After Death

When the Manhattan morgue finally managed to reach my husband, Victor Hawthorne, he was in the penthouse suite, fucking another woman.
"Mr. Hawthorne, this is the city morgue. We need you to come down and identify your wife's remains."
"Identify what?" he snapped, his thrusts not missing a beat.
"Burn her," he ordered. "Don't bother me with her pathetic ploys."
He tossed the phone onto the nightst...

At the auction, when Anna’s painting was sold for the highest price of the night, I died in a dim underground studio.

No one knew that the painting had stolen my inspiration.

I was the most talented painter in the Hale family, yet I lived forever in my sister’s shadow — only because our paintings always ended up strangely similar.

At first, people said it was the bond between sisters.
Later, af...

I'd been out of Coldwater for two weeks when my family asked me to go back behind silver.

"It's three nights," Mom said. "You did three years. Three nights won't kill you."

They had no idea it would. I'm dying. The only thing still holding my body together is my mate bond, and three nights away from Silas is all it will take.

For three years in Coldwater, a parcel came for me every month. A bla...

Nobody knew where my mum came from.
I didn't know either.
But I knew one thing for certain—every time my mom, Lorna, talked about leaving this place, my father, Gideon, would beat her senseless.
The neighbors would scold her too, calling her ungrateful.
"Gideon saved your life," they'd say. "You owe him everything."
Our village sat at the end of a winding mountain road, three hours from the neares...

I died on my birthday.

While kidnappers shattered my limbs and violated me to death, my family was throwing a grand party for my sister Chloe—yes, we shared the same birthday, but only hers was worth celebrating.

I called my father for help. He sneered and hung up: "Stop using this pathetic kidnapping stunt to ruin Chloe's birthday."

I called my fiancé Mark. He said with disgust: "If you're goi...

The loan sharks who kidnapped us wanted payment for my twin sister's gambling debts—in blood.

When my FBI negotiator father showed up with his tactical team, he found Lily with a paper cut, crying her heart out. I was dying from a gunshot wound in a basement below.

I called him with my dying breath: "Dad, please send help. I'm bleeding out."

"Are you kidding me right now, Emily? Your sister jus...

In this world, there exists a place called the Life Pawnshop.

As long as you possess enough Love Value—the genuine affection held for you by your family or spouse—you can trade it there for any miracle.

My biological brother, Noah, died in a car crash. My parents, my husband—everyone was forcing me to go to the pawnshop and use my Love Value to bring him back.

The pawnshop's laws were a...

My husband, the terrifying Mafia Don, dropped fifteen million dollars on a luxury yacht just to throw a lavish, high-profile birthday celebration for his precious first love.

And today marks exactly seven days since I died of an infection in a Detroit slum, simply because I couldn't scrape together a few cents for antibiotics.

At the banquet, an oblivious guest tactlessly brought up my name....

My adopted sister, Cordelia, conspired with her biological mother to harvest my organs alive, yet she had the audacity to claim I paid thugs to rape her.
My biological parents didn't bother to ask for the truth. They cursed me, calling me a vicious bastard, and threatened to break my legs.
My fiancé, Caspian, coldly announced the cancellation of our engagement, declaring he would marry the very mu...

My daughter was choked until her face turned purple by the mistress's son, then nearly died after my ex-husband forced her to give blood.
She was beaten, cursed at, and abandoned on a bench outside the hospital.
And I could do nothing to help her.
Because I had already died eight years ago.
It wasn't until my daughter collapsed crying at my grave—and the story made the news—that my ex-husband fina...

While I bled to death locked in a storage room, my fiancé Adrian was holding my sister's hand, comforting her.

He hung up on my final call for help, leaving only a voicemail: "If anything happens to Lena, the engagement is off."

My sister once said her birthday wish had always been for me to disappear.

That night, her wish came true early.

But my soul never left.

I watched everyone gather aro...

My husband locked me in a suitcase to punish me for frightening his childhood sweetheart. He said I could come out when I apologized. By the time his assistant warned him about the smell, our baby and I were already dead. But Adrian still expected me to crawl out and beg for forgiveness—and I was trapped beside him, watching.

On the morning of the entrance exams, my parents locked me inside the family freezer to keep me from outshining Ethan.
They thought they were saving him from a prophecy.
By the time they realized the prophecy was a lie, I had already frozen to death with my hand still raised against the door.

My husband often made me suffer for the sake of my younger sister, even divorcing me because of her.
My parents gave all their love to my sister and neglected me.
My husband and parents even had my sister perform surgery on me.
But they didn't know that my sister had no idea how to perform surgery.
It didn't matter though, because I no longer cared.
On Christmas Day, when they were celebrating, th...

For six years, I had worked as a contract killer to pay for my brother's leukemia treatment.
Today, I had finally saved enough money to cover his surgery.
But he casually rejected the operation.
"Actually, I'm not sick. And Mom and Dad aren't dead, either. I planned that car accident six years ago."
My husband, Damian Blackwood, followed his confession with one of his own.
"I never went bankrupt, ...

My boyfriend successfully proposed with a spectacular drone light show.
The whole city erupted in celebration: “Mr. and Mrs. Hansen—finally, a couple united!”
Yet, nestled in his arms was none other than his secretary.
The "Mrs. Hansen" everyone speaks of is now nothing more than a forgotten memory, buried beneath the earth.

I’d spent four years slaving away in the hospital basement sorting medical waste.
I thought I’d finally scraped together enough money to pay for my brother Leo’s brain damage treatment.
But he just took the card and tossed it onto the coffee table.
“I got better ages ago. That lousy little paycheck of yours? I blew it on a necklace for Victoria.”
My husband David pushed open the study door. “Tha...

I died the day before my brother Beckett’s state equestrian qualifiers.

Just because Beckett had mistakenly taken sedatives and fallen into a coma, my mother firmly believed that I—a worthless, sickly burden—had deliberately poisoned him out of jealousy to ruin her perfect son's future.

Ignoring my fatal immunodeficiency, knowing that even a microscopic trace of wasp venom would kill me, she dra...

I just got out of prison after three years, and my family wants me to go back in.
"It's only three days," they said. "You survived three years—what's three more days?"
What they don't know: I'm dying. The only thing keeping me alive is my mate bond. Three days away from Everett means death.
For three years in prison, someone sent me food every week. No note, no name. I thought it meant my family s...

On the third day after my death, Massimo got the call.
His arm was around another woman. He didn't even flinch.
"Dead is dead," he said. "Burn her, then call me."
He came to the crematorium two hours late. He took my ashes, dropped them on the floor, and stepped on them like they were dirt.
"Tell Tess," he said, "if she's still alive, she can crawl back and beg. If she's really dead, I'll dig her ...