Tragic Novels

I'd been married to Matteo—the Lamberti Don—for five years. No one knew I was his wife. I didn't want the perks. The spotlight. So I stayed invisible. We were in love. Still felt like dating every single day. Then my first day at the new hospital wrecked everything. "Dr. Accardi, you won't believe this." A coworker leaned in, grinning. "Guess who that new patient's husband is? Matteo freaking Lamberti." I froze. If she was his wife—then who was I? She was pregnant. Carrying the future Lamberti heir. So what did that make the baby inside me? I held it together. Did the exam. Played the calm, capable doctor. No one saw the panic clawing through me. I told myself it was gossip. Lies. It had to be. Then I heard Matteo call her 'my princess.' That was it. He had a new 'princess.' And I had to let him go.

When my mother-in-law gets hospitalized due to cancer, I'm about to pay the hospital bills when I find out that my wife, Lilibeth Saunders, has used our savings to pay off a male escort's debt. That's when I finally explode in rage. "Mom has gotten hospitalized because of her illness, and yet you use our money to pay off the debt of a useless piece of trash who relies on his manhood for survival! You really are an evil bitch, Lilibeth Saunders!" As Lilibeth grips the lingerie, she remains stone-faced. "How am I the one at fault here? I'm just trying to give my future child a father who still has a future with me! You can always earn money to treat your own mother's illness! Meanwhile, Carl can't do the same thing about his debt! If he doesn't pay off his debt, his life will be ruined! "You only have yourself to blame, Josiah! After all, you're a good-for-nothing impotent man!" The entire room falls eerily silent. My friend, who's there to help patch things up between us, looks at me with sympathy in his eyes. All the criticism surrounding me flashes through my mind at that moment. That's when I realize that it's time for me to end things with Lilibeth once and for all. What she doesn't know is that she's the infertile one based on the doctor's diagnosis. Also, her mother is the one being hospitalized, not mine.

After my husband picked up his secretary and our son, they went into the hotel for a business meeting. Photos of them were trending online. I gave him a call to ask him about it, but he hung up on me impatiently. “I’m meeting a client. Obviously, we’re meeting at the hotel! Can you stop being unreasonable?” I was busy contacting IT support to retract the trending topics. Two hours later, I received a call from the emergency department of the hospital. When I reached the hospital, my son was already dead. In his hand, he was still holding a staff ID tag. The secretary’s name was on the tag. I broke down crying. My husband, Zac Davis, had blocked my number so I could not reach him. After I completed the hospital procedures, Zac finally returned my call. He sounded very angry and impatient, “Did you fetch our son? Why didn’t you inform me? Don’t you know that we’re all waiting for him to pass us the agreement? Just send the document over now!” After that, he immediately hung up and blocked my number again. I stared at the notification on my phone and sneered. I was going to snatch your clients and force you into a dead end!

Three years ago, my mother and I got into a car accident. My father immediately got himself a new wife. His illegitimate daughter, Kaitlyn Lee, was only two years younger than me. Kaitlyn and I became the butts of the joke of the whole country from fighting over my mother’s inheritance. Aaron White ignored his family members’ objections and married me. He drove Kaitlyn away and saved Stance Corporation. I thought Aaron loved me very much until I accidentally overheard his conversation with Kaitlyn. “When are you divorcing her? I’m pregnant.” “I’ll divorce her when she agrees to transfer all her shares to me. Then I’ll marry you.” “I really wish she had died like her mother.” “If we managed to plot her demise the first time, we could do it again.” I almost fainted from hearing the truth. I clamped my hand over my mouth as tears streamed down my cheeks.

I was madly in love with James Gates for 10 years. So mad that everyone in the Imperium said that I was addicted to him. How far did it go? I wouldn't allow any woman to get close to him. I wanted to eliminate every woman around him. In the end, James sent me to rehab. While others quit smoking, drinking, or gaming, I was quitting James. But later, I truly moved on from him. Yet, he regretted it and, in the pouring rain, begged me to love him again.

My husband, who was a drug enforcement police officer, personally got me into rehab. My son was cheering on the side, saying that he no longer had to see me under the influence for a long time. After I was discharged, I discovered my husband moved in with his lover and our son. I begged him to come back and told him that someone would kill me. He did not believe me. Instead, he said coldly, “If you die, you better end up in a trash can. Otherwise, I’d have to deal with your body.” My son cheered at the side. “Mommy is finally gone!” After a week, I was dismembered. My body parts were found in multiple trash cans. He was the police in charge of the case.

In my fifth year of marriage to Dominic, I'd become the woman all of Chicago knew as the crazy one — the mental case. Jealousy gnawed at me constantly, and my temper frayed easily, my emotions sharp and unsteady, unravelling more with each passing day. So it only made sense when he slid a divorce agreement across the table. "Vivian's pregnant. A Harrington heir can't be born illegitimate, and Mrs. Harrington can't be a lunatic." "Once she's had the baby, I’ll marry you again, and you'll still be Mrs. Harrington." I was forced to sign my name, then locked away in a private sanatorium a hundred miles from the city. The first year, I waited with desperate hope for him to come take me home. Instead, he handed me an ultrasound report. "Twins — a boy and a girl. Vivian's pregnant again. Just wait a little longer." The second year, he had electric fencing installed around the sanatorium grounds. "Harrington Corp is going public. We can't afford any slip-ups right now." By the fifth year, he simply called to tell me to wait one more year. He must have expected me to scream and lose control the way I always did. But this time, I just nodded calmly. "Alright. However long it takes." After all. I didn't have much time left anyway.

My husband's first love, the woman he had once idolized, had left him for a powerful and influential school bully. Years later, she found herself in the midst of a bitter divorce and in need of a lawyer. And who else but my husband, now an accomplished attorney, ended up back in her orbit? As he moved toward her once more, I decided it was time to step aside. After all, there was no stopping someone determined to chase after a lost cause.

Carlo La Rosa is the Don of the La Rosa family. As for me, I'm just a plaything who's been delivered to his bed in order to clear off my family's debts. For the next three years, Carlo vents his carnal urges on me anyhow he wants. He doesn't do any foreplay. In fact, he doesn't even turn off the lights. Instead, he forces me to look at myself in the mirror. He wants to show me how he eventually devours me. "Take a good look at who's screwing you right now, Lydia!" Carlo is very rough with me in bed, as though he wants to merge with me. I beg him to be gentler with me, but all I get in return are harder thrusts. Those thrusts continue until I faint from the intensity. When I wake up, I see a black card and a morning-after pill on the nightstand. Even though I quickly take the pill, I still end up getting pregnant. I'm about to tell Carlo the news when I see the news on the TV. Apparently, he gets stabbed three times in a row just to protect his first love, Serena Sergio. It turns out that I'm just a plaything for him to vent his urges on. I'm not even considered a replacement. As I caress my belly, I drop my signature on the divorce agreement. Then, I snap the black card in half and leave the pieces on the table.

I accidentally saw a notification pop up on my husband’s phone saying that an automatic transfer had been completed when I was using it for navigation. Immediately after that, his ex-girlfriend, Wanda Blake, sent him a message on WhatsApp: [I’ve received this month’s 10,000 dollars for child support. Thank you, Koah. I don't know what I would have done without you.] I froze. “Child support? “Koah, you told me that the money you send every month was for medical expenses for your mother’s treatment!” Koah Quinn’s expression stiffened as he explained, “Honey, don’t misunderstand. I just felt that life has become really hard for her because she’s a woman raising a child on her own. Her ex-husband refuses to pay child support, so I wanted to help her out…” I touched the old watch on my wrist. The one I had not replaced in years to save money, and felt extremely disappointed. “Your monthly salary is only 6,000 dollars. Where did you get so much money to send her?” He was silent for some time before finally admitting. “I used the money we had set aside for the new house’s downpayment.” I was stunned. He had taken the money my parents had scrimped and saved for decades for me as downpayment for a home and then transferred it to his ex-girlfriend as child support.