Socrates Death Painting

When I hear my boyfriend, Terence Bowen, is trapped in a house fire, I immediately rush back to save him. However, after dragging him out with all my strength, I realize it's just a dummy. Laughter erupts from the house next door. "Ariana Brock is such a fool! She fell for it again!" Through a half-open window, I spot Terence lounging on the couch, casually scrolling through his phone. He looks completely fine. "That's the 47th prank we've pulled on her. Three more to go and we're done." "Serves her right. She shouldn't have stolen Bethany Howard's scholarship. Bethany is the one Terence actually cares about. That's why he decided to fake a relationship with Ariana to get revenge 50 times over. Too bad the game will end soon." I bend over, gasping for air. All this time, the relationship I've worked so hard to protect is nothing but a game to them.

While I was being brutally tortured, my mate was with his first love, a she-wolf named Lily who'd been poisoned with wolfsbane. The wolves who had a personal vendetta against Louis blinded me and stuffed my mouth with stones, violating me one by one, then tried to call him using my phone. The alpha only gave me a heartless command before hanging up, not listening to a word. "Unless you donate your bone marrow fluid to Lily, I'll continue ignoring you!" The enemy wolves stared at the blood trickling down my legs, and mocked, "Oh, were you pregnant? Well, seems like we got the wrong person, anyway! How could you and your baby not compare to a poisoned she-wolf?" When my corpse was discovered, Louis immediately reminded Lily to be careful. When another wolf reminded him that he should check in on me since I was pregnant, he scoffed. "Pregnant? Her? Is that the lie she's going with to justify not saving Lily? "I never want to see such someone so venomous again!" Little did he know that he already saw me. The corpse, decaying and rotting in front of him, was me, his Luna.

I'm going to die. In the eyes of the underworld, I was a sinner. My death would be a final, cursed dishonor. But even with the Ricci family in ruins, I was still the noble Principessa. The Ricci pride in my blood would not allow my body to fall into the hands of a rival Family. Humiliation. Desecration. Photographs flaunted for all to see. I didn't much care if my body became a trophy to celebrate their victory. But if the world knew the last of the Ricci bloodline had become a plaything for our enemies, it would be a disgrace to the entire Family. After weighing my options, I dragged my broken body to the turf of my ex-boyfriend, the man I'd left seven years ago, now the Don of the Falcone family. "After I die, I need you to handle my body." He was silent for a long moment, then let out a cold laugh. "Of course. I'll sink you in the Hudson River with a tombstone tied to your feet, engraved with the name of your filthy family."

In the third year of our marriage, Adrian Jones made me play a game of truth or dare—and when I lost, he told me to take the place of a nightclub hostess and perform a striptease. "Macie's too timid," he said. "You dance for her." Laughter erupted around us. "Adrian's a real sport—letting us watch his wife put on a show!" "Liliana's got a body to die for. I'm burning up just looking at her." Drenched in humiliation, surrounded by crude stares and filth, I finally cracked. My voice shook. "Adrian… I want a divorce." Before I could say more, a glass of red wine hit me square in the face. Adrian scoffed, "The Shaw family's already bankrupt. Where exactly do you think you'll go without me?" However, this time, I meant it. I was done.

I dumped Orion Gray when he was at his poorest. I even aborted the child we had together. In the blink of an eye, I got together with a rich man. After that, Orion went abroad in anger and sadness. Within two short years, he turned into the CEO of a publicly listed company. When he came back to the country, he swore that he would exact his revenge on me. However, my mother sent a disfigured corpse to his house and asked him to restore it to its original state. He did not know that it was the corpse of the person he hated the most—me.

The moment I was born, I took her life. They called me a murderer. Marcus used to burn me with cigarette butts, and Dad would say it was my fate. “You’re a curse. If you had any conscience, you’d have gone to join Mom a long time ago to repay what you owe.” When Marcus was diagnosed with kidney failure, that same cold, distant father knelt in front of me. “Please… save him…” I put my hand on Dad’s shoulder. “Dad, I’ll do the surgery. But can you promise me one thing?” Dad performed the surgery himself. It was a success. He saved the son he loved most and took the life of the daughter he hated. But after I died, Dad turned himself in to the police, and Marcus lost his mind.

I plan a family trip at my mother Lucia Sweeney's request. While avoiding the danger zones, my sister Linda Harper and I are ambushed by rogues. To protect her, I throw myself in the path of their claws and get driven into a silver mine. As I fall, my back is slashed open to the bone, and shards of silver embed deep into my right leg. The searing silver poison spreads quickly, burning through me and my wolf. My wolf is whimpering—she's close to death. However, as the pack's chief healer, Mom gathers all the healers around Linda to give her a full check-up over a few minor scrapes. I sob and beg her to save me first. "Mom, the poison has almost reached my heart. I can't hold on anymore." She turns around impatiently and yells, "Are you seriously still fighting with Linda now? Do you have any idea how close she came to getting clawed in the face by a silver claw? Our pack doesn't have a wolf as heartless as you!" And in that moment, I hear my wolf's final whimper, saying goodbye. I finally fall asleep in the cold wind, never waking up again.

I died on the day I was supposed to marry Ryan Wolfe. When I didn’t show up on time, he angrily married his childhood sweetheart, Lorelei Floyd, instead, and publicly announced, “Alexis Harding cheated before our wedding and called it off herself!” The rumors crushed my mother, and she died from a heart attack right then and there. But Ryan seemed to have forgotten that he, in a fit of rage to defend Lorelei, slashed my arm and locked me in a basement for ten whole days. I begged him and pleaded for mercy, but all I got was his cold reply. “You’ll stay here for a while, so you can fully understand the pain you caused Lorelei. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll rid you of your wicked thoughts.” When he found my corpse, ravaged by maggots, he lost his mind.

It was New Year's Eve. We were streaming live when my brother called. I spoke first, "I wish you peace and a happy, long life." He gave a cold laugh. "Yeah, well, I don't want you to have any of that. I hope you spend the rest of your life in misery." I'd cut him off the year he was flat broke. Now that he was successful, this was the first thing he did—get back at me. I kept my tone calm. "I wish you peace and a happy, long life." He sounded annoyed. "Cut it out. There's no way I'm wishing you well. If I have to say something, then I hope you stay miserable forever." The host hesitated, then chimed in, "Ben, that was just a recording of Hailey's message. And yes, when she left… she was in a lot of pain and quite miserable, just like you hoped for."

My father's adopted daughter was only locked in the cramped storage closet for around fifteen minutes, yet he punished me by tying me up and throwing me inside. He even sealed off the ventilation with towels. "As Wendy's older sister, if you can't take care of her, then you should also experience how scared she was," he declared coldly. He knew I was claustrophobic, but my desperate pleas for mercy, my terror, were met with nothing but heartless reprimands. "Let this be a lesson on how to be a good sister." As the last sliver of light disappeared, swallowed by the oppressive darkness, I struggled helplessly. A week passed before my father finally remembered my existence and decided it was time to end my punishment. "Let's hope this week served as a good lesson for you, Jennifer. If this happens again, you will no longer be allowed in this house." He would never know that I had already taken my last breath in that suffocating room. My body had begun to rot in the darkness.