodged an inch from my heart, bleeding too fast for a medevac, my warriors had to shift and run me back in wolf form all the way to Creed territory. The moment we crossed the border, I saw fairy lights strung from every streetlamp along the road to the pack house. Pack wolves on the sidewalks were talking loud, smiling at each other. "The Alpha's Mating Ceremony is tonight. He's taking the Elder's daughter as Luna. Three years of peace on the border. It's a good time to be Creed." I coughed dark blood into the fur on the back of my warrior's neck and laughed, short and bitter. He hadn't needed me holding the border. He just hadn't wanted me home.

Natalie Brooke asked me to cook dumplings for her stepfather, Michael Sawyer. When the dumplings were knocked over and burned Michael's hand, she assumed that I was being disrespectful to an elder. So, she ordered the bodyguards to put me into a large pot, saying she would boil me until I was cooked as punishment. "Since you burned Michael, I will make you pay the price!" The water in the pot grew hotter, causing my whole body to be scalded red. All I could breathe was the scorching steam. I desperately pounded on the lid, but it had long been locked. I screamed in despair as I clawed the edges with all my strength. Blood overflowed from the pot and dripped onto the ground, but no one cared. Just before I succumbed to death, I summoned the system and yelled, "I want to go back! I refuse to save Natalie. I don't care if she becomes a vegetable!"

After my younger sister suffered an allergic reaction from eating the food I cooked, my husband flew into a rage. He grabbed a whole crate of red wine from the house, pinned me down, and forced it into my mouth. "You should feel Rosie's pain too!" Soon, red rashes spread across my body, and my throat began to swell. On the brink of death, I begged him to call an ambulance, but he locked me in the room instead. "Take your time and enjoy it. Only when you suffer enough will you stop hurting others." In despair, I felt my throat closing, and my skin itching unbearably as if pierced by needles. I scratched my skin until there wasn't a single patch of unbroken skin left. Three days later, he finally decided to show mercy and make it up to me with a candlelit dinner. "I bet you have learned your lesson. As long as you behave from now on, you'll still be Mrs. Henderson." However, he would never see me again. By then, my body had already turned to ashes.

Six years after the Jennings family threw me out for being their fake daughter, I was surviving by selling my blood. I had just been handed a few bills and was about to call my doctor for more medication when a bodyguard kicked the back of my knee. My knees hit the floor, and I heard a scream. "You ungrateful brat! What are you doing here?! Are you still trying to kill Tina?!" Then, there was a slap on my face. Only then did I realize that the woman in front of me was my mother, Florence. She had come looking for blood for her precious daughter, Tina. My older brother, James, stood beside her and watched her break down. Then, he ordered the bodyguards to throw me out. He looked down at me, saw the cash in my hand, and sneered. "Looks like the past few years aren't enough to wipe that temper out of you. To think that you're willing to sell your blood just for some money to satisfy your vanity. Tina graduates in two weeks, and she'll go abroad to further her education. "Once she leaves, the family won't have to spoil her alone anymore, and you won't be able to bully her again. When that happens, I'll explain everything to Mom and Dad and bring you home. You'll still be the family's princess." "Home... Princess...?" I muttered under my breath. Then, I shook my head and laughed. My amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) had progressed too quickly. I would not last for another month. From the moment James accused me of being a fake heiress for Tina, I no longer had a home.

Three days before I got married, Evan Jones' claustrophobic ex-girlfriend cornered my car at the cliff of a winding road and rammed into me 12 times. When Evan arrived with the police, I was being rescued by the firefighters from my driver's seat, which had been smashed out of shape. However, Evan went to the limited-edition sports car, which had only lost some paint, and carried the trembling Nikki Shore in his arms. "Evan, Madison is bleeding on her forehead; she needs to get it stitched up at the hospital." However, Evan stopped my stretcher from getting into the car and glanced at my bleeding forehead and bruised arms. "These are just minor injuries, but Nikki has claustrophobia. Her condition will only get worse, and she has to go to the hospital first." As I was about to be left behind, I used the last of my strength to grab Evan by his pant leg. He frowned and pried off my fingers. "Nikki didn't crash into you on purpose. It's just her condition acting up. You're a lawyer, and you should know how some things are beyond our control, so stop making a fuss right now." With that, his assistant handed him a settlement agreement, and Evan grabbed my limp wrist to print my fingerprint on the papers. "Just bear with this. The ambulance will be coming soon."

My name is Adrian Hart. The day my sister Serena found me and brought me home, I thought I finally had a family again. I was wrong. In Serena's eyes, her adopted brother Evan mattered more than I ever would. When he was too scared to marry into a powerful family, I walked down the aisle for him. When he wanted out, I swallowed a fake-death pill and disappeared. Every time, Serena swore it was the last. The seventh time, she poured the pill down my throat herself. And that was the time I actually died. My soul stayed behind. I watched Serena stand over my body in the morgue and fail to recognize me until it was too late. And the cruelest part wasn't dying. It was knowing that, until my very last breath, my sister still wasn't on my side.

My parents suddenly told me that we were living in a novel. I was the frail and favored younger brother destined to get into college, marry my childhood sweetheart, and live an easy life. My older brother, Daniel Luther, on the other hand, was the expendable one. He was destined to fail his SAT and be beaten to death. My parents said that if they wanted to save him, they had to make sure he got into college. They did everything they could to help him, but he still failed his SAT. Meanwhile, I got into the same college as my childhood sweetheart, Priscilla Grimmie, through my own hard work. That night, my parents snatched my college acceptance letter and locked me in a cellar under the backyard. "Let your brother take your place and go to college first. You can retake your exams next year." My foot slipped, and I hit my head hard against a canning jar. Warm blood trickled down my neck. I shouted, "Mom, it hurts!" She didn't even turn around. "Caleb, stop it! Your brother is one step away from his dreams!" Their footsteps gradually faded. I slowly closed my eyes. The next time I opened my eyes, I was already floating in midair.

In the third year after I've run away from home, my parents finally remember my existence. But the reason is that the fake heir, Jayson Norman, is displeased with his marriage partner in the upcoming marriage alliance. That's why my parents instantly think of getting me to replace Jayson in the marriage. When Mom sees Katrina Cobb, the woman whom I've eloped with, rummaging through the trash in a wheelchair, she feels extremely satisfied. "Back then, Joshua refused to stick to his role as the heir of the Norman family. He even went as far as to push Jayson down the stairs just so he could elope with this wretched woman! I bet he must be riddled with remorse by now!" With hazy eyes, Katrina mutters, "Yeah, he was filled with remorse. He regretted going back to that place you call 'home' with you." Dad lets out a cold huff. "Well, that's enough tantrum on his part! Tell him to get his ass home for the marriage alliance, and we'll consider the past water under the bridge!" Having noted Katrina's silence, Dad wastes no time in kicking her wheelchair over. "You wretched cripple! Where have you hidden my son?" I can only float in mid-air as I gaze down at Katrina, who's wailing in pain on the ground. At that moment, I feel as though my soul is getting ripped apart. "Mom, Dad, I've been dead for three years. How am I going to take Jayson's place in this marriage alliance?"

My girlfriend had always been drawn to powerful men, yet she was perfectly content to keep a useless intern on her payroll. She said she loved me with her whole life. When a routine health screening showed that the intern and I shared a rare blood type, she chose to keep him close. She claimed it was just a precaution, a backup source of blood in case I ever needed it. She cooked for him, took him on trips, made him gifts by hand, and fussed over him at every turn. She insisted it was all for my sake. To build good karma for my future. Then I was in a car accident. She arranged for blood to be brought in from over 60 miles away rather than let the intern donate a single drop. She said he had a cold and worried his blood might make me sick. The next day, the intern was diagnosed with uremic nephropathy. My girlfriend drugged me and had me wheeled into the operating room to donate a kidney before I could say a word. Her voice was gentle when she explained it afterward. "Daniel is our trump card. He has to stay healthy. He can only be used when your life is genuinely on the line, not wasted on every small setback. I had you donate the kidney for your own future, so you would stop overthinking everything. Once you are out of surgery, I am marrying you." What she did not know was that I already had mid-stage leukemia. The surgery accelerated its spread. I was dying, and I would never have the chance to marry her.

My family has gone into bankruptcy ever since my parents have passed away. As such, my older sister, Priscilla Lennox, and I have to shoulder a million-dollar debt. In order to pay off the debt, Priscilla works as a paranormal house tester, whereas I've taken on a part-time gig to act as a corpse in dramas and films. Just like that, I keep working for five years straight. As long as the debt remains saddled on my shoulders, I dare not take a day off. At the end of the year, I realize that I still need to collect 130 thousand dollars in order to clear the debt, so I decide to apply for a job as a drug tester. Once the experiments are over, I head over to seek Priscilla out happily with my 130-thousand-dollar payment in tow. Unexpectedly, I come across her when she's on a phone call. "Mom, Dad, Perry has been doing really well. You two have fun overseas. He doesn't like spending money now, so we can end his punishment next year." It turns out that my parents aren't dead, and my family isn't bankrupt at all. All the pain and suffering that I've gone through in the past five years is just a punishment for my excessive spending habits. My smile freezes on my face. That's when I feel my stomach churning violently before I spit out a mouthful of blood.

On the day I donated my kidney, I never thought my wife, Rebecca Tanner, would cut open her own heart and confess her regrets. After all, she had staged her own death in a bombing, all so she and Mason Sanders could test my loyalty. All she left me was two billion in gambling debt and a contract selling me into slavery. The creditor said they would leave her body in the grave and spare it from being fed to the hyenas. But to do that, I had to sign a contract with my blood and become their pet from then on. After that, I was locked in an iron cage beneath an underground fighting ring. By day, they chained me up and forced me to lick the blood from the winners' shoes. At night, they injected me with drugs and threw me into the fighting ring, turning me into a living toy for the wealthy to bet on. One broken rib doubled the stakes. One lost tooth added another ten thousand dollars. When I heard that my parents had been stripped and thrown into the mouth of a volcano alive, I broke completely. Covered in blood, I snapped the iron chain and rushed to the volcano. Instead, I found my "dead" wife gently lighting Mason's cigarette. Mason puffed out a ring of smoke and sneered. "We still have ten seconds left on the bet, Rebecca. You've lost."

The impoverished student I had sponsored, Jacob Murphy, had accumulated a massive gambling debt. When the debt collectors had kicked the door open, my childhood sweetheart, Renee Austin, had shoved me forward instead. Her voice was cold and distant. “He’s Jacob Murphy. Take him away.” In the darkness of an underground casino, they tore out my fingernails, then smashed my ribs one by one with an iron rod. When the searing pain arrived, I groveled on the floor like a dog. I was weeping and screaming, without a shred of dignity. Then, they “mercifully” gave me one chance to call for help. Clinging to the last sliver of hope, I called Renee. Her voice on the other end sounded very cruel. “If you hadn’t set him up, how would Jacob have ended up buried in gambling debt? Even if you die at their hands, you deserve it.” The dial tone after she hung up became the last sound in my world. Later, I really did die, just as she had said. However, there was not the slightest trace of a smile on Renee’s face. It was as if she had gone mad. Her eyes were bloodshot as she searched every underground gambling den in the city. ‘Renee, why were you crying for me?’ I wondered.

Five years ago, my family died in a car crash. My parents. My adopted sister, Liz. Everyone but me. They left behind grief, an empty house, and a debt so large it swallowed my life. When the collectors came, I turned to the only person I had left—my husband, Adrian. He told me he had cut ties with his own family to marry me and had nothing left. I believed him. For five years, I worked every job I could find, paid every dollar I earned, and told myself love was worth the suffering. When the balance dropped to its final $18,000, I signed up for a paid drug trial at a private clinic. They handed me a waiver, warned me about possible delayed reactions, and promised fast money if I swallowed the experimental dose. I thought it would buy us a new beginning. Instead, I came home early and heard Adrian on the phone. “Let Liz use the card. Evelyn still doesn’t know. She took away Liz’s money five years ago, so she has to earn every dollar back herself.” Then he laughed softly. “One more year, and her punishment is over.” That was how I learned the dead were alive. The debt was fake. My husband had never been poor. And the life I had fought so hard to survive was only a sentence they had given me.