Nouvelles Plot Twists & Romans Homewrecker Family Emotions

I spent four hundred thousand on the house I bought for our wedding. The whole place ran on a smart home system. On the day I moved in, my girlfriend locked every door and window from her phone, then turned on the gas. Someone pounding on the door woke me. I fought my way out with everything I had. After I was taken to the hospital, the doctor said a few more minutes would have left me in a vegetative state. In the ICU, my girlfriend called to complain. "Couldn't you have held on a little longer? Who gave you permission to run?! Evan was doing a medical experiment. He wanted to see how long a person could survive in a room full of carbon monoxide." She paused, her voice full of annoyance. "We were even going to ignite the gas and see what would happen. Now that you ran off, the whole thing was wasted." After I was discharged, I went back to the house, only to find that the smart lock no longer recognized me. My girlfriend called at just the right moment. "Evan needs a place for his experiment. Your place is big, so let him use it for now. Go rent somewhere else and don't bother him. All of this is for medical progress, so try to see the bigger picture. Don't be so narrow-minded." I said nothing. After I hung up, I went straight to a real estate agency and listed the place for an urgent sale. The moment the money came in, I texted my childhood friend whom I hadn't seen in years. [Do you have a house ready for after the wedding? If you do, let's get married.]

Ever since my parents got obsessed with AI chatbots, they let them run everything. Dad asked one about his back pain. It blamed his desk job and told him to start doing pull-ups. So he did. Right up until an ambulance hauled him to the ER. Turns out he had a herniated disc, and the pull-ups had made it way worse. He spent over three months in the hospital. And somehow, he still thought the chatbot was right. According to him, the real problem was that he hadn't worked out enough. Then Mom's stocks crashed. She asked an AI chatbot what to do, followed every word, and lost several thousand dollars overnight. Did she blame the chatbot? Of course not. She blamed herself for not listening sooner. I tried everything to knock some sense into them. Nothing worked. Then I found out someone had messed with my college applications. I knew exactly who did it. I confronted them, and Dad just smiled. "You've been buried in school too long. You're behind the times. The AI came up with your college plan. "This is the age of AI!"

Five years after Liam DeLuise went bankrupt and skipped town, he suddenly returned, richer than ever. While I was waiting in line at the hospital pharmacy to pick up lifesaving medication, he kidnapped my eight-year-old son, Teddy Molson. He called me on video. I immediately recognized the abandoned industrial park on the west side of town behind him. On the screen, Teddy, who had a heart condition, was suspended over a pool of water inside an abandoned warehouse. His skin had turned purple from the cold. Liam sneered into the camera. “You really are one hell of a friend, Dave! When I went bankrupt, you refused to help me and even stole my woman! Bet you never thought I’d make it back on top, did you? “Now, I’m going to make you feel what it’s like to lose the person you love most!” He raised the metal pipe, ready to break Teddy’s knee with it. My eyes burned with panic as I screamed at the screen. “Don’t touch him, Liam! He’s your son!”

Before the holiday ticket rush started, my fiancée, Lisa Jetrow, and I had agreed to go back to my hometown for the holidays. A minute before the train tickets went up for sale online, her phone suddenly rang. Her male assistant's voice was trembling on the phone, sounding flustered. "Ms. Jetrow, what should I do? My mom sprained her ankle, but my signal's terrible so I can't buy tickets to go home..." I was totally focused, double-checking all the info in the last thirty seconds. But Lisa suddenly grabbed my phone, deleted all my travel details, and keyed in her assistant's details instead. When she tossed my phone back to me, she and her assistant had successfully booked tickets, and the destination was his hometown. All the other tickets were already sold out. "Are you out of your mind? You promised my grandma..." "His hometown is really far, so he can't wait. I'll explain to your grandma later." I was speechless. My grandma was critically ill, and she wanted to see her grandson and future granddaughter-in-law one last time. Lisa had only reluctantly agreed to go back with me after I'd asked her three times. But she wasn't going back to my hometown now. She gave that precious ticket to someone else. Taking a deep breath, I opened a WhatsApp chat and typed: "Come pick me up. Grandma wants to see you."

On my 24th birthday, an app suddenly appears on all the other digital devices in my family except my phone. The one inside that app is another version of me, another Cordelia Winchester. But she's so much better at everything than I am. Mom's bakery has been in the red for three years. "Cordelia" casually tweaks one recipe, and the cakes sell out that same day. Dad has failed to earn his promotion three times. "Cordelia" revises his presentation, and the very next day, his boss grants his promotion. My fiance, Chase Jensen's company is about to run out of cash. "Cordelia" spends ten minutes reworking his pitch deck, and the investors immediately put in another 20 million dollars. From then on, Mom starts asking her how to develop every new dessert. Dad prints out screenshots of everything she says. Even when Chase chooses an engagement ring, he asks her opinion first. On my 25th birthday, before we even cut the cake, Mom suddenly stares at the app and asks, "Does she really have to stay inside the phone?" Dad lowers his voice. "Is there any way to bring her here for real?" Chase taps open customer support. [Apply for a parallel-life exchange?] Customer support replies, [After the exchange, the Cordelia from your world will be sent to the other world. Confirm exchange?] They barely hesitate. I watch as they hit "confirm", my nails digging into my palms and drawing blood. I force a strained smile. "Since you guys adore her so much, I hope you don't regret this." The next second, a red line of notification appears on the screen. [Exchange sequence initiated. Countdown: 7 days.]

Eight years ago, I was transported into this post-apocalyptic power fantasy novel as the same-named expendable nobody. I had the ability to create a large-scale radiation shield that could block zombies. I was the only S-Rank ability user in the entire colony. But because my younger brother, Samuel Grant, failed to awaken his ability, my only purpose became providing him with "upgrade materials." I tried to fight against the story and refused to hand over my crystal core. But the story's inertia twisted everyone's minds. My parents accused me of working with the Zombie King just so they could forcefully transplant my crystal core into Samuel. My ex-wife, Chloe Carter, went even further. While I was unconscious, she personally cut open my chest and took half of my crystal core. I survived. But my spine was severely damaged. My ability circuits were destroyed. I became a cripple who could never stand again. After I was released from prison, I could only work at a chemical protection laundry plant on the outer edge of the colony. Then, a mutant zombie horde carrying extreme radiation surrounded the colony. The old shield generator was burned out by the radiation. Suddenly, my entire family knelt in the dirty wastewater and begged me. "Ethan, you're the only one who can manually guide the remaining power in your ability to repair the shield! You have to save Samuel! He's still fighting on the front lines!" Sitting in my wheelchair, I pointed at the eight-inch scar across my chest. Then I pointed at my withered legs. "The crystal core is inside Samuel's body. My broken spine is buried in the mud under your feet. I can't even stand anymore. And you want me to go into the radiation zone? Are you hoping to watch me die?"

I have a severe alcohol allergy. One drop can kill me. As the real son the family had only just found, I came home certain I would finally have my father's love. What I found was that he only had eyes for Tristan Ashmore, the stand-in, the son who wasn't. To prove to the board that I wasn't some spineless nobody raised out in the country, my father ordered me to a dinner that would decide the future of the company. At the table, I tried to get by on a cup of tea. Tristan and my stepmother took it out of my hands and set down a full glass of high-proof liquor. "Dad's giving you a chance here! "Show a little backbone. Don't let him down." Tristan smiled like he'd never done a thing wrong in his life. From the head of the table, my father watched me coldly and raised his own glass. "If I'm still your father, you'll drink that and win us this contract." I closed my eyes and swallowed it. My airway closed. It felt like drowning on dry land. As I went down I saw the disgust in my father's face, and then my soul came loose from my body. And even then I was sorry. I'm sorry, Dad. I embarrassed you again. I watched him shout that I was faking. I watched them leave my body in the private room. When the last of it was gone, a voice came out of the emptiness. "Heaven has taken pity on your suffering, and a reader from another world has been sent to turn your story around. "If he can carry you to the final chapter alive, he'll bring you back."

After I quit my job to become a full-time househusband, my wife, Brooke Lowell, left me with nothing but a bank card capped at 1,000 dollars a month. She said children had to be raised with hardship to grow up strong, and was always worried I might secretly give our daughter special treatment. But 1,000 dollars was nowhere near enough to cover a household's monthly expenses. Every time the kindergarten asked for nutrition fees, I could only swallow my pride and beg for leniency. "She's just a child. Why does she need that much money? You've got some nerve, living so comfortably on 1,000 a month." I had thought Brooke's harshness was meant to temper our daughter's character. That illusion lasted until I asked Brooke for 300 dollars to buy clothes for our daughter's Children's Day performance. What I received instead was humiliation and ridicule from everyone. Brooke accused me of acting like a spoiled rich kid, wasting money on unnecessary clothes. My mother-in-law complained that I dressed too poorly, like a beggar bringing shame to the family. Even my daughter blamed me for embarrassing her, saying I had ruined her Children's Day and damaged her props. I bowed my head, apologized, and paid compensation. Only then did I discover that my bank card had been frozen. The very next moment, Brooke's crush posted on social media about his son receiving a luxury mansion. 'Already a house-owner at three! Who'd believe she's not his birth mother?' Only then did I understand. People who truly loved someone would never be stingy when spending on them.

During the Christmas holiday, a fire suddenly broke out at my family’s factory. My younger brother, who had gone there to inspect operations, was trapped inside the burning building. As the captain of the fire department, I calmly ordered my team not to go in to rescue him. My mother, Susan Tatcher, and wife, Willa Sutton, begged me desperately to go in and save my brother, but I pulled out my phone and started playing Poker. My mother was on the verge of breaking down. “Zayne Luke, hurry in and save your brother! He’s so young. He can’t endure this kind of suffering!” My wife was also pacing anxiously. “Honey, with a fire this complicated, only you can save Mors!” After all, this was my family’s factory. No one knew the escape routes better than I did. However, I turned a deaf ear to them and leisurely topped up my token balance by 100 dollars to keep playing. Having no other choice, Mom splashed cold water on a thin blanket and prepared to rush into the fire. I blocked the key rescue entrance. “What’s the rush? Wait until I finish this round.”

I was the Blackwell family's real heir, lost as a child and recovered only five years ago. After Grandfather's will left me the controlling shares, the adopted son, Damian, jumped into the pool himself and swore I'd pushed him. My parents never bothered to check. They shipped me overnight to the poorest mining belt in Kembala. Three years later, my father called me for the first time. "Damian isn't angry anymore." "Blackwell Forge Holdings is short on cash." "Crawl back here and marry into Gloria Dane's household in Damian's place, so she'll invest in us." I laughed. Gloria Dane was an old woman pushing sixty. What a devoted father he was. But they didn't know that during those three years, I'd quietly built the largest private financial network in the world, the Obsidian Crown Consortium. Now they were days from bankruptcy and still wanted to trade me for money. Fine. I'd been looking for a reason to go back and settle every account.

During a team-building event, we are playing King's Game, a game where anyone who draws the King card gets to order another player around. The company's new intern, Daniel Zugler, draws the King card. His eyes narrow as he sweeps a glance across everyone present. At last, his gaze lands on my fiancee, Sharon Solt. "Then how about… Sharon, feed me a grape using your mouth." There is an immediate uproar, with people slamming their hands on the table, wolf-whistling, or even holding their phones up in preparation to record the moment. Their loud jeering is almost deafening. I initially think that Sharon will refuse coldly, yet to my surprise, she actually blushes and playfully scolds them, "You guys are seriously too much!" Following that, she plucks a grape from the fruit platter, bites it gently between her teeth, then leans closer to Daniel. Daniel smoothly wraps an arm around her shoulders and brings his lips close to hers, almost brushing against them. However, his eyes aren't focused on her. Instead, he gazes past her to shoot me a provocative look. I immediately jump to my feet, my hand snapping out to seize her wrist. Silence descends upon the room at my action. Yet, Sharon yanks her arm out of my grip. "It's just a game. Why are you making such a huge deal about it? Danny's new here, and this is his first team-building event with us. Are you trying to make things difficult for him and humiliate him?" Subsequently, I don't bother stopping them again, allowing their lips and teeth to clash together. That night, after we return home, the phone she left on the coffee table suddenly vibrates. A WhatsApp message appears on the screen, sent from someone she saved as "Sunshine" in her contacts. "Sharon, the grape was quite sweet. Are you going to feed me again next time?" I lock her phone screen and don't ask any questions. One week later, Sharon goes on a work trip and has to bring an assistant with her. She chooses Daniel, who has zero experience. Still, I say nothing, but I do hand in my resignation letter to the HR department. This time, I won't look back again.

"Your brother's gone to Korea. Make sure you send him an extra $300 next month for his loan repayment." I was swamped at my desk when I received that text. My mind went blank. I asked Dad how much my brother had borrowed, and he casually replied: "The surgery costs $83,000, but you only have $75,000 in your bank account, so we took out an $8,000 loan for two years." Seeing my brother's selfie from a luxury hospital room in Seoul, posted on his social media, a chill ran through me. That was my life savings, scraped together by selling my car and pulling all-nighters for three months! Perhaps sensing my emotion, my father sent another text: "Put off your treatment for now. Once your brother becomes handsome, he can snag a rich woman, and then you'll have all the money you need for treatment." Without another word, I immediately called the bank to report the loss and filed a police report for theft. My bank account was instantly frozen. Within days, my brother, who was kicked off the operating table because the payment couldn't go through, called me and begged. His face half-stitched, he was on the verge of a breakdown.

After my scores were revealed to be the highest in the city, I was holding the report in my hand as I happily returned home to tell my family. However, before I reached home, I unexpectedly got a call—it was from myself, four years into the future. I was stunned to see how terrible I looked in the future, but I remained hopeful like a kid seeing candy. "Are you really me from four years into the future? Will our parents finally be proud of me and love me like they love Yohan?" Future Me was laughing so hard that he teared up. "Never tell them about your scores! They'll never be proud of you—all they care about is Yohan, and they will force you to give up your results because he fell short!" I felt a chill run down my spine, but it was true. After my parents found me and took me home, they took Yohan to luxury restaurants while making me eat cold leftovers, saying that my stomach was weak after being homeless for so long—that good food would be wasted on me. I naively thought that success would bridge the gap between us and earn me fairness, but as it turned out, blood connections couldn't win against companionship. And hearing what my own parents did for Yohan, I folded my report neatly before sliding it deep into my pocket. Since they wanted to treat me like a tool, I had no reason to tell them that I made it into Jogen University.

I've wanted a big brother for as long as I can remember. The second I open my eyes every morning, I start making a fuss and shout, "Dad, give me a big brother!" Even with my eight sisters taking turns trying to cheer me up, I keep clinging to Dad and begging him for a big brother. So when people from Jarroville suddenly show up saying I'm the real heir to a family I was switched away from at birth, Dad immediately shoves me into a luxury car. "Go on! Off you go! Your brother's over there waiting for you!" The second I step through the Decker family's front doors, my biological sister, Amber Decker, sneers at me. "Arthur Decker is the only little brother I acknowledge!" My betrothed, Mindy Hickman, whom I'm promised to by our families, frowns as well. "Jake Moore, know your place. Arthur is the only person I'll ever marry." But regardless of what they say, my eyes stay fixed on the fake heir. Oh my gosh! He's the brother I was always meant to have! I squeeze past the two women blocking my way, lunge at him, and wrap both arms tightly around him. "I've always known I was destined to have a big brother!"

After five years of being forcibly institutionalized in a mental hospital by my parents for “rehabilitation,” I awakened the “Slap System” skill. One slap, a million dollars deposited into my account. Another slap, my combat power skyrocketed. Just as I was thoroughly enjoying my slapping spree and preparing to leap over the asylum walls to break free, my parents suddenly arrived to take me home. The moment I stepped through the front door, I saw my adopted brother Atticus Hawthorne, eyes reddened, holding my fiancée, Cassandra Vaughn, in his arms. Meanwhile, my real brother Roman Montgomery was locked in a dog cage, bitten and torn by vicious hounds, covered in wounds, and breathing his last breath. The moment he saw me, a faint light flickered in his eyes. Using the last ounce of his strength, his lips trembled slightly. “Lysander... run…” Before the words could fully leave his mouth, his hand went limp and dropped. I smashed the dog cage open with everything I had, scooped up his still-warm body, and rushed outside like a madman. “Stop right there!” Cold-faced, my parents blocked the doorway. “Roman is pure evil. He tortured Atticus’s dog to death and drugged Cassandra. Suffering a little punishment like this is light for him! Why take him to a hospital over a tiny injury?” Atticus fell to his knees before me with a loud thud, tears streaming down his face. “Lysander, after five years, you still hate me this much... I’ll go die right now so I don’t stay in your sight…” Cassandra immediately shielded him behind her back, harshly berating me. “Lysander! The moment you return, you force Atticus to die! You should never have been released from the mental hospital!” I looked at their hypocritical, evil faces, then down at Roman’s closed eyes that would never open again, and slowly raised my hand. Bullying me? I could bear it. But torturing Roman to death... I was going to make them find out whether their bones were tougher, or my slaps were harder.

I had spent six months drifting across the ocean on a cargo ship, but I would send 20,000 dollars back home every month. So, I really only had one thing on my mind the day I finally set foot on solid ground again—my wife's pork rib soup. When I pushed open the front door, I found my seven-month-pregnant wife, Sophia Merkin, sitting on our worn-out sofa. At that moment, my six months' worth of exhaustion, frustration, and pent-up anger from the roiling life at sea surged to the surface. "I've been busting my ass out there and working more than 10 hours a day. Yet, I don't even get a hot meal at home when I'm finally home?" Sophia said nothing. Instead, she walked over to the refrigerator and yanked the door open. That was when I saw that the fridge only had half a jar of ketchup and a bag of expired pasta with bugs. Then, she asked me dully, "What do you want to eat? Take your pick."

After transferring my villa to my best friend, Dylan Truman, I'm told that I'm not even the owner. The villa under my name now belongs to someone else. How's this even possible? I'm the only son of the chairman of Livington Group. How can anyone else possibly have a claim to what belongs to my family? The employee hurls the property deed in my face, his voice dripping with contempt. "Here, see for yourself. The registered owner is Kenneth Johnson. It was transferred a few days ago, and Mr. Johnson's moving in today." This makes no sense. All of my family's property is registered under my name. Kenneth Johnson? Who the heck is that?

My father-in-law, Lawrence Richards, suddenly becomes gravely ill. After seeing the exorbitant medical fees, I call up my wife, Victoria Richards. She doesn't ask questions and instructs her people to transfer five million dollars to my bank account. But even as Lawrence is prepped for surgery, the money doesn't show up. Out in the hospital hallway, I repeatedly call Victoria, but my calls go unanswered. Finally, the 7th call gets connected. "Tori! The surgery's about to start, and Dad's in a lot of pain right now. Please tell the finance department to hurry! He's—" The call gets cut off. I continue to wait. In the end, all I receive is the official death verification from the hospital, confirming that Lawrence has died. I also see a photo of a ridiculously expensive watch that Victoria's assistant, Simon Lewis, uploads to his social media. "I only said that I fancied it, and Ms. Richards gives me five million dollars without any hesitation! Now that's a boss I will happily serve for life." Victoria finally sends me a message. "The finance department needs some time to clear the transaction. Can't your dad just wait a little longer?" I looked at my dad, who was waiting outside the operating room with me. It now occurs to me that Victoria has assumed that it's my dad who died.

On the day I got married, my father-in-law personally fastened an obsidian bead bracelet around my wrist. He looked at me and said, "Moses, from today on, you're one of the family. I'll treat you like my own." I had grown up in an orphanage and had never truly had a family of my own. Because of those words alone, I willingly married into the Zeigler family and wore that bracelet for six straight years. Even after it rubbed my wrist raw—leaving it swollen, ulcerated, and oozing with pus—I still could not bear to take it off. Everything changed the day I stopped by my childhood friend's antique and jewelry appraisal studio for a small get-together. The moment he saw my wrist, he turned grim. "Moses," he said sharply. "Take it off." I froze. "My father-in-law gave this to me. It's a Zeigler family heirloom. I can't." His eyes reddened as he enunciated every word. "That's no obsidian. It's something that's going to kill you."

I guided 3,600 souls across the River Styx. I endured the fires of Hell 3,600 times on behalf of the rich and powerful. I turned down 3,600 offers from the King of Hell to be reborn into a life of wealth and privilege. Finally, after I earned enough merit, the King of Hell allowed me to return to the day of my father’s wedding. I shoved my way through the guests and screamed until my voice gave out. “Dad! Don’t marry her!”