Tragic Synonym

I was Alpha Dylan’s “mate-in-waiting” for six years. Every night, he’d make love to me, worshipping every inch of my body. On our sixth anniversary, he promised me a surprise. I thought he was finally going to make me his official Luna. Instead, I watched him place the moonstone necklace, the symbol of the Luna, around the neck of Lady Lilith from the Black Forest Pack. He took my hand and explained, “Lilith has a rare disease, Moon-Eater's sickness. The only cure is to complete the mating bond with a powerful Alpha.” “Don’t worry. In three months, you’ll take your rightful place as my Luna.” I didn’t cry or fight like I used to. Instead, I sent a message to the Alpha King, the fated mate I once rejected. “About your offer to marry me… I accept.”

To celebrate our daughter's eighteenth birthday, my husband, James Miller, decided to go nude cycling. I told him he was too old for that and would embarrass himself, but he looked at me with disdain and said, "Liliana, your life is so boring. You refuse to embrace new things." Then he brought the dog belonging to his first love, Sophia Lewis, and placed it before me. It was then I realized it was Sophia who had organized the nude cycling event. I felt my anger boiling beneath the surface as our son, Thomas, took the leash and handed it to me. "Dad, you can go have fun with Sophia. Mom will take care of the dog," Thomas said. But when the dog lunged at me later, Thomas protected it. Meanwhile, my daughter, Alice, fought to shield me. In the end, both Alice and I were bitten to death. James didn't even take us to the hospital. Instead, he dragged our bodies straight to the crematorium. Just before I turned into a wisp of smoke, I saw Alice rolling in the flames. During that time, James and Thomas were comforting Sophia. At that moment, I felt a deep rage—rage at myself for being so naive and for causing my daughter's death. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on the day when my son handed me the leash. This time, I was determined to make them all pay.

When the kidnapper fired the gun, I shielded Scott with my body. The bullet pierced my heart, and I was sent overseas to have my heart exchanged with an artificial one—one that ran on a battery. Because of this heart, Scott married me, and my friends congratulated me for finally having my wish granted, for finally marrying my childhood sweetheart. Later, when I laid there on the operating table with my chest cut open, he was kissing another woman under the moonlight. I didn't react to this in the slightest, recovering my heart in silence. Scott resented my numbness, grabbing my shoulders as he demanded, "Wendy, aren't you angry about this?" He didn't know the reason, and to be honest, it was quite simple. Why be angry when my heart was on the verge of giving out? Every passionate day he spent chasing after love… Was another tick in the countdown to the end of my life.

Five years into marriage, Silvia Serra becomes both Dante Valenti's most lethal weapon and his most invisible presence. She shields him from bullets. She crosses a freezing river for him. Her scars accumulate, and his response is an assumption that it is how things are meant to be. In time, Dante grows repulsed by the violence clinging to her. He derides her lack of charm and gives his warmth to another woman instead. He allows others to grind down her dignity, and with a new lover in his arms, he openly stains her name. Silvia tolerates it so she can continue guarding him. Everyone mocks her as if she's numb to it all, driven away again and again, but never truly gone. Then comes the night of pounding rain. Cast aside without ceremony, Silvia erases every sign she was ever there and leaves with finality. Dante treats it as nothing more than sulking, convinced she will return within three days. Later, the once-untouchable Don was seen on his knees at Silvia's feet, stripped of all pride, begging her to turn back and look at him just once.

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.

For five years, I thought our marriage was solid. Then, my husband, Lionel Franco’s first love, Sandra Howard, posted a photo of a property deed on her social media. The caption read: [Thank you, Lionel, for transferring the house to me.] I stared in disbelief and left a single comment: [WTF?] Lionel called within minutes. “She’s a struggling single mother. Transferring the house to her makes it easier for her son to get into school. It doesn’t affect where we live,” he snapped. “How can you be so lacking in compassion?” In the background, I heard her muffled sobs. Half an hour later, she tagged me in another post.  This time, she flaunted her Mercedes worth over a million dollars, with the caption: [Paid in full. As the saying goes, ‘Where a man spends his money, that's where his heart is’.] I knew he bought it to soothe her temper. But this time, I had enough. I decided to divorce him.

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.