Homewrecker Revenge の短編小説 & 小説

I came home from a night shift and caught my husband in bed with his secretary. After the screaming and the chaos, I ran out like a woman losing her mind. Derek chased after me. We ended up at the river, fighting. Somehow we both fell in. He nearly drowned trying to save me—the doctors said the oxygen deprivation had caused severe brain damage. When he woke up, he could barely function. No memory. No independence. He followed me around like a lost child. "Wifey, don't leave me. I'm scared." Looking at that helpless, broken man, I gritted my teeth and held this family together. The secretary vanished without a trace. Six years passed. Derek slowly seemed to recover. He was gentle with me, attentive, loving. I even got pregnant with our second child. Then came the family dinner. Derek knocked back two glasses of whiskey and suddenly slammed his hand on the table, his face twisted with frustration. "My oldest boy is already in first grade, and I haven't made it to a single parent-teacher conference!" I thought his brain was glitching again. MY sister-in-law Vanessa rushed to cover his mouth, but he shoved her away and let out a cold laugh. "You really thought the water scrambled my brains?" "Chloe gave me a son. I haven't forgotten about him for a single day!"

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.

A great white shark appeared during our holiday to the beach. My wife, Eunice Fuller, was a marine animal trainer. She deliberately cut our daughter Violet’s finger and used her blood to lure the shark away. She did that to save her first love’s son. By the time I arrived, the surrounding water had turned red with blood. I called Eunice and demanded an explanation. All I got was an impatient outburst. “For God’s sake, the rescue team’s already there! What more do you want? I taught her how to swim. What’s so wrong if I told her to hold off the shark for a little while?” I stared at Violet’s mangled body. My eyes were bloodshot with fury. I should have ended this marriage long ago. I would make every last one of them pay for this.

My sister, Vivian Richmond, is celebrating her birthday with the rest of the family while I lie trapped in an abandoned factory, bleeding heavily. She's hired four thugs to torture me, and they've left me fighting for my life. I crawl toward my phone with what little strength I have left. When I finally reach it, I call my husband, Ethan Monroe. "Ethan, I'm seriously injured. Come save me now… I'm at the factory nearby. It won't take much of your time…" He scoffs at my weak, desperate voice. "Sienna, whining won't get you anywhere. Are you playing the victim now?" he says. "You'll stop at nothing to ruin Vivian's birthday party, huh? Hurry back with a gift and apologize to her, or I won't go easy on you this time." Before I can speak, I hear Vivian calling his name over the line. Ethan has no idea that the moment the call ends, I no longer need his forgiveness. He doesn't know that the foul, rotting corpse that makes even an experienced forensic pathologist like him recoil in disgust belongs to the wife he's hated for years.

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 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.

Three years as his fiancée, reduced to nothing more than a soulless trinket. No going out. No friends. No opinions. Every breath I took was measured against Leo's mood. For three years I obeyed him unconditionally, trying to warm the heart of this mafia tyrant. Then today, in the fitting room at the atelier, his adoptive sister Alice snatched my couture wedding gown right off the rack. She didn't even have the decency to do it behind my back; she walked straight into Leo's arms while I stood there watching. Leo barely glanced at me. Just patted her head and said, “It's just a dress. Let her have it.” Three years of patience, and that's what it came to. A joke. I looked at the two of them, that smug, triumphant, and I thought: Marciano, did you really think I wouldn't fight back?

Late that night, I came across a post online. [I've been with my boyfriend for seven months. Out of nowhere, he dumped me, saying I got eliminated from the girlfriend selection. That's when I found out that in their rich social circle, it's normal to date a dozen girls at the same time, score them regularly, kick out the lowest, and pick the best one to marry.] It sounded so ridiculous. I couldn't help but jump into the comments and tear into the guy. Then I saw a reply from my boyfriend's secretary, Ayla Butler. [Well, considering his status, it's only fair. For high-value men like him, a selection process makes sense.] I rolled my eyes so hard that it almost hurt. I was just about to fire back when I heard the front door open. Fred Thompson and I had been together for five years. He had always been attentive, gentle, and endlessly patient. I had already made up my mind that the moment he proposed, I would tell him the truth about who I really was, the daughter of the richest man in the country. I never expected to catch a glimpse of his phone lighting up with a message. [You hooked up with Ayla again today? Gave her such a high score, too. Keep this up, and Hannah's gonna lose!]

After five years of keeping the demon sealed away, I finally saw my sister again—inside a coffin, her body mangled beyond recognition. The men carrying the coffin were whispering to each other. "She died like this, and nobody even investigated? Isn't her brother-in-law some big shot?" "Shh! She's only his sister-in-law. How could she matter more than his new lover? Mr. Smith even helped cover the whole thing up!" "His ex-wife has been dead for five years. Ms. Sophia runs the house now!" "They say the wedding is tomorrow, and it's going to be huge!" For five years, I'd stayed in a graveyard, keeping a demon sealed away for my husband, Victor Smith. Meanwhile, he'd found another woman to replace me. Worse, he'd stood by while she erased every trace of my existence and tortured my only sister for years. When my sister finally tried to escape and come looking for me, Sophia ran her over and killed her. I stroked what remained of my sister's face and smiled. I'd given up everything to protect Victor. This was how he repaid me. Fine. Then I'll stop protecting him. It's time to let the demon have him.

My baby brother was barely a month old when my father's mistress threw him off the upstairs balcony to his death. Then she turned around and said my mother had done it. And my father, the Don, took the mistress at her word and had my mother killed. That woman framed me too, and I was cast out of the house. For the next fifteen years, I clawed my way up through begging and reckless grit, until I became the Donna of the Vanetti family. Then one day, my adopted son Daniel Vanetti brought his new girlfriend to meet me. "Mother, this is Via, the Principessa of the Vitale family. I want to marry her." I looked at Via. Her face was the spitting image of my father's mistress. What a small world. The daughter of the woman who killed my mother had walked right up to my door. So I refused without a second's hesitation. "I don't approve."

After giving birth early, memories from a different life flooded into my mind. In these memories, the daughter I had worked so hard to bring into the world was switched with hers. After that, I was told that my daughter had a congenital heart condition. I worked hard to raise her for eighteen years. In the end, I sold off all my assets so that she could have a heart transplant. Meanwhile, I had collapsed from all my efforts to care for her. Left with no choice, I wanted to tell my “daughter” that I was leaving this world, but I overheard her talking with my best friend. “That fool still thinks I’m her daughter. I was the one who poisoned her! Mom, once she dies and you get rid of that pretender, we can finally be together again!” That was when I found out my daughter had been swapped out, and that I had been giving my all to the perpetrator. When I next opened my eyes, pain radiated from my belly, and a nurse said, “Miss Scott, we’ve just learned that your daughter has a congenital heart condition.”

Nine years ago, my family used me to pay off their debts. That was how I ended up married to the most dangerous man in the Rivoli underworld, Vincenzo Casanova. Everyone said I was lucky. My family was ruined, and I was its last heir. Marrying Vincenzo was supposed to be my one chance at a new life. I believed them. I thought if I played my part and never caused trouble, our marriage might actually last. I was wrong. At our ninth anniversary party, Vincenzo walked into the ballroom hand in hand with his secretary, Chiara Moretti. Chiara was all smiles, one hand resting on her belly. She announced that she was pregnant with Vincenzo's child. With Rivoli's most powerful families watching, Vincenzo turned to the housekeeper. "Move Donna's things out of the primary bedroom. My firstborn deserves the best of everything." I slipped off the family ring I had worn for nine years and walked out. Some laughed at me. Some pitied me. Others started taking bets on how long I'd last. Vincenzo laughed and put thirty million dollars on the table. His bet? I'd come crawling back to him within three days. Until that night, I hadn't decided whether to give his rival the secret files detailing the Casanova shipping routes. That settled it. He thought I'd spent nine years learning to be the perfect Donna. He had no idea I'd spent those same nine years learning how to bring a don to his knees. That night, our nine-year marriage contract expired. And I finally came to collect everything the Casanovas owed me.

All it took was a single exchange between my sister and Giselle’s lover, and my daughter accused her of stealing a gold bracelet. As a result, my sister was left to die in a warehouse for three whole days. With my sister’s life hanging by a thread, I got on my knees and pleaded before my wife and daughter. “Please, let Lucy go. She won’t speak to Theo again.” Faced with my pleas, my daughter simply let out a cruel smile. “I can release her, but only if she returns the bracelet.” Lucy never took the bracelet in the first place. There was no way she could return something that was never in her possession. Agony ripped through me as I crawled toward Giselle. “Please, Giselle. I’m begging you. Please let her go. She’s going to die at this rate!” Giselle took one cold, hard look at me before uttering, “So she’s been hung to dry for three days. She won’t die. If you really want her release, you should hand over your mother’s keepsake to Theo.”

When I was little, a car accident left me with a strange ability. I could see how many times I would meet each person in my life. One morning, the number above our neighbor Jenny's head changed to "one." She said hi to me, and by noon, her whole family had moved to England. I never saw her again. When the numbers above my parents' heads changed to "one," their plane crashed that night. I waited, but they never came home. Watching the numbers above the heads of people I knew slowly count down terrified me. Then I met the man who would become my husband, Austin Vance. A bright red "∞" glowed above his head. It meant we'd see each other an infinite number of times. It felt like a silent promise. He'd stay with me until my last breath, until death did us part. For all five years of our marriage, he made me feel safe. He was a mafia boss, but no matter how busy he was with the crew, he always came home on time. Even during secret crew meetings, he'd answer my video calls and tell his men, "Livia is my wife. She's the person I trust most." Then, shortly before my birthday, Austin stayed out all night. When he finally walked in, he reeked of another woman's perfume. The sickly sweet scent turned my stomach. When he saw me frown, he stroked my hair. "It's just the wife of one of my men. A deal ended in a shootout, and her husband was killed. I stayed to help her with the funeral arrangements." The "∞" above his head still glowed bright red, so I told myself not to overthink it. Then one night, Austin didn't get home until almost midnight. The number above his head flickered and changed to "three." In that moment, I knew my marriage to Austin was about to end.

At the final meeting before the company's IPO, my wife, who was supposed to give the presentation, was absent. I called her multiple times, but she never answered. Because of her absence, the company lost the bid and became the laughingstock of the industry. Right at that moment, her male best friend uploaded a new post. "It's just a cold. Look at how worried she is." I clicked on it. There was my wife, whom I hadn't seen in days, crouched beside him, fawning over him as she gave him his medicine. I was utterly disappointed. In that moment, the five years we had spent together vanished completely.

In my past life, the twin Alphas Alexander and Lucas pursued me, the only white wolf in the pack, relentlessly. Only a pack blessed by a White Wolf could receive the true favor of the Moon Goddess. Just as I was agonizing over whose mark to accept, they both hit their rut simultaneously. That night, I was forced to endure both of them claiming me. Later, I fell pregnant with a pup. Since the Alpha King couldn't determine the paternity, he decided I would be the Luna to both of them. The throne would go to the father of the child once a blood test could be performed after birth. But on the day of our Mating Ceremony, Sarah came back. She was my half sister and the Alpha twins childhood sweetheart. She was driven mad with jealousy, ran out trying to attract everyone’s attention, and ended up being torn apart by a passing Rogue. Alexander and Lucas seemed indifferent at first. Throughout my pregnancy, they treated me with unwavering devotion. But on the day I gave birth, they strangled my newborn pup. Their eyes were glowing crimson with rage as they roared, "Why wasn't it you? You bitch! You stole the White Wolf bloodline that belonged to Sarah and cursed her life!" Before I could even utter a word of defense, the two men I loved more than life itself tore me to shreds. When I open my eyes again, the Alpha King demanded I make my choice—to decide which twin I would accept as my fated mate—I chose neither.

The night I planned to tell him who I really was—under the full moon—my boyfriend of three years, Logan, walked up to me with another woman on his arm. He looked down at me and said: "Seraphina. I've been formally appointed the new Alpha of the Greywolf Pack. Only an elder's daughter is fit to be my Luna. A pack-doctor with blood as thin as yours can crawl back to the slums and patch up Omegas where you belong." But I was the highest-born princess of the Werewolf Royal Pack. So tell me—shouldn't I just have my brother, the Werewolf King, strip the Alpha title off this man and exile him to the Frostlands to keep company with the rogues?

I once believed that saving my vampire fiancé from the hunters was the best thing I had ever done. At that banquet, I drew the hunters away from him. A bullet struck my shoulder. But when I woke in the hospital, everyone said my cousin Sophia Ashford was the one who had saved him. Cassian Vale wanted to repay her by breaking off our engagement and marrying her instead. I tried to explain, again and again, but no one believed me. They all assumed I was lying to keep my place as his vampire bride. The dispute went before the Elder Council, but Cassian's plan was rejected because Sophia lacked a pure human noble bloodline. In the end, I married Cassian after all. Not because he believed me, but because of my bloodline. Because I could bear him a powerful half-blood child. Soon after, Sophia was married off to the North, where she fell ill and died. From that day on, Cassian was convinced that my jealousy had killed her. After our wedding, hunters attacked again. In the chaos, I threw myself in front of a bullet meant for him and lost my baby when I was eight months pregnant. Still, he regarded me with nothing but coldness. In the months before I died, wasting away from illness, he never came to see me. Not once. I opened my eyes again. I was back on the day Sophia claimed the credit for saving his life. This time, I did not explain. I simply took off the ring. "Cassian, I agree to end the engagement."

At an underground auction on the south side, my husband Matteo Moretti came across a woman fleeing debt collectors. In a panic, she threw herself into his arms. That same night, he raised his paddle three times for her. In the end, the six-carat diamond ring cost him enough to buy half a city block. When Sofia Bellini told me, I was sitting in my studio, carving a statue of the Virgin Mary. The more she talked, the angrier she got. "Five years ago, if you hadn't dragged him out of that pile of bodies behind the church, the Baldi family would've finished him off with a second bullet. Later, when the Moretti family was rooting out the rat and taking back the South Docks, you were the one who had his back. And now look at him. He made a scene at an auction over some woman who came out of nowhere, and the whole city is talking about it." She held her phone out to me. One look, and my knife slipped. In the photo, Matteo was shirtless, and the woman was leaning against his chest. Right above the old bullet scar over his heart was a freshly inked name: Lia. Five years ago, he'd been cornered in an old church. A bullet came through the window and hit him just to the left of his heart. That night, Sofia and I forced our way in, and I dragged him, blood-soaked, from the pile of bodies.When he woke, he held my hand and said, "Elena, you dragged me back from hell. I will never use the life you saved to betray you." Later, he tattooed a black rose on my left shoulder himself. It was the Moretti family's private protection mark, and not just anyone got one. Matteo had kissed the old bullet wound on my shoulder and said that from then on, wherever I went, anyone who saw the rose would know I was the one he'd protect with his life. But now he'd tattooed another woman's name over his heart. "Grandfather, I want to come home." Less than a minute later, he replied. "Eight tonight. The helicopter will land on the north lawn of the Moretti estate."

By the seventh year of my cold war with my father, Don Leonardi Rossi, he finally found a way to win me over. He introduced me to the most powerful Mafia Don in southern Ritalle—Riccardo Colombo. For my happiness, my father was willing to give me half of the family's empire as a gift. I surrendered completely to Riccardo's love. Four months later, I was pregnant. Every prenatal check-up saw Bascily regions' two most influential Dons personally by my side. Everyone envied me for having two men who loved me so fiercely. Yet, on the day of my amniocentesis, they were both absent. "There's a new arms deal in the north," my father said, stroking my head. Riccardo kissed my belly gently. "I'll bring you gifts when I return." I smiled and watched them leave. But as I lay on the examination table, my phone buzzed with an anonymous video. In it, my father wore a groom's suit, standing beside Rosa—the prostitute who had infuriated my mother to death. Their illegitimate daughter, Lina, cradled her swollen belly, proudly wearing the Colombo family crest, and clung to my husband's arm. The announcer cried, "Congratulations to Don Rossi for reclaiming his one true love, and to Don Colombo for marrying his soulmate!" At the video's end, my father laughed and clinked glasses with Riccardo. "The fake crest and fake marriage certificate for Lia—you really outdid yourself. Aren't you worried she'll be heartbroken?" Riccardo snorted. "She never let Rosa into the house, leaving Lina to grow up as a bastard. This was what she owed her." So that was the truth. But when I finally left with my child for the Massimo family, why did they still regret it?