Mga Maiikling Kwento tungkol sa Plot Twists at mga Nobela ng Independence na may Biological Family

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.

I was a ghost hunter. My client had bought a haunted manor. Everyone who moved inside ended up losing their minds, so they paid me a huge sum to exorcise the place. However, I had a feeling that I had bitten off more than I could chew. After moving in and fighting against the evil ghost for half a year, I could not handle it anymore and decided to move out to rest for a bit. Before my mind even cleared up completely, Ronald Durkin, my uncle, called me. “Apollo, Jessica just finished sitting for her SATs. I want the entire family to go with her on her graduation trip, but hotels are just too expensive. I heard that you rented a huge manor in the capital. Why don’t you let us stay there?” He then gave me some money, saying that it was rent. When I checked, I found that he had only given me a single cent. My mouth twitched, but I still patiently explained the situation to him. “Uncle Ronald, the manor is haunted. No one can move inside. Why don’t I give you three thousand dollars so that you could book a hotel?” I certainly did not expect him to hang up on me without another word and tag everyone in the family group chat. [Guys, everyone will be going dutch for the trip this time. Apollo will be providing us free lodgings in a ten thousand square feet manor in the capital.] The family group chat went wild, and everyone praised me for being a good boy. I simply could not laugh along with them. That place was uninhabitable!

In my past life, I was a top-tier criminal psychologist sent to the mountains to assist in an abduction case. I rescued a girl who was all chained up and fighting for food with wild dogs. She didn’t know how to talk and bit anyone who came close. To help her integrate into normal life, I taught her to walk on her two legs, dress herself, eat, talk, and read. Despite being bitten by her so badly that I had to get stitches, I continued staying by her side day and night. Five years later, I helped her find her biological parents, who turned out to be the richest family in the city. Yet, at her welcome banquet, she pulled the hem of her dress away, revealing old scars on her thighs and accusing me before hundreds of media partners and reporters. “Not only did Professor Lawson teach me the rules of society, but he even taught me how to please and serve others. He'd bully me and hit me if I were disobedient.” I was treated like a pariah overnight. The richest man in the city crippled me and hung me on the bridge over the sea as a warning to all. My sister, who had severe depression, had her privacy violated. She was driven to slit her wrists and commit suicide. In this life, the cellar door was kicked down once again. The girl, all covered in filth and dirt, climbed toward me once more, hugging my leather shoes and sobbing. I immediately took a step back and pulled out my body cam. “The suspect is extremely aggressive. Call for female cops and have them bring restraint straps with them. I refuse to come into contact with any underage persons of the opposite gender.”

My family was going on a beach trip for summer. My mother came up with the whole itinerary two weeks earlier. My father booked a room with a view of the sea. My brother picked the surfboards, while my sister went with the dresses for socials. I was helping them pack up the night before the trip when I saw the tickets on the coffee table. There were only four of them, and they were for my father, mother, brother, and sister. They didn't get one for me. My mother saw me, and she froze. "Oh, I forgot all about you." My brother didn't even look up. "She can just stay at home." My sister said quietly, "Maybe I shouldn't go, then?" My mother quickly took her side. "No. You've been looking forward to this." My father clapped my shoulder. "You can't go this time, but we'll bring you along for the next trip." I smiled bitterly at the tickets. They went to the beach the next day. I grabbed the 10 million from my lottery winnings and went to Aocity, a place more than a thousand miles away. Our choices marked the day we went our separate ways, forever.

Ever since I was little, my mother, Cynthia, used me as a living cautionary tale whenever she wanted to teach my older brother, Oliver, a lesson. When Oliver bullied a kid at school, she made me shave my head and pick up trash so he could see what it was like to be humiliated and laughed at. When Oliver stole an action camera from an outdoor gear store, she made me kneel in the snow and apologize to the manager so he'd learn what shame felt like. Lately, Oliver had become obsessed with extreme sports and started messing with pills from who-knows-where. To make the lesson stick, Mom secretly mixed something that would make me throw up and a muscle relaxant into the vitamin capsules I took after breakfast every day. She figured a dose that small would only make me throw up and give me diarrhea, just enough to scare my brother. But I had a bad cold and had already taken cold medicine. The combination of drugs soon left me struggling to breathe. I collapsed on the rug, convulsing. Dad rushed me to the ER, but on the way, we hit a police checkpoint. He'd already passed the breathalyzer when Mom shouted at the officers, "You need to check him again! He's on sedatives. How did you miss that?" She pointed at me in the back seat, my face already turning blue, then jerked her chin toward Oliver. "See that? Are you ever going to swallow random pills people give you again?" Oliver burst into tears and swore he'd never touch those pills again. Only then did Mom look satisfied. What she didn't notice was that her living cautionary tale could barely lift a hand. Mom, you're always complaining that Oliver never learns his lesson. Maybe losing me will finally teach him the lesson you've been trying so hard to drill into him. Would that make you happy?

After my parents passed away, Uncle Mike took me in. When greedy relatives tried to snatch away my inheritance, he chased them off with a kitchen knife. “As long as I’m here, nobody lays a finger on this girl!” Aunt Rachel doted on me, calling me her precious baby and making me nutritious meals every day. My cousin Pete secretly slipped me pocket money and made sure to pick me up and drop me off at school, afraid I might get bullied. The neighbors all said I was lucky and to repay their kindness someday. On graduation day, I cooked them a lavish meal to show my appreciation. Every dish was laced with rat poison. I didn’t spare a single soul, not even the neighbors. I killed them all!

Ever since Mom loses the baby, Dad has been spending his time keeping his late classmate's wife company. So I take scissors to our family photos, cutting him out of every single one. When Mom receives a call from my school, she overhears me telling a classmate that my dad is dead and asking if I can borrow theirs instead. Mom freezes for a moment before admitting, "Yeah, he died young." When family sports day rolls around, Mom catches me slipping a ten-dollar bill to the school guard, begging him to pretend to be my dad for the day. Instead of stopping me, she quietly hands the guard 200 dollars, making sure he attends the parent-teacher conference with me. Whenever an event requires a father figure, Mom simply lets me rent one. Eventually, it dawns on Dad that he hasn't heard anything from us in a long time. He clears his entire schedule for the afternoon to pick me up from school, but my teacher stops him at the school gate. Dad heads back home in confusion. The second he steps through the front door, he overhears me speaking to the maintenance guy. "My dad's dead," I tell him. "Do you want to be my new dad?"

On the day my grandfather, who was the wealthiest man in this state, died, the entire family got into a huge fight over the inheritance. My father could not stop the fight, so he requested my mother’s support. When I arrived, my grandfather was lying motionless on the bed. He was not even changed into his funeral suit. My aunts were pulling on each other’s hair as they fought over the ownership of a building. My uncles were fighting over the Rolls-Royce car keys. The entire family looked like hooligans as they fought. My mother was holding gold bars as she yelled at me, “What are you waiting for? Take that gold ring off your grandfather’s finger!” I rubbed my hands and was just about to take the ring off. I had just crouched down when I saw my grandfather’s pinky move.

I was the perfect daughter, always obedient and never questioning my parents' wishes. Yet, on the very day I finished my SATs, I became bound to a system that demanded disobedience. Whatever my parents told me to do, the system always made me do the opposite. When they told me to eat less to maintain my figure, the system commanded me to eat until I was stuffed. When they told me to wash the dishes and mop the floors to develop basic life skills, the system ordered me to walk away the moment I finished eating. Watching the shock and disappointment on my parents' faces, I closed the front door through my tears. Sobbing, I tried to reason with the system. "My brother said it's dangerous outside at night. I need to go home." The system didn't care. It forced me to attend a class reunion that evening. Terrified, I protested, "My parents said none of my classmates are decent people! I'm not going! Going out this late is practically asking for trouble!” "You'll die if you keep listening to them!" the system reprimanded me sternly.

After graduating from high school, my twin sister, Ella, and I were both accepted to Newland University. My parents put eighty thousand dollars in Ella's college fund and gave her a three-thousand-dollar monthly allowance, but put only eight thousand in mine and gave me three hundred a month. They took it for granted that I would move to Newland to look after her. The day the whole family threw a graduation party for my sister, I boarded a flight to the West Coast with a single suitcase and a full scholarship to one of the country's top engineering schools. What they didn't know was that the reporter who showed up that afternoon to interview "the outstanding Ashford graduate" had never been looking for my sister. The person they wanted was me, the daughter they'd already pushed out the door.

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 night I died, my whole family was busy celebrating my twin sister Elena's eighteenth birthday. Everyone thought Elena was going to die the next day. We're elves. My father worked as a clan guardian, and after Mom gave birth to Elena and me as twins, she stopped working altogether. We should have been a happy family. But from the moment we were born, Elena and I were bound by a witch's curse. Because Elena came into the world one minute before me, she took the full weight of it onto herself. She was never supposed to live past eighteen. From the day we were born, Elena was the family's treasure. Mom and Dad treated me like I owed her something. New toys went to her first. New dresses were always her pick. Every night, Mom would sit in Elena's room for at least an hour before she'd turn off the light. I always fell asleep alone. One night I had a nightmare and ran barefoot to find Mom. She was holding Elena and didn't even look up. "Go back to bed. Stop making a fuss." I kept telling myself: she's dying, of course they're kind to her. But every time I let something go, that splinter in my chest pushed a little deeper. Then the day the curse was supposed to take effect finally came, and naturally, that was the day my stomach cramped so badly I could barely stand. Mom and Dad didn't hesitate. They shoved me into the cellar and locked it from outside. I crouched on the stone floor with the smell of mildew everywhere and knocked on the door over and over. "Mom... Dad... my stomach really hurts, I can't even stand up... let me out, please..." One sentence came back through the door. "Your sister is dying tonight! Can you just give us one day? One day!" "But... Mom... I'm scared..." Nobody answered after that. The cellar went quiet. My eyelids grew heavy. My last thought was: if I were the one dying of a curse, would they come hold me too.

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.

My boyfriend’s cousin went to live at his place after her divorce. Not only did she have a five-year-old, but she was even pregnant. She regarded my boyfriend as her support as if it were her right and blamed me for everything. She thought I had taken away her cousin. At a family gathering one day, her son splashed a drink at me and yelled, "You’re not allowed to steal my dad!"

Mom raises me and my brother, Cameron Joyner, by herself after she gets a divorce. Cameron was born with congenital asthma and has to take medication every day. Although I'm healthier, Mom treats me better than Cameron. She always says, "You're the apple of my eye, Cassie. I don't want you to feel troubled because of Cam." From the very beginning of my life, I've always been number one in Mom's heart. However, the year I turn 15, Cameron suddenly disappears. Mom completely changes after he goes missing.

At the hockey game, my neighbor Bianca confessed her feelings to the team captain, Hudson, right in front of everyone. The moment she finished speaking, someone dumped an ice-cold soda right over her head. "Look at this greasy freak. Does she really think she has a chance with our star player?" The bleachers instantly erupted into cruel laughter. I watched her soaked hair stick to her face as tears mixed with the dripping soda. I walked over and shielded her from the cruel jokes. Then I pushed through the crowd and offered her a tissue. She slapped my hand away. "Stop being so fake, Harper! You're the biggest hypocrite in this school!" The next morning, I woke up and realized I was in Bianca's body. Before I could process it, my phone rang. It was a FaceTime call from Bianca from my own account. On the screen, wearing my face, she gave a smug smile. "I paid a witch a fortune to swap our bodies." "Now it's your turn to see what it feels like to be a loser everyone steps on." "Your life as a top model is mine now. As for Hudson and his insane abs, I'm keeping them for myself!" I hung up, stared at myself in the mirror, and smiled. I finally escaped the toxic mother who was draining the life out of me. I was also totally free from that cheating jerk who only played games with my heart. This idiot had no idea what kind of nightmare was hiding beneath my supposedly flawless skin.

After the college entrance exams, my parents finally agree to take me to visit Everleigh Palace in Jatwick. I pack my bags a full month in advance, meticulously drafting a list of every wish I want to make—wishes for my parents, wishes for my siblings, and wishes for Joel Sutton, my childhood friend. The night before our departure, my younger sister, Yvonne Jarrow, suddenly announces that she wants to go to Novenport to see the ocean. My heart sinks. A second later, Dad pulls out his phone and starts changing our tickets. "The weather's been great lately. It's perfect for a seaside vacation," he says excitedly. Mom immediately swaps out her everyday clothes for swimsuits and hats. "The sun down south is brutal. I've got to pack plenty of sunscreen for Yvonne." My older brother, Stefan Jarrow, starts searching for seaside hotels. Without even looking up, he says, "I've been saying there's nothing fun in Jatwick anyway. Compared to Yvonne, Alice doesn't know how to have fun." I turn to Joel, pinning my last remaining hope on him. He once promised he would take me to Everleigh Palace so we could make a wish together at the old fountain. Now, all he does is cancel my flight ticket for me. "Alice, Yvonne means well. She just wants you to have a more enjoyable summer holiday," he says, his voice gentle but firm. He glances at me before adding, "Be sensible. Don't ruin the fun for everyone." Be sensible. I've been hearing those two words for the past 18 years. This time, I don't want to hear it anymore. Without a word, I cancel my flight ticket to Novenport. Instead, I use all my savings to buy a ticket to Jatwick. Days later, I stand before the old fountain at Everleigh Palace and make my wish with all my heart. However, this time, it isn't for anyone else. I make a wish for myself.

My family is always tricking me into believing there's an emergency over the smallest things. When Dad faked an attack signal, I forfeited a championship final, only to discover he'd simply misplaced his favorite newspaper. The time Grandma claimed her wolf was vanishing, I missed my promotion review, only to find out she just wanted me to clean the lawn. Every single time, I rush to their side in a panic. And all I get is the same perfunctory, casual explanation—"We just wanted you to come home sooner." Eventually, it becomes an unspoken game of testing how quickly I will come running. On the night of the Full Moon Festival, I'm negotiating at the Alliance headquarters when my younger sister, Leah Holmes, suddenly calls. "Erin, Mom's wolf is fading… She keeps calling for you." The next second, my blood bond with Mom suddenly weakens. A sharp pain grips my heart. I can barely manage to excuse myself before bracing against the wall and rushing out of the conference room. But when I arrive home, Mom is on the terrace, carving a roast turkey. Upon seeing me, Leah excitedly waves her phone. "I win! She didn't even grab her coat!" Mom holds up the moonstone used to simulate distress signals and chides her, laughing. "You should tell Erin now. Look how terrified she is." My future mate, Nolan Harding, walks over and holds my cold hands in his. In the past, whenever my blood telepathy acted up, he'd always hold my hands like this and stay with me until the pain in my chest subsided. But this time, he advises me in a lowered voice, "Leah spent all afternoon preparing this. She just wanted everyone to have a happy holiday. Take a moment to calm down before blaming her." Leah bursts out laughing behind him. "Erin, I'm not the only one to blame. Nolan was the one who taught Mom how to use the moonstone." I slowly withdraw my hands. Of course. He knows better than anyone how to make me feel safe, and how to make me afraid. That night, I accept a three-year transfer to the West Coast branch and withdraw my application to form a mate bond.

My twin sister, wanting to be with her thug boyfriend, secretly planned to apply for a junior college. When I could not talk her out of it, I told our parents and managed to stop her. However, just a month into the new semester, her thug boyfriend cheated on her. She left a suicide note, blaming it all on the long distance between them. She wrote that if she had gone to that junior college, her boyfriend would never have cheated. Grief‑stricken, my parents turned all their rage on me. "You wretched girl, this is all your fault for meddling! What business was it of yours which school your sister went to? Even if she didn't go to college, we could still support her. We didn't need your big mouth!" "If it weren't for your spiteful tongue, your sister wouldn't be dead!" "We were cursed to have a vicious, unfilial daughter like you!" They locked me in her room, ordering me to repent. Then they took her ashes on a trip, saying they wanted her to see the beautiful mountains and rivers she never got to visit in life. A month later, they returned from their travels to find me long dead, starved to a withered husk in front of my sister's photo. Their eyes held no grief, no guilt, only a faint, scornful curl of the lips. In their eyes, my death was nothing more than justice served. My broken soul saw their icy expressions, and despairing tears burned my eyes. Then my sister's familiar voice rang out again: "What business is it of yours which school I go to? You're just jealous that I have a boyfriend, aren't you?"

"You're no daughter of mine if you dare apply for a college out of state!" I'd barely finished putting the candles on the cake when Mom's argument with my younger sister carried out of the bedroom. A second later, Lily Lawson stormed out, slamming the door behind her, then pointed back at the room and demanded that I settle things between them. She was wearing a yellow floral dress made from the fabric I'd bought for myself a week ago. I'd asked Mom to make me a dress for my birthday, but she'd hemmed and hawed and said she hadn't gotten around to it yet. Apparently, she'd finished it after all. It had just ended up on Lily. Again. All my life, Mom had told me I was the older sister, so I needed to give in to Lily. I'd given up new clothes, birthday presents, the chance to continue my education, and most of the money in my bank account. This time, as I looked at the cake slowly melting on the table, I suddenly didn't want to give in anymore.