Cerita Pendek & Novel

My fiancé slapped me across the face in front of the entire academy. He did it to save face for another girl. That same day, I deleted every way he could reach me and announced that our engagement was over. No one believed me. Orion Draven and I grew up together. From the age of six to eighteen, I followed him like a shadow for twelve whole years. Everyone knew I loved him. Everyone knew I would forgive him. Even Orion thought so. On the day I left Ironhold Academy, he stopped me at the gate. For the first time, there was panic in his voice. “Why? Just because I hit you?” I looked him straight in the eye and said each word clearly. “Yes. Because you hit me.”

All I did was reach for a pastry Lila had her eye on, and my childhood sweetheart Luca, the Don's heir of Galvani family, had me thrown in the estate cellar for three days and three nights. His voice was as cold. "I've told you before, Lila is like a sister to me. Why can't you just let her be?" This time I didn't cry or beg. I just looked at him. I had been half out of my mind over this man for more than a decade. I had even slashed my own wrist in front of his father, just to force him into marrying me. Luca looked at me like he was disappointed all over again. "With a temper like yours, how could you ever be the Donna of Galvani family?" "Get down to the cellar and think about what you've done. Come back when you've come to your senses." Then, as if he couldn't quite help himself, he dropped his voice: "Look, as long as you come around and stop making Lila's life difficult, everything goes back to how it was. Okay?" I clenched my jaw. It felt like a blade pressed against my chest. "Okay," I said. Next month, the Don of the Ferrara family will marry me as his Donna. This time, I am done with Luca.

At my mother’s funeral, I discovered that my future mate, Arthur, was cheating on me. The Omega had posted a photo of the newborn pup she shared with Arthur on social media, captioning it: “Thank you, Moon Goddess, for blessing me with this unexpected bond.” As I broke down, Arthur calmly tried to soothe me. “Don’t get distracted. The most important thing right now is finishing the funeral.” The next day, he skipped the burial ceremony entirely, leaving me with nothing but a brief phone call. “She’s too weak after giving birth. I have to take care of her.” Sensing my silence, he let out a long sigh. “Don’t overthink things. You'll still be my most beloved Luna. The pup is just an accident, and she never intended to ruin the alliance between our two packs. But the pup carries my bloodline. As an Alpha, I will spend Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays with her and the pup, and I will come back to you on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.” I clenched my fists, fighting back tears until my eyes burned red. “Alpha Arthur, this is your official notice: our marking ceremony is canceled, and my pack no longer requires an alliance.” Arthur froze, his voice instantly turning cold. “Don’t be like this, Bella. Your mother just passed away. Stop throwing a tantrum at a time like this.” Without hesitation, I hung up the phone and walked straight toward the fiercest nemesis of the Silver Moon pack. “Mark me, and let’s join forces to destroy the Silver Moon Pack. Do you have what it takes?”

At the party celebrating Ryan making partner, his childhood friend, Jenna knew I was deathly allergic to peanuts, yet she deliberately put peanut syrup in my drink. I drank it, Within seconds, my throat began to tighten, constriction seizing my windpipe like a closing fist. Panic flared in my chest as a suffocating wave of heat rushed to my face. Desperate, I grabbed my emergency allergy spray from my purse. Instead, a harsh minty sting sprayed into my throat. She had swapped my medication with a mint spray. I turned pale and collapsed onto the hardwood floor, clawing at my neck, gasping for even a shred of oxygen. Jenna laughed so hard that tears welled in her eyes. "Wow, Isabella Moretti. Someone get this girl an Oscar for that performance. I’ve been a nurse at the top hospital in Chicago for five years, and I’ve never seen anyone throw a tantrum like this over a splash of syrup." I crawled toward Ryan on my hands and knees, biting my lower lip until the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. "Ryan... please... call 911... I can't breathe..." Ryan looked down at me."Stop pretending, Isabella. Nobody drops dead from a little drink. Jenna is a medical professional. If you were actually in danger, she’d be the first to know." With that, he turned his back on me. I stopped begging. Using my final shred of strength, I triggered the phone's emergency SOS. A silent distress signal and my live GPS location immediately shot straight to my father.

At the company's banquet, Vanessa Sinclair the intern tosses a piece of abalone, which she has already taken a bite out of, onto my fiance, Leon Mercer's plate. He doesn't hesitate to gobble it up. That night, I tear our marriage alliance's contract into pieces before tossing them into the trash can. Leon takes off his glasses, his brows drawn together into a tight knot. "All this for a piece of abalone?" "She gave it to you after taking a bite out of it!" Leon looks up at me, his lips already curved into a mocking smile. "I never knew you're the type to be this petty, Audrey. Fine. If you don't want to proceed with this marriage, then let it be. Just don't regret your decision later." Leon thinks that I'll still badger him like I always do in the past. But I just laugh at him in return. "Fine. Whoever regrets their decision will be the world's most pathetic loser!"

My childhood friend, Sawyer Dwyer, had just confessed his feelings to me when his ex, Lina Keenan, got into a car accident. In the hospital hallway, his voice was steady. "She can't handle any emotional shock right now. Just give it some time. Don't tell her about us." I met his gaze and nodded. I never thought "some time" would turn into three whole years. He made her soup, helped with her rehab, and gave her all his attention. But whenever I showed the slightest frustration, he got annoyed. "Joelle, don't overthink it. She just depends on me right now. Once she's better, everything will be fine. "I'm just being there for her as a friend. "Stop making this into something it's not..." ... Over and over, he made the same promises with complete confidence. Then one day, I brought a hot meal to Lina's place and pushed open the door. They were kissing. I stood there, frozen. When Lina noticed me, she smiled. "Joelle, I have good news. We're back together. When are you going to get a boyfriend? I want to see you happy too." I looked at their hands locked together, my eyes burning. "I did have a boyfriend. But just now... we broke up."

After transmigrating into a CEO novel as the devoted female foil, I decided to give up on the powerful CEO, but Julian Sterling flew across the globe overnight and dragged me back to get engaged. The usually gentle, refined man gripped my waist, a terrifying madness burning in his eyes. "Georgia, you belong by my side. Forever," he declared.

Ethan and I met at a soup kitchen in the slums. We were fighting over half a moldy bread roll. I only learned his story from other people later. His father was the head of Lorencio's largest crime family, killed in a bloody power struggle from within. His mother took a payout and vanished. My father was an accountant for another family. He was framed for cooking the books and shot dead. Same story, same wound. That was what brought us together. We clawed our way up from a crumbling slum to the marble halls of the Lorencio crime families, until finally Ethan took his seat as Don of the Valeria Family. Nine years of marriage. No church. No proposal. Not even a proper cake. Then one day, out of nowhere, Ethan said he wanted to get me a diamond ring. "We had no church and no priest when we got married. I've been meaning to do this properly for a long time. And there'll be more to come." I stared at the custom diamond in the display case, enormous and flawless, and felt something close to happiness. The sales associate smiled and complimented his taste, mentioning that another couple had just ordered a ring too. They'd walked out minutes ago, planning a proposal for tomorrow. "Nine years together and still this in love. That's everything." I reached for his hand. He stepped away, said he needed to take a call. I hadn't heard his phone ring. I followed. Down the hallway, I watched him press a woman against the wall, his mouth on hers. His voice was sharp with jealousy. "You actually agreed to let him propose to you?" "Break it off. I'll buy you the ring." I stood frozen. My chest caved in. Then a pair of hands pulled me into a fitting room alcove. A man's breath was close, warm in the dark. A low voice, almost amused: "Your husband's sleeping with my fiancée. Why don't we give it a try too?"

I made a deal with the Devil. My soul, in exchange for seven days on earth after I died. The eleventh hour after my death happened to fall on our third wedding anniversary. The moment I walked through the door, he had just come home from another woman's place. He had an anniversary gift waiting for me. A set of sapphires. But the card tucked beside them bore another woman's name. I spotted a pale lavender hair tie in his hand. Once, I would have fought him over a hair tie like that, all the way from the front hall to the study. This time, I said nothing. It was him who froze instead, staring at me like I was a stranger. "You didn't used to be like this. I almost miss the way you used to fall apart over everything." He was right. The old me would have thrown a fit over something as small as him forgetting to cut my steak. But ever since the miscarriage, my heart had been dying by slow degrees. When I found out I was pregnant, I was overjoyed. I wanted him to be the first to know. But I couldn't reach him, no matter how many times I called. I lost the baby. I hemorrhaged. That very afternoon, while I lay on the operating table, a photo of him and that woman hit the entertainment headlines. He never even knew I had carried a child. Now there was only one last thing I wanted from him. To drive me up to the northern coast, and bury me with his own hands. But when he realized I had truly vanished from this world, he came undone.

My dad is locked up in a cargo container filled with explosives at the docks. The Genovese family has sent me a video. Apparently, the explosives are set to detonate in 20 minutes. I quickly call my fiance, Dante Luciano, for help. He's the Don of the Luciano family. As long as he's around, no one will dare to lay a finger on my dad. When Dante answers my call, he promises that he'll bring his men to rescue Dad right away. But when the convoy is on the way to the container, he claims that he has more urgent things to do, so he turns the car around and leaves. I drive toward the docks like a madwoman. There, as I watch the countdown on the video ticking down, I keep spamming calls on Dante's phone. When I call him for the 77th time, Dante finally answers it. His voice is as cold as ice. "Stop bothering me with such tricks, Lina." "But my dad will die for real—" "Then let him die." Just like that, Dante ends the call. The countdown strikes zero, resulting in Dad getting blasted into smithereens. The next thing I know, Dante's mistress, Bianca Magoni, has uploaded a photo to her social media feed. It features Dante, who's in the middle of cutting the steak for her gently. "I made an off-handed comment about wanting to eat steak, and now Don Luciano is personally cutting it just for me." It turns out that the so-called urgent business Dante has is cutting the steak for his beloved mistress. My heart dies on the inside. Hence, I fake my death and vanish from Dante's life. Later on, Dante kneels before me after searching everywhere for me like a madman. "Lina, please don't abandon me! I'm begging you, please!" I just smile at him. "You got the wrong person, sir. That's not my name."

Seven days before my wedding with Giuliano Corleone, the heir of the Corleone family, I find out that I'm pregnant. At that moment, I receive a text from an unknown number. "Mommy, please abort me. I'll get born with crippled legs, meaning I won't be able to stand up for the rest of my life. You and Daddy will keep fighting every day because of me until all of your love is reduced to hate. In the end, you'll get overwhelmed by the pain and get afflicted with severe depression, which will lead to you taking your own life by overdosing on pills. I don't want to see you living in that hell ever again." I immediately head over to the hospital to go through a medically-induced abortion without any hesitation. When Giuliano realizes what I've done, he's furious, to say the least. He yells at me, demands answers from me, and vents all of his rage on me. Finally, he stomps out of the ward and slams the door on me. By the time I return to Giuliano's heavily-guarded estate, I can hear Eva Bianchi's loud, malicious laughter ringing from within. "How is it possible for such foolish women to exist in this world? To think that she actually believed the text came from her child from seven years in the future! "I can't believe that she actually got rid of her unborn baby because of a fabricated text!" With a poker face, Giuliano warns Eva, "I'll let this incident slide. If you dare bully and humiliate Elena again in the future, I will never let you off the hook." I stand outside the closed door, feeling eerily calm. There will never be a next time. I know that the so-called text from the future is fake. But the thing is, I've also gotten reborn from seven years in the future, where I've gotten my heart shattered.

I could see the countdown above a person’s head when they had already decided to leave their partner. The day my father’s countdown hit zero, he slapped a lawyer’s letter on the breakfast table and walked out on my mother and me. The day my best friend’s countdown hit zero, she finally threw her parasite of a boyfriend out of her apartment and changed the locks before sunset. That was why I’d always been terrified of seeing a countdown above my fiancé, Lucian Bellandi. Luckily, for seven years by his side, the space above his head had stayed clean. Lucian was the youngest Don the Bellandi family had ever seen. He owned the docks, the casinos, and half the South Side’s dirty money, yet he saved every soft part of himself for me. Until last month, when he picked me up after a family auction. I looked up and saw blood-red numbers stabbing into my eyes. [702 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes.] Less than two years. My heart tightened like a cold hand had closed around it. I started searching for an answer like a woman losing her mind. Had I done something wrong? Then, during a blizzard by the lake, we ran into Mia Crane at the back entrance of the Bellandi Hotel. Lucian had just brought her into his charity foundation as a new assistant. Snow clung to her hair and lashes. She was shivering from head to toe, but her smile was bright and painfully innocent. Lucian pulled a black silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to her. His face was calm. There was nothing openly improper in the gesture. But in that exact second, the countdown above his head jumped. [327 days, 4 hours, 47 minutes.] More than three hundred days, gone. And I knew I had found the reason.

I've gotten reborn on the night before Christmas. The first thing I do is send my boss, Jack Davenport, a resignation letter. Then, I board the next flight to Coral Bay for my vacation. In my previous lifetime, my colleague, Julie Trent, had called me when I was on vacation. She told me that the numbers on the account ledgers wouldn't add up, and the IRS would be conducting its audit soon. That was why she pleaded with me to save her. After hearing Julie's pleas, I boarded the earliest flight back to the city before hurrying back to my company. There, I double-checked all the accounts, leading to the discovery of the deficit in the accounts. So, I used my own money to pay off the deficit, allowing the company to pass the IRS' audit process. Even so, the submission of our accounts went past the deadline, resulting in the company receiving a fine. Julie decided to pin the blame on me. "There's a deficit in the accounts because Annie wanted to secretly embezzle the company's funds!" I quickly explained everything to Jack. But the very same boss, who used to be understanding and rational, just looked at me. "I thought you were on a vacation, Annie. Why did you return to the company all of a sudden? Did you plan on making the company suffer from a deficit in the accounts right before the IRS audit just because you're about to switch companies? "Anyway, you're the one causing the financial loss, to begin with. That's why you must compensate the company for the loss!" Later on, Jack hired the best lawyer and took me to court, completely disregarding whatever relationship we had as employer and employee. In the end, I lost the lawsuit, which meant I had to pay double the compensation to my company. On top of that, Jack even spread the word so that no one in the same industry would hire me. After that, I sold all of my assets, yet I still couldn't gather enough money to clear the debt. So, I could only take on the grungiest and lowliest of all jobs. As I couldn't eat my fill for a long period of time while having to take on huge amounts of work, I ended up dying from exhaustion in the end.