Plot Twists Romance Short Stories & Bias Face Slapping Novels

Natalie Shaw, the dance company's new understudy, slipped razor blades into my practice outfit and left my back slashed and bloody. My boyfriend, Derek Mercer, the theater's associate director, sent her makeup case skidding across the room with one furious kick. "Touch her again, and I'll end you!" Natalie was thrown out of the rehearsal room, her eyes rimmed red. After that, she didn't just refuse to back down. She hired a few thugs to corner me in the alley behind the theater. Derek threw himself in front of me to block a steel pipe, fracturing his arm. Everyone said Derek would die for me. Then, at a sponsors' dinner the night before the tour, I drank a glass of wine Natalie handed me. Within minutes, my limbs went slack and my skin began to burn. I dragged myself into a storage closet at the end of the hall, only to hear Natalie's syrupy voice just outside the door. "The way you took that beating for her two days ago almost broke my heart. But..." Fabric rustled, and Natalie giggled. "Back in the private dining room, you watched me slip something into her drink. You knew those sponsors had cameras ready and were waiting for her. And you just stepped out for a smoke." "You let me destroy her reputation, so the principal role is mine now. Right?" Derek said nothing. He only pinned her against the door. The door vibrated slightly, striking a heavy blow against my heart. He had already given his heart to someone else.

Lennon Shepard's first love, Jessie Sterling, has caused a medical malpractice incident due to an operational mishap. That night, Lennon cuts off the oxygen for Mabel Judson's mother to coerce her into taking the blame. At the moment, he's sitting across from Mabel with a confession placed between them. Once she signs it, she will never be able to pick up a scalpel in this country for the rest of her life.

My fiancee, Winona Ziegler, moves her childhood sweetheart, Caeden Gardner, who has just come back from abroad, into our future marital home. When ordering takeout, I add an eight-dollar omelette and a five-dollar caramelized onion soup to the order, but Winona deletes them all in disgust. "Caeden can't stand the smell of onions. Do you want to make him throw up? Can't you just have some plain water?" Moments later, she orders a seafood feast worth a thousand dollars for him, complete with king crabs and a premium seafood boil. Holding a glass of plain water, I watch her fuss over Caeden with endless concern. Then, my phone vibrates. My bank account has just been charged 1,000 dollars. She uses my money to spoil her childhood sweetheart, yet refuses to even buy me an omelette that costs eight dollars. Five years of love completely fall apart in that moment. This time, I don't argue or beg like I used to. I simply pick up my phone and press "Freeze Authorized User Card".

Cole Jackman married me to repay a life‑saving debt. Eight years after I entered the Jackman family with tens of billions, his long‑lost, unreachable first love, Ashley White, returned, with her child. Because Ashley had a nightmare, she claimed my son, Oliver Jackman, would bring misfortune to her child. Cole believed her without hesitation. He sent Oliver to an abandoned monastery deep in the mountains, forcing him to fast for seven days to “purify” whatever darkness Ashley imagined. I knelt before him, pleading, “Oliver has a heart condition. He won’t survive seven days without food.” Cole, busy preparing nutritious meals for Ashley, didn’t even look at me. “He won’t die from a few days of hunger. If he can’t endure this, he doesn’t deserve to be my son.” He locked me in the basement for the entire seven days. By the time I reached Oliver, he was already gone. I carried him home in my arms, his small body cold and still. Cole kicked me aside as he pulled Ashley into his embrace. “You’ve ruined our son! He’d even pretend to be dead just to deceive me. If you can’t discipline him, I’ll find him a new mother.” I wiped the tears from my face and dialed my older brother, Emilio Darcy. “Withdraw your investment,” I said, my voice steady for the first time in years. “Bankrupt the Jackman family.”

My girlfriend, Laura Dawson, once asked me a question. "If you ever made it big, would you leave me behind?" I told her no. For six years after that, I stood beside her through every low point in her life. Then the tables turned, and she was the one who made it big. At the Best Actress awards ceremony, she stood there with tears in her eyes, ready to announce the man she'd loved for years. The spotlight swept right past me and landed on the young man I'd sponsored. He stood beside Laura, his eyes red. "Will, thank you for taking care of Laura all these years. But gratitude isn't love. You can't use it to hold her hostage." Laura turned her own gaze on me, cold with warning. "I've had ten thousand dollars transferred to your card. As far as I'm concerned, we're even now." Six years of my youth, poured into her, reduced to one unremarkable number on a bank statement. I watched the internet fill up with people calling me a homewrecker. I made one phone call. "Pull every film Laura Dawson has ever made. All of them." Laura, I regret it now. Now that you've made it big, the first thing I'm going to do is leave you behind.

On the day I finally helped my wife land the hospital's deputy director position, she told me she was ready to make our relationship public. But at her induction ceremony, the medical resident who'd always seemed to have it in for me beat her to the stage. He took her hand and cooed at her like a lovesick teenager. "Thank you for finally telling everyone about us, Megan. I promise I'll take good care of you and our baby." The room went silent for a beat, then erupted into applause, everyone gushing about what a perfect match they made. The resident looked thrilled with himself. He even walked out on a patient halfway through a surgery once, just to throw a tantrum until my wife came running to soothe him. I confronted her about it, and we had a screaming match. She didn't look ashamed at all. If anything, her voice turned mocking. "You've helped me plenty, sure. But his family background puts yours to shame, orphan. He's the only one who can give me everything I actually want." I didn't cry. I didn't fight her on it. I just nodded along and offered her a divorce instead. I wanted to see something for myself: how far she and her lover would get once my "dead" tycoon parents stopped clearing the road ahead of her.

At the airport, I ran straight into Zach Martin, the man who had left me at the altar two years ago to accompany his foster sister to Apania to watch elephants. I had on sunglasses, yet he recognized me instantly in the crowd. “Tina, I’m back to marry you.” I paused for a moment. There was a flicker of doubt in my eyes. “You’re…” He gave me a helpless smile. “Hey, come on. Don’t be mad. I didn’t mean to disappear like that. After taking Yvette to see the elephants, she wanted to stick around and document everything. She’s my only sister. I had to spoil her a little. “After two years of working on the project and finishing the shoot, I rushed straight back to fulfill our engagement!” Only then did it dawn on me that this dark, scrawny man, flashing a mouthful of white teeth, was actually my former fiancé! Wait. Did nobody tell him that on the very day he ran away, I married his uncle instead?

On the night before Match Day, it's 2:17 am when I find myself staring at the screenshot on my phone. For a long while, my heart refuses to calm down at all. Ethan Blake: "Let's have a bet, guys. If Leah doesn't get a spot at Redwood General Hospital tomorrow, this will mark the end of our relationship. The starting bet is two thousand dollars. Is anyone following up on this bet?" Already, more than a dozen people have responded to the message with various emojis. Someone even comments, "Count me in!" I feel my nails digging into my palms. "The end of our relationship", he says. To think that Ethan actually used this phrase. We've been dating for four years. This is the very same man who once told me that he wanted to marry me. Is it this easy for him to end a relationship? I take a deep breath and force myself to calm down. There are still other medical interns in the staff room with me. I mustn't lose my composure around them. I know that Ethan is waiting for me to react how I did in the previous times. I'd either spam his phone with missed calls, beg him to delete the message while crying, or apologize to him in an extremely humble manner. But now… Now, I'm really done with this relationship.

When the most popular amusement park in Crestwater—Fableland released a special offer for pairs, my girlfriend, Alice Winslow, bought two tickets without a second thought. One for herself. And one for my childhood friend, Troy Prescott. After linking their tickets to their IDs, she turned to me. "Hunter, did you get yours?" By the time I came back to my senses, the two of them were already walking towards the entrance together. I hurriedly bought a single adult ticket. As soon as I got through the gates, Troy messaged the group chat. "Hunter, you're too slow. We're going to check out the attractions first. We're not waiting for you." It was supposed to be a trip for three, but they were always paired off. I was always the one trailing behind. I stared at the message I had typed, "I'll come find you." Then I deleted it. Then I opened my feed and saw a photo Troy had posted of himself and Alice wearing Wally Whiskers hats. The caption read, "Our 30th photo together." During our 10 days in Crestwater, they had taken 30 photos together. And they had left me behind 30 times. That evening, I ran into them beneath the fireworks over the castle. Alice held up her phone with a smile. "Hunter, let me take a picture of you." I forced a smile and raised two fingers towards the camera. She handed the phone to me, then slipped her arm through Troy's. "Take one of us, too. " For a moment, I simply looked at the two of them standing together beneath the fireworks. Then I handed the phone back to Alice and slowly turned away. This was where my summer trip with Alice ended.

During an hurricane, I rescued Adrian Whitaker, the golden heir to one of the capital's most powerful families, from the ocean after he'd fallen into the water and lost his memory. While we were living in a cramped place in Seabrook, a small coastal town, I worked three jobs to pay for his treatment. I shielded him from a bottle when some thugs attacked him, and when he got sick during a torrential downpour, I carried him into town to see a doctor. Everyone said I was deeply in love with Adrian, that I cared about him so much I was willing to risk my life for him. Even Adrian himself thought so. So when his memory returned, and he was about to go back and take over his family's company, he asked me what I wanted. When I told him I only wanted him to grant me one wish, his face turned cold. "I can make sure you live in comfort for the rest of your life, but don't even think about becoming Mrs. Whitaker. Charis is the only woman in my heart." I didn't argue. I simply waited. On the day he officially took over the company, I finally breathed a sigh of relief. "Mr. Whitaker, please give me a letter of non-prosecution." Surprise flashed across his face. Then, for some reason, his expression darkened. "Do you really have to play hard to get at a time like this just to upset Charis?" I froze. Wait. How did asking for a letter of non-prosecution turn into playing hard to get? I was still waiting to get my poor, unlucky husband out of detention so I could bring him home for the holidays.

I was the A-list celebrity in the country, the youngest actor ever to win all three major acting awards, and the man Monroe family's heiress treasured above everyone else. Zara Monroe had not only founded a talent agency dedicated to promoting me alone, but had even set aside her status as the heiress of the Monroe family to work as my personal assistant for love. Everyone in the industry knew that crossing me meant crossing the Monroe family. Yet no one could have imagined that in the latest S-tier film production, the male lead I had been all but guaranteed to play would be snatched away by an obscure actor barely known beyond the industry's bottom tier. People across the industry all placing bets on how long it would take before Zara had this newcomer, Kyson Bentley, blacklisted across the entire industry. But instead of a public takedown, they got an official announcement from Monroe Media. [Welcome to our company's second signed artist, @Kyson Bentley! Mr. Bentley will be partnering with Monroe Media from here on out. His future is full of promise.] The entire industry was shaken. Everyone mocked me for having fallen out of favor. The award-winning actor himself was now expected to play second fiddle to a newcomer. On set, I watched Kyson deliver a painfully amateurish performance. My face cold, I followed the and slapped him using a camera angle that made it look as though I had hit him. But Kyson clutched his cheek and fell to the ground, accusing me of using the scene to get revenge on him. Zara ordered her people to pin me down and made the production team add a hundred more slapping scenes to my schedule. By the time they were done, I had been slapped until I lost my hearing in my right ear. My face was so swollen that I was barely recognizable.

My husband, Shawn Payne, goes bankrupt overnight. That very night, he ships me and our son, Tommy Payne, off to a deserted island, claiming it's the only way to keep us safe from his creditors. Worried sick about leaving him to face the danger alone, I sneak back home halfway there, only to find him throwing a wild party, his arms wrapped tightly around a beautiful woman. His best friend, Ryan Foster, needles him. "You dumped your wife and son in the middle of nowhere. How are they going to survive out there?" Shawn shrugs like it's no big deal. "Yvonne's closing down her dog food factory anyway. I had all the surplus kibble repackaged and shipped to the island. It's more than enough to keep them fed for a few years." The woman, Yvonne Sullivan, purrs and snuggles deeper into his chest. "Oh, babe, you're so good to me and the baby," she coos, gently stroking her belly, which isn't even showing yet. He taps the tip of her nose affectionately. "You're so innocent and soft-hearted. If I don't look out for you, who will?" He pulls Yvonne closer and continues, "For your sake, I had to ship that shrew off to some godforsaken island. If she ever found out you were pregnant, she'd tear you apart. Once you have the baby and she turns two, I'll bring them back. By then, it'll be a done deal. There's nothing she can do about it." His words hit me like a ton of bricks. A cold sweat soaks me to the skin. Three years later, right on schedule, he calls. "Hey honey, how are you and Tommy doing? I'm ready to come pick you guys up." I glance at the man beside me, and a rush of satisfaction washes over me. "We're doing great," I reply. "My new husband treats both me and your son incredibly well."

In the afternoon, I mysteriously receive a text message from myself seven years in the future. Thinking it's some kind of new scam, I don't even bother reading it before replying, "Get lost, scammer!" However, the sender sends a photo of an empty bottle of sleeping pills and replies, "I'm not a scammer, but I really am dying. Break up with Crystal. Today will be the first day she cheats on you. "Her first true love just returned from abroad today. His name is Reuben Knight." I'm stunned. I'm about to make fun of the scammer for lying so blatantly to me because I clearly know that I am Crystal Harper's first love. At that moment, the door behind me opens. Crystal then strides in with a man behind her. She introduces me to him and says, "Hey, Daniel, I'd like you to meet a friend. This is Reuben Knight, and he's like a brother to me. He just returned from abroad today."

Thanks to the paparazzi sneakily taking a photo of Caitlin Randall in her swimwear, she's been rated as the most perfect woman in Lunbury for seven years in a row. Countless men who wish to bed her can line up to the moon and back. The thing is, everyone knows that Caitlin only favors me, the deaf man who stays by her side all the time. When I was 18, I blew out my eardrums when I was saving Caitlin from danger. Since then, I can no longer hear the sounds and voices coming from the external world. Whenever we're passionately entangled with each other in bed, Caitlin will always kiss my ears with red-rimmed eyes. But I can never hear what she tells me every time. That is, until the night of Caitlin's birthday, when she blindfolds me and tells me that she wants to play a game. That's when I can finally hear her voice. "Let's play something spicy, Terry." Caitlin ties me up and convinces me to drink some alcohol. When the lashing heat pooling in my gut threatens to break me down, I'm so close to telling the truth to Caitlin—that my hearing is restored. "Ms. Randall, the people and the tools are ready. Are you sure you want to do this to Mr. Boyer?" When I hear the robotic voice coming from Caitlin's earpiece, I freeze up immediately. But at that moment, she has already injected me with a dose of sedatives. "Be a good boy, Terry. Everything will still be fine when you're asleep."

In the second year of my divorce battle with Adrian Pierce, the judge awarded him everything. As I was packing, my daughter pulled an old cell phone out of one of the boxes. "Mommy, look. It still turns on." I tapped the screen, and an email popped up. It was one I had written to myself 10 years ago. "Clara, how are you at 28? Did you marry the man you love? Is your baby adorable? He loves kids so much. You two must be so happy together." Tears splashed onto the screen as I typed back, one sentence at a time. "I did get married, and we had a daughter. However, I found out he was cheating on me with my best friend, our daughter's godmother, during the third year of our marriage. We spent two years fighting through the divorce, and he won. I walked away with nothing." A reply came back mere seconds after I hit the send button. "You're lying! Adrian and Avery love me more than anyone else in the world. They would never betray me like that." A bitter smile tugged at my lips as my trembling fingers typed another swift but brutal reply. "The people who loved you the most? Funny. Our daughter was born with a congenital heart defect. She wouldn't survive without surgery. I got down on my knees and begged Adrian for the money to save her, but he accused me of trying to scam him. "He froze every one of my accounts and used the money from our wedding gifts to pay for his wedding with Avery. The invitations have already been sent out. "Wake up, Clara. Adrian will no longer love you 10 years from now. Now that you know the cruel truth, it's your choice whether to walk away now or stay with him."

We had been married for three years, and together, our income was decent at twenty-six grand a month. Yet, we barely had two hundred bucks in savings. My husband was a nice guy, lending practically his entire wages to our next-door widow and her daughter. He covered their expenses when the daughter needed money for school, when the widow needed a little time at the spa, and when they wanted to give their home a new facelift. The moment my father fell ill and needed surgery, I went next door to ask for the money back. However, my neighbors slammed the door in my face. “Your husband chose to give us the money. Why should we pay you back?” Enraged, I sought help from my husband, only to be criticized. “I felt bad for them. Why did you demand payment when they are already struggling? What’s wrong with you?” I smirked. That night, I decided to do a good deed by spending my entire paycheck to help a broke college hunk. The next day, our power was cut off for unpaid bills, and my husband lost an unfinished document he hadn’t saved. Putting his finger up my nose, he gave me a piece of his mind. “Where’s your money? Why didn’t you pay the bills?” I replied with the most innocent look on my face, “I helped a struggling college student. His life was falling apart because he had to deal with a sick mom and a deadbeat dad. His needs should come before the utility bills.”

I was the most cheated-on man in our entire circle. People online had even put together a compilation of every time my wife had cheated on me. Whenever Vanessa Kane started threatening suicide, everyone knew I'd been cheated on again. The first time, she wanted to go on vacation with a college student she was keeping. She stood on the roof of an eighteen-story building and forced me to get on my knees and beg her. The second time, she wanted to celebrate her male assistant's birthday. She grabbed a shard of glass and screamed that she'd slit her wrists. When I tried to stop her, the glass severed a tendon in my hand. The third time, she wanted to win over a male model from a club, and she was dead set on becoming a nun. It went on and on. Then came the ninety-ninth time, when she said she'd found the love of her life. To sleep with Lucas Reed, she lost the baby she'd been carrying for twenty weeks, then threw what was left of our unborn child down in front of me. "You can forget it. I'm never having your baby as long as I live." Heartbroken and done, I laid a divorce agreement in front of her parents. "Let's get divorced. I'm letting Vanessa go."

I donated so much blood to save the person Dakota Lennox had never gotten over that I went into shock. When I woke up, she tossed a divorce agreement at me. "I'm pregnant. Walter deserves a place in this family." When I refused, she showed up with Walter Kingsleigh and caused a scene at my mother's funeral, trashing the place. "Asher, sign this house over to Walter. He likes how peaceful it is here." I gritted my teeth, wishing I could tear her apart. But she only scoffed dismissively. "What? Are you refusing? In that case, you can forget about getting your mother's ashes." Walter put an arm around her shoulders and called out, "Dakota, we could put the urn on display in our new house. That'd be pretty unusual decor." I laughed, turned, and dialed a number. "Yeah. Dig up every one of the Lennox family's ancestral graves. Have them all moved to a public restroom downtown. I want every last one of the Lennox family's ancestors to watch those two shameless bastards kneel in front of a cesspool and cry, day after day."

My boyfriend never stayed up late, yet he pulled an all-nighter just to watch the sunrise with my best friend. He insisted it was for work and told me to stop overthinking it. Felix Grant and I had been together for seven years, but I never knew where I stood with him. I stuck with him when he had nothing and helped him build his company from scratch. But in all those years, he'd never spent more than a hundred dollars on a gift for me. He said having money didn't mean we should start wasting it. So I limited myself to less than a thousand dollars a month. Then he spent a fortune at an auction on a necklace just to make Gracie smile. My eyes stung with anger. "Lixi, how is this fair?" He frowned and pulled Gracie into his arms as she trembled. Then he turned to me, clearly annoyed. "Gracie liked the necklace. That's it. Can you stop being so difficult?" My best friend, Gracie Bennett, gave her usual sweet smile and stepped between us. "Lix, don't be so mean to Eunice. Didn't you buy her a gift too? Give it to her." Felix tossed a cheap plastic bag at me. "Gracie picked it out for you. You should thank her." Gracie glared at him and pointed at the stuffed animal inside, the cheap kind sold at roadside stalls. "I told you to say you picked it out for Eunice yourself." Her teasing tone cut straight through me. I dug my nails into my palms, suddenly tired of all of it. In three days, Felix and I would have been together for seven years. Fine. I'd prepare one last gift for the two of them.

When His Majesty King Dominic Thornfield was attacked, my husband, Roland Wentworth, Commander of the Royal Guard, was busy placating his first love, Vivian Sinclair, who had stormed off in a fit of anger. I did not light the signal flare in my hand. Instead, I used my heavily pregnant body as a human shield to protect the King and help him escape. In my past life, I had lit that flare. Roland abandoned Vivian to rush back and save the King. He was rewarded for his loyal service by being made a Duke Protector. However, Vivian fell into a trap and died on the spot. On the surface, Roland said nothing. Yet, on the very day I went into labor, he threw me into the Beast Dungeon. My face twisted in agony as I demanded to know why. Roland merely glanced at me coldly and said, "His Majesty had plenty of guards around him, so why did it have to be me who came back? You must have done it on purpose, only caring about power and wealth. If you hadn't lit that flare, Vivian wouldn't have died. Whatever suffering Vivian endured, I'll make you pay it back tenfold!" In the end, I was torn apart and devoured by the beasts. Even the child in my womb was consumed completely. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day the King was attacked.