Lovely Bones A True Story Novels & Stories

The maid's daughter, who grew up in my home, had the nerve to act like an heiress. On her birthday, she invited every kid from school for a full-on rager at my family's villa. When I suggested they take it to a hotel, she lost it. "You don't get to tell me what to do! My friends can party wherever they want!" She added, "The ten-layer cake my parents ordered for me is on the way. Why don't you park yourself by the door and wait for it, huh?" Her crew circled up, laughing and pointing at me. But I'd lived through this before. Nothing about her little act rattled me. I turned to the butler and told him to lock the gate. Then, I went to Rambo's cage. "Hey, buddy," I said, opening it up. "See those trespassers?" I pointed at the crowd. "I'm counting to three. If they're still here, don't let a single one get away."

My neighbor's daughter is sick, and my mother forces me to donate a kidney to her. I've been malnourished since childhood—just drawing blood is enough to cost me my life. However, my mother says, "What does your death matter to me? Rhea is my actual daughter!" Only then do I learn that my mother switched me and our wealthy next-door neighbor's daughter at birth! I glance at my neighbor's daughter, but she's calm and unaffected. I watch as my mother signs the consent form for the operation. My father ties me to the operating table, and my brother performs the surgery. I have no strength to retaliate, so I make one last request—a DNA test with my mother. She agrees—she wants me to stop holding out hope. Later, I forget everything after the surgery, but she breaks down.

On the day of the state-wide exam, the Johanson family's real daughter accused me of cheating. Two perfect-score papers lay side by side, identical in every detail. No matter how I argued, I could not clear my name. Everyone sided with her. They branded me a cheater and cast me out of the Johanson family in front of everyone. To appease her, the Johansons went even further. They used their influence to blacklist me across every industry within their reach. I ended up sleeping on the streets. One hardship followed another until my thoughts dulled and a car struck me with such force that it sent me airborne. Even at the end, one question haunted me: "Why did my paper match hers?" Then I opened my eyes and found myself back in the exam room. This time, I turned in a blank sheet. I wanted to see for myself how someone who scored zero could possibly copy anyone.

My heartbeat is so steady that sometimes, I don't resemble a human being at all. The fluctuations in my heart rate are very small even though I might be sleeping, suffering from a fever, or losing too much blood. When I'm 18 years old, the Ziegler family admits me into a rehabilitation center. My new home is now a temperature-controlled intensive unit located on the top floor. Oh, Aiden Ziegler doesn't love me at all. It's merely because the one and only artificial heart present in this world—and also in his chest—needs to be fine-tuned with my own heartbeat as its primary frequency. If my heartbeat is steady, he gets to live. If not, he dies. Three months ago, a nurse accidentally took off one of the monitoring pads on my chest. Five minutes later, Aiden, who was ten thousand miles away, went through a temporary crash where his heart stopped. The next day, the third-party medical company filed for bankruptcy. Everyone who was involved in this incident got banned by the medical world. Because of that incident, all of the sounds get eradicated from the top floor. Even the elevator's chimes get muted when it reaches the top floor of the rehab center. Everything changes when Aiden flies to Iropa. That's when his fiancee, Mandy Sutherland, takes over the rehab center. As she flips through my medical bill of nine figures, she sneers at me. "So, the Zieglers are basically sustaining a loser who does nothing but gasps for breath while lying in bed, huh?" After that, Mandy tears off the monitoring pads and unplugs the sync line. Then, she forces me to get on a treadmill. "That'll be a six-mile run for you. You can forget about returning to the top floor if you can't finish the run." As I grip the handrails tightly, I can feel my heart rate turning erratic for the first time ever. It feels as though my heart is about to burst out of my chest. As soon as the alarm goes off, Mandy turns it off immediately. What she doesn't know is that Aiden's artificial heart has already gone crazy, just like mine, while he's stuck in a place that's 12 time zones away.

When the owner of the horror game world summoned me home to reunite with my family, I was busy scolding the horrors in my dungeon. After spending years as a dungeon boss, I finally learned that I was the heiress of the Swans in the real world. The moment I stepped through the front door, carrying the gifts my horrors gave me on my back, the fake heiress shoved me hard to the ground. "Don't even think you can come back and take my place! Mom and Dad will never love you!" My birth parents treated me with indifference, made me sleep in the storage room, and used me to make their fake daughter look good. At a banquet, my fiancé splashed red wine on me before acting intimate with the fake heiress right in front of my face. It wasn't until the fake heiress was chosen to participate in 'Call of the Sea', a horror scenario, that they remembered my value. Without any hesitation, they bound me to enter the game with her, gently reassuring her, "Don't worry, Anna, we'll make sure you're safe no matter what!" "Don't be afraid, alright? Sylvia will die in your place!" None of them noticed the mocking smile on my lips. Silently, I spoke in my heart, 'Welcome to my dungeon! Now, none of you will leave alive!'

Everyone in the city knows that Michael Shaw despises me to my core. He even takes pleasure in humiliating me in public at banquets. He sneers, "My family made its fortune through gambling. Nancy Jackson is just a pretty face who can't even recognize all the suits in a deck of cards. Marrying her would be worse than marrying an inflatable doll that at least reacts!" Still, the marriage agreement between our families comes first. On top of that, the fake heiress, who is his true love, can't have children. So, he forces me to gamble with him. "If you lose, I want your womb to bear me a child. You have to get a C-section without anesthesia," he demands cruelly. I've long had enough of him always giving me a hard time. A soft laugh escapes my lips, and I reply, "Fine. If I win, then I want your manhood, Michael." The crowd bursts into laughter. Everyone says that I'm overestimating myself. Everyone knows Michael is the best gambler in the city. I lower my eyes and say nothing. Indeed, he is one of the best. After all, five years ago on a stormy night, I was the one who held those hands and taught him how to cheat for the first time to stay alive.

Steven Zimmer, the assistant of my wife, Lucy Quinn, has lost in a truth-or-dare session. Lucy doesn't hesitate to file for a divorce from me for the ninth time. In the courthouse, I hear the staff member asking Lucy curiously, "Your husband is like a well-trained dog now. You've already married and divorced him nine times! Aren't you worried that your husband might ditch you for real?" Lucy merely smirks at her. "Do you know that the more ruthless you are when you abandon your pets, the harder it'll be for them to live without you? In fact, they will just become more obedient and docile. As long as I curl a finger at him, he'll definitely sink down to his knees and beg me to remarry him." Everyone bursts into laughter after that. They bet that I'll plead pathetically to Lucy to remarry me for the tenth time in less than a day after I've obtained the divorce certificate. Lucy even declares that she'll stream the tenth wedding proposal on the Internet when it happens. But the next day, Lucy keeps waiting for me to show up at the city hall while clad in a wedding dress. All she gets is a text from me. "No more proposals. This is the end between us, Lucy."

On the very first day I'm welcomed back into the Morcant family, my grandfather announces to the public that I am the future successor of Morcant Group. My father handpicks three potential marriage candidates for me, but all of them only have eyes for the fake heiress, Eliana Morcant. The three of them go out of their way to isolate and embarrass me in public—except for Keanu Strathmore, who always comes to my defense. Somewhere along the way, I fall for him and decide to choose him. Before our engagement, Eliana threatens to jump off a building. I rush to the scene, only to find Keanu kneeling before her, vowing, "You're the only one I love. Once I help you take back your family's inheritance from her, I'll kick her to the curb!" Her two childhood friends chime in, "Keanu has made so many sacrifices! He put himself on the line time and time again just to make her fall for him." It dawns on me that all the humiliation I endured is part of Keanu's plan. When my grandfather asks me one last time, "Marriage is no trivial matter. Are you sure he's the one you want?" "I don't want Keanu anymore," I answer with a smile.

The Lombardos' long-lost son turned out to be some "scam-busting" influencer. He stormed into the company with my fiancée, cut me off mid–quarterly report, pointed straight at me, and went live. "Drop a comment if you're watching. Blow this up. I'm exposing a fake heir who stole someone else's life!" His crew dragged me offstage, ripped my suit, and shoved me into a neon vest stamped with "FAKE." "A fake's always fake. Never real. I'm ripping off your mask. If you're smart, get on your knees, hand over the CEO seat, and get lost!" I glanced at his parents—faces drained—and gave him one warning. "You don't get to call me a fraud. For their sake, apologize now, and I'll let it go." The room buzzed. Everyone thought I'd snapped, waiting for the "fake heir" to crash and burn. They had no clue. I wasn't the fake. I was the one the whole family answered to.

When my boyfriend told me he had failed the college entrance exams, he begged me to apply to a vocational college with him. I was about to say yes when a barrage of floating comments suddenly appeared in front of my eyes. [The male lead deserves an Oscar. Since when is 680 considered a bad score? He was literally touring Kingston University with the real heiress just moments ago.] [Don't fall for it! You're the top scorer in the entire state! He only wants to drag you down so the real heiress can shine.] [There's no point warning her. She's completely blinded by love. A provincial champion wasting her future at a vocational college... she'll end up abandoned by her family, framed into debt by the real heiress, forced to drop out, and stuck running a roadside stall for the rest of her life.] My hand froze midair. In an instant, all the blood drained from my body.