Homewrecker Regret 短篇故事與小說

On the day Serena's company went public, she announced her engagement to her assistant, Hugo Snow. Meanwhile, I, her husband who had quietly stayed by her side for four years, watched as Hugo walked up to the press conference stage. "None of this would have been possible without Hugo's support," Serena stated. "I thank you all for trusting Serena. From now on, the two of us will be completing this project together, hand in hand," Hugo added. As I listened to the crowd shower them with congratulations, my clenched fist slowly loosened. It was finally time for me to let go of this four-year marriage.

After Katherine Winston delays our wedding for the tenth time, I decide to set her free. At the celebratory party thrown by my friend for his second newborn, I arrive at the venue to congratulate him in advance. When my best friend invites me to a camping trip, I walk away as soon as Katherine shows up. When my company decides to dispatch me to Katherine's company to follow up with the project we're working on, I tender my resignation without hesitation. Even when Katherine's parents visit me in hopes of convincing me to forgive Katherine. But I refuse to leave my residence at all. I take the liberty to delete all the photos with Katherine in them. Then, I block her number and on all social media platforms. Finally, I delete the social media account that has been recording our daily lives as a couple. Just like that, I cut myself off everything related to Katherine. We've known each other for 25 years, and we've been in a relationship for 5 of them. I've always thought that we're each other's only love in life. That is, until the wedding I've prepared for gets delayed for the tenth time. It's then realization finally dawns on me. I should love myself first before loving someone else.

When they strapped me to the operating table, I heard my wife comforting Leo Ferdinand outside the door. “Leo, don’t worry. In a little while, I’ll perform the surgery and swap your face with Carter’s. Once we hand him over to the police, you won’t have to worry about the hit-and-run case anymore.” A smile immediately spread across Leo’s face. “Riley, you’re the only one who’s ever been good to me, but... won’t Carter be angry? After all…” Riley let out a soft sigh. “Carter loves me so much, and your sister once saved my life. The least he can do is help you. I’ll make it up to him in the future.” Before I could even process what I had heard, the anesthesia took effect, and everything went black. When I woke up, my face was already wrapped in thick layers of bandages. To stop me from damaging this new face, Riley brought up our son. “Carter, please try to understand. If not for me, do it for our son.” In the end, I stopped resisting. With her own hands, she sent me to prison, and five years later, I was finally released.

Three hours after my engagement banquet ended, I was stuffed into a burlap sack and thrown straight into the ocean. By the time deep-sea divers found me, my body had swollen into something grotesque and barely recognizable. The police called my fiancé right away to come identify the remains, but he could not have sounded less interested. "So, she's dead. So what? I'll show up at the funeral when the time comes." Left with no choice, the police dialed the second starred contact in my phone. It was my own brother. He laughed so hard that he doubled over. "Dead? Last I checked, it's not April Fools'. Not a funny joke. And do me a favor. Tell Selene Corvin I couldn't care less about her corpse. Throw it back in the ocean to feed the fish. I don't care." He did not know that I did end up as fish food for a very long time. The moment my remains appeared on that massive screen, however, both my fiancé and my brother lost their minds.

The news came that Raymond had been shot. I was seven months pregnant, but I flew straight across the country to the family's East Coast compound—and got detained the moment I stepped inside. “Never heard of the Don having a fiancée, and pregnant no less. You've got some nerve running a con on Carraso turf.” The barrel of a gun pressed cold against my temple. My heart was clawing its way up my throat when I caught sight of a familiar figure across the room. “Raffina,” I shouted, “tell them I'm your brother-in-law's fiancée.” Raffina gave a small wave of her hand, and the man holding the gun immediately bent at the waist. “Donna, I didn't know she was a friend of yours. My mistake.” I stared with wide eyes, unable to make sense of what I was seeing. Inside the compound, the same man crossed to where Raymond sat on the couch without a scratch on him, and gave a formal nod. “Don, she claims she's your fiancée.” Raymond took a slow sip of his whiskey and shook his head, just barely. They dragged me out, and on the way the man slapped me across the face, warning me not to try my con act anywhere near the family again. I pulled the engagement ring off my finger and went straight to International Financial Tower.

Since my daughter, Lucy Shepherd, is an only child, my husband, Felix Shepherd, and I have decided to find her a live-in son-in-law. I ask on an online forum, "If my future son-in-law has a master's degree from a top university and earns over 10,000 dollars a month, what kind of wedding gift would seem appropriate to welcome him into the family?" Someone jokingly replies, "You'd probably have to be loaded to get a son-in-law like that. Why not give him ten million dollars as a wedding gift?" Without any hesitation, I take the person's advice and give Paul Cranston, my future son-in-law, and his family ten million dollars, along with a riverfront apartment. However, to guard against the possibility of Paul and his family seizing Lucy's inheritance for themselves once we're gone, I make Paul sign a prenuptial agreement. It clearly states that all their children must take the Shepherd family name and that the family's assets will not go to anyone with a different last name. Paul agrees to it and even thanks me profusely for everything. Yet, when Lucy gives birth to her second child, he immediately grabs the baby and changes his tune. "Even though I married into the Shepherd family, that doesn't mean I'm no longer my own person! My son must take my family name! This affects my dignity as a man!" I scoff in anger, but before I can say anything, Lucy, who is completely blinded by love, tearfully takes Paul's side. "Just go along with it, Mom. We're all a family anyway. Why must you harp on whose last name is used?" I hold my ground and refuse to back down. But the very next day, Lucy flies abroad with Paul, bringing along her two children. They have no qualms about moving into the property that Felix and I had bought abroad, as if it were their own. Despite being 58 years old, I am so enraged by her foolishness that I drag Felix to a fertility clinic. We start the IVF process. After turning 59 years old, I give birth to a son. Just as the nurse brings him to me, the door to the hospital room flies open. The family of four, who have just rushed back in a hurry, freeze in place.

On the night before our engagement party, my fiancée went radio silent for five hours—just to buy her male assistant stomach medicine. When she finally came back, I gave her two choices: fire him, or call off the wedding. She disappeared for three full days. The next time I saw her, she showed up at our doorstep soaking wet. She threw her arms around me and said, "I don't want anyone but you." Then, on our wedding night, she vanished again. I'm an ER doctor. I got called in for an emergency. When I got to the hospital, I found out the patient was her assistant. He had a groin injury. My fiancée was standing by his bedside, disheveled, her clothes a mess. I didn't raise my voice. I just looked at her and said, "Cut ties with him right now. We can still make this work." Her eyes filled with conflict. She hesitated. Then she reached down and took his hand.

Joanna Cross's fiance, who had supposedly died seven years ago, suddenly came back. When I went to find her, the two of them were discussing their wedding. Adrian Shaw pointed at me, standing at the very back of the crowd, and asked, "Jo, who is he?" Joanna answered without hesitation. "Our wedding officiant." I clutched my chest, faintly feeling my heart condition beginning to flare. Before I could question her, the bodyguards escorted me out of the living room. Inside, laughter filled the room. Outside, my hands and feet went cold, and the pain nearly tore me apart. Two hours later, Joanna came out with a smile still on her face. When she saw the state I was in, she panicked and immediately wrapped me tightly in her coat. But the words she spoke were colder than ice. "Adrian has forgotten everything except that I was his fiancee. "The doctors said any stimulation could make him try to kill himself. The wedding is fake. It is only to make him happy. The person I love has always been you." I could not hold on anymore and collapsed. Joanna hurriedly helped me into the car, her voice shaking. "Mason, don't be scared. The matching heart was prepared long ago. I won't let anything happen to you. "I will take you to the best hospital right now." But just as she helped me into the passenger seat, she ran into Adrian, whose eyes were full of tears. "Jo, are you abandoning me?" In a single second, Joanna made her choice. She peeled my fingers away from her one by one, then shut the car door. After that, Joanna never appeared again. Instead, she sent me a message. [Your surgery was successful. That's wonderful!] [Adrian cannot handle any stimulation. Can you disappear for three months? After that, we will spend the rest of our lives together.] Her promises were so vivid. But Joanna did not know the surgery had never succeeded. Three months was too long. I could not make it that far.

When Samuel Larson came to pick me up from work at the county clerk's office, he suddenly slid a marriage license through the service window. "Actually, this one was fake the whole time. Getting back together with you was just a joke." Before I could process what he'd said, he waved a brand-new marriage license in front of me and grinned. "Yesterday, Jessie sat on my lap and kissed me. It felt so good I couldn't help myself. So I went and got a real marriage license with her." The second betrayal hit me as a bucket of cold water dumped over my head. I stared at him in disbelief. "Why?" I asked in a trembling voice. "Because you're gullible." He narrowed his eyes and savored the sight of me tearing up. He then smiled and handed me a tissue. "Back then, it took you three years to figure out Jessie and I were secretly seeing each other. "So we made a bet. We wanted to see how long it would take you this time." His gaze shifted to the fading hickey on my neck. He paused briefly before shrugging. "She bet it'd take you a year at most. That's why I've been leaving obvious clues all year. "But I got tired of acting, and you still didn't catch on. "Today's the last day of the bet. I wanted her to win and be happy. "I had no choice but to just tell you myself."

I waited ten years to get married to Emily Stanton. We had applied for a marriage license seven times, and seven times it had been called off. In our circle, we were the golden couple. She had sold her own blood to help cover my hospital bills, and I had stood by her side as she built the Stanton family empire from nothing. On our tenth anniversary, I brought up the idea of finally having a wedding ceremony and making things official again. She just rubbed her temples and tossed her blazer aside. "We'll talk about it later. We've been together this long—why are you still hung up on something like this?" The words I wanted to say got stuck in my throat. Does every great love eventually fade into something ordinary? The sound of running water came from the bathroom. Then her phone buzzed with a notification. Against my better judgment, I picked it up. The contact name on the screen was impossible to miss: Honey. [Baby, when are you coming home? Jamie says she misses Mommy.] A storm of emotions crashed over me. That's when I discovered Emily Stanton had another WhatsApp account. The woman in those posts was nothing like the one I knew. At the top was a wedding photo—the two of them beaming, radiant. Tucked among the roses she'd received yesterday was a brand-new diamond ring, hidden between the petals. The water in the bathroom stopped. I clenched my fists. Then I forwarded the guy's WhatsApp info to my assistant. [Look into him.]

The year I turned sixteen, the water supply of Moonlight Pack was contaminated. A desperate, burning thirst spread through every household. Owen was the one who found me half-dead and carried me home. His parents didn't just open their door to me. They shared what little water and food they had left. Everyone said it was because we were fated mates, destined to be together. But anyone could see the truth. His family loved me from the bottom of their hearts. The year I turned twenty, Owen asked me to be his mate. He gave me a silver dagger he'd forged with his own hands. He said that when he wasn't by my side, this dagger would protect me in his place. That very night, I used it to kill everyone in his family.

Ever since my wife, Allison Strong, gives birth to our son, Noel Russell, she becomes unable to speak. The doctors say it is likely a psychological issue. For three whole years, she does not say a single word to me. Even when there's a gas leak in the house, she simply waits for me to discover it myself. When Noel cries from hunger, she never tries to comfort him. After my company goes bankrupt, I don't even have time to grieve. I spend my days delivering packages to support the family while taking my wife to see psychologists and specialists. One day, I am dead tired after working from morning until night. As I back my car into the garage, I fail to notice that Allison has left three-year-old Noel to play behind the vehicle. The moment I feel the car roll over something, my gut tells me something is very wrong. Noel's cries last only a few moments before he falls silent. My legs nearly give out beneath me. Forcing myself to stay upright, I scoop up Noel and rush him to the hospital with my hands trembling uncontrollably. Meanwhile, Allison stands silently somewhere to the side. Just like always, she says nothing. Her expression remains absolutely unfazed. Though she is the one who has given birth to Noel, everything seems completely unrelated to her. I have a mental breakdown. Grabbing her by the shoulders, I shake her desperately and yell, "You saw what was happening, why didn't you warn me? Why did you let him play there? What kind of psychological problem do you have that you can just stand by and watch your own son die? "Are you trying to destroy me, Allison?" I scream hysterically, but she still does not open her mouth or make a sound. Despair engulfs me. Three years of complete silence from her crushes me. Just when I am about to give up, Allison pushes through the crowd and softly speaks her first words in three years. They are quiet, but I hear them clearly. "Clarence..." Clarence Welch is the name of her first love. Only then do I realize that her psychological issue is with Noel and me.

I went to my best friend's place for her birthday, and out of nowhere, she started complaining. "I'm so jealous of you," she said. "Your boyfriend has basically no sex drive." "Mine's the complete opposite. He wanted it seven times last night. I was crying so hard I lost my voice, and he still wouldn't stop." I gave her a sympathetic smile. "That just means he's crazy about you. Unlike mine—he's practically celibate. Like a monk." She raised an eyebrow, casually stroking the two-million-dollar ruby bangle on her wrist. "He's not bad," she said, a hint of smugness in her voice. "He was with his ex for five years, but he still chose to marry me behind her back. He was so afraid she'd push for marriage that he faked going bankrupt and told her he had ALS. "The girl wouldn't let go, though. She sold her blood, her kidney—whatever it took—to scrape together money for his treatment. "She was working the graveyard shift at a factory, while he and I were fooling around in a twenty-million-dollar villa." I froze. To help my boyfriend Nathan Whitley pay for his ALS treatment, I had done all of those things. Before I could even process it, the door opened, and a tall, sharply dressed man walked in. "Babe," he said, "I got that strawberry flavor you like. How about wearing that silk nightie tonight?" Our eyes met. I stood there, frozen in shock, a chill running down my spine. It was Nathan Whitley—the man who was supposed to be broke, bedridden, and dying of ALS.

On Valentine's Day, my wife gave her late sister's widower a fifty-two-thousand-dollar Rolex. "Marcus, my sister may be gone, but that does not mean you should go without the things other men have." Marcus took the watch with barely hidden excitement. "From now on, my son and I will depend on you." My wife thumped her chest and promised she would be his and his son's support from now on. I watched the two of them cling to each other and said calmly, "Ines Sutherland, I want a divorce." She frowned at me. "It is just a watch. What are you jealous about this time?" I smiled faintly and handed over the divorce agreement. "Sign it. Then you can take care of Marcus with a clear conscience."

Throughout my five-year marriage with Irene Anderson, I never celebrated my birthday. That was because my birthday also was the death anniversary of her childhood friend’s mother, so she had to accompany Zac Reid, her childhood friend, to the cemetery to visit her. Not only that, but she also did not allow me to celebrate my birthday. She did not even allow me to smile. “Please be more considerate towards Zac. He’s very vulnerable on his mother’s death anniversary. Once he feels better, we’ll celebrate your birthday.” Every time my friends asked me carefully if they could celebrate my birthday, I could only force a smile and say, “Forget about it. Let’s do it next time.” It happened year after year, but she never fulfilled her promise. One year, Irene dressed in all black again and prepared herself to attend the memorial. Coincidentally, she saw the birthday cake that my family had specially ordered for me. She instantly grew angry and smashed the cake onto the floor. “You can eat cake at any time; why did you have to choose today? Are you that greedy?” I left the mess behind in the house and secretly followed behind her. In the cemetery, I saw her claiming herself as Zac’s wife and his mother’s daughter-in-law, and I felt exhausted. I walked over and took off my wedding ring. “Irene, let’s get a divorce.”

I spent eight years raising Dante's children. Three of them, and every single one belonged to him and his arranged wife Bianca. Not one was mine. I fought against it. I really did. But the Costello family needed heirs, and my background was too ordinary. The family would never accept me. Dante always had something to say about it. "Nora, once Bianca has the baby, I'll take you to the States. You can go to art school, open your own gallery. It's what your mother always wanted, isn't it?" Then Bianca had a son, and suddenly the family needed a daughter too, someone they could marry off to another faction. When the daughter came, the elders stepped in and said the mob was a bloody business and you needed enough children to guarantee the line would continue. Eight years. I went from Dante's lover to something worse than a servant. Then I got pregnant. I was so happy I could barely breathe when I told him. I thought this baby would finally be our way out. But there was no smile on his face. Just a look that was pained and apologetic, like he already knew what he was going to say. "Nora, you don't have a place in this family. Neither does your child. He'd disrupt the line of succession. We can't let him be born." I pressed my hand to my stomach, just barely starting to show. Hot tears hit the floor. Fine. If we couldn't leave together, I would leave alone.

After my son was abducted, my husband took me to an adoption center to bring home a baby boy born the same year as the child we'd lost. I poured every ounce of love I had into raising him. He had a sensitive stomach, so I pushed through my chronic back pain to cook him special meals every single day. When he spiked a fever in the middle of the night, I carried him twenty miles through the rain to the nearest hospital. When he couldn't focus in school, I was constantly at his classroom door, flattering his teachers and bringing them gifts, just to get them to pay a little extra attention to him. Fifteen years of grinding sacrifice, and it all came down to one moment at his college acceptance party. "I couldn't have gotten into Harvard without my mother's love and hard work," he said into the microphone. He raised his glass, eyes drifting toward where I was sitting. The cameras flashed as I started to rise from my seat, matching his silent lip movements. And then I heard a name I didn't expect. "She is Rachel Lynch." I froze. That was my best friend's name.

Everyone keeps telling me that I've hit the mega jackpot just because I get to marry Anson Granger, the man of every woman's dreams. I'm the only one who knows that I'm just a tool used by Anson just to shut everyone up. To the public, he's a CEO who's devoted to his wife. But in reality, he keeps taking various young starlets home with him every day right in front of me. In fact, Anson falls in love with a strict housekeeper named Winona Judd. After he takes her home, Winona begins setting up house rules for the entire family. Not only does she freeze my bank card and donate my personal belongings, but she also restricts my freedom. Even when my mom is deathly ill, Winona forbids me to leave the estate just so I can go to the hospital. It's then that I break down right in front of her helplessly. "My mom is already dying from her illness! I need to stay by her side! She needs me!" Winona continues wearing a distant yet stern expression. "Mrs. Granger, I've already informed you last week that today is a family day. You're supposed to bond with your family today, so you can't go anywhere at all." Anger and panic overwhelm me in an instant. Left without a choice, I can only ask Anson for help. The smile in his eyes fades away instantly as he tells me coldly, "Kim, I'm the one who personally hired Winnie. You can forget about remaining as my wife if you refuse to listen to her orders." This cold and heartless version of Anson is no longer the same man I've grown up with and spent my entire youth loving. In that case, I might as well relinquish my title as his wife.

During a family gathering, my daughter drove her rideable toy car straight into me and shattered my leg because she wanted to stand up for her live-in manny, Wilson Smith. As I lay on the ground in agony, she glared at me and said, "You're not my dad! Wilson takes care of me. He's kind to me. Mom and I both like him!" From where I had fallen, I looked up and saw Wilson standing at the center of the crowd, surrounded by smiles and admiration. At that moment, a bitter realization settled over me. I mattered less than a manny to my own family. I soon filed for divorce. Then, I signed up for a community revitalization initiative and spent the next twenty years helping struggling communities build better lives. My family did not need me, but somewhere else in the world, there were people who did.

My wife's nephew, Oliver, got kidnapped. The ransom was $500,000. Then my wife froze every card I had. I called her 999 times. Not one call went through. Oliver was tortured for three days. By the time they found him, he was covered in wounds. Dead. I pulled every favor I had and finally found Zara. In a hotel bed. With her so-called brother. "I'm wrecked about Poppy too, but she's gone. We can't bring her back. Holden needs heart surgery, and Poppy's a match. Send the body to the hospital." So Zara thought the kidnapped kid was our daughter. I was so pissed I laughed. Then I sent the body straight to the OR.