Independence Familial Bond Short Stories & Novels

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.

When my elder sister, Melanie Grant, is 15, I inadvertently cause the death of our parents. I want to eat cake, so Mom and Dad make a U-turn halfway. Tragically, a drunk driver behind the wheel of a heavy-duty truck takes their lives on the spot. I suffer a severe blow to the head, causing my mental capacity to regress to that of a seven-year-old. Alone, Melanie buries Mom and Dad. When the orphanage offers to take me in, she holds back her tears and shakes her head. "My little brother needs me." Everyone believes she simply cannot bear to lose all her family members at once, but they assume that sooner or later, she'll remember what I've done and send me to the orphanage. Over the next decade, she takes me with her everywhere, from school to work. She even adopts another brother to help take care of me. One day, our little brother, Noah Cooper, burns his hand while pouring me a cup of hot water. Melanie suddenly shoves me to the floor. "It's been ten years! Haven't you had enough?" she barks. "I gave up my education and a good job for you! Why do you keep hurting us? You should've just died! Without you, all of us would be happier!" I don't understand why Melanie is so angry. But what I do know is that I must listen to her.

I am the only person who refuses to abandon Sophia Quinlan when she gets kicked out of the Quinlan family. I work to expand her network, secure funding, and piece together a business empire of our own over these six years. Zachary Lund, her first love, returns from abroad on the very day she becomes the CEO of Quinlan Group. I spend six years busting my back for her, while Zachary spends those same six years keeping her company from halfway across the world. She begins to regret marrying me so early, so she secretly goes behind my back and promotes Zachary to be her personal secretary. Later on, a business rival Sophia has backed into a corner suddenly barges into the banquet carrying an improvised bomb. The crowd scatters in panic. Zachary doesn't even hesitate to leave her behind, breaking free of her grip and running for his own safety. I am the only one who stays behind to protect her from the blast, leaving my body completely shredded from the explosion. In the last moments of my life, I cough up blood and hold onto her hand as I ask the question I have kept inside for six years. "Have you ever, in the past six years—" Sophia pulls her hand away from mine before I can finish speaking. She runs toward Zachary, who is screaming over a scratch on his arm from the shrapnel. It turns out the answer is right in front of me the whole time, making the question pointless. I close my eyes for good this time, a smile of relief creeping onto my face. When I open my eyes, I find myself back on the luxury cruise ship on the day of my wedding with Sophia. I take off my boutonniere without a second thought, strip off my wedding suit, and plunge right into the sea to run away from the wedding. I notice a sea of people gathered just as I reach the shore, with loudspeakers blasting the wedding march. It is then that a woman clad in a wedding dress walks up to me and asks, "Will you marry me, Robert Lister?"

On the day my parents file for bankruptcy, my adopted brother and fake heir, Oliver Bilson, is also diagnosed with leukemia. To earn enough money to pay his medical bills, I brave the snow and winds and continue working even on New Year's Eve. When I hand over the food delivery to the scion, Charlie Jetton, he suddenly knocks the cake over. "Why weren't you more careful when making the delivery?" he demands. "Don't you know that Mr. Bilson spent a million dollars to specifically order this cake for Olly?" I'm about to make a retort when I hear three voices that I'm intimately familiar with coming from within the warm villa. "It's okay. It's the thought that counts, Mom and Dad." The voice belongs to none other than Oliver! Dad, who claims that our family has gone bankrupt and is saddled with a mountain of debt, proudly says, "You're so mature, Olly. I'm going to give you an island to reward you!" Mom, who has always been frugal, gently adds, "My one and only, precious son is so understanding. I'll give you my golf club in Masonila, so don't be angry, alright?" My phone chimes just as the cake lands next to my feet, informing me that I have received a bad review. Later, I cut ties with them and leave with my advisor, Richard Dyer. However, when Mom and Dad find out that I'm leaving, they fall to their knees and frantically beg me to stay as if they have completely lost their minds.

I was the eldest daughter of the Costa crime family until an engineered car crash killed me three years ago. When I opened my eyes again, to my shock, three years had passed. I had been reborn. For three years, hatred had blinded my three brothers, and they had welcomed our true enemy as family. They trusted Elizabeth, the woman who copied my every move, without question. They let her join forces with our enemies and gut the Costa Family from within. Fools. Since I was given a second life, I would set everything right. Rebuilding the Family would start with my youngest brother, Nick, the Wall Street prodigy.

After I came of age, I entered the Gallo family's trial period. Only those who passed the family's trials within five years would earn the right to wear the family crest. Anyone who failed would be sent to the shooting range as a live target. This year's trial was to seize a weapons shipment at the port. I was the first to locate the weapons cache, but when Vera blundered into the ambush, I had to stay behind and clean up the mess to save her. After the fierce gunfight, my team's casualties ended up exactly one more than Vera's. At the crest ceremony, my mother Carmela once again pinned the family crest to Vera Gallo's chest, smiling with satisfaction. "Vera brought back the weapons with the fewest casualties. She passes the trial again this year, without question. "Not that the crest needs to be awarded twice, but Elsa, you really aren't as capable as Vera. Better luck next time." Better luck next time. I'd been hearing those exact words for four years straight. Ever since Vera was brought back four years ago, I, the adopted orphan, had become the most unwelcome person in the house. Because she claimed everything I had should have been hers. The moment she heard that Carmela had treated me well, she'd spiral into hysterics and threaten to kill herself. From then on, I waited four years and never once received the crest from Carmela's hands. This time, I was done waiting. I was going home. My real home.

While on a car trip, our car is struck by falling rocks and breaks down on a remote mountain road. My sister, Renee Olsen, is terrified. We wait three hours before a passing vehicle finally comes. The driver rolls down the window. "I can only fit three people in my car. How many of you are there?" My mom, Penny Ziegler, lets out a relieved sigh and smiles. "Great, there are three of us." My dad, Leonard Olsen, immediately shifts slightly to the side, completely blocking me from view as I cower in the back seat. They get into the car with Renee and leave. Ten minutes later, Mom sends me a message. "Renee is in shock. We're bringing her to the hospital for a check-up first. You stay right there with the car and wait for us to pick you up." I glance at my leg that is bleeding from cuts caused by shattered glass and reply, "Okay." I wait from day into night until my phone battery dies, yet my parents never return. They never pick up my calls or reply to my messages. A team conducting geological surveys nearby discovers me, barely conscious. They arrange for a tow truck and rush me to the hospital, as I'm burning up with a fever. The doctor frowns when he sees my leg. "Why did you wait until now to come in? Young lady, your wound is infected. You need surgery to debride it. Where is your family? Get them here quickly to sign it." I slowly unclench my stiff fingers and take the surgical consent form. Calmly, I pick up the pen and sign my name. "I can sign it myself. They've already forgotten about me."

On Thanksgiving, after I got off work, my younger brother, Nate Anderson, left an update in our family group chat about having moved to a different address. I had to take five different public transport connections before I finally reached the location he had sent me. However, when I arrived, I found that I was in a deserted area. Nate sounded smug over the phone. “Got you! My prank was successful! The last bus has left. What’re you going to do now?” I was dumbfounded, but my parents were laughing. “Why did you believe such an obvious lie? Who did you inherit your dumbness from?” “We’re having our Thanksgiving dinner soon. You can walk home.” My girlfriend, Gwen Smith, was chuckling. She said mockingly, “Oliver, you should come back on your own, just like your parents said. “It’s not the first time you’re getting pranked like this. Don’t be a sore loser!” After that, she hung up on me. In the past, I would have called them and begged them to pick me up. However, this time, I was overwhelmed with exhaustion as I gazed at the distant city lights. Nate loved to play pranks on me, and my entire family enabled him to do so. Two years ago, he put peach fuzz into my drink, and I suffered an asthma attack because of it. Last year, he swapped my shampoo with a hair removal gel, and I failed an interview because of it. My entire family knew that I was terrified of the dark, but they conspired with him and lured me to a deserted area. They were betting on when I would call them and beg for their mercy at the dinner table. I did not cry or beg. In the dark, I walked in the opposite direction from where my home was. I was going to put an end to these pranks.

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.

I have a congenital heart defect, and the doctors say I won't make it past 18. When I am ten, my parents bring home a blind child, saying she is my twin sister, Everly Wallace. My family spoils me rotten, but they treat Everly like a ghost. Everyone says Everly exists only to give me her heart. I try so hard to be good to this sister who shares my face, desperate to ease my guilt. When I reach 18, I lie on the operating table. Except they don't take my heart. They take my corneas. I die after that, while Everly finally sees the light.

On New Year's Eve, my little brother begs me to play hide-and-seek with him. The moment I cover my eyes and count to 30, the "eraser" in my mind starts moving again. I stand frozen for a few seconds, then turn around, go back inside, and start watching TV. An hour later, Mom crouches down in front of me. "Sweetheart, where's your little brother?" Little brother? I blink, confused. "I don't have a little brother…" Her expression drops instantly. Leaving the New Year's Eve dinner untouched, everyone surges out into the heavy snow. But no matter how hard we search, we can't find my brother. Mom raises her hand and slaps me hard across the face. Her eyes bloodshot. "Didn't I tell you to keep your brother company? Didn't I tell you not to let him out of your sight?" she screams. "Where is he now? Which way did he go? Answer me!" I'm shoved to the ground, tumbling into the snow and ice. "Why couldn't it have been you who got lost, you idiot? It's not like you can remember a single thing anyway! "You forgot your brother this time. What's next? Are you going to forget your father and me, too?" Mom lunges forward, wanting to strike me again, but Dad grabs her and holds her back. They won't stop crying, and my heart aches alongside them. She's right. Why couldn't it have been me, the idiot, who got lost instead?

On the day my adoptive father, Claude Bolton, is buried, my biological parents, along with the fake heiress, Gwen Walton, force their way into the funeral hall to pressure me into signing a statement of forgiveness. They say Gwen is about to be recommended for graduate school, so she can't afford to have a disciplinary record for driving a mechanic to his death. My biological mother, Lorna Pollard, holds my hand and cries. "Claude is already dead. Don't ruin Gwen too." My biological father, Joseph Walton, presses the pen into my palm. "The dead shouldn't stand in the way of the living." Gwen kneels in front of the casket, crying pitifully. "Ada, I'm sorry. I didn't know Mr. Bolton would really jump off the building." Just as I am about to sign, the funeral home calls. They say a pearl button fell out of Dad's hand before cremation. Meanwhile, Lorna's cuff is missing a button today.

At the Alpha Summit, my younger brother Felix accused me in front of everyone. "I grew up crushed under my older sister's thumb. If I so much as ate a piece of candy, she'd pry my mouth open and dig it out." I swirled the red wine in my glass and gave a cold laugh. "That wasn't candy. It was a pill made from wolfsbane. If I hadn't saved you, you wouldn't even have the chance to stand here talking to me." Felix's face froze. Refusing to give up, he said, "When our cousin Toby came to stay with us, you gave him every single moonstone I'd worked so hard to find. I'm your own brother, and you played favorites with someone else?" I sighed. "Your cousin had it rough. A big fire burned his family's house to the ground." "What does that have to do with me? Just because he had it rough, I'm supposed to give in to him every time?" "You set that fire." The room went dead silent. The reporters hammered their shutter buttons, capturing Felix looking as if he'd swallowed something foul. "Well, didn't I find him a job afterward? I went out of my way to help him, but the second you found out, you beat me up. Do you have any idea how badly that scarred my fragile young heart?" His eyes reddened as he spoke, while the memory made my blood boil all over again. "You shipped your cousin off to work in a mine in the Wastelands. How is that any different from exile? "You locked him into a five-year contract when you sent him there, so he's still serving hard labor in the Wastelands. You're telling me you didn't deserve that beating?" The viewers watching the livestream didn't know whether to laugh or cry. [Poor Toby. He still hasn't escaped that family?] [See, no beating is ever wasted.] [Just get a new brother. This one's a lost cause.]

As an exploration geologist, I'm caught in a landslide during a mission, and one of my arms is crushed. Before we set out, our exploration team has accurately predicted the weather. There's no chance of heavy rain that day. It isn't until I overhear my wife, Diana Nelson, talking to a doctor friend that I learn the truth. "Diana, you knew Adam was going out on a mission that day, yet you spent a fortune on creating cloud seeding just to get him injured and eventually cost him an arm. You really went too far for Flynn." Diana frowns. "Who told him to care so much about that exploration project? The only way the project can go to Flynn is if Adam gets disabled. "Otherwise, Flynn will be sent to Nambara. You think I can bear to let him suffer in a place like that?" What she doesn't know is that the Nambaran assignment will go to either Flynn Cooper or me. Before leaving, I put my medical report, which states that I've lost my reproductive ability, into a box. The day Flynn makes a name for himself, the box will be delivered to Diana as a gift.

My cousin had been pretending to be mentally disabled and freeloading at my house for five years. He scared off two of my ex-girlfriends and drained my parents’ retirement savings. This time, he set his sights on my cunning girlfriend, who was a company president, and sneaked into the guest room. He ended up pinned to the floor by her. My mother rushed in and slapped me. “He cannot help the way he is, but what is your excuse? Couldn’t you just let it go?” My girlfriend remained perfectly calm. She pulled up three months of security footage and said in a flat tone, “You might want to save your outrage until you see what your precious boy’s been doing every night.”

On the day of the topping-out ceremony for the resettlement housing, my mother, Diana Knowles, insists on reporting me to the authorities for shoddy workmanship. It's all because my cousin, Marco Sanford, went to play at the construction site, stepped into the freshly set cement, and scraped his knee. "You think you're so great just because you built a couple of buildings?" Mom screams at me. "I can't just stand by and watch you put the whole town in danger just to make millions of dollars by pocketing the difference!" Marco clutches his bandage and explains quietly, "It's all my fault for climbing over the fence to play there, Aunt Diana. The construction workers even tried to stop me. It really has nothing to do with Kevin." The project supervisor, Pete Warner, and the town mayor, Hugo Larkin, also hurriedly produce the inspection report. "Mrs. Sanford, the cement, steel bars, and load-bearing cement are all up to standard. This project is a public housing project that the state government is monitoring very closely, and it's going to be a huge deal if we even stop work for a day." Mom, however, holds her head high and yells in a voice louder than a megaphone, saying, "If Kevin dares to let his relatives get hurt at the construction site, then who knows what else he'll dare to do to the rest of the people by giving them shoddy construction? "Stop flattering him! The fact that he became the project manager for this proves that I understand better than you what it means to be a reliable person!"

The day my brother, Aaron Payne, is abducted by human traffickers, an older woman in our town tells me that if I can come up with 80,000 dollars, I can get him back. Desperate to save him, I return to the home I haven't set foot in for two years and beg my wealthy parents for the money. But they fly into a rage. "We sent you two to the countryside to toughen you up, not to give you an excuse to scam us for money!" "Human traffickers? You really expect us to believe someone could kidnap a child and then just give him back? Stop making up stories." With nowhere else to turn, I hear that I can make money by selling a kidney. So that same day, I go under the knife. As soon as the anesthesia wears off, my parents call. "Steve just told us he lost 80,000 dollars, and then we found out you received the exact same amount in your bank account. We were too soft on you. We've raised a thief!" Without giving me a chance to explain, they hang up and transfer the money straight out of my account. Later, my adopted brother, Steve Payne, walks past me with his arms linked through my parents', grinning from ear to ear. "Mom, Dad, thanks for buying me an 80,000-dollar watch. I'm so lucky to be your son." Is he? Without a word, I slip a missing-person flyer under their windshield wiper. If they can help me find Aaron, I'll gladly let him have that luck instead.

Natalie Jett's first love needs a mobile blood bank. But she's going to drain all the blood from my comatose younger brother due to me not arriving in time. I drop to my knees and beg her desperately. "Micah is already showing signs of waking up. The doctor said he'll die if you keep taking his blood. Take mine instead and leave my brother alone! Please!" But Natalie remains unmoved. She looks coldly at me as I kneel before her on the ground. "This is your punishment for being late. It's only some blood. What's the big deal? "Andy is severely anemic. He's the one who could actually die. Is your brother's life really more important than Andy's?" Ignoring my pleas, she orders her private doctor to increase the rate of the blood draw. Bag after bag of blood is sent to Andy Stone's hospital room. Not long after, my brother's heart stops. He dies after all the blood is drained from his body. When I receive the news of my brother's death, Natalie is celebrating Andy's successful surgery, setting off fireworks across the city that last the entire night. This time, I finally give up all hope. I kneel before Natalie's mother in despair. "I have nothing left to hold on to. From now on, Natalie and I have nothing to do with each other."

My little sister was murdered by her kidnappers. I watched it all happen and never said a word about who did it. My mother got on her knees and begged me. I didn't flinch. When my father threatened me with his authority as the Don, I walked away from my place as the Family heir. I moved to a small town down south. Eight years later, I was dying of a terminal illness, and my older sister, Beth Turner, had taken over the Family. Under her, the Turners had become the most powerful mafia family on the East Coast. The first thing she did when she found me was have me dragged back to the Family's tribunal. "Selena Turner, you ungrateful snake. Mia called you her sister for all those years, and you still won't name the kidnapper. "Mia's been dead for years. Don't you feel any guilt at all?!" I was on my knees in the great hall. I couldn't speak. "After all these years, I can finally extract your memories. Today, I'm going to see exactly who you've been protecting. I will avenge Mia." She ordered her men to restrain me and hook up the extractor. On the screen above the banquet hall, a face suddenly appeared. The room erupted into chaos, and Beth's face went deathly pale.

I'm nine years old when I secretly contact my mom Lori Parker's family to get her out of the remote village. When my grandpa, Richard Parker, bursts into the cellar, he finds Mom chained by the neck, with a whip stained with dried, dark blood lying at her feet. Overwhelmed with rage, Grandpa beats my dad, Bruce Fraser, until he is almost dead, vomiting blood repeatedly. Dad is left paralyzed and bedridden for the rest of his life. Just before getting into the car, Mom cries and reaches out to me. "Amy, I'm taking you home!" My eyes sting as I clutch the hem of her clothes, but then memories of my past life come rushing back. Her family turns against her because she protects a bastard like me. She endures their contempt and humiliation and eventually dies of illness alone in a rented room. If she takes me with her, she will never forget this nightmare. I dig my nails into my palm and push her away. "Get lost! Dad only brought you into this family because he wanted a child. I never loved you!" The car door slams shut. I finally break down and run after it, tears streaming down my face. But I don't dare call out "Mom". I'm afraid that if she hears me, she'll turn back.