Cerita Pendek & Novel Independence Familial Bond

My twin sister, Bianca, tried to kill herself because I was better than her at school. Apparently, my success triggered her. So my parents sent me away from the Bellini estate. “Only until the college decisions come out,” Mother promised. “Then you can come home.” Behind her, my brother, Dante, helped Bianca choose her new armored Bentley. My boyfriend, Luca, stood beside them, holding Bianca’s favorite white roses. “If anything happens, call us, Valentina.” I did. A month later, a drunk man showed up at my door and wouldn't stop pounding. I locked myself in the bathroom and called my family again and again. Every call was declined. Near dawn, Mother finally texted. Sorry, sweetheart. We were celebrating Bianca’s birthday. Seeing your name might have upset her. After that, I stopped asking for help. The last college decision arrived, but they still wouldn’t let me return. Then, at our eighteenth-birthday gala, the Bellinis presented Bianca to New York as their beloved and only principessa. Mother sent me another message. Your sister still needs time. Please wait. This time, I was done waiting. They didn’t know I had already accepted my offer from MIT. I was leaving the Bellini family behind.

Three years after my husband, Lucien Vance, put me on a household spending card linked to his account, he hired Camilla Bennett to manage his money. From then on, every dollar I spent needed her approval. "Nine dollars for a cab? The bus costs one dollar." Denied. "An air conditioner for your mom? She's gone without one for decades. What's changed?" Denied. Lucien watched me fume and said, "Camilla knows what she's doing. She's helping us save money. You know I can't stand gold diggers." Then Lucien's mother, Nora Vance, landed in the ICU with severe pneumonia. She needed a ventilator, antibiotics, and continuous hemofiltration. The bill came to $30,000. Camilla denied it again. My hands shook as I called Lucien 43 times before he finally answered. "Send the money now! Nora has pneumonia. She's going to die without treatment!" He sounded annoyed. "Camilla said it isn't serious. A little cough syrup will clear it up. You're making this up for money? What would your mother say?" Then I heard Camilla's voice in the background. "Lucien, this necklace only cost $25,000. I couldn't pass it up. Let's call it my birthday present!" I opened my mouth, but he hung up before I could speak. As I watched Nora suffer, it hit me. Lucien had gotten one thing very wrong. It wasn't my mother in that hospital bed. It was his.

In my last life, it happened at the welcome party for my newborn brother. My aunt Vivian forced her way into the nursing room while my mother was changing and carried Noah out. By the time my mother came out in clean clothes, he was gone. Vivian argued that she had only taken him out to show him to the guests, and that my mother was the one who hadn't watched her own child. The security footage was destroyed on purpose. My mother couldn't find any new evidence, and in the end the investigation into his disappearance was closed. After that, my mother was never right again. She spent every day murmuring Noah's name, and six months later she was in a car accident. My father searched for three years. He finally found Noah's body in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Then I opened my eyes, and Vivian was walking toward the nursing room with a smile on her face. I threw myself at her, grabbed the fruit platter off the table beside me, and slammed it into her.

For eight years, Damian Caruso kept me as his secret wife. I handled his family's lawsuits, protected his empire, and raised the son he refused to acknowledge in public. Ethan wasn't even allowed to call him Dad when anyone else was around. I told myself Damian had his reasons. Until our son's seventh birthday. Damian promised he would come home. Ethan waited beside an untouched birthday cake until nearly midnight. Damian never showed. Because Sofia Bellini—the childhood friend everyone already treated as Damian's real woman—had the same birthday. And Damian had chosen hers. That night, I stopped waiting. I signed the divorce papers. The next morning, Damian was in such a hurry to rescue Sofia that he signed the documents I placed in front of him without even reading them. He didn't realize he had just given me permission to take Ethan out of New York. Then he moved Sofia into our home—and asked his wife and son to leave so she wouldn't discover we existed. Ethan looked at the father he had spent seven years trying to love and called him "Mr. Caruso." Damian finally looked shaken. But it was already too late. On the day we left, he told me he had to fly abroad to handle a divorce case for a client. I said nothing. Because that divorce case was mine. He was flying across the ocean to finalize the end of our marriage—and he still thought I was just taking our son out of town for a few days.

After the Intermediate Mage Examination, I stood outside the door and overheard my mother tell a relative, "The Royal Academy's tuition is too expensive. We can't afford to send both daughters." The relative tried to reason with her. "They're both your daughters. You can't send one and leave the other behind." My brother cut in. "Liana can't even cast a basic light spell. She's the one who needs the extra help. Ella's talented enough to manage on her own. Send her with Liana as a maid. She can sit in on classes whenever she's free." Then came the voice of Caden Vale, the boy I had grown up with. "That's fair." Standing outside the door, I finally understood what fair meant to them. Liana got the place at the academy. I got to save them the extra tuition and wait on her as a maid. When we were kids learning the levitation spell, the only cushion in the house always went under Liana. Once, I fell and cracked my head open. Even then, I made excuses for them. I told myself Liana needed more protection than I did. But as I listened to them laugh, something inside me finally snapped. This time, I would not let Liana use me as her stepping-stone.

On my 18th birthday, I take the fall for my sister, Josephine Walker, and plead guilty to felony hit-and-run. My parents fall to their knees before me, kneeling on the floor until they bleed. "Edwin, you've saved our family! When you get out, we'll spend the rest of our lives making it up to you!" Josephine, too, wraps her arms around me and sobs until she passes out. "I'll never forget what you've done for me, Ed. I owe you everything," she says. I endure the humiliation for their sake, clinging to the promises they made me. At last, after serving my full sentence, I walk free. At the dinner table, years of exhaustion catch up with me, and I let out a quiet sigh. Hearing that, Dad slams his fork down on the table. "What's with the sighing? Is the food not good enough for you? You think we've had it easy while you've been gone all these years?" "Oh, so now you're too good for our food? Maybe prison didn't teach you anything. We should send you back for a few more years!" Mom exclaims as tears well up in her eyes. Beside them, Josephine bursts into tears. "What right do you have to feel sorry for yourself? Because of you, I can't even show my face around here! Everyone laughs at us. They all say I have a murderer for a brother!" "You're nothing but trouble! You should've died in that accident!" Then the door slams shut. I look down at the cancer diagnosis in my hands, the paper soaked through with rain. And strangely, I feel calm. Maybe it's for the best. I can finally pay for that lost life.

I am an orphan who was adopted, yet I live like a king in my house. While my older brother, Eric Jones, sleeps in the attic, which is freezing in the winter and sweltering in the summer, I get the nicest bedroom, the south-facing one with the best sunlight. Eric wears worn-out clothes from the flea market, the kind sold by the pound. As for me, I get new clothes from the mall every year. Some still have the tags on. Eric starts working at a construction site right after high school. As he works three shifts a day, his hands are covered in calluses. I, on the other hand, attend the best private high school in the city, where one year's tuition costs as much as two years of his wages. My adoptive mother, Dolores Bender, looks over my straight-A report card, wipes away her tears, and says, "Even if I have to sell everything we own, I'm putting you through college." Whenever relatives come over, they tell me how lucky I am to have been taken in by the kindest family on earth. That's what I've always believed, too, right up until Thanksgiving, when Eric had too much to drink.

My stepsister, Abigail Lambert, is accepted into Quailmont High School through a special admissions program. Her teachers say she has what it takes to get into Bromwich College, one of the country's top colleges. My mother, Harper Quinn, and my stepfather, David Lambert, are so thrilled that they reserve a private dining room at the nicest hotel in town to celebrate her achievement. Before the celebration, they make a special trip to Quailmont and spend two days there. They even pick out presents for Abigail. When they come home, they're carrying the latest computer, their faces glowing with excitement. "Zachary, is dinner ready yet? If not, put some ribs in the oven. They're Abigail's favourite. Make extra so you can have some, too." I'm already on it. The ribs are roasting in the oven, filling the kitchen with their aroma. The television in the living room is airing a report on a string of missing-child cases. Nearly ten children between the ages of three and sixteen have gone missing. All of them are believed to have been kidnapped by human traffickers. The kidnappings are becoming increasingly common. The report immediately catches Mom's attention. "I don't think we should let Abby go out alone this summer. Zac, be sure to keep an eye on her, alright?" she prompts. "Her tutoring lesson should be over by now. Zac, go pick her up when you're done." The delicious smell of ribs fills the kitchen, overwhelming me until I can barely breathe. Abigail is missing. She's been missing for 30 hours, and she's nowhere to be found.

The Gambino family's highest decree: every Don must be married before taking office. So the moment I came back from studying abroad, my father sent me to intern at the family company run by my fiancé, Ethan Clark—to prepare me for taking over family operations, pave the way for me to become the next Don of the Gambinos, and, you know, build some chemistry between us while we were at it. The first day I walked in, I saw a woman holding court, surrounded by everyone, with everyone deferring to her, calling her "Mrs. Clark" with practiced reverence. She tore up a two-hundred-million-dollar contract, and they all applauded. She spotted the ring on my finger, and they all reached out to take it off for her. I didn't flinch. Didn't panic. "Do you know who can wear this ring?" She scoffed. "An intern. What's the big deal? Take it off." I smiled. This ring is the heirloom of the Gambino heir. Anyone who touches it without permission doesn't live to tell the story. I pulled out my phone and dialed Ethan right in front of her. "Your 'Mrs. Clark' is trying to take my family ring. Care to explain?"

To teach me independence, my parents enforced a fifty-fifty rule from the time I was little. Half the rent for my room. Half the cost of a breakfast sandwich. Even when a high fever sent me to the ER, they added half the bill to my debt and reminded me, "Get a summer job. Don't make a habit of owing people money." I always believed they just wanted me to become independent. Then my younger sister, Chloe, was born. Whenever she broke something and owed Mom money, all she had to do was give her a kiss. "All right, sweetheart. Debt paid." When Chloe wanted piano lessons, she made Dad breakfast once, and he happily paid for an entire year. But every dollar spent on me went straight into the family ledger. On my eighteenth birthday, I looked at the cake and quietly asked Mom, "Can I mow the lawn to cover my share?" She frowned. "Sophie, you pay what you owe. Don't look for shortcuts." "You still owe us $1,704.08 from last month. When are you going to pay it back?" I didn't answer. I only tightened my grip on the letter in my pocket offering me a full scholarship to New York University. Soon. Once I paid it off, my debt to this family would be settled. After that, I would never owe them another cent.

I came from a family of musical prodigies. Everyone had talent—except me. I was born tone-deaf, with a harsh, unpleasant voice. My parents were Grammy winners, but I couldn't even pass an audition for a school show. Everyone said listening to me was torture. Desperate to carry on the Bennett family's musical legacy, my parents adopted Layla Bennett. The moment she entered our home, she took my place. My parents called her a musical genius and brought her to exclusive dinners, industry parties, and prestigious galas. My older brother, Ron Bennett, who had once spoiled me rotten, now said Layla was a hundred times better. Within a few years, Layla became one of the hottest rising stars in the music industry. I became an embarrassment to the family. Once, I touched Layla's performance gown. They accused me of trying to ruin it out of jealousy and shipped me overseas. “A spiteful child deserves to be punished!” Years later, I finished my studies abroad and finally returned home. But nothing was the way I remembered it. Layla lifted her chin and looked down at me. "Evelyn, I'm giving my first solo recital in Vienna soon. Mom and Dad will officially announce it at the party tonight. I'm the heiress to the Bennett family's musical legacy. We only need one golden voice in this family." My hand froze over the gift I'd brought her. Everyone said I had disgraced the family name. But what would they say if they knew the daughter they'd thrown away had already won gold at an international violin competition and performed on stages around the world? Would they be proud of me?

My foster sister, Sylvia Blackwood, was so terrified of being bonded to the cold, merciless Alpha King that she rigged the lot the moment it was my turn to draw. I pulled out the Alpha King. The whole hall erupted. I looked toward my fated mate, Raymond Hale—but he wasn't looking at me. His eyes were locked on Sylvia, and only her. My brother, Carl Blackwood, didn't call out the switch either. He just let them whisper and laugh. I stood there frozen, eyes burning red. Everyone treated it like a joke. They never thought I'd actually go through with bonding with a wolf that dangerous. But staring at the same faces who once swore they'd love me forever—I finally knew. I was done. I was leaving.

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.

Everyone in our neighborhood knew me as the meek full-time housewife. I had no income and no social life. Every hour of every day went to the kitchen, my child, and my hypercritical mother-in-law, Sofia Carter. Yet when I woke up, I had somehow swapped bodies with my insufferably smug husband, Kevin Carter. My phone lit up as he sent one mocking message after another: [Olivia, you act like having a baby entitles you to lie around at home all day, watch the kid, and throw together a couple of meals.] [For your information, this swap is permanent. I can finally get some rest.] [Don't run your mouth at my office. That management job is way beyond what a brain that never even made it through college can handle.] When I finished reading, I stared at the stubble-covered man in the bathroom mirror and burst into tearful laughter. He had no idea. My meekness and numbness had been bought with my health. From the day I married him, I never got more than five hours of sleep. At twenty-two, I suffered a severe hemorrhage during a difficult delivery. At twenty-four, I developed severe tendinitis. At twenty-six, after years of exhaustion and Sofia grinding me down, I was diagnosed with moderate depression. To him, I was never a wife. I was a live-in maid he didn't have to pay, someone he could take his temper out on whenever he pleased.

From the age of ten, every dollar my parents spent on me became a debt. Tuition. Clothes. Food. Even medical bills. By eighteen, I had signed one hundred and ninety-nine promissory notes. But Camilla—the daughter of the man who died protecting my parents—received everything for free. They gave her my bedroom, my inheritance bracelet, a Manhattan apartment, a Maserati, and eventually even the attention of my fiancé, Nick. My parents called it repaying her father’s sacrifice. They called my suffering “heir training.” On the eighteenth birthday Camilla and I shared, I was seriously injured in a car accident. While my family celebrated her aboard a Caribbean yacht, I begged them for three thousand dollars to pay for emergency surgery. They accused me of inventing the accident to ruin her party. Then Mom told me to sign another promissory note. That became number two hundred. I finally understood that no amount of obedience would make them choose me. So I gave myself seven days to repay every cent, surrender the DeLuca name, and end my engagement.

On the nineteenth day after giving birth, I told my mother something felt wrong. She didn't even look up. "Who isn't exhausted after having a baby? I didn't have anyone helping me after I gave birth, and I still got through it." After that, I stopped talking about it. At night, when Noah cried, I got up to warm his bottle. My hands shook so badly that I dropped it on the floor. Carol ran out of her room barefoot. The first thing she said was, "Are you doing this on purpose?" Once, a nurse from the clinic came out for a postpartum home visit and asked how I was feeling. Before I could answer, my mother cut in. "What could possibly be wrong with her? She eats my food, lives under my roof, and still complains that taking care of her own baby is exhausting." After the visit ended, my mother slammed the door. "You really know how to put on a show for outsiders." During that time, I spent every waking second trembling. Then I started growing hydrangeas on the balcony. Seventeen pots. I planted them one by one, counting the days. Those ten minutes I spent watering them every day were the only moments when I felt like I was still alive. Last week, driving Noah home from his vaccination, I thought the first flower should be blooming soon. Then I opened the door. The balcony was empty. Only smears of soil left on the tile. My mother was in the kitchen trimming beans. She didn't even look up. "I pulled the flowers out. They attract mosquitoes. The balcony's better used for the baby's things." I said nothing. I walked out to the balcony and stood there a long time. The wind came through. The air was clean, without even the faintest trace of flowers. I looked down at the dirt marks on the tile. And suddenly I thought they looked like the last evidence that I'd ever existed in this house.

Mom's words hold immense weight, but she only speaks one sentence each month. When a bankrupt businessman begs for her blessing, his life turns around the next day. When a childless tycoon begs her to bless him with a child, his wife is pregnant before a month has passed. But all my life, she has never spoken a complete sentence to me. When it was time to choose which university to apply to, Mom merely shook her head. "If you apply…" Her unfinished sentence kept me awake all night. I took her meaning the wrong way, and in the end, I lost the university I had dreamed about getting into for ten years. Then, my younger sister, who had scored less than me, somehow snagged a spot there. Yet, she only smiled shyly and said, "I just got lucky." After graduation, a prestigious foreign company came knocking. However, Mom simply gave a cold warning. "Maybe it's a trap…" So, I took her advice and joined a company that has me working overtime day after day. Yet, my younger sister joined that foreign company, and she ended up with a high salary and weekends off. Three days before my wedding, Mom looks at my fiance. As always, she only says, "The happiness you have now is only temporary…" I toss and turn, unable to sleep. But as I pass my younger sister's room, I hear Mom's gentle voice. "First, I pray that Zara and Evan grow old together, surrounded by children and grandchildren. Second, I hope they live happily without any misfortune…" She talks all night. I listen from the other side of the door the entire time. It's only when my tears run dry that I finally understand. It isn't that Mom can't speak. She simply doesn't want to talk to me. Since her words are never meant for me, she has no reason to involve herself in the rest of my life.

I've been a stickler for getting things right since I was a child. Whenever anyone is vague, I keep asking questions until I get to the bottom of it. At the children's home, the director used to say that the crying child gets the candy. I asked, "Why doesn't the quiet child get any? Does a child have to cry to get candy?" The director had nothing to say to that. After I became a lawyer, my supervisor assigned me a case she claimed was guaranteed to win, despite there being no evidence. I asked, "With no evidence at all, how can we possibly win?" "That isn't for you to worry about. Just show up in court on time." I put the file back on her desk. "If I can't get the full picture, I'm not taking this case." After that, none of my colleagues dared dump another hopeless case on me. That changed when my birth parents brought me home to the Rossi Family and threw a belated banquet to formally acknowledge me as their daughter. Bruno, the butler, brought out a case. Inside was a Browning pistol with the Rossi crest set into the grip. "This is the keepsake the Rossi Family commissions for each of its children. Your three brothers each have one. So does Letitia." My father took aim at a vase worth a million across the room and fired a test shot before sliding the pistol toward me. "Yours. " I picked it up. Neither the magazine capacity nor the curve of the grip had been designed for my hand. I couldn't hold it securely. I looked at him. "Father, was this made specifically for me?" "Of course." I lifted it again with my palm up so he could see the gap between my fingers and the grip. "Then why was it designed for a hand smaller than mine? "If I had to use this pistol in the field, the sharp edge at the base would snag when I changed magazines and cost me my best chance to fire." I turned the pistol over so they could see the tiny letters engraved inside the chamber: L.L. "More importantly, those are Letitia's initials." I looked at Letitia. "Or did you swap mine out?"

When I realized my soulmate Darius was still hung up on his former lover Cassia and her child, I started teaching our son to call him "Lord Darius." That night, Theo accidentally stepped into a thorn trap set by forest nymphs. He was poisoned by a minor curse that sent his magic spiraling out of control and plunged him into darkness. But Darius turned and left because Cassia called him on his messaging crystal late at night. I touched my son's forehead as his divine aura dimmed from the pain, and made him say, "Goodbye, Lord." On Theo's birthday, Darius skipped our celebration because Cassia tearfully complained that her child needed a father. I didn't say much. I just had little Theo explain to the guests, "The Lord has important divine duties to attend to." My boy would always struggle for a long time before forcing those words out. Until Darius finally realized he owed us far too much. He offered to go to the temple and commission an enchanted portrait of our family. But right there inside the Portrait Pavilion, Cassia sent another message through the crystal. "Darius, I am begging you to come to the Divine Academy. Could you just pretend to be Milo's father for a bit? The young gods here are all mocking him for being a bastard..." A flash of guilt crossed Darius's face. He was just about to bend down and explain things to our son. But this time, Theo did not need my prompting. He just waved his hand. "It is okay, Lord Darius. Hurry up and go be with your other child. Just having me and Mom in the portrait is enough."

"Today is supposed to be a good day. We're choosing Wendy's dowry. Stop standing there bringing bad luck down on us!" My mother pulled my sister back in disgust, afraid the blood I had coughed onto the floor would splash the silver-bound chest. When a forest elf girl is born, her family plants a bonded tree for her, a tree that lives and dies with its owner. When a daughter marries, her eldest brother takes the old branches the tree has dropped on its own and builds her a dowry chest, a sign symbolizing a lifelong covenant of love and kinship. The chest is filled with gowns and with whatever the family gives her, and the larger the chest, the deeper the blessing. My brother cut my tree down and damaged its roots as well. "Wendy's tree is too thin and weak. It isn't worthy of the Royal Court. I had no choice but to saw yours into boards and put together a respectable chest for her." My sister stroked the silver-bound chest made from my ancient tree like a highborn princess. The whole family gathered around her to pick out what would go inside, as though they had forgotten that I was a bride that day too. My voice shook. "Then what about me?" My mother looked at me shaking there, and her face filled with disgust. "You insist on marrying that short-lived human. A wicker basket is dowry enough for you." Only in that moment did I understand that to them my life mattered less than Wendy's dignity. So I no longer had to treat them as family.