Plot Twists Short Stories & Bias Face Slapping Novels

The day Ethan Pierce’s stepsister, who suffered from depression, threatened suicide for the ninety-ninth time, he abandoned me at the altar for the ninety-ninth time. "As a psychiatrist, I have a responsibility to my patient." And just like that, the system declared that I had failed my mission. My punishment was severe depression. Every last trace of my will to live was taken from me. From that day on, all I wanted was to die as quickly as possible so I could return to my original world. By the time Ethan finally realized that I truly wanted to die, he was desperate. He used everything he had learned in his entire career to try to cure me. To awaken even the slightest bit of love I had once felt for him. To force me to stay in this world. But I didn’t want him anymore. I hadn’t for a long time.

The annual Family dinner was in full swing, the clink of glasses and hum of conversation filling the air. Paige, never one for a kind word, stumbled over, a glass of wine in her hand, her breath reeking of cheap booze. "You know," she said, a sly, knowing grin on her face, "I used to be jealous as hell of you. He's a Capo. He runs a whole borough." "A lot of good that's done you, huh? Still stuck in the slums, where gunshots are your nightly lullaby." I heard the mockery in her voice. The list for the Family's secure compound was out, and once again, my name wasn't on it. I held my own glass, my voice steady. "They're Family rules. Not even Dean can break them. A Capo's wife still has to toe the line." She let out a sudden, sharp laugh. "Five years ago, when the first group moved, your name was at the very top of the list! Dean crossed it off himself. Five years in a row, all to build that pristine reputation of his..." Before she could finish, one of the dock enforcers nearby clamped his hand over her mouth. I glanced around the room. The men and women who had been flirting and laughing just moments before now avoided my gaze. Only Dean remained as he was, sitting ramrod straight, not a flicker of shame on his face. He held a half-smoked cigar between his teeth, his voice low and gravelly. "What she said is true. I approved the placements for the compound." "They're for the widows of our brothers who bled and died for this Family. They need a safe place more than you do." "Let others fight and claw for survival. You are my woman. A Capo's wife. You have to understand what it means to see the bigger picture." I smiled, but tears streamed down my face. So that was it. So, does our son have to be an orphan on paper, the child of a fallen hero, to finally get a private doctor and a safe home?

My marriage to Dante Moretti, the heir to the Moretti family, was arranged when we were kids. But after my father died, he publicly refused to marry me. Three times. Each time, he used his dead mother as an excuse, and I couldn't argue. The third time, I walked in on him with some starlet on the anniversary of his mother’s death, and I overheard him sneer: “A boring woman like Isabella? Who the hell would want her?” “So desperate to marry me. It’s pathetic.” I looked down at my white wedding dress, turned on my heel, and knocked on his father's door. Later, on the day I moved into the Moretti estate, I ran into Dante. He thought I was there to force his hand and ran his mouth. But he had no idea I was already his new stepmother.

Jenny Shaw, my roommate and belle of the campus, had been stealing my skincare products for four whole years. She even used them to fake a wealthy and beautiful persona, becoming a million-follower influencer and bagging a wealthy heir. Right before our graduation defense, her face suddenly erupted in severe lesions, completely disfigured. Jenny immediately accused me, claiming that I was jealous and vicious enough to lace the skincare products with poison! In an instant, I was branded online as the Poison Queen and a dangerous figure. Facing the police, I simply smiled at them and showed them my thesis. [Molecular Deconstruction Analysis of Herbal Medicinal Materials: Skin Regeneration and Reconstruction.] "Poisoning you? That's like a pot calling the kettle black. But thanks for providing me with experimental data!"

Before we submitted our college applications, the popular girl in our class, the billionaire’s daughter, suddenly said she could get all of us into Harvard or Yale. “My parents donated several buildings to those schools. Getting you all admitted is nothing.” Most of my classmates’ college entrance exam scores were still a long way from those schools, but they believed her. They gave up submitting their own applications and counted on her to pull strings so they could get into college. In my last life, I realized her promise was unreliable. I immediately urged them not to give up on their applications, to keep a backup plan, and I called their parents one by one. But that infuriated the popular girl. She mocked me for being poor and said I did not understand how the upper class worked. She claimed I had ruined everyone’s future. My boyfriend also snapped at me for being jealous. “You’re just jealous that Lissy’s family is rich. You can’t stand the thought of all of us going to Harvard or Yale. So what if you have good grades? You could work your whole life and still never catch up to what her family built over three generations.” For the sake of our three years as classmates, I did not argue with them. But before the deadline, when I found out they still had not submitted their applications, I called the police and exposed the popular girl’s fake identity. The popular girl was condemned by everyone. In despair, she jumped into a river and killed herself. My classmates all said she deserved it and thanked me for saving their futures. But at our class farewell dinner, my boyfriend poisoned my drink, and the entire class watched coldly as I writhed in pain. “At worst, we would have lost our chance at college. Lissy lost her life!” When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the popular girl claimed she could pull strings for us.

After working as a dishwasher abroad for five years, I've finally paid off all the debts my wife, Nora Palmer, owes. I'm thinking of going back home to give Nora a surprise. But when I get home with our son, Rick Moore, I realize that our rented apartment is worn-down and locked. A neighbor who's passing by asks in shock, "Didn't you break up with Nora? What are you doing here?" I immediately head to Nora's office, but the receptionist stops me. "Are you looking for Ms. Palmer? It's her child's sip-and-see party today, so she's not at work." A notification rings on my phone, and the contents show up on the screen. "CEO of Palmer Group, Nora Palmer, drops millions of dollars on her child's extravagant sip-and-see party, and the couple looks completely in love!" Just then, I receive a voice message from Nora. "Honey, I bought some clothes on discount for Rick online, and they're getting delivered to your place today. Remember to pick up the package, okay?" In the background, I can hear the grin in a man's voice as he says in a teasing tone, "The bet is already over. How much longer are you going to fool Adam with that fake marriage certificate? You've been pretending to be poor for years. Haven't you had enough?" I have had my doubts before, but this confirms it. All this while, I'm the only one who's actually penniless. Turns out, after all that hassle, I have turned into the homewrecker instead.

On the very day I returned home, my would-be mother-in-law slapped a check across my face. “Five million dollars. Walk away from my son. I’ve dealt with gold diggers before, who think a pregnancy can lock a man down. You’re not nearly as smart as you believe.” Before I could say a word, a girl in a white dress shrank behind her, clutching her sleeve with trembling fingers, her eyes brimming with tears. “Mrs. Sterling, please… don’t do this. What if Adrian finds out? And… if he truly cares about her, I’m willing to step aside.” I let out a soft laugh. So that was the story she had written for me. A calculating woman trying to steal her man. I bent down, picked up the check, and tucked it neatly into the deep neckline of Lily Bennett’s dress. “Here. A tip. Your performance wasn’t bad.” Then I pulled out my black card and flicked it onto the table. “Ma’am, I’ll offer you ten million. Keep your son on a leash, and tell him to stop bothering me. I find him revolting.” I paused, then added lightly, “Oh, and one more thing.” I gestured toward the delicate little flower she was guarding so carefully. “The girl you’re protecting? My father brought her home last year. His illegitimate daughter. “If anyone thinks they’re joining my family, they should probably ask the Bennetts for permission first.”

A boy I supported and raised called me one day, his voice bubbling with excitement. He told me he'd finally found his biological parents. It turned out he was the long-lost heir of the prestigious Carter family, one of the ten most influential families in Kingsford. I was genuinely happy for him. After everything he'd been through, he'd finally found his family. I prepared countless gifts, looking forward to celebrating his homecoming with him. But the celebration never came. Instead, he vanished without a trace. I went to the Carter estate myself, only for the butler to frown in confusion. "A long-lost heir? Mr. and Mrs. Carter have only ever had one son." My heart sank. I hired people to investigate. In the end, what awaited me was an unidentified corpse in the Carter family's private hospital. The boy I had watched grow up would never smile and call me Ed again. Instead, he lay motionless inside a morgue freezer. The so-called homecoming had never been about bringing their son home. He simply was a compatible heart donor for their real son. My sweet, well-behaved Owen... The family he longed for and the future he dreamed of had both led him straight to his death. Just then, an invitation to the Carter heir's birthday gala arrived in my hands. Good. The Carter family, was it? I would soon find out whether they could survive making an enemy of the Blackwell family, the most powerful family in Kingsford.

I was 10 minutes late to my own housewarming party. When I finally walked in, Wren Halley, the college girl my boyfriend, Austin Blanchard, had been supporting, was already chatting with my relatives like she owned the place. My parents sat at the head of the table, both of them looking furious. Austin walked over to me, looking completely relaxed. "What took you so long? Wren's been handling the guests for you." Everyone in the room went quiet. Wren moved behind him, almost shyly. As she shifted, her sleeve slid up and revealed an emerald bracelet on her wrist. It was my grandmother's jade bangle. Wren looked down. "I'm sorry, Lily. I've never been somewhere this beautiful before. I just thought I could help." Austin quickly stepped between us. "She's never had a chance to experience this kind of life. Let her enjoy it for one night. You don't have to make everything a big deal." I looked from him to the bracelet on her wrist and chuckled. Apparently, Austin had forgotten something important. This penthouse with its sweeping view of Bellmere belonged to only one person, and that person was me.

My wealthy family could hear every thought in my head. On my first day home, they sent their adopted son a forty-thousand-dollar allowance. Me? They sent thirty bucks. I grumbled to myself, 'Is this a joke? Thirty dollars? I make more than that tightening bolts at the plant.' They looked down their noses at me, sneering, waiting for me to come crawling to them. Then they heard what I thought next. 'A top Healy City family's monthly allowance for both its sons adds up to a measly 40,030 dollars? That wouldn't even buy a square yard of insulation. 'What family fortune is there to even fight over? 'The plant still hasn't hit this year's KPI of thirty rockets. Instead of wasting time on rich-family power games, I could be building a few more rockets to hold off the aliens.'

The yacht carrying my parents and my younger brother, Dylan Marsh, exploded at sea. There were no survivors. I came home to an empty house and a mountain of debt I had no way to pay off. Numb with despair, I climbed onto the roof, ready to jump—when a stream of comments suddenly scrolled past my vision, as if I were watching myself from the outside. [Plot twist: your parents actually won three hundred million dollars in the lottery. They took your brother abroad to live it up.] [Lol, Dylan has no idea the poor, blind girlfriend he dumped is actually the eldest daughter of the Ross family. She's just been playing along, pretending to be broke.] [Once Dylan blows through all his money and comes crawling back, Celeste Ross is going to lock him in a room and make him pay for it.] [Come on, cannon fodder, jump already. Everyone's waiting for Dylan's big comeback.] I decided, right then, that I wasn't going to die after all. That night, soaked to the bone and half-drunk, I knocked on Celeste Ross's door.

At our friends' get-together, my girlfriend, Delilah Stallard, casually stuffs her half-eaten ice cream into the mouth of her childhood sweetheart, Noel Weston. Everyone around us instantly exchanges awkward glances. My best friend looks furious as he asks me what I'm going to do about it. What else can I do? Naturally, I give them my blessing. "Why did you even bother to look for a boyfriend? You two might as well just date each other."

Ever since Mom has gotten remarried, my stepdad, Winston Cox, becomes the only person who matters to her. She saves every luxury meal and delicacy for him, while I am left to sip on his leftover soup. His designer suits fill three closets until they overflow, yet I am forced to wear my cousin's old hand-me-downs. She spends 20 thousand dollars on virtual gaming gear for him, but when I ask for a ten-dollar study guide, she says, "Just memorizing the textbook is more than enough!" One night, the noise Mom and Winston make in the bathroom disrupts my studying. When I ask that they keep it down, Mom throws me out of the house and onto the street. Years later, I turn into a multibillion-dollar entrepreneur. That's when Mom crawls back to me, begging, "Winston and his mistress teamed up and drained all my assets. Could you please take me in?"

On our wedding anniversary, I get shot by a rival family during a crossfire. When I'm brought to the hospital while drenched in my own blood, I come across Don Marco Lombardi, my husband, who's supposed to be negotiating a business deal in Asterra right now. Apparently, he's supporting his ex-girlfriend, Lucia Santoro, as they wait for her medical check-up. The moment we come across each other, I gaze at Marco calmly. "What a coincidence." Even though there's panic crossing his eyes, he makes no move to approach me. As I stumble out of the operation room while leaning against the wall for support, I hear Lucia telling Marco, "You should go check on the Donna. I think she's badly hurt." But Marco sounds extraordinarily confident. "It's fine. I'll accompany you through your check-up first. She loves me too much to ever leave me anyway." I let out a cold chuckle at his words. Is he that confident that I will never leave him, hmm?

Before filling out our college preferences, Ethan Barron, our class president and son of the richest man in the country, suddenly claims that he can get everyone in our class into Meridian College. "My parents have donated several buildings to the college. It'll be a piece of cake to get all of you in." Even though most of my classmates have scores that fall well short of Meridian College's admission threshold, they fall for his promise, skip their official applications, and count on Ethan to pull strings and get them into college. In my previous life, I realize Ethan's words can't be trusted, so I immediately urge them to submit their college applications, just in case. I also make a point of calling their parents one by one to warn them. However, this infuriates Ethan. He mocks me for being a penniless nobody who knows nothing about the rules of high society and accuses me of ruining the lives of our classmates. My girlfriend, Sasha Corbin, also berates me for being consumed by jealousy. "You're just jealous that Ethan comes from a wealthy family and can get all of us into Meridian College. So what if your grades are good? You could work your ass off your entire life and still never catch up to what his family has amassed over three generations!" For the sake of our three years as classmates, I choose not to hold it against them. Yet, when I realize right before the deadline that they still haven't submitted their college preferences, I immediately call the cops and expose Ethan's fake identity. Ethan is vilified by everyone and, overwhelmed by despair, jumps into the river to end his life. My classmates claim he got what he deserved and thank me for saving their futures. However, at our class farewell dinner, Sasha poisons my drink. My classmates watch coldly as I writhe in agony. "We may have lost our chance to get into college, but Ethan has lost his life!" When I open my eyes again, I find myself back on the day Ethan claims he can get us into Meridian College through his family connections.

When my mother won a million dollars from a lottery ticket, she prepared an envelope for each of her three children. After we opened them, my younger brother and younger sister each found a bank card inside. But from my envelope, two 1-dollar coins clinked onto the floor. Seeing me freeze, a trace of unease flickered across Mother's face. "Cassian," she said hesitantly, "Logan and Sienna suffered a lot growing up because your father passed away so early. So I gave each of them 500 thousand dollars as compensation. "You're the eldest son—like a father to them. Don't fight with them over this, okay?" I glanced down at the faded down jacket I had worn for years, the fabric so worn that it had lost its color. Then, my eyes drifted to my younger brother's limited-edition sneakers and to the designer bag slung over my sister's shoulder. Mother seemed to have forgotten that when Father died, I had only been eight. I smiled faintly. "Alright. I won't fight them for it." Hearing this, Mother let out a long breath of relief. The next second, my voice turned cold. "Then I won't fight for the responsibility of supporting you in your old age either."

On my wedding day, my groom's sister, Nadia Lawson, wears an elaborate ball gown and comes on stage to snatch the emcee's microphone. Before all the guests, she arrogantly says to me, "Can't you see the princess is here? Why didn't you curtsy and greet me? You deserve to be punished! Get on your knees and prostrate yourself before me as an apology!" My expression sours at her insolence. I turn around only to see the indulgent expressions on her parents' faces. The groom, Bowen Lawson, says dotingly, "We spoiled Nad silly since she was a child. You are her sister-in-law now. Don't make things hard for her." I am so mad that I can't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. The clown thinks she's a princess, asking me to kneel before her? Ridiculous.

On the eve of our ninth wedding, my fiance, Jasper Preston, develops a split personality after saving me in a car accident. One personality loves me down to his very bones. The other, however, is hopelessly in love with his junior, Wendy Upton. While I'm in a half-dreaming stupor, I hear the doctor sigh. "Mr. Preston's two personalities possess immense self-awareness. I'm afraid it'll be very difficult for them to merge. If Ms. Birch insists on marrying him, she must be willing to share her husband with another woman." Sighs ripple through the room, but I remain exceptionally resolute. After all, he had risked his life to save me in that accident. How could I possibly give up on the man I love so easily? However, the very next second, I hear another voice. "Jasper, you really outdid yourself this time. I can't believe you actually made up a split personality. Still, knowing Stella's temper, won't she drag you down to hell with her once she finds out the truth?" Jasper scoffs, "She loves me so much that she'd give her life for me; she'd never hurt me. I have to teach her a lesson because she fired Wen." My heart feels as though a blade has pierced straight through it. So, the disasters plaguing our weddings aren't coincidences. Everything—every single obstacle—has just been his twisted way of punishing me. Since he's willing to go this far for Wendy, I no longer want this forced marriage. Consequently, when I come to, and Jasper puts on his split-personality act, I simply look at his sworn rival, Mason Winslow, who is standing beside him. "Honey, who is he?" I ask calmly.

After the IVF procedure worked, I finally got pregnant and flew back from overseas, hoping to surprise my husband, Rob Balmer, with the news I'd been waiting so long for. A friend tipped me off that while I'd been abroad, Rob had taken on a new personal assistant — the clingy, temperamental type who always had to have her way. At first, I didn't think much of it. In the old days, all I had to do was frown, and Rob would have anyone who got on my nerves shown the door. But when I got home, I found out the code to the front gate had been changed. I tried our wedding anniversary date again — and that's when the door swung open. Some woman was leaning against the doorway in my silk pajamas, all drama and attitude, her brows arched like she owned the place. "Look what the cat dragged in — some beggar showing up at the Balmer estate! Scram! Or I'll set the dogs on you!" I was so furious I almost laughed. "Go get Rob. I want to ask him just what kind of stray he's been letting into this house." And I had one more question: Did he still want the heir — the Balmer family's only shot at continuing nine generations of single sons— the one I was carrying right now?

My husband Charles always had selective amnesia. Anything that had to do with me, he would forget, then promise he'd make it up next time. On my thirtieth birthday, I prepared an elaborate dinner at home and waited for him and our family to come celebrate. But the hour came and went, and no one showed up. Burning with a high fever, I went out to look for Charles and called everyone else. Isabella's voice was warm with laughter. "Charles is here with me picking out your birthday present. We'll be back soon." My best friend said, "Traffic is awful. I ran into Charles on the way, so we're heading over together." Even my own brother told me, "I ran into an old friend with Charles on the road and we got to chatting. Don't worry." Last was our son, coaxing me in his little voice. "Daddy's buying me fresh bread!" Everyone was telling me Charles was right there with them. Everyone was telling me he'd gone all out for my birthday. What they didn't know was that I had watched Charles walk into an upscale restaurant with his arm around another woman. He pulled out her chair like a gentleman and handed her the menu. I stood outside in the rain, soaked to the bone, and every last hope in my heart died. A husband who couldn't stay faithful? I was done.