Scumbag Crime Short Stories & Novels

I never thought I'd die on my honeymoon. 160 feet down in a pitch-black underwater cave, Adam Hunter, my husband who has spent ten years courting me, kills me with a knife. When he returns home, he takes everything my family owns. The broke nobody turns into a billionaire powerhouse overnight. Meanwhile, my parents spend every last cent trying to prove he murdered me, only to die in bitter despair. When I open my eyes, I'm back at the moment before the dive. Adam lies beside me, holding me tightly as he sleeps peacefully. Only I know that he will kill me in the crushing darkness of the deep water. I have less than two hours to escape this death trap. I look at the clock. The countdown begins.

On the last trip before Zeke Malone and I were set to register our marriage, someone clamped a hand over my mouth and dragged me into the bushes to assault me. Zeke and my sister, Crystal Bianco, arrived just in time to "save" me. That was when I heard Zeke switch to French and ask her, "Did you get enough footage just now?" "Yeah," Crystal answered back in French. "But isn't this unfair to Lizzie?" Zeke's voice turned grave. "The man was only acting. He never actually went through with it. We just needed the footage. As long as I don't hold it against her, that's all that matters. "Besides, you could win a Pulitzer for breaking this story. That's what actually matters here." I lay in his arms, a chill spreading through every inch of me. Certain I must have misheard, I couldn't help but ask, "What were you two just saying?" Zeke wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes, his voice as gentle as ever. "We were talking about your case, about what happened to you. It might be best to let Crystal be the one to report it. That way, the man responsible will pay for what he did." He assumed I couldn't understand a word of it, so he went right on discussing with Crystal how to get the story more attention. What he didn't know was that I'd spent the past year secretly teaching myself French, just so I could belong in their world. I never imagined that the first time I finally understood them, it would be to discover that they had both betrayed me.

I've been married to the prince of the underworld for ten years and have endured countless life-or-death situations by his side. My hands, once trained to play the piano, are covered in calluses from holding guns and stained with blood. But at 28, my husband ends up falling for a young woman from the slums. She's as delicate and pure as a chamomile. She's his well-kept little secret—until I run into them at the woman's prenatal appointment one day. I storm up to him, demanding an explanation, only for him to nonchalantly hand me divorce papers. "Sonia is a devout follower of the church and can't have a child before marriage. I must make an honest woman out of her. Sign these, and you'll get 40% of the company's shares." I refuse to do as told, so he corners me. In the end, he has my crippled younger brother tied up and forced under a hydraulic compression machine. "Sign the papers, Maeve, or watch your brother become a human mince pie. The choice is yours." I fall on my knees and beg him to stop. As the machine turns on, my hands fly to my aching lower belly, and I scream as I lose consciousness. When I wake up again, I'm back in the hospital, in the same spot where I ran into my husband and his mistress at her prenatal appointment. This time, I don't confront him. Overnight, I make arrangements with a sanatorium abroad, get divorced, and run away from home. Yet the moment I truly disappear, my husband loses his mind.

As the Cavallo family's consigliere, I had a perfect record. Time and again, I'd planned hits that left rival territories soaked in blood. But today, they were calling the escape route I'd spent three months perfecting for an operation across the border a trap. They said I'd set our own men up to die. Not one of our men made it out. Every last one of them was dead. Back at the estate, every gun in the room was aimed at me. No one wanted to hear another word out of me. They pinned me to the floor and beat me until my face was a bloody mess. They didn't stop until someone pulled up the dark-web transaction records. Just an hour earlier, someone had put my escape route up for sale on the dark web for 30 million dollars. "Elowen, you'd sell out your own people? What, the family didn't pay you enough?" Riccardo Lombardi, the fiancé I'd grown up with, pressed his gun to my forehead. My adopted sister, Sophia Cavallo, pulled up my bank records. The most recent deposit was for exactly 30 million. Her voice was cold. "Father, the proof is airtight. Execute her according to the code. We owe the men who died that much." The evidence was right there in front of everyone. My father, the Don, looked at me with nothing but disappointment. In the end, he had me strapped to an iron chair and strangled with a wire until my neck snapped. I died with one question still unanswered. How had the plans I kept locked in my safe, behind a combination only I knew, ended up on the dark web? When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day before they accused me.

My husband and I scratched off a five-million-dollar lottery ticket at a lottery shop. Before we even had time to celebrate, the rosary I had worn since childhood suddenly snapped, a single bead cracking clean off the chain. Without another word, I grabbed him and tried to buy tickets that very night to flee back to the southwestern mountains. The lottery shop owner stared at me in shock. My husband clung to the metal shutter and roared, "Have you lost your mind?" But I gripped that broken wooden bead tightly. "We leave now." My husband flung my hand away, his eyes bloodshot. "I'm claiming this prize today. If you dare run, we're getting divorced!" I nodded without hesitation. "Fine. The five million, plus the used car at home, all go to you. I'll leave with nothing... "But tonight, I have to leave this city."

When I'm eight months pregnant, my parents, who sold me off when I was a child, beg for my forgiveness and ask me to come home to await the birth of my baby. Suddenly, a gas explosion occurs. Without a moment's hesitation, Mom and Dad shove me aside and rush through the inferno. They are quick to carry my younger sister, Avril Holden, who suffers from leukemia, to safety. Only my husband, Zack Burton, charges into the flames like a madman to rescue me. He even brings in a top-tier medical team for my treatment after I'm rescued from the fire. In the end, I lose my baby, and a falling roof beam leaves me with a broken leg. As I hobble along to catch one last glimpse of my child, I see Zack outside the morgue, pulling Avril into an excited embrace. "Thank God, Avril! We can now harvest Ashley's bone marrow while she's unconscious, and you'll be cured! You'll be back to your old self in no time." I once believed Zack was my warm, reliable refuge, but it turns out it was nothing more than an illusion all along. The marriage I once took such pride in has become a bitter, freezing winter. If that's how it is, then I shall simply let go.

I'm reincarnated a week before the college entrance exam. Despite being the soon-to-be top scorer, I stab my eye with a syringe. In my past life, Marianne Quentin, my boyfriend Lance Russell's childhood friend, reported me for cheating off her during the final mock exam. The teacher compared our papers and found that my essay was identical to hers. He harshly criticized me and warned me not to repeat my mistake. However, Marianne reported me for copying her answers again during the math exam. Once again, my answers were found to be identical to hers. The teacher scolded me for being incorrigible and sent me home to reflect on my actions. I couldn't understand what had happened. Clearly, I'd never cheated, but my answers were nearly identical to Marianne's, whether in writing and language or in math. As the SAT exam loomed over me, I could only suppress my doubts as I stepped into the exam hall. I finished the writing paper and thought I was safe. However, Marianne stepped out and accused me of cheating again. I tried to defend myself, yet the answers on my paper were identical to hers. In the end, I was disqualified, kicked out of the exam hall, and banned from taking any exams in the next two years—just because I "cheated". I succumbed to despair and leaped from the rooftop. When I open my eyes again, I'm back to one week before the SAT.