After Death

From a young age, I understood that my asthma was a shackle for my entire family. My parents took turns caring for me, their hearts gripped by the fear of any sign of respiratory distress. In their fervent concern for my health, they even compelled my sister, Sophie, freshly accepted into university, to postpone her studies and return home to assist in my care.
At Sophie's eighteenth birthday cele...

On my birthday, I was dragged up to the attic and assaulted by several men.
I called my parents, brother, and boyfriend for help, but they all thought I was seeking attention and ruining my sister Sophie's celebration.
"Mia, stop it. We're busy preparing for Sophie's party. If you want attention, find another way."
This was the hundredth time they'd let me down.
But there won't be a hundred and fi...

I was the best student, the most obedient, the most compliant—yet the only unloved child in our family.

When my brother got into fights, I took his punishment. When my sister snuck out with boys, I bore the consequences. Mom force-fed me pills and made me get my stomach pumped just to scare my brother away from smoking. Dad dressed ten-year-old me like a prostitute and threw me into a bar to wa...

I was dead, and the whole world was celebrating for my sister.

For twenty-two years, I had been the hardest-working but most invisible daughter in the Sterling family, forever living in the shadow of my gymnastics prodigy sister.

Running a high fever, I begged my family to take me to the hospital, only to hear: "Don't you DARE ruin Bella's award ceremony!"

When I was tricked into the abandoned ...

On my wedding day, my entire family received Iris’s desperate plea for help.
“Mom, Dad, Brother! I’ve been kidnapped, come save me, quick!”
Everyone panicked—including my fiancé, Theodore.
They interrupted the wedding ceremony to rush to Iris.
I begged them through tears not to go. I said it was a trick, something Iris had staged herself.
“The ceremony would have been over in ten more minutes. Can...

They say the dead go where they belong.

But I didn't.

I drift through the cold winds, watching my husband—the detective who once swore to protect me with his life—diligently investigating a dismemberment case.

He doesn't know that the broken body lying in the morgue is his wife.

He doesn't know that the gentle, caring "psychologist" who brings him lunch every day is the one who killed me.

He ...

To avenge his beloved, my husband locked me—pregnant—in a dog cage and sank it into the icy lake outside our house.
"Wendy spent ten minutes in the water. You'll stay in there for two days."
I screamed and pleaded, "I'm not lying! I really am pregnant! Please!"
But he towered over me, his eyes full of disgust. "You'll say anything to avoid punishment—even a lie like this?"
As the iron cage sank, t...

I was diagnosed with hemophilia when I was ten years old.
At first, my parents were terrified. They watched me closely, rushed me to the hospital over every bruise, every nosebleed. I was the fragile one—the child who needed saving.

Then years passed.
They got used to it.
They got tired.

By the time my twin sister was graduating and my family was finally breathing again, I was about to turn eigh...

I’m in the final stages of stomach cancer. My son just passed away yesterday.
At his funeral, my ex-husband barged in, pointed at our son’s headstone, and accused me of doing anything for attention—even putting on a show like this.
He told me to get lost, to stay far away from the woman he really loves.
So I did exactly as he wanted.
I took my son’s ashes and disappeared into the endless sea.
But ...

After Nicholas got engaged, his assistant handed me a plane ticket.

"Leave. Don’t ever show your face in Silverlight City again."

"Otherwise, Mr. Jackson has more than enough ways to ruin you."

All those years I spent by his side, I was admired by everyone, living in the spotlight.

Yet when I finally left, I was reduced to a pitiful, laughable sight.

I said, "Fine."

But that very night, the ...