After Death Short Stories & Ruthless Marriage Novels

When the Irwins were on the brink of bankruptcy, I proposed a marriage of convenience to Ryan and saved them from collapse. Ever the playboy, Ryan was so grateful that he swore eternal loyalty to me, even getting a vasectomy immediately to prove his devotion. He took me across mountains and rivers, saying he wanted to etch our love into every corner of the world. Three years later, he got me drunk, stole my phone, and used it to infiltrate the Knights’ estate. That night, he orchestrated the complete downfall of my family’s legacy. My parents overdosed on sleeping pills. My sister was dragged into an alley by his men, violated, filmed, and the footage was auctioned off to amuse wealthy heirs. I begged him to let my family go. However, he gripped my face and forced me to watch as my parents were cremated. “You think marrying me back then was some noble sacrifice? Sure, the whole city praised your family for helping mine in our darkest hour. But what did they say about me? “They call me your lapdog, Lily!” Ryan destroyed the Knights to prove he was better than us and not anyone’s dog. He tore up the divorce papers and shoved the shreds into my mouth. Ryan wanted me to watch as he rose to power and made the world kneel before him. To humiliate me, he brought home a different woman every night, turning our house into a hotel while I served them. “What’s the Knights’ worth now? With your status, cooking for them and massaging their feet like this is only fitting.” It didn’t matter. When I saved him from that avalanche, a shard of stone slashed my heart. Now, I only have three days left to live.

The year I die, my wife, Liana Chandler, despises me more than ever before. Unable to handle her endless emotional abuse, I choose to end my own life by swallowing pills. At the crematorium, she watches the roaring flames in the cremation chamber with a rare smile. "Filth like him doesn't deserve a proper burial," she comments. When the employee hands her my cremation urn, she swiftly overturns it, scattering my ashes all over the floor in an instant. All this time, she has believed that I'm the one who caused her first love's death. So, she took great pains to formulate a plan—all for this very moment. When everything is over, she walks away without looking back, trampling my ashes underfoot. But before long, she's on her knees, begging for the funeral parlor to give my ashes back to her.

My wife's first love crashes his car into me at 75 miles per hour, throwing my body over 65 feet across the road. As I am moments away from drawing my last breath, I use the remainder of my energy to call my wife. Focused on helping him cover up his crimes, she brushes me off before hanging up. "I'm busy—stop bothering me," she spits. Little does she know, the man who was just killed… is me.

My husband is the Don of the entire New York East Coast Mafia. For ten years, I dimmed my own light to be his perfect silent partner, the dutiful wife who gave him the perfect heir. I thought we were the lovers who wou ld die for each other. Then came a mere associat. My husband and son had formed an alliance with the woman who seem want to take my place. But they just said, "Elena, you have the crown and the kingdom. She has nothing but us. Be generous." So, to make her smile, my husband trampled on my dignity again and again. To please her, my son affectionately calls her "Mom." In their eyes, I was the iron wall, the woman who would swallow any insult for the sake of the family honor. Until the fire. My husband locked me inside the burning room, to let me "reflect" on my jealousy. He didn't know that the fire didn't kill me. But it burned away the last ash of my love for him.

The first year after my mother became a star, I learned that children give their fathers gifts on Father's Day. I didn't have a gift. I only had the letter Mom left behind for him. In my earliest memories, Mom was always on the balcony, talking to Dad on the phone. When I was three, she said, "Five million hush money? What is that supposed to buy? I spent it ages ago. I want cash now!" When I was four, she cried into the phone, "You're successful now. Just let a few crumbs slip through your fingers, treat it like spare change for a beggar!" When I was five, those phone calls stopped. Mom came back to us inside a wooden box. The lawyer told me that not a single penny of Mom's bank account had been touched. She left everything to me. But I didn't want the money. I just wanted my mom. This year, my teacher at school said we had to thank our fathers for Father's Day. I made the prettiest greeting card. Following the address written on the envelope, I walked all the way to a pair of grand iron gates. The security guard looked down at me and said, "Kid, Mr. Wright doesn't have any children. You clearly have the wrong address."

After I became a vegetable, Samuel kept me alive for two years with all sorts of tubes. I thought he couldn’t bear to let me go—until his true love returned to the country. He took my corneas and transplanted them to her. Right in front of me, he spoke to her with the utmost tenderness: “Don't worry; you'll be fine. These eyes have been prepared for you for two years.” As a result, I had an adverse reaction after the surgery and passed away. When he heard the news, his eyes turned crimson with rage, and he nearly smashed the hospital: ”Didn't you say there wouldn’t be any problems?!”

It had been six months since I died in a car accident, but my wife, Susan Young, still thought I was throwing a tantrum and waiting for me to come home and apologize. Then one day, she suddenly couldn’t find a watch. Her childhood friend, Julian Lane, gave it to her. When it broke, she asked me to take it to a watch repair shop. She called and said angrily, “Quentin, are you finished making a scene? If you don’t want to be with me anymore, we can get divorced. What are you trying to prove? “Where did you put the watch I asked you to get repaired? “Did you hide it from me? After all these years, you still haven’t stopped being jealous of Julian!” Then my sister’s voice came through the phone. “Congratulations, Susan. Quentin is dead. He’ll never be jealous of Julian again.”

Maynard Hansen planned a luxury birthday cruise for Darlene Thompson, but the cruise ship capsized when a violent storm swept in without warning. Without hesitation, Maynard gave the last seat on the lifeboat to Darlene. As I struggled in the water, my son, Waldo Hansen—whom I carried for nine months and gave birth to—cried out, "Don't let Mom up! She'll push Ms. Thompson off." Clutching nothing but a broken plank, I somehow made it to shore. By the time I collapsed on the sand, I was frozen, exhausted, and done. I had never felt so alone. Shortly after, I found myself clutching a diagnosis of severe depression in my hand. I was ready to bring this wretched life to a quiet end. But when my husband and son realized I truly didn't want to live anymore, they collapsed into tears. They wrapped their arms around me as they sobbed, "Please don't leave us. We really can't live without you."

My wife's first love kills me without a shred of mercy. But my wife, a world-class surgeon, doesn't try to save me. Instead, she comforts her first love. "He's so ruthless! How could he hurt you this badly?" She even tells the police that I've severely injured her first love, claiming she wants to press charges for attempted murder. Then she points at my body and demands that I get up and apologize to her first love. "Charles, stop pretending! You just want me to pity you, right? Get up and apologize to Steven!" she yells.

Emma, the fake heiress, and I were sold into an underground BDSM club. When my parents, the richest couple in the country, and my husband, Leo DeLuca, the feared Don of the DeLuca crime family, finally found us, I was bound with duct tape and covered in wounds. Emma lay beside me, heavily pregnant and unconscious. Three months later, doctors confirmed that her baby had died in the womb. She was the adopted daughter my parents had cherished for twenty years, and the girl my husband had never gotten over. My parents and husband went half mad, offering a nationwide one-hundred-million-dollar bounty for any lead on the person responsible. I was the only one who might have seen the culprit's face, and I said nothing. My father locked me in the basement for seven full days without food or water, but I still refused to identify the person responsible. At my weakest, my enraged husband dragged me before a memory tribunal. "Your sister is still unconscious, and you are protecting the person who did this because you are jealous of her! The thought that I share a bed with someone as poisonous as you makes me sick!" My father, Victor Valenti, watched from a distance, his face hard with disappointment. "I regret ever going through hell to bring you home from the slums! Why couldn't you have died instead of Emma's baby! Today I'll use the Valenti family's own interrogation device, the memory extractor, and neither you nor the person behind this will have anywhere left to hide!" But when my real memories appeared on the huge screen, my husband completely lost his mind. My parents hung their heads and knelt before me, wrecked.

On my birthday, my wife, Selena Zane, slices off my ear. She does it just because her first love, Yale Sullivan, makes some nonsense. I scream and beg her to stop, but she ties me up and lets Yale dump leeches straight into my open wound. "Don't worry," she says casually. "He's a freak who can't feel pain. You can do whatever you want with him." Eventually, I go into shock and die from the excruciating pain. Only then does she regret what she has done. Consumed by remorse, she tortures Yale to death, believing it is the only way to make up for my death.

My wife, Christine Leigh, forced me to the brink of death all for her first love, Henry Carson. To give him a liver transplant, she sent me to the surgery table. I told her I had cancer and that the doctors had advised against the surgery. She just looked at me with an undisguised contempt, "Jason Lowe, stop with your petty tricks. Don't forget, you owe our family your life!" I lowered my head and smiled bitterly. I never left the surgery table.