Plot Twists Biological Family Short Stories & Novels

I am directionally challenged. I don't remember routes well, and I get lost quite easily. Wyatt Zimmerman, my best friend, refuses to believe me and insists on helping me fix this problem. He even gets Queenie Jackson, my foster sister, and Yvonne Lambert, my childhood sweetheart, on board to put me through "special training". They get off the subway before I do whenever we travel, leaving me alone at the station. They quietly leave through another entrance whenever we go shopping, leaving me wandering alone like a fool as I search for them. They always say it's to train my sense of direction. I step away to use the restroom during lunch today, and by the time I return, the three of them are gone again—even the table is completely cleared. I am about to make a call when I realize I have given my phone to Wyatt to hold on to. I walk to the front desk to ask about them, and the receptionist hands me a note from Wyatt. It merely states, "We've taken you along this route twice already, Scott, so I'm sure you remember it by now. You can do it! We'll be waiting for you at home!" I suddenly realize how pointless this whole training is. There's honestly nothing wrong with having no sense of direction. I can find my way without anyone's help as long as I have my navigation app on my phone.

After class, my half sister sent a driver to pick me up for the family dinner. But he parked outside the estate of the Besa family, the most dangerous mafia clan in England. My half sister, Sophie Hawthorne, was practically dripping with smugness on the other end. "Got you! The driver's gone. Let's see how you get out of this one!" I stood frozen. My father sighed on the other end of the line. "You fell for a trick that simple? You're a disgrace to the Hawthorne blood in your veins!" My stepmother laughed. "How can you be this stupid? Find your own way out. We have a dinner to attend." Shaking with fear, I sank to the ground and, with my last shred of hope, called my fiance, Ethan Mercer. The call connected, but it was Sophie's voice that answered. "Iris, Mom and Dad said you have to come back on your own. No cheating!" Ethan took the phone. His tone was breezy. "Come on. Don't disappoint your sister after all the thought she put into this. Good luck." The line went dead. Before, I would have cried and called them over and over until someone agreed to come get me. But this time, staring at the forest stretching endlessly before me, I was just tired. Sophie loved her pranks, and the whole family played along. Last year, she kissed my fiance in front of everyone at my engagement party. Last month, she swapped my heart medication for sugar pills and landed me in the ICU. This time, they all knew the Besa family' reputation for cruelty, yet they still helped her dump me on their doorstep. I spotted the red glow of a surveillance camera in the distance. I knew there was no escaping. I wiped my tears and stood up. I walked toward the Besa estate. If my own family wouldn't have me, I would find one that would.

I come home for the holidays to find four pairs of slippers beside the shoe cabinet. There's a pair for my dad, Dean Pratt, a pair for my mom, Nancy Kerr, and two pairs for my sister, Luna Pratt, including a spare. Mine isn't there. Although my sister attended school in another state, kept her room exactly as it was. Even her slippers sit by her bedside, waiting for her return. I had been away from home for three years. When I returned, I discovered that my belongings had disappeared one by one. And now, they hadn’t even kept a pair of slippers for me. I stand in the entryway, my feet bare. "Where’s my pair?" Mom pokes her head out. "You hardly ever come back, so I threw them away. They were taking up space." But the soles of my sister’s spare pair had already been worn smooth, and they were still neatly sitting in their original place. The next day, I buy a new pair for myself at the supermarket and put them beside the shoe cabinet. That night, I check the shoe cabinet and find them gone. Dad is watching TV on the couch. "Luna's classmate came over, so I gave them to her." "I just bought them." Dad doesn't even turn around. "It's just a pair of slippers. Get another one." Luna pauses. "Huh? I thought Mom had bought them for guests." It makes sense. Guest slippers were supposed to be thrown away once the guest had left.

I host a late-night campus radio show and have been on the air for three years. I take calls about cheating, scandals, and even people threatening to end their lives. The final night to submit college choices is also my last night on the air before graduation. At 11:30 pm, an anonymous call comes through. It's a guy. "Host, I changed my sister's college choices for my mom tonight," he says. "I have two sisters. Ever since we were kids, the older one has been better at everything than the younger one. "She gets better grades, she's prettier, and even strangers praise her. "This year, my younger sister is just 20 points short of the cutoff, while my older sister is certain to get into a top university. "So I changed all my older sister's college choices to schools she can't get into. That way, she has to wait a year and apply again. "She's smart anyway. If she takes the exam again and reapplies, she can get into an even better school. It all works out in the end." He pauses. "We just want my little sister to win for once. That's not too much to ask for, is it?" I grip the microphone but say nothing. Suddenly, another guy's voice comes through the line. "Host, I'm the older sister's boyfriend. We've been together for three years. Honestly, I do feel bad about this. "Could you play her a song? She listens to your show every night. If she hears it and comes to see me tomorrow, we can still talk about which schools she should apply to. "If she doesn't hear it, then I guess it doesn't matter." I take a deep breath and reach out to end the call. Suddenly, the producer cuts to a piano piece. I freeze, my blood running cold. It's the song I taught my childhood best friend to play, note by note, back when I was 16 years old. Only the two of us know this song.

The year my sister turned fifteen, my father, Grant Davis, became obsessed with holding auctions at home. Everything in the house, from a plate of meat to a turn with the washing machine, from school lunch money to after-school activity fees, had to be won by bidding with family credits. I worked odd jobs until I dropped, sleeping only three hours a night, and finally saved up a thick stack of family credits, the paper soft and warped from my sweat. All Melody had to do was sit on the couch and shed a few tears, and my father would stuff fistfuls of credits into her arms. "Girls deserve to be spoiled. Can't have Melody feeling left out." That day, the item up for auction was an old necklace that had belonged to my grandmother, Ruth Bennett. Eyes burning, I pushed everything I had onto the table. "Eight thousand." Melody tossed out ten thousand without a second thought, her voice sweet and wheedling. "This necklace would go perfectly with my new dress." I begged my father through tears. "This is the only thing Grandma ever left me. Please." My father slapped me so hard my ears rang and my vision blurred. "Highest bidder wins. That's the rule! You're too poor to win, so don't blame anyone else!" Melody snatched the necklace, gave it a look of disgust, and casually tossed it into the roaring fireplace. "Oops, the fire's getting low. This'll make good kindling." I threw myself at the fireplace. The back of my hand split open instantly from the heat, the skin blistering and peeling away. They left, slamming the door behind them, complaining that my screaming was bad luck in the house. Later, I couldn't stop thinking. If I put my own life on the auction block, how many credits would you bid?

When we were small, a witch named Sybil predicted that my sister would not live past sixteen. Since then, every eye in the family turned toward her. All the love in that house gathered around Aurora and stopped there. Whatever she wanted, whatever she wanted to do, our parents backed her completely. Every scrap of tenderness and every resource they had went to her, while I was left out in the cold, and the things that should have been mine were handed to her too. Even so, I never complained, not once. I knew my sister was someone to be pitied. Then the day of the prophecy came, the day she turned sixteen, and I was the one who ended up poisoned with wolfsbane, of all people, hanging on the edge of death. My parents were busy with her. They decided I was making a scene, and they ordered the guards to throw me out of the castle. My arms and legs had no strength left. I dragged myself toward the doors and called out in a shaking voice, "Dad, Mom, let me in, please, it hurts so much..." Instead, from behind the doors my father's gentle voice said to my sister, "Don't worry, sweetheart. The one causing trouble has been put out. No one is going to take your parents' love away from you again." Hearing that, something in me died for good. With the sound of my family fussing over her drifting through the door, I slowly closed my eyes.

Three years ago, on a full moon night, my mother jolted awake at midnight, claiming the Moon Goddess had delivered a prophecy: On the day of my twentieth birthday, the feral gene inside me would spiral out of control. I would shift into a wolf and kill my sister. At first, my parents were skeptical. But after I awakened my wolf at eighteen, my sister would seize up whenever she was near me, clutching her chest and collapsing to the ground in violent fits of gasping. To protect her and force my wolf into dormancy, my parents resorted to every harsh measure they could devise. They poured suppression potions down my throat that ate away at my organs, and clamped a restraining collar around my neck so my sister could keep me on a leash. Eventually, my wolf vanished completely. And somehow, I survived to my twentieth birthday. A flash of joy hit me, and I reached for the cake on the table. My father backhanded me so hard I went flying. "That feral gene in your blood really is impossible to tame! "If anyone eats first, it's your sister. What makes you think you can touch it?" Clara stepped forward as if to soothe things over, but my mother pulled her behind her back, eyes full of wariness as she edged away from me. Then my father dragged me up to the attic and bolted the door shut. Through the door, they said, "Stay put and get through tonight. The prophecy will be broken. "After this, we'll give you half the love we've shown your sister." I sank my teeth into my lip, not daring to make a sound. Years of the suppression potion had already hollowed out my body. My consciousness was fading, piece by piece. Mom, Dad, in that dream the Moon Goddess sent you, did she happen to mention this part? That the one dying today might be me?

After my sister was born, my mother's love turned into a game decided by a coin toss. Mom had a custom gold coin made: the flower side stood for my sister, and the number side stood for me. For ten years, that coin decided who got the bigger slice of cake, who got a new dress, and even who went to the doctor when we were sick. But the number side never once landed face up. I cried, because none of it was fair, and Mom just looked at me coldly and said, "Your luck is worse than hers. Who are you going to blame for that?" The day my acceptance letter from the elite prep school arrived, all I wanted was a steak cooked by Mom. So I secretly swapped in a rigged coin engraved with a number on both sides. The coin hit the floor. Mom spotted the trick at once and kicked me hard, through the doorway and into my room. "You vicious little rotten thing. Get in there and think about what you did!" She didn't know that when she kicked me across the room, my head slammed into the sharp corner of my desk. Blood flooded my vision in an instant, and the pain was so intense I couldn't make a sound. I crawled toward the half-open door in desperation. I got a hand on the panel and tried to pull myself upright to call for help, and then a dead, silent dizziness rolled over me. My legs gave out, and my body, already unconscious, pitched straight forward. The momentum of my fall yanked the wooden door shut with a bang! I lay there limp as mud, and my own weight wedged that inward-opening door shut for good. Mom's furious voice came through from the hall. "So now you've got an attitude? Slamming doors at me? Then you can starve in there! "Don't be scared, Chloe. Mommy's taking you out for a big seafood dinner." Her heels receded down the hall as warm blood spread across the floor, inch by inch. I'm sorry, Mom. In my next life, I'll win with my own luck.

The sales department organized a team-building trip and turned it into a killer-instinct trail race, with a $30,000 prize for the winner. I volunteer with a search and rescue team, and I stayed up all night mapping the safest route with supply points along the way. The new VP they had parachuted in tore up my map right before we set out. "What's the fun in a paved trail? We take the undeveloped Wildman Gorge. That's how you show real killer instinct! "To keep anyone from cheating with GPS, everyone hands over their communication devices." I pointed at the thunderheads on the horizon and tried to stop him. Wildman Gorge floods easily, and going in without radios was suicide. Instead, he smashed my radio to pieces in front of everyone. "You're just jealous that I got to lead this thing, and you want to keep everyone from taking home the prize money, right?" For that $30,000, my coworkers lined up to call me a coward who cared nothing about the team. Fine. I took off my shell jacket and volunteered to stay at base camp at the bottom of the mountain. A storm was coming. If this pack of office wolves wanted to take on a mudslide in Wildman Gorge, I would sit there with a hot cup of tea and wish them a triumphant return.

My mother dragged me out of my biological father's brutality, and I thought we had finally escaped. Then she married the Don of the Falcone family. The woman who once fought to protect me completely changed. To secure my stepfather's approval and coddle his beloved Sofia, she stood by and let them turn me into a servant in the house I was supposed to call home. Every time I pushed back, they pushed harder. Every time I begged to be seen, I was met with contempt. My biological father's fists left scars on my body. This family's marks went deeper—into my bones. So I stopped. If they never wanted me there, I would stop breaking myself for their hollow approval. I would take my own life back. In seven days, I would leave. Harvard acceptance in hand—Boston waiting.

For the third time, Mom complains that the fridge isn't cooling properly. I know she's waiting for me to offer to buy a new one. Mom's always saying I'm the one holding this family together. She constantly reminds me that my younger sister, Celia Kessler, only makes 2,000 dollars a month and can't be expected to help. So everything falls on me. When Mom says her bedroom is too hot, I grit my teeth and buy her a new air conditioner. When Dad complains about his constant neck pain, I scrape a living for a month so I can afford a neck massager for him. Last year, I even paid for most of the renovations on the house, scrimping and saving to cover the cost. I've been working for five years and make 8,000 dollars a month. But by the end of every month, I don't even have 500 dollars left. Seeing that I'm not going to say anything, Mom slams her fork down on the table and shoots me a glance. "They say you have kids so someone will take care of you when you're old. Guess I wasn't that lucky!" My chest tightens, and suddenly the food in my mouth is hard to swallow. I'm about to say something when the front door opens. Celia calls out cheerfully, "Mom, I got paid almost 10,000 dollars! You and Dad don't need to give me the usual 4,000 this month!" I look up, stunned. Celia walks in carrying the latest tablet, and my boyfriend, Bryan Alston, is right behind her. He told me he had a client meeting today. That's when I realize where the money has really been going. Every month, I give Mom an extra 5,000 dollars for household expenses, and she's been giving most of it to Celia. Everyone depends on me, but somehow I'm the one who has the least.

Before our mating ceremony, my mate, Pavel Blackwell, took me and my older sister, Vivienne, out for seafood. The server recognized them and came over smiling. "The usual for you two?" Pavel nodded. He slid into the seat beside Vivienne without a second thought. The crab came out of the steamer, and he cracked the shell open piece by piece and passed the meat to her. I had been put at a spare chair shoved into the aisle, without so much as a dish of sauce in front of me. Halfway through the meal, the server appeared with a couples' silverware set. "Pavel, Vivienne, this is your hundredth visit to us. That means you get your custom set." A line was engraved on the back of each piece. "Pavel and Vivienne. Never apart." The earliest date on the record was three years ago today. It took me a moment to place the date. That was the day a severe allergic reaction sent me into surgery and I nearly didn't make it out. So for the three hours my life hung in the balance, Pavel had not been waiting outside that door at all. Vivienne ran a finger over the engraving and gave a mischievous smile. "Pavel, once you and my little sister are mated, she won't stop you from going out with me, will she?" Pavel ruffled her hair and turned to look at me. "Of course not. She's always been reasonable. "Besides, you and I have known each other for ten years. Ashlyn and I have only known we were fated mates for four. If it bothers her, she can learn to live with it." On the way back, I got into the back seat on my own. The front seat had always belonged to Vivienne. Then the car's voice assistant chimed in. "Welcome aboard, Vivienne! Pavel will get you home safely!" I watched the scenery stream past the window, and suddenly I was tired of all of it. So I took out my phone and sent my father a message. "I agree to the pack's arranged mating." Ten years of closeness had turned the two of them into a habit. Then let me be the one to quit mine. Four years of it.

After the Intermediate Mage Examination, I stood outside the door and overheard my mother tell a relative, "The Royal Academy's tuition is too expensive. We can't afford to send both daughters." The relative tried to reason with her. "They're both your daughters. You can't send one and leave the other behind." My brother cut in. "Liana can't even cast a basic light spell. She's the one who needs the extra help. Ella's talented enough to manage on her own. Send her with Liana as a maid. She can sit in on classes whenever she's free." Then came the voice of Caden Vale, the boy I had grown up with. "That's fair." Standing outside the door, I finally understood what fair meant to them. Liana got the place at the academy. I got to save them the extra tuition and wait on her as a maid. When we were kids learning the levitation spell, the only cushion in the house always went under Liana. Once, I fell and cracked my head open. Even then, I made excuses for them. I told myself Liana needed more protection than I did. But as I listened to them laugh, something inside me finally snapped. This time, I would not let Liana use me as her stepping-stone.

My parents are music professors, and their university is always hosting these music salons and exchange events. But they never took me. After I graduated from college, I was desperate to see what it was like, so I begged my mother for a visitor's pass. She was busy helping my sister Ella fill out an application for one of those concerts, and she cut me off cold: "Everyone attending is a top-tier musician. You can't even read sheet music—walking in there, you'd just stick out like a sore thumb." A few days later, I stood in the freezing wind, listening to the applause rolling out from the auditorium. My sister stood at center stage, performing alongside a bunch of renowned musicians. That night, my mom posted a proud photo of Ella's performance on social media. Graceful. Composed. Radiant. The comments were all flattery—until one relative asked: [Why didn't you bring your Seraphina along to soak up some of the spotlight?] My mom replied: [She has zero musical talent. Too much of a philistine. Not her scene.] I stared at my phone, glancing at the six-figure offer from Wall Street, and let out a helpless laugh. My mom always favored the kid she thought was brilliant—never had a clue that I was shining somewhere else entirely. Three days left until I move out of Ohio for good. I'm taking everything she called "philistine" about me and walking out of her precious little music kingdom forever.

I've never been one to take a loss. If my dad, Jared Ingram, buys a cake for my sister, Harper Ingram, I'll demand to have half of it. If my mom, Lindsay Sutton, buys a phone for my brother, Simon Ingram, I'll demand to buy a new digital tablet. When I'm eight, my whole famy goes on a trip, and once again, they forget to buy a ticket for me. I run out onto the main road and call the police using a passerby's phone, claiming that my parents have abandoned me. My parents, who have only just left, are forced to turn back. Mom is so furious that she throws my adoption papers at me. "Beth, you're adopted. What more do you want from me?" From that day onward, I stop fighting for what I want. To stay in this family, I try my best to please everyone. When Simon gets in trouble, I kneel in the snow and plead for him. When Harper doesn't want to do her homework, I stay up all night to help her finish it. My parents work hard, so I take care of all the house chores. When my aunt, Brianna Lane, visits us, she pulls Mom into the room and asks, "Lindsay, how did you pull this off? You gave Harper, your adopted daughter, 3,000 dollars a month, but only 300 dollars to your own daughter. Why doesn't Beth ever makes a fuss about it?" Mom lets out an arrogant little laugh. "That's easy. I just told Beth that she was adopted. Forget giving her less money. Even if I gave her nothing at all, she'd still be grateful to me."

Mom's words hold immense weight, but she only speaks one sentence each month. When a bankrupt businessman begs for her blessing, his life turns around the next day. When a childless tycoon begs her to bless him with a child, his wife is pregnant before a month has passed. But all my life, she has never spoken a complete sentence to me. When it was time to choose which university to apply to, Mom merely shook her head. "If you apply…" Her unfinished sentence kept me awake all night. I took her meaning the wrong way, and in the end, I lost the university I had dreamed about getting into for ten years. Then, my younger sister, who had scored less than me, somehow snagged a spot there. Yet, she only smiled shyly and said, "I just got lucky." After graduation, a prestigious foreign company came knocking. However, Mom simply gave a cold warning. "Maybe it's a trap…" So, I took her advice and joined a company that has me working overtime day after day. Yet, my younger sister joined that foreign company, and she ended up with a high salary and weekends off. Three days before my wedding, Mom looks at my fiance. As always, she only says, "The happiness you have now is only temporary…" I toss and turn, unable to sleep. But as I pass my younger sister's room, I hear Mom's gentle voice. "First, I pray that Zara and Evan grow old together, surrounded by children and grandchildren. Second, I hope they live happily without any misfortune…" She talks all night. I listen from the other side of the door the entire time. It's only when my tears run dry that I finally understand. It isn't that Mom can't speak. She simply doesn't want to talk to me. Since her words are never meant for me, she has no reason to involve herself in the rest of my life.

On matriculation day, I carried my acceptance letter to the campus grounds to register alone. But before I could cross the threshold, the guards drove me back into the street with their anti-riot forks. Humiliated and bewildered, I reached for my phone to call my childhood friend, Daisy Reid. A sharp laughter rippled through the receiver. “Violet, are you truly that blind behind those glasses? The letter you swept off the desk was a forgery I mocked up. Your actual one is still sitting at home.” Panicked, I hastily booked a return ticket and hurried back to search for my letter. I scoured the house for hours, turning up nothing. Just then, Daisy’s personalized ringtone sang out from my palm. “Stop looking. “Bryan has it. He’s over at Millfield now.” Without a moment’s hesitation, I boarded the train to Millfield. But the second I stepped out onto the platform, a video call from Daisy flashed onto my display. “You gullible fool, did you genuinely travel all that way to hunt down Bryan? “It was just a joke. “Truth be told, the guards didn’t chase you off because of a counterfeit letter. I tipped them off that you were hauling concealed explosives…” She swung the phone around, showing Bryan Hawke, another childhood friend, who was dotingly fanning her with a brochure. Directly behind them stood my brother Harry, who was supposedly halfway across the globe on an extended getaway. “Hey Violet, what’s with the face? Learn to take a joke for once,” he teased with a chuckle. I could not move an inch. Turned out his elaborate cover story of an overseas holiday was nothing more than a ruse to escort Daisy to her new college. Gazing at the three laughing faces, something dawned on me. Their cruel entertainment, paid for with my dignity for eighteen years, had run its course.

The day a Category 5 hurricane struck, my younger brother, Ryan Bennett, suddenly disappeared. Without hesitation, my parents, Daniel and Emily Bennett, dragged me out into the hurricane to search for him. I barely survived the monstrous storm, but my parents never came back. When the rescue team finally found Ryan, they discovered that he had been playing video games the entire time in the glass room on the top floor. I furiously confronted him, but he couldn’t have cared less. “You’re the one who chose to go out and look for me! “Use your brain! Why would I ever go outside during a hurricane?” Enraged, I rushed at him and hit him, but he shoved me off the rooftop with his own hands. “Stop blaming me! If you’d stopped Mom and Dad from going out that day, they wouldn’t have died! “Since you’re so devoted to our parents, go atone for their deaths!” I fell from the rooftop, and everything went black. When I opened my eyes again, I was back two hours before the hurricane made landfall. Dad had already put on his raincoat and was preparing to go out. Mom was putting on her shoes by the door, desperately tugging at my arm as tears streamed down her face. “Hurry! The wind is getting stronger! We have to find Ryan!” The next second, I yanked my arm free. “I’m not going!” Since Ryan claimed he never asked us to look for him, I wouldn’t look for him this time. I’d like to see just how long he can last in that glass room with a Category 5 hurricane bearing down on him.

"Today is supposed to be a good day. We're choosing Wendy's dowry. Stop standing there bringing bad luck down on us!" My mother pulled my sister back in disgust, afraid the blood I had coughed onto the floor would splash the silver-bound chest. When a forest elf girl is born, her family plants a bonded tree for her, a tree that lives and dies with its owner. When a daughter marries, her eldest brother takes the old branches the tree has dropped on its own and builds her a dowry chest, a sign symbolizing a lifelong covenant of love and kinship. The chest is filled with gowns and with whatever the family gives her, and the larger the chest, the deeper the blessing. My brother cut my tree down and damaged its roots as well. "Wendy's tree is too thin and weak. It isn't worthy of the Royal Court. I had no choice but to saw yours into boards and put together a respectable chest for her." My sister stroked the silver-bound chest made from my ancient tree like a highborn princess. The whole family gathered around her to pick out what would go inside, as though they had forgotten that I was a bride that day too. My voice shook. "Then what about me?" My mother looked at me shaking there, and her face filled with disgust. "You insist on marrying that short-lived human. A wicker basket is dowry enough for you." Only in that moment did I understand that to them my life mattered less than Wendy's dignity. So I no longer had to treat them as family.

My father was a judge, but he fell in love with a killer. His lover ran my grandparents down with her car. He found her not guilty in court. At the time, his power was absolute. No one dared to go against him. That homewrecker lived in luxury and got whatever she asked for. My mother lost both her parents, suffered betrayal, and was driven mad by everyone's ridicule. Thirty years passed. I fought with everything I had and became a Supreme Court justice. During graduation season, I sat on the interview panel as presiding justice. Across from me was a poised, immaculate young woman. She was the finest graduate the law school had produced this year. Looking at that familiar face, I glanced down at the surname on her file. When I saw it, I froze. I stared at it for a long time. Then I raised my head and looked at the young woman who bore a faint resemblance to me. “We won’t be hiring you.”