Historias cortas de After Death y novelas con Mistress ambientadas en Face Slapping

On April Fool’s Day, my CEO husband cut out my heart to save his childhood sweetheart's son. After the surgery, he tossed me into a cold rental apartment, where I died in agony. Three days after my death, my five-year-old daughter played in the room as usual. Walking by the sofa, she wrinkled her little nose and mumbled, "Mommy, there's a weird smell in here." She touched my face and murmured, "Mommy, are you pretending to be Snow White? Why are you so pale?" She shook my arm harder and raised her voice, "Mommy, it's my birthday today—get up and blow out the candles!" Confused, she picked up the phone and called her father. “Daddy, did I make Mommy mad? I lit the candles, but no matter how much I call her, she won’t wake up.” On the other end of the call, Patrick Hart’s voice was cold and impatient. “What could possibly be wrong with her? She’s just pretending to be asleep for sympathy. It’s Johnny’s birthday, I’m busy. Don’t bother me! Tell your melodramatic mother to stop playing her little tricks. I don't have time to humor her." My daughter removed the candle from her bun, pinched off a piece of the bun, and fed it to me. "Mommy, I made a secret wish… I really wish you could hold me again, just like before."

Three days after I died, my fiancé got a call to ID the body. He just scoffed. "She's dead, so what? Call me when she's in the ground." The cops, out of options, hit up my backup contact—my childhood friend. He actually laughed. "She's really gone? Not my problem. Burn her or whatever." Then my body hit the internet— And suddenly, both of them looked like ghosts.

It was our seventh year of marriage when my husband, Joseph Lowe, brought my best friend, Teresa Shaw, to my ward. And they were the picture of a perfect couple. I gave them my most genuine blessing. "You two make the perfect match." Joseph tossed an agreement in my face. An asset transfer. He demanded that I give Teresa everything I had. I took the papers and signed my name without wasting a moment to think. Teresa laughed happily, pleased with my obedience. She then hugged Joseph and said, "Thanks for taking care of Joseph for me, Selina. Oh, there's the divorce papers, too. How about…" I noticed the look of impatience in Joseph's eyes, so I snatched the papers from Teresa's hand. "Yeah, I'll sign them all."

Two years after breaking up with Evan Grey, my lung cancer finally reached its final stage. At the end of my life, I dragged my aching body to Lake Manco, where we promised we'd come together on the 999th day of our love. In the end, I was the only one who went. As the doctor's calls came in endlessly, no doubt urging me to return to chemotherapy, I silenced my phone and buried the pendant Evan gave me by the lake. "Evan, maybe this is the last time I'll think of you…" As soon as the words left my mouth, a drop of blood from my nose fell into the sand. Then, from behind me, I heard the voice I'd missed every day for the past three years, "Miss, could you please take a photo of me and my girlfriend?"

After my husband's first love, Sydney Edwards, used me as a walking blood bank, I died in the run-down rental apartment my billionaire husband, Casper Hawthorne, had tossed me into like it was a blessing for me. Today was the third day since I had died. My six-year-old son, Adam, finally realized something was wrong. He had cut his finger while playing with his toys, yet I did not comfort him. He tore open a packet of crackers and raised one to my mouth to feed me, but I did not stop him. He lay in my arms, clutching my clothes and whispering for me. Still, I did not answer. Lost and panicking, he found my phone and called his father, Casper. "Dad, why is Mom still sleeping?" The man sent back a photo of himself having New Year's Eve dinner with Sydney and said in a cold voice, "She's just sleeping, she's not dead. Today is New Year's Eve. I'm busy. Tell that clueless mom of yours that when she's ready to admit she was wrong, she can come and look for me." After the call ended, Adam stood there frozen for a long time. He picked up the last biscuit in the rental apartment from the trash can, broke it in half, and held one piece to my mouth. "Mom, let's eat too."

On the day I'm set to go into labor, I plead to my husband, Timothy Langford, to take me to the hospital when I'm two centimeters dilated. However, a pissed-looking Timothy orders his men to lock me up in a sauna room that's heated to 356 degrees Fahrenheit. This is all because my estimated labor date is one day earlier than my widowed sister-in-law, Natalie Thornton. Since Timothy is bent on making Natalie's baby the oldest grandson of the Langford family, he instructs his men to inject me with 100 labor-suppressant injections. No matter how much I beg Timothy to spare our baby, he remains unmoved. Having received 99 injections, I feel a world of pain crashing down on me, seeing as I'm already suffering from contractions to begin with. But Timothy is the one who injects the final labor-suppressant injection into my huge pregnancy bump. As he gazes at my agonized and writhing form, he says coldly, "It's already difficult for Natalie to survive in this world after losing my older brother. As her brother-in-law, I'm merely fulfilling her wish to become a mother. "Still, you refuse to spare her. It's not enough for you to force her to survive overseas on her own; you even plan on receiving labor-induction injections just to give birth to your baby on an earlier date! "It seems that I've spoiled you far too much for you to have the guts to pull this stunt off! The doctor already told me that once I've given you the labor-suppressant injections and leave you somewhere extremely hot, it can stop you from giving birth. You're only allowed to give birth once Natalie is out of labor." At that moment, I've completely given up on life. The moment Timothy witnesses Natalie's baby being born, his eyes are filled with tears of happiness. He sets off firework after firework to celebrate the grand birth. Later on, as Timothy gazes at Natalie's newborn, he finally remembers me and our unborn baby. When he's about to order his men to take me to the hospital, he receives a phone call from his assistant. "The hospital has called to inform you to take Mrs. Langford's body away."

Savannah Cox was my husband's first love. When she got divorced, my husband, Alex Stewart, was the lawyer who handled her case. Then he moved her into our home after getting rid of Mochi, my cat, because she was allergic to cats. Because she lost a necklace, he forced a pregnant me to jump into an icy pool to retrieve it. By the time I lost our baby and ended up in the hospital, Alex was posting Savannah's prenatal checkup report—the first post he'd made all year. "The cherry blossoms are blooming at Cherrywood Park. She arrived with spring." I quietly liked the post, feeling unwell and numb with grief as I spent the day in silence. Alex only looked at me with disgust, a cruel sneer creeping onto his lips. "Autumn, people like you deserve to lose their children. If you love kids so much, why don't you go die with the baby?" What he didn't know was that I was already dying.

On the night I get dismembered, my girlfriend, Victoria Hewitt, announces her marriage to the world. Clad in the wedding dress that I've personally designed, she soon marries her first love, Joseph Danford, happily. When Victoria receives the news of my death, she merely smiles before claiming that I'm a pathological liar. But what she doesn't know is that I've died for her sake. Later on, Victoria constructs a sculpture out of my bones. She develops a habit of hugging it every day since then.

Chelsea Fischer's childhood sweetheart, Patrick Goldstein, loves fighting with me over everything. After I get reborn, I realize that I can never win against Patrick. So, I decide to attach price tags to everything I own. Since Patrick loves taking over Chelsea's front passenger seat under the guise of getting carsick easily, I slap a price tag onto the front passenger seat immediately. "That'll be 100 thousand dollars per year. If you decide to continue the subscription, you'll get a 20% discount." Patrick has his eye on my project proposal. As soon as Chelsea knocks on my office door, I say to her without even looking up, "Wire me 500 thousand dollars, and I'll change the project lead's name to Patrick's as soon as I receive the money." On the day of my daughter Callista Hammond's birthday, I reschedule all of my work matters so that I can hurry over to the kindergarten to pick her up. But Callista tells her teacher, "He's not my dad. I'm not leaving with him." While we're stuck in a stalemate, Patrick arrives at the kindergarten with the gift I've prepared for Callista. That's when Callista rushes over to hug his leg. "Take a good look, miss! This is my actual dad!" Chelsea is about to provide an explanation to me when I extend a hand to Callista. "Give me five million dollars, and I'll make sure that he gets your custody by the end of today."

On my wedding day, I had just stepped onto the aisle when a ripple of laughter spread through the crowd. "Take it all off, and she's got a body on her! Look at her face, like she's enjoying it!" I turned toward the voices and saw my ex-husband's photos of me blown up across the giant screen. They kept changing, one after another, explicit and impossible to ignore. All around the room, phones were already coming up as people started taking pictures. My hands began to shake. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother collapse. Behind Leon Coleman, Allison Fleming slapped her thigh and raised her voice, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Oh, wow. Leon showed these to the guys yesterday, just messing around. Guess they accidentally put it on the big screen. Gemma, you're not gonna make a big deal out of it, right?" The groomsmen laughed. "Come on, Allison. Leon always lets you get away with anything. Gemma had to beg for this wedding. There's no way she'd dare complain." With all those eyes on me, Leon reached for my hand and held it, his tone easy. "Allison's one of my closest friends. We joke around like that. She didn't mean anything by it, so don't take it personally. It's just a few private photos. I'll have someone take them down. It's our wedding day, so just bear with it for now."

After my sister-in-law Lydia had my brother Caleb's kidney removed and spent three years draining his blood, he escaped back to our hometown barely alive. He lay on a bed at the clinic, holding my hand tight as he said, "Noah, don't go after them. You can't afford to cross Lydia's family." Three days later, he died in my arms. I buried him on the hillside behind the town, under the old oak tree he had loved to climb as a child. On the seventh day after I buried him, a black Maybach stopped at the edge of town. Lydia got out with a frail man who looked like he could fall over at any time. She stood outside my house's door and looked at me. "Noah, where's your brother? Tell him to come out. Evan needs bone marrow this time." I wiped the dirt from my hands and raised my head as I smiled. "You want to find Caleb, right? Then start digging."

I had lost my memory for three years. I'd been through hell and high water with Adrian Vance for the past three years. He told me we'd grown up together on the same block, two kids who'd fallen for each other young. He told me that once he had a real foothold in the Family, he'd marry me in front of all of Palermo and make the whole city come to watch. I believed him. With a steady trigger hand and a mean streak, I cleared every man who stood in his way. I dragged him up from a nobody bastard son into the inner circle of the Family, one body at a time. Then the day finally came, and what he said was, "I've already asked the Don for his daughter Camilla. It's settled. I'm marrying her." "Camilla's a mafia princess. The Don's pride and joy. Not some no-name orphan girl with nothing and no one behind her. She's the one who can actually lift me up." "Be good, Vera. As long as Camilla never finds out, we can go on the way we always have." "Be good. You mean play your mistress in the dark, is that it?" What Adrian didn't know was that my memory had already come back. My real name was Hale, heir to the Hale family, the one enemy the Marlowe outfit he'd sworn himself to feared most. Childhood sweethearts, princesses, Don. In the end they were all just one more debt I'd settle on my way to paying the Family back in full.

In the chaotic aftermath of a devastating earthquake, I frantically tore through the rubble in search of my missing daughter. Amidst the panic, my phone rang. To my shock, it was my husband calling me from five years in the future. "Valerie, you have to listen to me carefully," Brent Serrano said. "I am the only one who can save the girl." Without a single shred of doubt, I directed the rescue team straight to the coordinates he detailed. Within minutes of digging, the faint, muffled cries of a child echoed from beneath the heavy concrete slabs. Overjoyed, I sobbed into the receiver, "Thank God, Brent! I found her!" On the other end of the line, Brent let out a soft, distant chuckle. "Good. I'm finally fixing my greatest regret." But when the rescue crew hoisted the massive wall of concrete, the one they pulled from the debris wasn't our daughter. It was Zoe—the daughter of his late best friend's widow, whom Brent had taken under his care. As I stood frozen in horror, he breathed a sigh of relief across the timeline. "In my timeline, Madelin was shattered when Zoe died in this disaster. She had no one left but me, and that was the night we finally crossed the line and fell into each other's arms. "I'm sorry, Valerie. I had to use this call to rewrite history for Madelin. Our daughter is trapped on the opposite side of the mall. Hurry, you can still save her." By the time I raced to the other end of the ruins, Brent's voice returned, brimming with smug pride. "See? Told you she'd be here." I lost my voice, staring down at Juliet's cold, lifeless body. Numb with a grief that swallowed the world, I hung up the phone.

The day Mom's 17th love letter is listed on eBay, Dad, who is usually calm and easygoing, completely loses his temper. He calls Mom three times in a row. "I just gave you ten thousand dollars for the last love letter. How have you already spent it all? "How many times do I have to repeat myself? Wendy just came back from ten years in the future. She's emotionally unstable. If something happens to her because of all this nonsense, I'm going to hold you accountable!" As Dad rages over the phone, I hold up my fingers and do the math. What is he talking about? The love letters are only 200 dollars each. Mom takes me out for hamburgers every time she gets the money. But this time, she's sleeping too soundly. No matter how hard I try, I just can't wake her up. "I'm hungry, Dad. Can you take me out for some hamburgers?" "Did your mom put you up to this?" Dad asks, sounding slightly exasperated. "She's doing everything she can to get my attention." A moment later, his voice softens. "Stella, can you show me your mother's love letters? If you do, I'll take you out for hamburgers."

When my boyfriend, Caleb Steele, loses his family and everything he has, I walk away. After he makes a comeback, I come to see him every year. The first year, I hold my daughter, Claire Sutton, in my arms. Caleb throws fifty thousand dollars at me and tells me to stay away. The second year, I bring my late-stage cancer diagnosis, and he doesn't even look at it. Instead, he gives me a hundred thousand dollars and tells me to disappear for good. In the third and fourth years, I vanish just as he wants. Then, in the fifth year, he gets a call from Claire. "Mommy, when are you bringing me dinner? I'm hungry."

When I found Silas Pembroke, he was carefully untangling a strand of another woman’s hair from his tie clip. The two of them were wrapped around each other, far too close to pretend otherwise. He let out a mocking laugh. “Jenna, what exactly are you going to accuse Sienna and me of this time?” Sienna Vale smiled sweetly. “Mrs. Pembroke, you stayed away longer than usual this time.” I steadied myself and said, “I’m not Jenna. I’m her twin sister, Summer Sinclair.” Silas burst out laughing. “What is this, your latest stunt?” Then his expression hardened. “Keep pushing me, and I can’t promise you’ll stay Mrs. Pembroke forever.” I only looked at him and said quietly, “Silas, my sister left three keepsakes behind for you.”

After losing his entire retirement savings to a scam, my father-in-law, Kyle Knight, tried to kill himself by overdosing on pills. I frantically called my husband, Joshua Knight, a psychology expert, hoping he could talk his father out of it. "Dad lost his entire retirement fund to a scam. He left a suicide note, and he's trying to kill himself. Come home!" Instead, Joshua snapped at me for making such a big deal out of it. "Your dad's made plenty of bad decisions before. Maybe this'll finally teach him a lesson. Don't bother me with stupid stuff like this again. I'm trying to watch a movie with Vanessa." For a second, I thought he hadn't heard me clearly. I was about to tell him that the man dying was his own father. Then Vanessa Morgan's voice came through the phone. The horror movie scared her. Joshua immediately turned to comfort her. Later, he casually told me to put together a PowerPoint on how my dad got scammed so he could use the case in one of his anti-scam livestreams. I swallowed everything I was about to say and obediently said, "Okay." After all, the person who scammed Kyle out of his retirement savings and drove him to suicide was Vanessa's mother.

Ten years ago, a fire broke out at my school. I saved four friends, but the flames left me an idiot. The four of them stood beside my hospital bed and cried, swearing they would spend the rest of their lives making it up to me. They were afraid I would get bullied, so they gave up their spots at two of the country's top universities and went to community college with me instead. They were afraid someone would trick me into leaving them, so the other three pushed Joshua Summers to confess his feelings for me. I had once said I envied people who lived in houses that didn't leak, so all four of them saved every cent they had and bought me a house for Joshua and me to live in after we married. Then came the party the night before my wedding to Joshua. When I returned from the bathroom, I heard everyone inside playing a round of Truth. The topic was "Secrets Loretta Doesn't Know." Curious, I pressed my ear to the crack in the door. Calvin Dawson's drunken laughter drifted through. "That little idiot has no idea tomorrow's wedding is actually for Nisha." I froze. After a moment of silence, my sister picked up where he had left off. "Loretta doesn't know that when Josh confessed to her, he only did it to spite Nisha. Who would've guessed she'd say yes? This wedding was supposed to be Nisha's from the start." My best friend's eyes reddened. "If my family hadn't forced me into marriage, I never would've taken Lori's wedding from her. I only want the ceremony. She can keep the title. As long as she's happy, my own happiness can wait until the next life." Joshua's eyes flickered. With a resigned expression, he revealed the final secret. "This morning, I got worked up enough to consider sending Loretta to her death, but I gave up on it in the end. We owe her a life anyway. Let's call this one paid off." I didn't know how long I stood there before I finally stumbled back to my room in a daze. I opened Joshua's bag, and there it was: an opened bottle of pills. My heart shuddered. The happiness I had cherished for ten years had never been anything more than repayment for a debt. Through my tears, I put the pills into my mouth one by one. There was no need to wait for the next life. In this one, I would give them the happiness they wanted.

Everyone around us knows I'm in love with Ryland Wood. But from his 21st birthday on, he despises me. It takes three years and my accidental death for him to finally be free of me. When I open my eyes again, I find myself reborn, right back on the day of his 21st birthday. This time, I choose to run. Now, I refuse to be the lovesick fool, and I refuse to cling to him.