Remorse Family

After my twin sister and I were accepted into the same elite university, our parents fully sponsored the freshman welcome banquet.

They told the university president, "This way, even at school, they can feel that parents will always be their unconditional support."

On the night of the banquet, my mother pressed a piece of paper into my hand.

"Elara, go to the podium. Read the address, and...

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, ...

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...

Six months ago, my parents started fostering a girl named Lila Mercer.
Six months ago, Mom repainted the guest room and strung fairy lights over the bed. My room still has the same furniture I've had since I was twelve.
Six months ago, Dad started coming home for Sunday dinner. Not for me. I'd been eating alone at the counter for years by then.
Six months ago, Mom posted a photo of the two of them...

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...

For five years, my marriage was nothing but a lie, a perfect show Aiden staged for the entire family.
I loved him for more than a decade. And for his lover, he threw our five-year-old daughter, Chloe, into the basement to be fed to his Dobermans.
All because Chloe accidentally shattered an antique crystal cup, a so-called love token between Aiden and his precious Sophia.
I dropped to my knees and ...

My sister came to kill me. The moment my mother stepped in to help her, I stopped struggling.
She had plastic surgery to look exactly like me and now sits in my bedroom, waiting for my husband, Liam, to come back to bed.
My parents are blessing her, wishing she and my husband a lifetime of happiness and wealth.
I can only laugh—none of them knows how terrifying the man in front of them really is.

The Solarien family had two daughters.
Aurelia, the younger, was their pride and joy, soon to marry Duke Lysander beneath a reputation she had never earned: the so-called genius enchantress.
I, Vespera, was nothing more than the family's hidden workhorse, locked in a basement and valued only for what I could produce.
For years, I churned out enchanted gear to fund their lavish life while they used...

My husband's childhood sweetheart lost her entry for the competition,
so he gave mine to her.
It was I who saved him all those years ago,
and that's why he married me.
But he turned his back on me right after our wedding.
I've been childhood sweetheart all these years.
But this time,
I suddenly feel like this marriage has lost all its meaning.
After handing in the transfer request I had prepared l...

"You sure dispatch called this... natural causes?" I gripped the steering wheel, staring at the perfect suburban house.
"That's what they said," Gates muttered. The victim's father, Arthur, stood at the door in pressed khakis, weeping.
He swore his daughter, Grace, died in her sleep last night after eating vanilla pudding.
But the moment we stepped inside, a suffocating cocktail of cheap lavender...

Our engagement has gone unfulfilled for ten years.

My parents saved his family in that yacht accident. With their dying breath, they asked his family to look after me. In return, we go to city hall every year, trying to fulfill this obligation.

Ten attempts. Ten failures.

Elevator malfunctions, food poisoning, home invasions, car crashes... Every single time, I get hurt at the worst possible mo...

My name is Junie. I'm six years old, a half-werewolf. My mom Juliet is a human witch, the gentlest woman alive.

A month ago, Mom was eight months pregnant. We were walking by the river when Dad's childhood friend Melody shoved her straight into the rushing current. The cold water took my unborn brother. When they pulled Mom out, she was covered in blood, her magic all but gone.

Dad, Maxwell, is ...

My family ignored my calls while I was dying in our basement. They thought I was trying to ruin my younger sister's graduation.
That night, my brother finally came looking for me. My sister wanted the cookies I used to bake for her.
I was right beside him when he demanded that I come home.
He couldn't hear me. My body was still downstairs.

For Joey, I shouldered the blame for a commercial crime and survived five years behind bars—alone, even through a miscarriage.

With only five days left on my sentence, his secretary flaunted a “bonus” transfer from him—521,314—and when I left one mild comment, she blocked me.

I got released early on Christmas, wanting to surprise my husband. Instead, I pushed open our bedroom door and found Joey...

I was their real daughter.

The lost princess they found, brought home, and promised to protect.

But every time she cried, I was the one punished.

Every time she bled, I was the one accused.

When she disappeared, they said it was my fault. They tore my memories apart to prove it.

Fine , only if they stand where I stood, feel what I felt, will they ever know my pain.

In a matter of life and death, the kidnappers forced my husband to choose who would walk out alive: my sister or me.

Declan chose me. My sister, Valerie, was executed because of it.

But in the three years following our rescue, Valerie's death became an uncrossable chasm between Declan and me.

He spiraled into heavy drinking, violently channeling all his resentment onto me.

It culmi...

At my seventh wedding, they replaced me.

The Oracle pointed at me and screamed one word: "CURSED."

Father's hand cracked across my face. Mother tore the wedding dress off my body and shoved my cousin Seraphine into it.

"She'll marry him instead," Father said. "You'll destroy us all."

What they didn't know? A thousand years ago, our family made a blood pact with the Shadow Lord himself: if the ...

Thirty-three days in the dark. When the dungeon door finally opened, I, Cordelia, walked out with absolutely nothing.
My adopted sister, Romina, forged the evidence that locked me away. My parents bought her lies and disowned me. My husband, Silvano, sent divorce papers to my cell and immediately dumped our three-year-old son, Lior, at an orphanage, registering him as an orphan.
Then came the diag...

"Sign the Brooklyn house over to Isla. I'll cover your tuition next semester."

Gabriel didn't look up. Just sat there in his leather chair like he was doing me a favor.

My mother grabbed my sleeve. "She has depression, Rachel. She just needs a studio. Why are you making this so hard?"

I looked at her, then at him. That house was the only thing my father left me when he died. The only thing. And...

I spent five years letting men degrade me at a club, all to save $300,000 for my blind brother Joren's eye surgery.
The day I finally raised the money, I excitedly told him he would be able to see again—only to discover he was never blind to begin with.
My husband’s "bankrupt" company had been thriving all along. My parents, who supposedly died in a plane crash, had been living luxuriously abroad....