Novelas y relatos de Twenty-five Thousand Five Hundred

To the outside world, Xavier Sullivan and I are a loving couple. In truth, my father sold me to him to repay the debt he owes the Sullivan family. When the five-year contract expires, Xavier's parents want me to extend it. They threaten me and tell me I'm heading for certain death if I refuse. I have no choice but to fake my death and leave everything behind, taking only the child in my belly with me.

I'm the type who has a ton of allergies. That's why my family has specifically hired a nutritionist to help prepare and monitor my meals while paying her a salary of 7,500 dollars per month. During my lunch break, the new intern, Julia Hall, suddenly tells me, "Emma, the food that you bring to work looks very healthy! You can prepare another portion for me from now on! "It so happens that I'm on a diet as well. Think of it as me going down the journey of dieting with you. I'll pay you five dollars per meal. You can earn quite a lot of money from this side gig, you know?" I'm flabbergasted when I hear Julia's words. The ingredients meant for my meals are specifically flown in using private jets. Not to mention, my family pays the nutritionist a lucrative salary. Five dollars can't even cover the transportation fees needed for my meals! I shake my head and turn Julia down on the spot. I refuse to give her a chance to use any plot holes against me. But the next day at noon, I've just left my desk to refill my water bottle. When I return, I realize that Julia has already taken my lunchbox away and has shared the food with the other colleagues while chatting animatedly with them. My lips curl into a cold smirk. Since Julia insists on taking advantage of me, then I might as well teach her a lesson she will never forget.

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.

It's the fifth year since I eloped with my boyfriend, Leonard Goodman, and he has gone bankrupt again. My father has tried his best to separate us. He has cut me off financially and left me to fend for myself. In the past five years, I've worked as a janitor and a street vendor. It has been an extremely rough time. But I'm doing all this to help Leonard start his business. I'm rooting for him to stabilize his income so that my father will give in and bless our marriage. However, throughout the past few years, all his attempts to start a business have ended in failure. This time, he's ten million dollars in debt. He looks at me with eyes full of remorse. "Rena, I'm so sorry for dragging you through five years of hardship without making you my wife." I shake my head and tell him it's okay and that I'm willing to go through everything with him. To help him pay off his debt, I secretly take on side jobs at a massage parlor without telling him. Today, I'm attending to a wealthy socialite. She earnestly instructs, "Make sure to watch your pressure during the massage. My body is naturally sensitive and delicate, so my skin bruises very easily. "My husband is a possessive man, and he only allows his marks to remain on my body. Last night, he couldn't control himself and left 108 hickeys on my body. He'll definitely be counting them later." When she finishes speaking, her phone on the table suddenly lights up. On her lock screen, the man holding her in a deep kiss is none other than my boyfriend of five years, Leonard himself.

On the fifth anniversary of Rebecca Perry's marriage to Vance Bradford, his first love returned to the country. That night, she caught him in the bathroom, murmuring Catherine's name as he pleasured himself. That was why, for five years, he had never touched her. "Catherine is back; she's all alone. I'm just helping her as a friend." "I understand." "I promised her I'd accompany her to the island for her birthday. I'm just fulfilling it." "Okay." "This banquet requires a capable companion, and Catherine is more suitable than you." "Okay, go ahead." When she stopped getting angry, stopped shedding tears, and stopped making a fuss, he grew puzzled. "Rebecca, why aren't you angry?" Of course, she wasn't angry anymore—because she was preparing to leave. Weary of this stagnant marriage, she had secretly learned a foreign language, taken the proficiency exam, and applied to study abroad. The day her visa was approved, she presented him with the divorce agreement. Vance froze. "No joke. How are you gonna survive without me?" Rebecca turned away, bought a plane ticket, and flew to the European continent, vanishing without a trace. The next time he saw news of her was in a viral video. Dressed in a flowing red gown, she danced against a foreign sky, igniting the internet with her performance. He gritted his teeth. "Rebecca, no matter where you hide, I will find you and bring you back!"

My best friend called me sobbing at two in the morning, saying she owed three hundred thousand dollars in online loans and was begging me to save her life. I told her I'd help cover half. She grabbed my phone and transferred all three hundred thousand. "It's just money—why are you being so stingy? You make six figures. Helping me out shouldn't be a big deal." I swallowed it. A month later, she posted Maldives vacation photos on Instagram. When I asked when she planned to pay me back, she replied—right there in the comments, where every mutual friend could see— "God, stop nagging. Maybe spend that energy making more money instead, you cheapskate. So annoying." I screenshotted everything. Then I opened the civil complaint I'd already drafted. This kind of best friend? We could catch up in court.

"Mommy, you have to be the first person to come pick me up, okay?" These are my daughter Dorothy Grant's final words to me when she walked me out of the house this morning. But when I stand at the kindergarten's entrance with a box of Dorothy's favorite strawberry shortcake in my hands, the security guard just stares at me as though I lost my mind. "Ma'am, this place might be where Sunflower Kindergarten is located, but it has already closed its doors for three years. This place is now a retirement home." I rush into the "kindergarten" instantly. The spot where the slide used to be is now replaced by a row of flowerbeds. The room that used to be the classroom now hosts a bunch of elderly people, who bask in the sunlight. With trembling hands, I call my husband, Chester Grant, on the phone. He sounds very exasperated and exhausted over the phone. "Honey, we've been married for five years, and we choose to be childless. You've never given birth before."

"We partied too hard last night and forgot to use protection—don't forget to buy morning-after pills for your wife." Looking at the woman's smooth bare back and the red mole on her neck in the photo, I felt absolutely nothing. Again. Five years of marriage, and this wasn't the first time. Kathy liked to test me this way. She called it her "little experiment." The first time, she "accidentally" left a receipt for condoms on the nightstand. I got angry and confronted her, but she just smiled with contempt. "Why are you so petty? My girlfriends and I bought that on purpose just to see how you'd react." The second time was on our wedding anniversary. A guy showed up at our door with a bouquet of roses, ready to propose to her right then and there. I got into a fistfight with him, fell down a flight of stairs, and broke three ribs. That's when she finally strolled out and told me the guy was an actor, and the whole thing was supposed to be a surprise for me. Five years. Her games kept getting more extreme. From flirty texts to explicit photos, she kept pushing my limits. And I'd gone from furious to completely numb. Since she loved testing me so much, fine—I'd give her exactly what she wanted.

My boss, Grant Conner, tells me that since the company has doubled its sales performance this year, he'll make sure to reward me nicely. I'm filled with anticipation, thinking that perhaps it's time he's giving me a raise. When everyone's having dinner at the year-end party, they are all discussing how much they'll get for the year-end bonus. "Allow me to toast to you, Shania!" Clare Randall, an intern who has joined the company for a month, shakily stands up to her feet while holding a full glass of red wine. Her cheeks were flushed. She was clearly drunk. "I feel so lucky, Shania! I'm just a fresh grad who doesn't know anything at all, and yet my boss has given me a six-thousand-dollar base salary! On top of that, I even get to learn from a wonderful mentor like you…" My hand trembles violently at Clare's words, almost resulting in me spilling juice all over the table. I've been working at this company for five years, and yet I've never received a raise before. But Clare's salary is twice my salary even though she's just joined!

On my birthday, Jake handed me two bucks and took me to a gas station to buy a lottery ticket. Then he dashed off, claiming he had an urgent work meeting. As I sat alone in the restaurant celebrating my birthday, I spotted my boyfriend, who claimed he had no time for me, having dinner with another woman. Without a second thought, I sent him a breakup text right then and there. Two days later, that lying jerk had the nerve to demand I return the lottery ticket. That's when I discovered it was worth $5 million. I cashed in the ticket and told him to get lost.