Whitebeard Face Blown Off Novels & Stories

Dante and I have been married for three years. But he never knew my real name. We’d had countless arguments over the past three years—over the petty details of everyday life. I can no longer tolerate such a ridiculous life like a puppet today. Calliope, that’s what he called me, but it was actually my twin sister’s name. My husband may never know that the woman who married him three years ago was a substitute bride. Three years ago, my sister abandoned us and left before the wedding with her lover. To prevent the anger of the Laurent’s, my family had no choice but to let me marry Dante instead of my sister. My phone rang again and again, I finally picked it up. "Throwing another tantrum, are you? Calliope, tell me what you are capable to do if you can not even be merely a housewife?" I knew Calliope could always get her way through her sweet voice and innocent smiles. She can be an obedient and perfect wife—something I could never manage. "Dante. I’m not joking.” I didn't know if my voice sounded a little sad. "You can’t be serious—" For the first time, I heard a tremor in the man's words. He doesn't love me. He likes to be in control. When he realized that his puppet was losing control, he began to panic. It's time for this farce to end. I clenched my phone and spoke to the man on the other end in the calmest voice of my life. "Dante, let's get a divorce." But what shocked me more than hearing Dante's answer was the person who suddenly appeared in front of me. Calliope, my twin sister, who disappeared for the whole three years. “Are you crazy? Why on earth would you want a divorce? That's Dante Laurent, a billionaire heir, every woman's dream！” “Calliope? Our parents and I all thought you would never show up again. I entered this wrong marriage because of your escape. Dante... he’s not that a husband out of your dreams.” “Seraphina, put away your ridiculous niceness and compassion. I have returned this time to take back what is MINE and my place.” She lifted my hand with a sneer and removed the wedding ring from my finger.

“It’s still her.” Three words. That was all it took for the carefully constructed world of my last five years to shatter into dust at my feet. Zane didn’t even have the decency to look away as he said it. For twenty years, I had been the third wheel. The reliable shadow to Jovienne’s brilliant sun. I had buried my own feelings for Zane so deep I almost forgot they existed, only daring to dig them up and confess them after Jovi had left the country and broken his heart. We built a life. A marriage. I truly believed, in my foolish, hopeful heart, that it was my happy ending. Now Jovienne was back, and the illusion was gone. The love of my life saw me only as a consolation prize. As my world collapses, the last person I expect comfort from is her husband—a man as cold and polished as he is powerful. Vance sees the same betrayal in my eyes that he sees in his wife's. Leaning in, his voice a dangerous whisper, he proposed the unthinkable: "They are living in the past. Let's be each other's revenge. What do you say, Nerissa?" I should avoid at all costs. It was a game that could burn our broken worlds to the ground. But as I looked into his eyes and saw the same raw, humiliating betrayal reflected back at me, the answer poised on my lips wasn't "no." It was a terrifying, thrilling question. “What,” I whispered, my voice steadier than I felt, “did you have in mind?”

He pressed him against the door, breath hot, voice ragged. “If you don’t want this… tell me to stop.” A pause. A heartbeat. “I can’t.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some obsessions aren’t meant to be touched. Some men aren’t meant to be loved. And some desires don’t care. This collection isn’t about perfect love. It’s about the one you weren’t supposed to want— Another man. Your brother’s best friend. Your enemy’s son. Your professor. Your fake fiancé. The man who shouldn’t look at you like that. The man you can’t stop wanting. Every story is a man falling for another man when he shouldn’t—and doing it anyway. Fast-paced, emotionally sharp, and dangerously seductive, every story in Burnt Offerings dives headfirst into the hunger we deny, the rules we break, and the lovers we were warned to stay away from. Some affairs stay in the dark. Others start wildfires. This isn't a love story. It's all the ones you swore you’d never tell. All of them about men who should have walked away from each other… but didn’t.

The autumn break has just ended when a call arrives from school. "Ms. Watson, your daughter failed to secure a scholarship and bullied her classmate in retaliation. Can you please come to school?" When I rush over, I find Lila Keats bound to a trash can, her hair drenched in sewage, and her mouth sealed with duct tape. Meanwhile, the so-called victim merely has had two strands of hair pulled out. After some querying, I discover that Melody Caldwell is jealous of Lila's achievements and has been waiting for an opportunity to strike. When I demand an apology, Vanessa Morrison flies into a rage. "You're lowly trash without a proper family! My daughter teaching her a lesson is the greatest honor you can obtain in this life! "Expel her immediately! My husband works in the Education Bureau! Beg for mercy, or she can forget about taking the college entrance exam!" That arrogant woman is convinced that Lila and I will beg for forgiveness after being expelled. Unfortunately, she has chosen to mess with the wrong person. Lila's grandfather is a nuclear weapons expert. Her true origins have been concealed for her safety since her whole family works for classified operations. I immediately call the Intelligence Agency. "Mr. Keats' granddaughter was bullied severely at school. Send someone here to deal with this now!"

My boyfriend is a lauded attorney. His true love rams into me with her car; my daughter stands bravely before me as the car explodes. She's blown to smithereens. I'm on the brink of death as I'm carried onto a stretcher, but my boyfriend holds his true love's face tenderly. His gaze is filled with heartache as he tells her that he'll get her off scot-free. He ruins the scene of the accident and buys off the witnesses. He even comes to the hospital to threaten me after I've been disfigured from the explosion. In the end, I die after the treatment doesn't help. It's only when the court announces the sentence that he realizes the deceased's personal details match mine perfectly.

Overnight, an electronic notification sounded in the minds of all office workers. It was from a "Performance-Share System". The rules: employees who paired off could split their year-end bonuses 50/50. I was a junior associate at Summit Financial, one of the biggest wealth management firms in Manhattan. In my previous life, I agreed to pair with my manager, Jared, and the intern he brought in — Stephanie. By the time the project went into its crunch phase, they'd shoved every garbage task and every blown deadline onto me. I pulled all-nighters for months. My body was running on fumes. When the one promotion that could have saved me came up, they cut me out of the team without a second thought. In the end I was fired for "burnout and poor performance." I couldn't make my mortgage. I jumped. They took the work I'd done with me, walked out with million-dollar bonuses each, and flew off on vacation together. Then I opened my eyes again. I was back, on the exact day the pair-binding system went live. This time, I'm not just keeping every cent of what I earn. This time, I'm putting them in prison.

Even knowing that wailing at an Eravalen aristocratic funeral was considered disrespectful to the deceased, I let my husband's adopted sister make a scene anyway. In my previous life, my husband, Robert Baker, had a distant relative among the Eravalen aristocracy who passed away. A lawyer informed him that he stood to inherit the estate and invited him to attend the funeral. His adopted sister, Mia Carter, insisted on tagging along to see how the privileged few in another country lived. She wanted to rub shoulders with nobles and make herself look important, even planning to wail dramatically in front of everyone. I rushed to stop her. "Public mourning is taboo among Eravalen nobility. Forget inheriting anything. We'll all be thrown out!" Yet she burst into tears, accusing me of looking down on her and thinking she was not good enough to mingle with aristocrats. She stormed out and was killed by street thugs in a random attack. I thought Robert would fall apart, but he stayed silent through the entire funeral and collected his inheritance without a hitch. Six months later, on our wedding anniversary, he took me to the snowy mountains for a photoshoot. The moment we reached the peak, he shoved me into a sleeping bag and tied it shut. "If you hadn't blown everything out of proportion, Mia never would've run off and gotten herself shot." He buried me alive in the snow. I froze to death, and he used that aristocratic fortune to become the CEO of a publicly traded company. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Mia insisted on wailing at the funeral.

Gilbert Pierce, my wife's male trainee, bragged that he could disarm a bomb just by relying on his senses and with his eyes closed. However, he misjudged it and triggered the bomb's secondary detonation sequence. I stepped in at the last second and used the most dangerous method available, liquid nitrogen flash cooling, to save the entire building. Gilbert was pulled off frontline duty and placed on suspension for review. My wife, Jasmine Clem, tried to speak up for him, but I stopped her cold. "If you defend him now, you won't save him. You'll just get dragged down and suspended alongside him." Unable to handle the pressure, Gilbert blew himself up in an accident. In his suicide note, he accused Jasmine of choosing self-preservation when he needed her most. Jasmine said nothing. She only locked that letter away in her study. Years later, Jasmine became a nationally renowned bomb disposal expert. During a terrorist attack, I was captured and strapped with a timed explosive. Jasmine came to the scene personally to defuse it, but right in front of me, she repeated the exact same mistake her trainee had made years ago. She watched the countdown and smiled lightly at me. "See? He was just nervous back then. If I had encouraged him, he'd be a hero now." The bomb detonated, and I was blown apart. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the moment she was about to defend Gilbert. She didn't know that inside that building sat the nation's most classified core servers.

On my third day driving for a ride-hailing app, I picked up a female passenger who was completely wasted. Early the next morning, the police knocked on my door. At the station, the woman pointed straight at my face and screamed, "It was this driver! He raped me while I was drunk in the car. I’m still bleeding down there!" Her boyfriend lunged at me, trying to punch me, but the officers restrained him. People at the station started pulling out their phones to record, shouting insults like "scumbag" and "pervert" at me. An officer who wore a gloomy face asked, "Do you have anything to say for yourself?" I calmly took off my baseball cap. I even thought about unbinding my chest. "Officer, there’s something I’m really curious about. I’m a woman. With what, exactly, would I have made her bleed?"

In those eight terrifying seconds when the plane dropped into darkness, my first thought was how devastated Lucas would be if I never made it to the airport. However, after surviving and landing safely, what greeted me instead…was a photo he shared with his childhood sweetheart, the two of them smiling on a hike. The caption read: [Here's to still being wild with you at sixty.] If it had been before, I probably would have blown up his phone, demanding an explanation and picking a fight. However, then, after brushing so close to death, I just felt… tired.. So I typed out a message: [Let's get a divorce.]