Family Plot Novels & Stories

On New Year's Eve, my older brother, Casper Shaw, attempted to expose me as a fraud and announced that Jenny Ford was the real heiress to the family. He pulled out a paternity test result and threw it in my face. "Open your eyes and take a look! Jenny is the Shaw family's real daughter. You're just a fake who has taken Jenny's place for so many years, yet you still have the nerve to sit here and eat New Year's Eve dinner with us!" Then, he pushed Jenny in front of us, revealing a face that looked exactly like my mom, Theresa. Everyone froze. I lunged for the report, but suddenly, a stream of floating comments rolled past above Jenny's head. [Is the female lead finally going back to her rich family and starting a sweet romance with her fake older brother?] [Not yet. Right now, they still think they're siblings. They only get together later, once the misunderstandings are cleared up.] [Am I the only one who feels bad for the female supporting character? She's the biggest victim in the whole book. She takes all the female lead's hatred that should have gone to her fake brother, and she gets treated as the fake heiress and sent to the Ford family to suffer on top of that.] I looked at Jenny's face and compared it to my own—we almost looked like twins. I checked our ID cards again, confirming that our dates of birth were exactly the same. "Seriously? Ever think that you might be the real impostor here who was switched at birth?"

My sense of direction has always been terrible since young. Getting lost is a norm for me. When I was eight years old, I had to face the worst consequences of getting lost. That time, I almost got kidnapped by human traffickers. So, my older sister, Aubrey Cochran, gifts me a GPS watch and repeatedly teaches me how to use it. "As long as you follow the GPS, you can find your way home. Have you remembered it yet?" I nod heavily. Since then, the watch stays strapped onto my wrist. But later on, my adoptive mom has found her actual son. That's when the entire family's attitude toward me begins shifting. They no longer panic even when I don't return for the day. This year's Thanksgiving holidays are coming soon. Aubrey decides to take me on a trip out of the blue. Our trip lasts for more than a dozen days. Our last stop is a remote village. There, Aubrey takes my watch from me and fiddles with it for a long time. At the start of the next day, I can't get in touch with her no matter how hard I try. As I stare at the unfamiliar GPS coordinates on my watch, I feel realization dawning on me immediately. When I'm about to leave, a villager looks at me in confusion. "You're leaving too, eh? Where are you headed to?" I smile at her. "I'm going home." Since Aubrey doesn't want me anymore, I shall grant her wish.

After my parents died, the family went bankrupt, leaving my brother and me with a large sum of debt. To pay it off, he became a haunted-house test sleeper, while I acted as a corpse on film sets. For five years, we worked tirelessly, not daring to rest a single day—and still, the debt wasn't cleared. By the end of the year, only 13 thousand dollars remained. Gritting my teeth, I signed up as a clinical trial volunteer. When it was over, I dragged 13 thousand dollars in cash, brimming with joy, to show my brother. But I found him frowning, on the phone. "Dad, Mom, Lily's doing well. Have fun abroad," he said. "She's stopped spending recklessly. The punishment ends next year." What? Our parents weren't dead? Our family wasn't bankrupt? The five years of hardship, every ounce of struggle—I'd endured it all as punishment for my love of spending. My smile froze on my face. My stomach churned violently. A mouthful of fresh blood spilled out.

My ex-fiancé made me do a blood test the night before our wedding. The next day, he threw the genetic report on my face and dumped me over defective genes. The reason was that the Zimmer family only wanted perfect heirs, and he said that I was not worthy. He broke off the engagement, and instantly married the girl-next-door with perfect genes. Five years later, he reappeared in the hospital, clutching his ill son. He saw my daughter who had similar rashes, and he thought I had given birth to his daughter in secrecy. Little did he know that my daughter had nothing to do with him and only had a mild seafood allergy. I would not be defined by the so-called defective genes again, while me and my daughter live happily and healthily, it was their turn to be destroyed.

Kyson Hale, the regimental commander, finally agrees to let me live with him on the military base. But in return, our son isn't allowed to address him as "dad". Kyson and I have been secretly married for eight years. I've taken care of his parents in the countryside for that long as well. After the death of his parents, my son, Darryl Hale, and I request Kyson to let us live with him on the military base. He agrees to our requests, but he has a condition of his own. "Once you've reached the military base, you shall declare to everyone else that you're just my relatives from the countryside." Only then do I realize that Kyson has another family of his own in the military. Some time later, I leave the army with Darryl without looking back. But Kyson, who's always been cold and distant, is alarmed by our disappearance.

On the third day I was brought back to my family, the fake heir, Christopher Parker, gets into a car crash in order to frame me as the mastermind. His mental state has deteriorated to one belonging to an eight-year-old. My older sister, Eliza Parker, thinks that I'm the one who hired someone to hit Christopher with a car. Because of that, she hates my guts and torments me endlessly. In order to take care of Christopher, Eliza eats with him and sleeps beside him every day. As for me, I'm used as the human mat that they can step on anytime they want. I'm arranged to take care of Christopher so that I can atone for my sins. As long as Christopher reveals an aggrieved expression, I'll get whipped ten times regardless of the cause. I thought Eliza would find out the truth sooner or later. But in her haste to cure Christopher, she actually decides to send me to an underground lab as a test subject for their experiments just because the doctors there claim that the medication can help restore Christopher's mental state. Five years later, Eliza finally comes to pick me up. A mocking smile is etched onto her face as she sees how haggard I am. "You should recognize your faults by now. It's been five years, after all. If you dare lay a finger on Christopher after coming home with me, I'll definitely send you back here." I raise my head hazily, tears soon seeping out of my eyes due to how bright the light is. Then, I mutter softly, "There won't be a next time…" Eliza won't have to worry about me seizing a chance to hurt her beloved Christopher. After all, the drug experiments conducted on me for the past five years have already ruined my body. There are only seven days left in my life span.

I'm Sophie Gould, the only daughter of the wealthiest man in Arberton. My mother doesn't like me, though. She treats her niece, Tanya Hall, like her own and allows her to take over my identity. At a banquet where all affluent families are gathered, Tanya takes my seat before I can. Then, she says in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, "You wouldn't even be here if not for Mom wanting me to show you around so you can expand your horizons, Sophie. "Remember this—you might not be a member of the Gould family, but your actions are linked to us. Don't disgrace us." In the past, I would've stood there with my eyes red, at a loss for what to do. It was too bad I'd been reborn. I smile icily at Tanya and kick her off my throne. "I should've expected this of an impostor. To think an insignificant banquet like this is enough to make you act so obnoxiously! And did you say you're part of the Gould family? You have no idea the sort of trouble you'll be getting yourself into!"

In all the eight years after Mamma died, Father hated me. He hated me for causing Mamma’s death, and he hated me even more because I didn’t resemble her at all. So he adopted a girl who looked eighty percent like Mamma and raised her as the principessa of the Vitale family. He brought her to banquets hosted by the five Mafia families of Corholt and seated her beside him at negotiation tables. In front of the entire family, he publicly declared that his adopted daughter, Bianca Vitale, was his only heir. Meanwhile, I wore a servant’s apron and lived in a cellar beneath the estate. He allowed Bianca to break my fingers, slash my face, and lock me inside the morgue freezer. “This is what you deserve.” I believed it, too. Until my sixteenth birthday, when Mamma came back.

In my previous life, I took the blame for the false son of the Stafford family and was sentenced to five years in prison. On the day I left jail, my family threw a grand birthday party for Charles. My only birthday present was the removal of my clothes and being frozen to death in the snow. When I opened my eyes, I was once again five years old. My parents stood before me, ready to take me home from the orphanage. My older sister, Juliet Stafford, rushed out from nowhere and blocked the door. She pointed at me—a boy dressed in rags—and shouted, "Dad, Mom! Leave him here, or he'll ruin everything!" Her emotional reaction was different from the one I saw in my previous life. That was when I realized she had been reborn too. After our parents left in disappointment, Juliet walked up to me and forced a piece of candy into my palm. Then she threatened, "Remember this. Chuck is the only son of the Stafford family. A curse like you is not welcome in our home."

Seven years ago, I swap my heart with Orion Gifford, the cyborg replica of me that my sister, Mildred Gifford, creates. However, my heart frequently gives him chest pains because of organ rejection. Mildred blames everything on me. She believes I have hidden a preexisting heart condition and have given away a defective human heart in exchange for a mechanical heart worth millions. So, she sues me for fraud and sends me a court summons. But on the day of the hearing, I don't show up. To force me out of hiding, she publicly announces to the media that she is officially taking Orion as her younger brother and leaving all her assets to him. When I still fail to appear, Mildred loses her patience and goes to the workplace address I leave behind. She steps into a sketchy factory and grabs a random worker to ask, "Do you know Zachary Gifford?" My factory supervisor, Greg Mathews, stares at her in shock and says, "Zachary? He died three years ago from sudden cardiac arrest. It was awful! His body got pulled into one of the machines. There was basically nothing left of him."