Historias cortas de After Death y novelas con Scumbag ambientadas en Regret

The first experiment in the world of retrieving memories after death succeeds, and my memories are going to be broadcast live all over the Internet. My dad has just learned about my death, but he only says in a disgusted tone, "Who would want to see the memories of someone who is selfish, mean, and has nothing commendable at all about them? Today is the wedding day of Zoe and Cameron. Pause the live broadcast and stop being so sickening!" Zoe is my stepsister, and Cameron is supposed to be my fiance. After that, my father finds out the truth from the live broadcast of my memories. He begs for my forgiveness tearfully but… I'm already dead.

My husband's adopted sister invited me out to dinner, and while we were eating, disaster struck—a violent earthquake shook the ground beneath us. My husband, a firefighter, rushed to the scene as quickly as he could. But fate had a cruel plan for us. We were trapped beneath a massive boulder, unable to move, and the rescuers could only save one of us. He made his choice. He chose her—the adopted sister who had always been frail and sickly—over me, his wife, who was five months pregnant with his child. I begged him, pleaded with him to save me. But he turned his back on me. The boulder pressed harder, and I felt the sickening crack of my arm breaking. He didn't even flinch. "Alice has always been weak," he said coldly. "If I leave her here, she'll die." But when I died, he lost his mind.

After my husband's first love, Sydney Edwards, used me as a walking blood bank, I died in the run-down rental apartment my billionaire husband, Casper Hawthorne, had tossed me into like it was a blessing for me. Today was the third day since I had died. My six-year-old son, Adam, finally realized something was wrong. He had cut his finger while playing with his toys, yet I did not comfort him. He tore open a packet of crackers and raised one to my mouth to feed me, but I did not stop him. He lay in my arms, clutching my clothes and whispering for me. Still, I did not answer. Lost and panicking, he found my phone and called his father, Casper. "Dad, why is Mom still sleeping?" The man sent back a photo of himself having New Year's Eve dinner with Sydney and said in a cold voice, "She's just sleeping, she's not dead. Today is New Year's Eve. I'm busy. Tell that clueless mom of yours that when she's ready to admit she was wrong, she can come and look for me." After the call ended, Adam stood there frozen for a long time. He picked up the last biscuit in the rental apartment from the trash can, broke it in half, and held one piece to my mouth. "Mom, let's eat too."

Three years ago, Isabella Moretti was the sole heir to the Moretti family, the most powerful of New York's five crime families. She was supposed to inherit the Moretti name and most of the business flowing through New York Harbor. A Mafia shootout changed everything. To save her husband, Matteo De Luca, she deliberately drew the enemy away from him. Matteo got out. But Isabella was shot in the shoulder and captured by the kidnappers. They wanted information about Moretti operations. For three years, they tortured her to get it. She was carrying Matteo's child at the time. She did not know she had already been written off. She kept believing the husband she loved would come for her. The truth was that for three whole years, nobody came. She escaped by faking her death and made it back to New York alive, only to find that she had lost everything. Her loving parents were dead, while the husband she adored was rushing to bury her with his lover and their children at his side!

I was once the Pythia, an oracle of Apollo. After marrying the late king, I became known as the Oracle Priestess. When my husband died in battle, I faked my death and returned to the temple. From then on, I devoted myself to protecting the capital with the gods' blessing. Then one day, they brought my daughter's body into the temple. She was covered in raw, unhealed wounds, and her eyes were still open. The attendants tossed her body, wrapped in nothing but a straw mat, onto the floor. Then they stood nearby whispering. "Poor princess. The king cared more about the Rose of Highcourt than his own sister. He let her suffer until her wounds became infected and she died in agony. "King Theron was the one who sent her to the beastmen for a marriage alliance. Duke Charles was supposed to marry Princess Callista, but he later fell for Naia instead." So that was what had happened. While I was hidden away in this temple protecting Ostan, my son had turned his back on his sister for another woman. He let Naia take Callista's place, then sent his sister to live among savages. Callista survived the beastmen and everything they did to her. When they were finally defeated, she must have thought she could come home and put it all behind her. But Naia still wouldn't leave her alone. She bullied Callista every chance she got. Then she framed Callista for plotting to hurt someone, and Theron had her thrown into the dungeon. As I held my daughter's body, I couldn't bear to imagine what she had gone through in that dark, waterlogged dungeon, where prisoners were interrogated on the upper level and executed below. A corrupt kingdom like this didn't deserve the gods' protection. I begged the gods to forgive me. If this was how they treated my daughter, then I no longer cared what happened to this country.

"I crossed a line. I fell for Ilaria." On our wedding day, the car had barely pulled away when Matteo Rossi turned to look at me. He pointed at the seat beneath me and said coldly, "Last night, she sat right there, wrapped her legs around my waist and kissed me. I couldn't hold back. We had sex in the car. "I guess I'm no different from any other man. I finally understand Luca. Ilaria really does have more fire in her than you." Luca was my ex-husband and Matteo's half-brother. Ilaria had been my only friend since childhood. Three years ago, I walked in on the two of them in my bedroom. The shock caused a late-term miscarriage. When I fell into the dark, Matteo was my light. And now he had betrayed me the same way.

On our fifth anniversary, my fiance, Antonio Miller, the head of a powerful mafia syndicate, takes me to see the northern lights. Before we set out, our guide warns everyone to bundle up against the cold. Antonio immediately wraps his childhood friend, Simona Weaver, in his own winter gear, terrified that she'll freeze. When a blizzard hits, he piles every piece of warm clothing he can find around her. He never notices me standing nearby until I lose consciousness from the cold. When I finally open my eyes, Antonio's furious face fills my vision. "Camilla, why didn't you tell me you weren't feeling well?" We've been together for five years, yet when I wake up after collapsing, his first reaction isn't concern. It's anger. After the trip, I cancel our engagement party and book a flight to Westmere. I've heard the mountains there are another perfect place to see the northern lights. When Antonio finds out, he sends me a single message. "Camilla, don't test our love like this. Simona's father died saving my life. I promised him I'd take care of her." But there's one thing Antonio doesn't know. I only have ten days left to live.

Vito and I had been giving each other the silent treatment for three days, and he never once reached out. With the Family’s enemies hunting me, I hid under a bridge and called him. “Vito, the Colombos are after me. Can you come save me?” Vito said coldly, “Antonia, are you playing the victim again? “I’m in the middle of a Family meeting. Don’t bother me!” The footsteps outside the bridge came closer. I said quietly, “I’m not lying.” He scoffed. “Fine. Wait for me, then.” I curled up under the bridge. The Colombos’ men shot me in the chest. Right up until my breathing stopped, Vito never came...

When Damian was eighteen, he could barely afford a decent dinner. Still, he spent half his first commission on the cheapest silver ring in the store for me. He slid it onto my finger, his expression stern. "Wear this for now. When I have a real name, I'll get you a better one." I laughed at how cheap it was, then hid my hand behind my back and refused to give it back. Later, he did get a name. He was the Moretti family's long-lost heir, the man destined to lead its vast empire. But I never got that better ring. Five years ago, on the night a gang war broke out, I dragged a badly wounded Damian out of the fire. I never made it out myself. When he woke, huge pieces of his memory of me were gone. Cecilia Russo sat beside his hospital bed and told him I had despised him for being poor, betrayed him, and even sold the location of our old safe house to the enemy. She also told him she was the one who had saved him. Five years later, my ghost appeared in the final family trial he had to face. By then, another wedding ring sat on his hand. Cecilia was his wife. When his memories returned, he lost his mind.

Three days before I got married, Evan Jones' claustrophobic ex-girlfriend cornered my car at the cliff of a winding road and rammed into me 12 times. When Evan arrived with the police, I was being rescued by the firefighters from my driver's seat, which had been smashed out of shape. However, Evan went to the limited-edition sports car, which had only lost some paint, and carried the trembling Nikki Shore in his arms. "Evan, Madison is bleeding on her forehead; she needs to get it stitched up at the hospital." However, Evan stopped my stretcher from getting into the car and glanced at my bleeding forehead and bruised arms. "These are just minor injuries, but Nikki has claustrophobia. Her condition will only get worse, and she has to go to the hospital first." As I was about to be left behind, I used the last of my strength to grab Evan by his pant leg. He frowned and pried off my fingers. "Nikki didn't crash into you on purpose. It's just her condition acting up. You're a lawyer, and you should know how some things are beyond our control, so stop making a fuss right now." With that, his assistant handed him a settlement agreement, and Evan grabbed my limp wrist to print my fingerprint on the papers. "Just bear with this. The ambulance will be coming soon."

My husband, Brandon Robinson, threw me a rehearsal funeral for the sake of his first love, Aylin Blessen. He said Aylin had witnessed her family burn to death and had been terrified of death ever since. The cure was to pick someone close to her, put that person through a full funeral process, and then have them reappear on the seventh day. Only then would she be healed. So, Brandon revoked my keycard access to our house, announced my death to everyone we knew, and sent me to a death simulation facility. I was not allowed to contact anyone for seven days. Aylin sobbed as she personally picked out my burial clothes. "Leanna, you only have to be dead for seven days. But this funeral could save my life." Brandon put my phone in a drawer. "You'll be alive and well through the whole process. What's the harm in doing this for Aylin's sake?" On the day of the rehearsal, Aylin shoved me into the facility's old cold storage unit. Then, she went back to the funeral hall and told Brandon I had run away. His expression darkened as he burned my portrait. "Since Leanna won't play along, then for these seven days, she's dead to me." My soul sat in the corner of the funeral hall and watched them hold each other as they "mourned." Brandon did not know it yet, but this rehearsal funeral was no longer just a rehearsal.

Five years after my death, my husband, Lucas Grant, wanted me to take the blame for his lover in a drunk driving incident. He had barged into my house with forged evidence, but realized I was not inside. He had no other choice but to knock on my neighbor’s door. However, my neighbor told him, “Joan? She died a long time ago. “I heard that the family of that case was not happy with the verdict, so they abducted her the day she was released from prison. She was tortured for three days straight!” Lucas did not believe the neighbor. He was furious that I was creating a ridiculous lie just to escape. He yelled angrily at my neighbor. “Don’t think I’ll believe you! Joan must have paid you to lie to me! “Tell her that it’s no use hiding. If she doesn’t contact me in three days, I’ll no longer pay the alimony for that rascal!” However, he did not know that the person that his lover had killed in the drunk driving accident was the very rascal he was referring to.

Just days before our wedding, I was told that my fiancé, Matteo Ferrara, had died in a car crash. The car had been completely destroyed. The only thing his men recovered was a bloodstained diamond tiara. His father, the Don, pressed a pistol to my forehead and growled, “If Matteo hadn't been rushing to give you the tiara he designed himself, he would still be alive!” His adopted older sister, Isabella Ferrara, was at the Don's feet, playing a video of Matteo's last words as he sank into the sea. “Don! Matteo's last wish was for Layla to live! Please don't kill her. Let him rest in peace.” So I was locked in the Ferrara family's punishment room and made to kneel for 72 straight hours. They didn't let me out until the fourth night. But Matteo's funeral was already over. I never even got to see him one last time. Numb with grief, I slipped into my wedding dress, swallowed poison, and made my way to the dock where Matteo had supposedly died. I'd just climbed over the railing when applause and whistles erupted behind me. Isabella rushed over, practically jumping for joy. “I won, Matteo!” The crowd parted. Matteo stepped out of an armored car with a cashmere wrap. He ruffled Isabella's hair and gave a resigned sigh. “A bet's a bet. You wanted a dress just like Layla's, right? I'll have one made for you when we get back.” Only then did he look at me. He draped the wrap over my shoulders. “It's freezing out here, and you're soaked. You'll catch a cold.” Then he smiled. “Isabella was worried you only wanted to become the next Donna, that you didn't actually love me. So she came up with this little test. “Well, congratulations. You passed. Now let's go get married.” I stared at him, struggling to process what I'd just heard. None of it had been real. The fatal crash and the video of his last words as he sank into the sea were all part of Isabella's elaborate prank. Matteo had staked my life on their bet. A metallic taste filled my mouth. I struggled to steady my trembling body against the pain, then shook my head. “Call off the wedding. “I don't want to marry you anymore.”

My fiance, Adrian Hale, and I had planned to go snorkeling on Valentine's Day. The day we landed in the south of France, I discovered that his first love, Vivian Clarke, had come with us. They insisted on heading into unpatrolled waters. "But those waters are dangerous, shrouded in strange rumors..." Adrian frowned at me. "Sophie, do you have to ruin the mood right now?" Vivian smiled and hooked her arm through his. "With you here, nothing is going to happen to us." Once we were in the water, Vivian recklessly swam toward the deeper channel. A swell shoved half her body into a narrow opening. I swam over to pull her free, but she thrashed and drove her heel hard into my knee. Her elbow knocked my mask crooked. Before I could straighten it, Vivian kicked me into the opening. Adrian came up behind us, grabbed Vivian, and held her hand tight. The voices over my underwater headset were muffled, but I still heard Adrian's cold warning clearly. "Vivi doesn't know these waters. You do, don't you? "You led her into deeper water on purpose. Who exactly were you trying to hurt? "Figure your own way out. Consider it the lesson you've earned!" Briny seawater flooded my throat. My aching legs kicked uselessly. My body was wedged fast in the opening. I closed my eyes in despair. My last thought was this: if I died, they deserved to pay with their lives.

After the cruise ship strikes a hidden reef, panicked passengers shove me and Kristen Langford into the sea. My boyfriend, Elijah Jensen, is the ship's captain, so he plunges into the water. But instead of saving me, he grabs Kristen and boards the last lifeboat. I thrash and cry for help, but he slaps my hand away. "You can swim. Stop pretending for attention!" Elijah snaps. "Kristen's body temperature is dropping. I have to get her to a hospital!" The waters around me are pitch-black, and his words feel like a death sentence. When the tracking bracelet I always wear is discovered inside a shark, Elijah dives alone into shark-infested waters, searching for three days and nights. In the end, the brilliant captain who once ruled the oceans can never sail again.

I had lost my memory for three years. I'd been through hell and high water with Adrian Vance for the past three years. He told me we'd grown up together on the same block, two kids who'd fallen for each other young. He told me that once he had a real foothold in the Family, he'd marry me in front of all of Palermo and make the whole city come to watch. I believed him. With a steady trigger hand and a mean streak, I cleared every man who stood in his way. I dragged him up from a nobody bastard son into the inner circle of the Family, one body at a time. Then the day finally came, and what he said was, "I've already asked the Don for his daughter Camilla. It's settled. I'm marrying her." "Camilla's a mafia princess. The Don's pride and joy. Not some no-name orphan girl with nothing and no one behind her. She's the one who can actually lift me up." "Be good, Vera. As long as Camilla never finds out, we can go on the way we always have." "Be good. You mean play your mistress in the dark, is that it?" What Adrian didn't know was that my memory had already come back. My real name was Hale, heir to the Hale family, the one enemy the Marlowe outfit he'd sworn himself to feared most. Childhood sweethearts, princesses, Don. In the end they were all just one more debt I'd settle on my way to paying the Family back in full.

After my family went bankrupt, my husband, Felix Skye, paid the price. The debt collectors drowned him in the river. To pay off the debt, I took a job at an underground casino as a human punching bag. Every punch I took earned me five dollars. Then one night, I was sent to deliver drinks to a private room. Through the crack in the door, I saw Felix, my husband who was supposed to be dead, sitting at the head of the table and slowly savoring a glass of fine red wine. "It's been more than three years since I last saw Avery. I wonder how she's doing." My supposedly bankrupt mother, Ivy Schotz, sat there dripping in gold and jewels. She sighed. "She'll just hide away and grieve for a few years. Once she's over it, she can remarry. "No matter what," Mom went on, "as long as she believes you're dead, you and Riley can finally live in peace." Riley Mackenzie was the daughter my mother had with her first love. Every face in that room was familiar, including my best friend and the very "enemies" who had supposedly killed Felix. It had all been an act from start to finish. The only thing real was the three years of hell I'd lived through. Holding twenty bottles of beer, I smiled and shook my head. Once I scraped together enough money for my coffin, they would all be free.

Five years ago, I threw Jase Prescott out of my mansion like a dog. Five years later, he'd become a renowned professor, while I'd been told my illness was incurable. He swirled the red wine in his glass, his gaze icy. "Why aren't you out making the big bucks, Audrey? What made you switch careers and start drinking with men for money?" Bitterness rose in my throat. I forced a smile. "Can't be helped. I'm buried in debt. Jase, would you be generous enough to lend me a hundred thousand?" He splashed the red wine across my face. "Same old story." His voice was as sharp as a blade. "You're still rotten with greed." Looking at the way he hated me to the core, I finally breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God. He had no idea that the heart beating in his chest was mine.

It has been three years since I traveled back in time, but today, I stumbled upon a helicopter hidden right inside the manor’s yard. Looking down at my crippled leg, my husband, Ethan Miller, decided to finally drop the act. “Three years ago, you couldn’t accept the fact that I was marrying Vanessa and that you were just the mistress,” he said. “So, we had no choice but to trick you into believing you had traveled back in time, just to keep you locked up here. After serving as a maidservant and an unofficial mistress here for three years, I’d say you’ve finally learned your lesson.” I stared at him in disbelief. Suddenly, the steward standing beside him ripped off a mask, revealing himself to be my brother, Logan York. “Eva, now that Vanessa has safely given birth to her baby, you can finally go back,” Logan said carelessly. Then, he turned to someone else and added, “Hudson, your plan was absolutely flawless!” I slowly turned my head to look. The manor’s resident physician was standing there, smiling right at me. “You didn’t mistake my identity back then. I am your childhood friend, Hudson Jones,” he admitted. “We only set up this entire illusion because we were afraid you would hurt Vanessa.” For three long years, I believed I had traveled back in time. During this time, I was beaten, sold off, violated by countless strangers, and eventually bought by Ethan to be kept as a broken slave and mistress. By now, I had lost the use of my legs and was completely blind in one eye. I went from crying day and night, begging to go home, to living a numb, submissive existence. However, as it turned out, I had never traveled through time at all. The reality of it all made me break down. Just as I was about to end my life, an eerie line of text suddenly appeared before my eyes. [Congratulations to the tragic AI female protagonist for awakening. Countdown to reincarnating as a real human: Two days.] [Countdown: 48 hours.] [Countdown: 47 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds.]

To save my family, I was dying of silver poisoning, my fiancé Marcus, the Alpha who had promised to never abandon me, now wanted to harvest my healthy kidney for my parents' adopted daughter, Celeste. Nobody cares if I live or die So I refused the conservative treatment plan. I injected myself with the witch's life potion. The price? In 72 hours, I would die from complete organ failure. In those three days, I gave my private healing center—the one I'd built with my own hands—to Celeste. Mom and Dad beamed with joy. "Good girl, you've finally grown up. You're taking care of your sister now." Marcus wanted to postpone our wedding to care for Celeste. I accepted it calmly. He praised me for finally being understanding. I even gave up my position as the pack's chief healer to Celeste. My parents and Marcus were so excited they planned to throw her a grand celebration ball. They invited every important person with status in the pack to honor her new role. I was just curious about one thing. After I died, would they shed a single tear for me?