Plot Twists Romance Short Stories & Mistress Cheating Novels

Five years ago, I catch my husband, Henry Lancaster, cheating on me. He's a college professor, and the other woman is his teaching assistant, Vera Ashmore. Henry begs me not to go public, saying it'll ruin her reputation. I agree, but only if she drops out of school, leaves the city, never comes back, and signs a binding agreement. Everyone around me calls me vain, saying I care more about money than feelings. And yet Henry is willing to turn on his entire family just to protect her name. Five years later, I travel to that same city on a business trip to attend a lecture and end up finding a little boy wandering by himself. I take him to the police station so he can get in touch with his family. The officer dials the number the boy recites from memory, and a familiar voice comes through the line, "Hey, it's okay, don't be scared. Daddy's coming to get you right now." Less than half an hour later, Henry, who's supposed to be teaching classes a thousand miles away, rushes through the station doors. I'm sitting on a bench when our eyes lock, and he freezes on the spot. I smile and rise to my feet. "Henry, I had no idea you had a secret son behind my back this whole time. Looks like that spotless professor image of yours isn't going to last much longer."

While working overtime late into the night, I suddenly received a video from my wife. "Honey, there's a homeless man outside our door. I'm so scared!" In the video, a disheveled man was sitting outside my house. He occasionally muttered strange, unintelligible words. I immediately got permission to leave work and drove home, but on the way back, I got into a car accident. Only after I died did I learn the truth. It was a prank that had gone viral online. The footage of the homeless man had been generated using AI. What I never expected was that my wife's male best friend had taught her how to pull it off. They had even tampered with my car's brakes in advance. Worse still, the two of them had tampered with my car's brakes beforehand. After my death, they even went live and tearfully blamed the AI prank for killing me. Countless viewers sympathized with my wife, allowing the two of them to make a fortune from the livestream. Seeing how deep my resentment ran, the Grim Reaper gave me a chance to start over. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day my wife sent me that video.

My half-brother, Jim Sullivan, pushed me down a snowy mountain, leaving me with a fractured spine. My mom, Doris Moore, and my wife, Julia Stone, rushed me to the hospital in a panic. Later, they learned that I might be permanently paralyzed. To put my mind at ease, Julia held up a ring and swore that she would take care of me for the rest of my life. Mom also cut ties with Jim, saying she would make him pay for what he had done. They told me Jim fell off a cliff while trying to escape, and they never found his body. I believed them. That was until three years into my marriage, a friend sent me a video. In the footage, Jim, who was supposed to be dead, was holding a child in his left arm and had his right arm around Julia. "Julia, thank goodness you helped me fake my death. Otherwise, I'd be in prison right now!" Jim said. "Has Mom said when we can get the inheritance Joshua's dad left him? "I really can't stand living in hiding like this anymore!" "Jim, I know these past few years haven't been easy for you," Julia said. "If it weren't for that inheritance, I wouldn't have married that cripple. "As soon as we get that money, the three of us can be together again!" It turned out that what I thought was my salvation was just another terrible betrayal. The two women who mattered most to me had never truly cared about me. If that was the case, I wouldn't show them any mercy.

After three years in a long-distance relationship, I went straight to the courthouse as soon as my flight landed, ready to marry Willow Payne. Instead, she showed up holding a newborn baby. Without a trace of guilt, she placed the baby in my arms. "This is Rachel, my daughter with Preston. You can raise her from now on." My mind went blank. Standing beside her, my childhood friend, Preston Webb, burst out laughing. "Willow and I got drunk one night, and one thing led to another. We ended up sleeping together. Your time working out of town is finally over, and now you get to come home and be a dad. Hell of a surprise, right?" I stared at them. "Do you seriously think this is funny?" Preston only grinned wider. "Willow and I made a bet about whether you'd cry when you found out she had my baby. I said you wouldn't. So I won. Willow promised to travel the world with me until I get bored and feel like coming back." Willow gave him an amused look, then turned to me like she was doing me a favor. "My daughter is your daughter, too. Take good care of her. When I get back, I'll marry you." She took Preston's hand and walked away with him. I looked down at the baby in my arms. Her skin and the whites of her eyes were so yellow that even I knew something was wrong. I called after them, but neither one looked back. Three years later, Willow showed up at my workplace. "Michael, I'm here to keep my promise. Let's get married. "But Preston and I have a daughter together. We thought it would be better for her if her parents were legally married, so Preston and I got married. "I can't legally marry you anymore, but I can still give you the wedding." She pulled out a wedding band and reached for my hand, trying to slip it onto my finger. I knocked her hand away and stepped back. "I already have a wedding ring. My wife gave it to me."

In our third year of marriage, my wife's kept boy toy decided he wanted to break up with her. He left her nothing but a long, dramatic message and blocked her on every platform before she could respond. [You can't give me what I actually want. I don't want to keep dragging this out with you.] I watched my wife's romantic drama play out with a cold, distant expression. After three years of them breaking up and getting back together more times than I could count, I figured this was nothing new. I expected Elena Sheridan to rush straight to coax him back like always. But this time, she was ice cold about it. "He was just a plaything I kept around for amusement. Now he thinks he can threaten me with a breakup? I’ve clearly indulged him too much." But a month later, the news broke online. He'd jumped from a building. The woman who had always been cold and unfeeling completely fell apart.

Damian Cross was my father's most promising lieutenant. To earn the right to marry me, he swore he would take over the Golden Triangle. Before he left, he kissed my forehead. "Wait for me. The whole Golden Triangle will be your wedding gift." I waited for him for three years. Three years later, he returned covered in scars, with a fragile-looking girl following behind him. By then, he had become the "Mad Dog," a man whose name struck fear into everyone in the underworld. He went down on one knee in front of my father. "She took a bullet for me. I owe her my life, and I owe her my name." My father put the black-and-gold whip in my hand. Everyone in the room was waiting for me to make him bleed. But I only pulled off the ring he had given me and tossed it back to him. "Congratulations." Then I turned around and called Adrian Blackwood, his worst enemy. "Your proposal. I accept." On my wedding day, Damian blew up the chapel. His eyes bloodred, he pinned me against the wall and demanded: "Who gave you permission to marry someone else?"

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.

At the space agency's awards ceremony, my husband gave the honor that should have been mine to his first love, who had just returned from overseas. He accused me of plagiarism and rescinded my promotion in front of everyone. Everyone thought I would argue and make a scene, but I simply smiled and personally placed my work badge around his first love's neck. "A new position calls for a celebration, doesn't it? Why not make it a wedding? I'd be happy to officiate." They didn't know that I was the only one capable of drawing the rocket's design blueprints. Even the resources keeping the project alive had been secured because of my reputation and connections. This time, I wanted to see whether she really was the brilliant overseas-trained expert they claimed she was—or merely a pretty face with nothing to back it up.

At a major press conference, my husband, Julian Winslow, is about to publicly introduce me as the love of his life when his young assistant suddenly walks onto the stage carrying a girl. "Go on, sweetheart. Daddy's calling for you." The room erupts. Reporters start firing questions about Julian's relationship with his assistant, but instead of correcting them, Julian simply takes the little girl into his arms and fastens the company's multimillion-dollar new necklace around her neck. "Yes," he says. "We have a daughter." As I stand silently in the crowd, the reporters turn their attention to me. "Ms. Aldridge, you've been with Mr. Winslow and the company for years. Surely you have something to say on such a special occasion?" I smile. Then I take the designs I spent an entire year perfecting and toss them straight into the assistant's hands. "You can have the designs too. Consider them my gift to your happy little family."

A typhoon warning had been issued. I drove out to pick up my mother, who lived by the coast. My car broke down halfway there. I called my boyfriend fifty-eight times, and every single one was declined. The rain kept getting heavier. No rescue services were available, and the water was rising. My hands were shaking so badly that all I could do was get Mom to a nearby bus shelter. That was when I scrolled past a Facebook post from my boyfriend's assistant, Megan. "Derek is such a sweetheart. Spent two hours searching, and the little stray finally has a home." In the photo, Derek was at Megan's place, giving a stray cat a bath. I looked at my mother, soaked to the bone, and a wave of hurt washed over me. By the time evening fell, my boyfriend finally called back, but the wind was so strong that the signal kept cutting in and out. I was about to ask him to come get us when his voice crackled through the receiver, broken up by static. "Don't let your mom... the seafood... mess up the car." Before I could say a word, he hung up. The rescue team arrived. As we climbed in, Mom was still shivering, fretting over the seafood that had spoiled during the delay. I picked up the bag and tossed it into the trash. If it's spoiled, there's no point keeping it. Same goes for people.

Three days before my wedding with Adam Wayman, his childhood friend, Diana Smith, came up to us. She ignored me and said to Adam as if it were only natural, “Adam, I know you’re about to get married, but I need you to spend five days with me.” Adam took me by the hand and led me away, just like he always had. Right when I thought our wedding would proceed as scheduled, he sent me a message. [Grace, I’m sorry, but let’s postpone our wedding for five days.] Later, he placed his suitcase by the door and pulled me into his arms. “Grace, I’m sorry. I’m the only one who can handle this project. Wait for me to get back, and I’ll make it up to you properly.” I held him tightly and said, “It’s okay. When are you coming back? Do you want me to pick you up at the airport?” Adam gently kissed my forehead and said, “Don’t worry about it. Just get some rest and enjoy being a bride-to-be.” Not long after he left, I saw a notification pop up on his spare phone. He had left it on the couch. The notification was about flight tickets to Marisol Bay. On the tickets, I saw Adam and Diana’s names. That was when I knew it was not a business trip at all. He was going on a vacation with her. I recalled how thrilled he had looked when I said “yes” to his proposal. Oh, well. Rotten fruit got tossed, and so did rotten people. I took out my phone and sent a message to the wedding planner, Felicity Feathers. [Cancel my wedding.]

On the day of my mother's funeral, I sat outside the chapel, crying so hard I could barely stand. Three days earlier, my father had told me she'd died in a car accident. He said her body was so badly damaged that I shouldn't see it. I wouldn't be able to handle it. I believed him. I put on a black dress and sat beside her casket all night. Ten minutes before the cremation, my phone buzzed. A notification popped up for a hotel livestream. I opened it and froze. My mother was on the screen in an evening gown, smiling as my younger sister, Nina Whitmore, handed her a glass of champagne. My father sat beside her, his eyes red. "From now on, Nina doesn't have to live in Evelyn's shadow or suffer in silence." My brother smiled and dropped a set of keys into Nina's hand. "The condo is yours now. Adrian is inside waiting for you." My whole body went stiff. Adrian Cole had been my fiancé for eight years. He was supposed to be here with me, mourning my mother. The camera shifted, and there he was, standing in the condo doorway and brushing a hand over Nina's hair. I'd sold the little cottage my grandmother, Rose Bennett, had left me just to afford the down payment on that condo. Only last night, Adrian had held me and said, "Once your mom's funeral is over, we'll move in." Now he was holding my sister and telling her something else. "Don't cry. This is our home now." Then I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around. My mother stood in the chapel doorway, still wearing the same evening gown from the livestream. The smile on her face hadn't even fully faded. "Evelyn, I had no other choice. Your sister has loved Adrian since she was little. Adrian already gave you eight years. Can't you let Nina have him now?" I looked at the black-and-white portrait surrounded by flowers. The woman in that photo had such a warm, gentle smile. But the woman standing in front of me had just buried me alive.

The day my boyfriend, Ashton Grant, ends up in the hospital, I find his will. Or rather, 214 of them. They're written on different dates, but every single one names the same beneficiary. And it isn't me. It's his first love. My hands go cold. I can't even confront him because Ashton is lying unconscious in a hospital bed. "Mr. Grant is addicted to extreme sports. The more dangerous, the better," his assistant explains. "He writes a new will before every trip. But only the most recent one was ever made official through his lawyer." I already know the answer before I ask. "And I'm still not in it, am I?" The assistant falls silent. After six years together, Ashton still disappears for weeks at a time, leaving me terrified that he won't come home one day. And all this time, whenever he risks his life, he's making sure that another woman is taken care of if he dies. His first love. If she's the one he thinks about when he might not make it home, then why should I be the one waiting and worrying when he leaves?

After a wild month of partying across half the world, I unexpectedly found out that I was pregnant. I flew home overnight to surprise my husband, only to find a new nanny had moved into our house. Before I could say a word, she slapped me across the face. "What's a vixen like you doing here?" she snapped, fierce and full of herself. "Get out! This is my daughter's house! Out, out, out!" My hand froze halfway to dialing 911. I shot back instead, "Who's your daughter?" She settled onto the leather sofa I'd bought, crossed her legs smugly, and said, "My daughter is Paige Griffin, and her husband is Bradley Ford, Morlene City's hottest new rising star. Did you hear that clearly, or are your ears just for show?" My head started buzzing. I looked down at the wall-sized print of my wedding photo with Bradley and let out a bitter laugh. If her daughter was Bradley's wife, then who did that make me? Me, the proud daughter of Morlene City's richest man, had been reduced to being someone's mistress?

When a wave of labor pain brought me to my knees in the hospital hallway, Orson Caldwell, a brilliant doctor, was just about to wheel me into the delivery room. Just then, his phone rang. When he answered the call, his expression fell. "Seraphina, Cressie's teddy is having trouble giving birth. It's in critical condition, but the vet clinic in her town is closed. I have to perform a C-section on it." I clutched my stomach as blood slowly began to seep between my legs. "I'm fully dilated. If you leave now, what am I supposed to do?" Orson looked annoyed. "We'll get another doctor to do it. You're only giving birth, but Cressie's dog could die. I'll make it up to you and our child someday." With that, he rushed into the elevator without even taking off his white coat. I laughed through my tears, pulled out my phone, and called my father. "Dad, I'll agree to the arranged marriage."

On the day my family went bankrupt, my older sister fled the country overnight to escape her wedding. When I returned home after selling off every luxury item I owned, my alcoholic father drugged me and sent me to the bed of Tristan Chevalier, a man with intermittent explosive disorder. Once the effects of the drug wore off, he realized something was wrong. His eyes bloodshot with rage, he wrecked Chevalier Manor. He was even willing to sever ties with his family just to go abroad and explain everything to my sister. In the end, however, Tristan's grandmother, Donna, threatened to take her own life, forcing him to marry me and register our marriage. Whenever Donna pressured him to have a child with me, he would deliberately wait until his intermittent explosive disorder was acting up before taking me with brutal force. Afterward, even when I lay on the bed covered in blood, he would not spare me a second glance. "Sylvia Jefferson, consider this my reward to you this time. If you can't get pregnant, you'd better be prepared to spend the rest of your life as a widow!" After that, I tried everything I could think of to seduce him, but he refused to touch me, not even with a finger. Instead, he tormented me even more cruelly. In public, I was the once-down-and-out heiress who had married into a wealthy family, living the life of a pampered society wife. Behind closed doors, however, he gave me only twenty dollars a day to keep myself fed. Then, one night, I took advantage of his drunken state and climbed into his bed, hoping to sleep with him. But he called the police on me and accused me of sexual coercion, turning me into the laughingstock of our entire social circle. Eventually, I stopped longing for a child. I even personally brought my sister back to him and handed him the divorce papers. Yet this time, Tristan refused to let me go.

After we got married, my husband, Mason Callahan, handed over his debit card and told me to treat myself, no limits. Then his mom ended up in the hospital. The second he asked me to transfer the money for her treatment, I told him that there was none left. He flew into a rage. "I give you ten grand a month! How the hell can you have zero dollars left? "I said you could treat yourself, but you actually blew through every cent? You didn't save a dime? God, how did I end up marrying such a wasteful woman?" I didn't bother arguing. I simply asked for a divorce.

The sixth time photos of him cheating surfaced, Leander Prescott snatched the knife from my hand and brought it down hard. Stroke by stroke, he carved the name "Seraphina Vale" into his thigh. "Happy now? Can you leave Celeste alone?" I stood frozen, staring at him as if I suddenly didn't recognize the man in front of me. For ten years, we had tortured each other over Leander's infidelity. Every time he crossed the line, I carved my name into his flesh. Wrist-cutting, kidnapping, even hanging Celeste Waverly from a helicopter to threaten her—every scar on his body had a bloody story behind it. He had never been this calm. … Seeing the confusion in my eyes, a flicker of tenderness passed through his hate-filled gaze. "Celeste is pregnant. As long as you promise you won't confront her again, you can carve as many marks into me as you want. "This is the ninety-ninth mark. Ninety-nine is a good number. Let's make things work between us from now on." My throat suddenly felt dry. "Make things work? Do you really mean that?" He looked at me with a mixture of pain and mockery. "Sincere?" "My body already belongs to you. Stop coveting what belongs to Celeste." Watching him close his eyes in numb resignation, I suddenly understood. Ninety-nine wasn't his way of saying he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. It meant he had finally resigned himself to his fate. He was willing to sacrifice his entire life so that another woman and her bastard could live out the rest of theirs in peace. A bone-deep sorrow flooded my heart, chilling me to the core. A lifetime was too long. And suddenly, I no longer wanted to sacrifice mine for him.

It was Christmas Eve. I had flown home in a hurry, hoping to surprise my wife. But the moment I stepped inside, I heard Nancy Summerson say gently, "Dad, Mom, this is Ronald Riverton. We've been secretly married for years." She heard the door open and turned around. The second she saw me, she walked over and slapped me across the face. "You thieves are getting bolder by the day. Breaking and entering during Christmas Eve? Get out now!" I stared at her, my eyes red. I grabbed her hand tightly, hoping she would give me an explanation. She flung my hand away and took a phone out. "I've called the cops, and they'll be here very soon! They'll arrest you, thief!" Then Nancy turned back to her family and took Ronald's hand, intertwining their fingers as though I were nothing more than an unwanted stranger. "It's just a thief. The cops will handle him. Ignore him." I stood petrified. The four of them looked so happy together. As for me, all I felt was exhaustion. Without another word, I turned and left. Then I tossed the share transfer agreement I had brought for her into the bin.

When my husband, a college professor, suddenly asked to sleep in separate rooms, I knew he had developed feelings for one of his female students. Then that student hit our seven-year-old son with her car, leaving him paralyzed. I gave Cedric Langley two choices. Either send her to prison, or make sure she never graduated and force her to spend the rest of her life paying for what she'd done. But when Cedric came home, he dropped to his knees beside me, his eyes rimmed red. "She was so ashamed that she took her own life. I'll never betray you or our child again." He smashed the student's gravestone, burned everything connected to her, and became the devoted husband and father he had once been. Three years after our son was paralyzed, I happened to see a file open on Cedric's computer. "100 Reconciliation Coupons: Usage History." "Coupon No. 100: Forgive Elara for her unintended mistake and help her evade legal punishment." A loud buzz exploded inside my head. Elara Beaumont—the woman who should have been burning in hell for what she had done—was actually his teaching assistant, Evelyn Montrose, living under a new name. One reconciliation coupon was enough for him to completely forgive the woman who had left our son paralyzed. But there was something Cedric did not know. That very day, the last reconciliation coupon between us had just been used up.