Novel & Cerita A Good Neighborhood

At the New Year's Eve dinner, my mom suddenly assigns some rules to me and my siblings. She claims that those who don't fit the criteria aren't allowed to eat at the table. Rule number one: One must have spent at least 50% of their time keeping Mom company at home last year. Rule number two: One must have gone shopping with Mom all the time. Rule number three: One must keep giving Mom allowance. But it appears that I, the oldest sibling, am the only one who doesn't meet the requirements. My little sister, Chelsea Cage, begins acting coquettish immediately. "All Cassidy cares about is her business, unlike me, Mom! I care about you!" Meanwhile, my younger brother, Cameron Cage, lectures me with a frown, "What's the point of you being able to earn more money than average people? No matter how good a breadwinner you are, the fact that you don't care about Mom completely nullifies it!" My mom tells my siblings to sit around her happily. Then, she criticizes me in a sarcastic tone. "As parents, when we become old, what we need is our children's company, not cold hard cash." I'm pissed off, to say the least. I'm the breadwinner of this family, and yet these freeloaders get to put on airs in front of me. The reason why I don't go shopping with my mom is that she's never satisfied with whatever gifts I've picked out for her during the times I did go out with her. That's why I gave her money straight away. I didn't give my mom any allowance at all because all the money is regularly deposited into the supplementary card, which she has. Since my long-term efforts are worth nothing compared to my siblings' sweet talk, I suppose I can quit being the ATM of this family.

This bottle girl, new to the club, always demanded I serve her. And only me. She was good for business, so I let it slide. Then, one weekend, two in the morning. I’m in bed in the penthouse. She calls, barking orders at me. “I’m in the ‘Paradise’ suite. Get up here with a bottle and get me right.” I almost laughed. The girl was an idiot. “It’s 2 AM. Are you ordering me around? I’m not your bodyguard or your dealer.” She sneered, her voice dripping with arrogance. “My cousin is the club manager. You should feel honored to serve me. By the way, your ‘protection fee’ is late this month. Get your ass over here now, or I’ll have my cousin dump you in the Chicago River.” Oh. She had no idea. The docks along the Chicago River… they’re mine. All of them.

After the chairman announced my appointment as general manager, a barrage of floating comments suddenly appeared before my eyes. [The supporting female character slept with some old guy just to steal the female lead's big client. How shameless!] [Good thing our clever female lead already collected the evidence. Once she becomes department manager, she and the male lead can finally start their sweet life together!] [I can't wait to watch the female lead and the male lead build their empire together!] The so-called female lead, Cindy Carlton, stood there with tear-filled eyes. "Shannon, how could you steal my client?" I was so stunned by the floating comments that I didn't react right away, but she was already crying pitifully. "Even if you wanted the deal, you shouldn't have sold your body for it! If you'd talked to me properly, I would've given you the client!" The comment section popped up again. [Our female lead is way too kind!] Even my longtime boyfriend stepped forward to defend her. "Who knows how many men you have slept with over the years? This time, you have to give Cindy's deal back to her!" While everyone hurled insults at me, I helplessly pulled out photos of the thousands of cattle and sheep grazing across my family's massive ranch. "Is selling beef and lamb to clients illegal?"

My husband's secretary, Regina Wade, claims she is a lucky charm. She wins every lottery ticket she buys and even wins three bets in a row. In truth, she is just transferring her bad luck onto me. In my previous life, she confidently invites the entire company to gamble, and everyone walks away with huge winnings. Well, everyone except me, as I lose everything. Regina throws money around in the casino, indulging her vanity, while my face rots and my body becomes riddled with illness. She conducts livestreams to auction off her good luck, while I get hit by cars every time I go out and almost die from infection during surgery. When I ask my husband, Jack Burns, to investigate her, he points at me angrily and scolds, "Ariel Nichols, stop blaming your bad luck on Reggie. You are just jealous that she is lucky. With such vicious thoughts, you deserve to get hit!" Three days later, Regina wins a trillion-dollar gamble and gains boundless wealth. I, on the other hand, bleed from inside and die suddenly. Even until my death, I never figure out why I have such terrible luck. When I open my eyes again, I return to the day Regina first claims she is a lucky charm.

On the way back to work after the New Year, my wife Liana Corn and I got into a car accident. Opening my eyes again, I realized that we had returned to the time we just started dating. In our previous life, we were married for eight years. Life was good, but she refused to have any children. Later, I learned that she had always kept her childhood sweetheart in her heart. After our regression, I decided to set us both free. We both deleted each other's contacts without a word, stopped seeing each other, and became complete strangers. Eight years later, Liana became a top investor. At our class reunion, she made a high-profile announcement with her childhood sweetheart Serge Gibson. Seeing that I had come to the reunion alone, she teased me. "Ryan Carter, I know I'm attractive. You love me for two lifetimes and still can't let go, but you don't need to cling to me like this." I pretended not to hear and took my son by the hand. Liana's face instantly turned pale, her eyes bloodshot. "Didn't you say you'd love only me for life?" she demanded. "How can you have a son with someone else?!"

On the night before our engagement party, my fiancé's childhood sweetheart sped through the venue grounds in a luxury car while heartbroken, hit an elderly man, and fled the scene. Ethan immediately postponed the party and took the panicked Mia overseas to help her relax. Before leaving, he transferred five hundred thousand dollars to me. "Five hundred thousand should be enough to buy your father's life. As long as you don't cause trouble for Mia, we'll continue with the celebration after I return." Confused, I looked at my father beside me. The renowned don of the McKenna family was sitting there perfectly unharmed, frowning in dissatisfaction over Ethan's decision to cancel the party without permission. Just then, I received a message from Mia with a video attached. [Ethan found out the person I hit was your father and still chose to protect me and pay for your father's life.] [A nouveau riche's daughter thinks she can marry into the Alvarez family? Take a good look at your father's condition. This is what happens when people like you dare to dream.] I opened the video and widened my eyes in shock. With a malicious smile, Mia slammed on the accelerator, drove over the old man's legs, and sped away. The poor elderly man lying in a pool of blood and groaning in pain was Ethan's father.

"Give me a baby, sweetheart." My husband, Don Nico, whispered, kissing me as he drove deep inside, making us come together. I rested in his arms, feeling his heart hammer against his ribs. He was crazy for me. A month later, on our anniversary, I gave him his wish. A positive pregnancy test. I drove to his private casino, ready to give him the surprise of his life. But I stopped outside the VIP room. The door was cracked open. I heard him bragging to his men. "The wedding's in a week. Scarlett still has no idea she's been sleeping with both of us." He gestured to the man beside him. A mirror image. His twin brother, Marco. "Last time, she was all over him, begging him for a baby." A low rumble of laughter went through the room. My blood ran cold. Someone piped up, nervous. "But Boss, what if she finds out?" Nico just scoffed. The sound was pure ice, pure control. "What's she gonna do? She has nothing without me. I gave all her best work to Bianca. She's the art world's new star. Scarlett's career is dead. I killed it. Her only choice is to be a good little Donna and beg for my scraps." That casual cruelty… it shattered my heart. He destroyed me for another woman. Played me for a fool. Any love I had for him died in that instant. I pulled out my phone. I found the message I'd been ignoring. The curator offer from that top European foundation. I typed my reply: "Yes." He thought I was his to break? He was wrong. In seven days, I would be gone. Vanished from his world for good.

The intern secretly submitted a voluntary pay-cut application on my behalf. As a result, my salary dropped from $10,000 to $2,000. When I found out and confronted him, my boss and colleagues all defended him. "The company is not doing great right now. Oscar was just trying to save costs for us. Do you have to nickel-and-dime over this?" With my salary so low, I couldn't afford the special medication for my chronic migraines, and one day I passed out at my desk during an attack. But the intern snuck a video of me unconscious and posted it on the company's website. He even whipped up a detailed 100-page slideshow breaking down how I was slacking off on the clock and dumping all my work on him. Overnight, I was labeled a workplace bully. My boss gave me the cold shoulder, and my colleagues whispered about me. Even worse, some extreme "anti-workplace-bullying" activists tracked me down to my home, showed up with two cans of gasoline, and burned me and my parents alive. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on that very day when the intern had submitted my pay-cut form. In this second chance at life, I would make sure everyone saw the intern for who he truly was.

"I'll leave the decision-making to our children. Girls, do you want 100 million dollars, or your mother?" On the day our parents get divorced, Mom looks at us with tears in her eyes. My older sister, Camila Walker, kneels before Mom while looking very emotional. "I want to stick with you, Mom! I don't want money—I just want you!" As she looks at me, she smiles confidently, as though she's won something. In my previous life, Camila didn't hesitate to choose Dad, who had inherited 100 million dollars. But he lost all of his fortune to gambling to the point that he had to sell Camila just to pay off his debts. Left without a choice, she was forced to take her own life. As for me, I chose to be with Mom, only to find out that the "poor security guard" she had married turned out to be the richest CEO in the city. Thanks to the marriage, I became the spoiled and pampered heiress whom the entire city envied. Camila thinks she's stolen my good luck. Little does she know that I died in my previous life as well.

During our company's Black Friday sale, an intern took it upon herself to change "Spend $300, save $50" to "Spend $300, save $350." In my previous life, I was the Director of E-commerce Operations. I shut down the servers immediately and stopped the company from bleeding nearly ten million dollars. At the year-end party, the intern stood in front of everyone with tears in her eyes, playing the victim. "Erin, all I wanted to do was drive user acquisition through a loss-leader growth hack!" "Customers would have come back to repurchase after getting the discount. Who gave you the right to cut off the company's revenue by killing the servers?" She posted a viral thread on Instagram: Gen Z Takes on the Workplace: How My Outdated Boss Sabotaged My Brilliant Idea. Strangers doxxed me and came after me in waves. I left the company due to depression. Eventually, her mob of rabid followers drove me off the edge of a roof. Now I've been given a second chance. When the intern points to the promo page that's about to go live and asks me: "Erin, does my Black Friday campaign look good to you?" "It doesn't just look good. This is the textbook definition of a viral growth hack!" I turn around, grab the documents, and announce over the company-wide PA system. "Cassie has personally guaranteed this campaign with her own and her boyfriend's credit history, signing a full liability agreement to cover any losses. Let's give her a hand, everyone!"