Face-slapping

On the day my daughter is discharged from the hospital after recovering from the flu, I run into my ex-husband, Zachary Levine, whom I have been divorced from for seven years. He is there to pick up his wife, who has just given birth. He looks a little surprised as his gaze moves up and down to take in my clothes, which is still stained from my child's vomit. I had no time to change out of it earlier. "Long time no see. How have you been lately?" he asks. I smile and say I am doing fine. As we are about to part, he grabs my arm. "Alyssa, our son misses you a lot. If you are having any difficulties, don't push yourself. The passcode for the house in the north of the city is still your birthday. You can go there anytime." I politely decline, and he lets out a sigh. "After all these years, you are still as stubborn as you were back then. Don't hate me." I smile but say nothing. There needs to be love for there to be hate. But now, he is just a stranger to me.

I died not knowing Rowan had fallen for another. So, I made a deal with the witch, exchanging my wolf heart for seven days of life. Seven years ago, during a territorial conflict between wolf tribes, I lost my sight while saving Rowan. My deal with the witch not only gave me seven days but also restored my vision. Overjoyed, I rushed to Rowan’s home under the moonlight. I was eager to share my miracle with him, even if I had only seven days left.  However, he was in the arms of another woman. Rowan’s cruel words echoed in my mind: "You know how to please me so much better than that blind princess ever did." "I’ve had enough of her lifeless eyes. Every time I look at her, I feel like I’m shackled by chains of duty and morality. I can’t breathe around her!" His harsh words and the sounds of their intimacy crushed the last of my hope. I was going to die soon, and with the short life I had traded the wolf heart of a Moonshadow Wolf Tribe Princess for, I had only lived long enough to witness Rowan’s betrayal.

After my sister's appendectomy left her without both kidneys, I took a scalpel and held an entire hospital hostage. I locked twelve doctors and three patients in the morgue, announcing to the world they'd all been infected with HIV. With only three hours until the treatment window closed, the doctors, trembling and begging, swore that they knew nothing. I started a live stream, flashing a blood-stained scalpel. "You have three hours to find my sister's kidneys." I didn't care if they were already inside someone else.

I go to the boutique my son has invested in to pick up the gown I've ordered for a banquet. Just as I'm about to leave, the manager, Wendy Reed, stops me and says that I still owe them money. She pulls out the bill. I look down at it and see that the boutique is charging me 300 thousand dollars for their creativity, 500 thousand dollars for fabric therapy, and one million dollars for their chief designer's mental wellness. On top of other expenses, the price totals up to two million dollars. I laugh incredulously and send a message to my secretary. "Withdraw our funding from my son's company and this boutique!"

“Who the hell changed the screw tolerance by 0.007 mm?” “I did. Is there a problem?” Kimmy Zabel, our department’s “good-luck charm” and full-time slacktivist, did not even look up from her compact mirror, where she was carefully applying lip gloss. “It just didn’t look right, so I tweaked it. Do you really have to yell at me?” The production line had been running on the wrong spec for twenty-four hours. I hit the emergency stop. Keeping my voice steady took some effort. “These parts no longer meet export standards. If we miss tomorrow’s shipment, even a month of overtime wouldn’t cover the penalties.” “It’s one tiny number. You’re being so dramatic!” Kimmy snapped her makeup case shut. “Anyway, it’s New Year’s Eve. I’ve got a date. I’m not staying here to suffer with you people.” Before she even reached the door, I gestured to the staff to pull the shutters down. “For precision components like these, one number translates into a million-dollar loss. You can take these defective units and explain them to the regulators.”

While visiting a property development with my fiancé to buy our first home, I ran into a two-faced real estate agent.   She showered my fiancé with compliments, praising him for being young and successful enough to afford a Rolls-Royce.   Then, she suggested I was a fake socialite with a knockoff designer bag, implying that I was just using my charms to snag a free house.   When she found out the property was meant to be a marital home, her voice grew loud enough for everyone nearby to hear.   “I just think the sugar daddy who bought you those two properties last time treated you pretty well!” “Oh, wait. Miss Gwen, don’t you have several sugar daddies? Do they all know about each other?”   I chuckled. What she didn’t know was that my “sugar daddies” were my godfathers and I really was a socialite.   The kicker, though, was that my so-called wealthy fiancé wasn’t rich at all. In fact, he was just a scholarship student I had been financially supporting!

My husband and I spend 50 loving years together. On the day of our golden wedding anniversary, someone pushes me down a flight of stairs. As I drift in and out of consciousness, I miraculously regain my hearing. I lost it in the process of saving my husband when we were younger. I hear my husband say to my son, "You shouldn't have dirtied your hands." "How long more are you going to put up with her, Dad? Calista doesn't have much longer to wait." My husband sighs heavily. After a moment, I feel someone remove my oxygen tube. I descend into boundless darkness. When I open my eyes again, I've been taken back to the 80s—before I married my husband. The only difference is that I can hear this time.

My husband has a PhD in medicine. He's fair, just, and kind… until the day his true love kills someone in an accident. He uses all the medical knowledge he has to help her get off scot-free. He turns the corpse into preserved specimens and displays them in his lab. When he's dealing with the corpse, he sees that there's an embryo in the womb. He's always been calm and composed, but he can't stop his heart from racing at the sight. What he doesn't know is that the corpse is mine, and the embryo is his child…

On my daughter’s birthday, I showed up at her after-school program unannounced to surprise her. When I mentioned to the instructor that I was Maddie’s parent, she furrowed her brows. “Are you saying that you’re Maddie’s mother?” I nodded, feeling a little displeased. Though her father, Matthew Rowe handled the drop-offs and pick-ups, the instructor had no business giving me an attitude. Nevertheless, the instructor promised to bring Maddie out right away with a huge grin. As she turned away, I decided not to make a big fuss out of the matter. The next minute, the instructor emerged with two burly men. “That’s her! She’s here to abduct one of the kids!”

My boyfriend, Landon Schmidt, has sold his assets just to support me in building my livestreaming career. But when I become a famous streamer, I steal all of his money and dump him right away. Landon slumps near a river and drinks from it while begging for money in the 104 degree weather. He's exposed to the heat for so long that he almost goes into shock. Meanwhile, all I have to do is push the boundaries on camera, and I'll earn millions of dollars' worth of tips. My best friend, Yvette Carter, thinks that it's unfair for Landon to suffer like this. She advises me not to bite the hand that had fed me in the past, only for me to slap her in return. "If you pity him this much, you should pay for all of his expenses, then! Why should I pay for a broke and useless man in the first place?" That night, Yvette exposes the recording of our conversation and takes me to court. Tens of thousands of Internet users flood into my stream instantly just so they can ensure that I get judged for my sins.