Plot Twists Romance Short Stories & Bias Karma Novels

My wife was eight months pregnant when she indulged her first love for the ninety-eighth time and let him run our child down with his car. My lawyer wife had promised me she'd bring him to justice, but in court, she suddenly changed her statement. "Mr. Quinn has a serious history of mental illness. His family will discipline him verbally, but he shouldn't be held criminally responsible." After the hearing, she shielded Caleb Quinn as he sobbed in public, then leaned close to my ear and said softly, "I promised you I'd only indulge him one hundred times. Let's just use up one chance. I can't watch him go to prison, can I?" I looked at my wife's flat stomach and felt calmer than I'd ever felt before. Then I nodded. She'd relied on that bet for six years, certain she could do anything. She'd forgotten there was only one chance left.

My girlfriend, Selena Jenkins, and I are committed to a strict 50-50 relationship. We are three years into our relationship, and we split everything down to a single bottle of water. Then, out of nowhere, I get a call from a kidnapper. "We have your girlfriend. Have 150 thousand dollars ready, or she dies!" I calmly launch our app, SplitMate. According to the algorithm, this unexpected incident falls under "shared risk", meaning she is responsible for 50% of the cost. However, after factoring in the personal insurance policy I took out on her behalf, she only needs to pay 35,550 dollars. I send the calculation results to the kidnapper. "This is her share. Please contact her family for the payment. I'm only responsible for my own portion." The line goes silent. A few minutes later, I receive a livestream link. The livestream shows Selena tied to a chair, smiling at her phone. The live chat in front of her is blowing up. "Holy shit! This guy's a monster. This is the craziest livestream I've seen all year!" Later on, she follows the 50-50 rule to a T, but I'm no longer on board with it.

I am the last priestess of the Wintermoor tribe, blessed with the power to make wishes on behalf of others. But every time a wish is granted, I become physically younger. The year I get engaged to Ethan Hayes, I am 28. Three years into our engagement, he's left at death's door after a plane crash. That's the first time I make a wish for him. He survives, yet I become 23. Five years into our engagement, Ethan loses everything and attempts to jump from a building. I make another wish for him. He's wealthy again, and I become 18. Seven years into our engagement, Ethan brings home a terminally ill woman. He then drops to his knees, begging me to save her. I shake my head. "I can't. If I do it one more time, I'll turn three. By then, I won't be your fiancee anymore, and I won't even remember you." But Ethan sneers. "You saved me twice, and you were fine. One time for her, and you'll drop dead? Mirabel, spare me the excuses for your heartlessness." Later, Ethan stands at the edge of the sacred mountain cliff and threatens me with his own life. In the end, I save the woman. The next day, she's completely healed. Ethan holds her close, his gaze soft with affection. Then, he looks up at me and says, "I'll marry you once she's stable enough." I look down at my hands, now no bigger than a child's, and turn to leave. There's no need. In three days, I'll turn into a baby.

The It Girl, Kelly Hilton, claims she's an airhead beauty. When a D-list nobody like me joins her on a variety show, she takes my mother's keepsake pendant without saying a word. Then, she breaks it into pieces. Yet, Kelly shows no remorse, saying, "Oh, I'm just such an airhead. It's normal for me to break things by accident. Your mom is already dead, so just let it go, okay? Everyone has to move on!" I laugh in disbelief. "You think causing trouble is cute and having no manners is being genuine? 'Airhead beauty'? You're just an idiot. Don't try to make yourself sound better than you are." Kelly's eyes redden. "How could you scold me? I quit! I'll have my brothers deal with you!" The crew is stunned. "Is she crazy? Doesn't she know how protective the Litt family brothers are of their sister?" "They are obsessed with Kelly. They'd do anything for her!" I can't help but laugh. I've entered the entertainment industry in the first place because my brothers are too clingy. I may be a nobody, but I haven't lost my memory. How come I don't know that my brothers have a sister named Kelly?

After dinner with my college roommates at a restaurant in the Old Harbor district, the rain came down hard without warning. We huddled under the awning, pulling our coats tight, calling our boyfriends one by one.My friend Maya nudged my shoulder with a grin. "Your guy chased you so hard the entire school knew about it. He'll definitely be the first one here." "Right? Four years of college. Hot coffee delivered to your door on rainy days, your bike path shoveled clean in the snow, and whenever you didn't feel like getting up for class, he'd organize the professor's lecture notes and send them straight to your inbox." "That year you had your senior exhibition and came down with a high fever, he stayed with you in the studio for three days. Made you soup, fixed your models, stayed up so late his eyes were bloodshot. Evelyn, I honestly thought you'd found yourself a fairy-tale prince." They chattered on about my love life. Before long, their boyfriends all showed up with umbrellas. When they glanced my way, their expressions faltered. "How come Noah isn't here yet? Isn't your apartment just across the river?" I smiled and held up my phone. "He said something came up at the office." Maya asked her boyfriend to drop me off first. I sat in the back seat, spotted a familiar figure standing outside the pet grooming salon on the corner. He was cradling a silver-gray longhaired cat in his arms. The cat was wrapped in a soft little wool blanket. He was shielding even its ear tips, terrified of letting a single drop of rain touch it. It was Noah. The cat in his arms belonged to his childhood neighbor, Selena. This wasn't the first time Noah had left me stranded in the rain for that cat.Another message from Noah. "Babe, the rain's too heavy. Wait until it lets up and then call a car home. Don't be stubborn. You won't get wet that way." What he didn't know was that from the day Selena moved to this city last year, I had already been soaked through.

My fiancé’s childhood sweetheart Vivian knew about my deadly asthma. She secretly mixed strong liquor into my drink. Fire poured down my throat. Then, my airway clamped shut. Panic hit me. My hands shook as I dug out my emergency inhaler. But the spray hitting my lungs wasn't medicine. It was strong mint spray. She had swapped it. The second I inhaled, my airways slammed shut. Lack of oxygen drained my strength. I collapsed onto the floor, pathetic and weak. "Aria, this is mint spray I specially prepared for you. It can give you an effective energy boost." Vivian said, rushing over with a look of innocent concern. She crossed her arms, her possessive eyes locked onto my fiancé—Silas Thorne, the CEO of Thorne Group. "Silas, is Aria practicing for a play? I've been a top private doctor for years. I've never seen anyone react to mint spray that strongly." I bit my inner cheek hard. The taste of blood filled my mouth. Cold sweat stung my eyes. I gripped Silas’s pant leg tight. "Please... Silas... ambulance... I can't breathe..." Real panic flashed in his deep eyes for a second. He leaned forward instinctively. But the mocking voices from the executives around us stopped him cold. "Come on, stop pretending! Nobody dies from a bit of beverage and mint spray." "Yeah, she's just throwing a tantrum. Vivian was appointed as the Chief Medical Officer of Thorne Group today, and Aria is clearly jealous." Silas’s jaw tightened. He forced down the worry in his eyes. He ruthlessly pulled his leg away from my twitching fingers, taking a cold step back. "Vivian is a doctor. With her here, you won't die." I stopped begging. I used my last breath to text my father，the President of the Federation.

To help my student, Stanley Johnson, win the chemistry competition, my fiancee, Yelena Quincy, replaces my experimental materials with a hazardous substance. She leaves me a note. "Hank, you've already won plenty of awards and honors. Stanley's mother only has a few days left, and this is his last chance to fulfill her dying wish. Just let him have this one. "Besides, you're Stanley's advisor. Helping your own student win the championship makes you look good, too. "Once he wins, I'll say yes to your marriage proposal right away, okay?" But she doesn't know that I no longer have a chance to marry her. The hazardous substance causes a massive explosion, and I burn to death along with the three thousand students and faculty in the building! She faces relentless demands for justice from the families of all three thousand victims.

I was in the parking garage of my Beverly Hills high-rise. And I backed my car into my neighbor's Ferrari. On purpose. I got out, a half-empty bottle of tequila in my hand, right in front of her. "Are you blind? Do you know how much this car costs? Can you even afford to fix it?" She was furious, her face turning red as she whipped out her phone to call 911. I just smirked. "You should probably call them. Get the LAPD down here to arrest me. I'll wait." The first time around, I was the fall guy for my fiancé, Grant, and his sister, Blair. They got high at some Hollywood party, went joyriding, and killed an innocent valet. But the car was my Porsche. And they swore I was the one driving. I rotted in a California state prison for ten years. The shock killed my mom. A heart attack. When I got out, they weren't done. They forged offshore debts to drain my trust fund and drove me to suicide. I woke up 24 hours before it all happened again.

It's our fifth year together, and I accompany my fiance, Theo Montague, to see the aurora he has always yearned to see. Fortune favors us that night as vivid green lights stretch across the snow-covered plain. He wraps his arms around me from behind and suddenly murmurs, "It's beautiful. Too bad we're still one step short of perfect." I freeze for a moment and ask him what we're missing. He doesn't answer, and I don't press him, either. After all, I've heard this phrase far too many times. When I go to great lengths to get him the out-of-print book he has his sights on for ages, he sighs. "We're still one step short of perfect." When we move into our beautifully furnished house and finally have a place of our own in Northshire, he laments, "We're still a step short." Even when he becomes a professor, our wedding's set, and everyone envies us for having it all, he still tells me, "This is wonderful, but it's still one step short of perfect." I've heard it so often that I assume he's simply harder to please than most people. The "one step short" he always speaks of seems nothing more than the small imperfection a perfectionist can never let go of. Everything changes when his most prized former student returns from abroad. For the first time ever, the man who rarely posts on social media shares a photo of himself picking her up at the airport. The woman standing next to him looks eerily like me, sharing at least 70% of my features. The caption reads, "My life's complete now that I've reunited with an old friend." That's when it hits me—the one thing he's missing is a person. I'm merely someone he settles for because I happen to look 70% like her. Since I'm only 70% similar to the woman he truly wants, how can I possibly give him the perfect life he longs for?

On my twenty-ninth birthday, I was supposed to be formally announced as the next head of the Ashford family. But before the charity gala began, my mother fed my succession speech into the shredder and replaced it with a written pledge to my sister. "Lydia hasn't had an easy time since the wedding. Announce in public that you're giving her the Harbor Hotel. Think of it as backing her up." It was the first property my grandmother had left me, and the only project I had been allowed to run on my own in eight years. I asked my mother, "And if I'm not willing?" My father looked at me coldly. "Don't forget, you'll inherit all of Ashford one day. She only has us." They had always used the inheritance to keep me in line, forcing me to hand over what was mine to my sister Lydia. This time, I didn't argue. I took out the resignation letter I had signed long before and set it in front of my father. "Then let Lydia inherit all of Ashford. "From today on, I want nothing."

At the coming-of-age ceremony my sister and I shared at twenty-one, our father produced two marriage contracts. One came from the ducal House of Beaumont. A century-old line with power beyond measure, whose heir Alexander was composed, wealthy, and the dream of every unmarried girl in Saint-Vérain. The other came from the bankrupt Moreau family. Their estate mortgaged, creditors at the door, their heir Elias had nothing but a handsome face. In my last life, my sister Vivienne chose Alexander first and left Elias to me. Later, she was caught in an affair, and the Beaumont family confined her for life under the name of "psychiatric rest." Elias, with my help, climbed from ruined nobility into City Hall and became the youngest chief secretary to the mayor. Vivienne didn't hate the in-laws who destroyed her, or the husband who was cold to her. She hated only that I lived better than she did. The day I visited her, she smashed my skull with a silver candlestick. When I opened my eyes again, we were back at the moment of choosing. Vivienne snatched the Moreau letter and said smugly, "Little sister, this time it's my turn to be the wife of the rising star of politics." I looked at her and smiled. She didn't know that in the last life, the one who had truly raised Elias to high office was never fate. And that Alexander, who had never touched her, had never been cold by nature. He had simply married the wrong woman.