Trauma

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 ...

Four months pregnant, I was full of joy and wanted to tell my gang-boss boyfriend.
He had sworn that if we had a child, he'd stay away from the underworld, and live a normal life with me.
But when I appeared at his stronghold holding a first aid kit, I was treated as a bitch who wanted to seduce the boss and suffered cruel abuse.
The most ironic thing was that my husband and I were only separated ...

No one would believe that Lorenzo Moretti's wife—the mafia Don's wife—

had to kneel in his study and beg him to approve three hundred thousand dollars to save her brother's life.

All because he thought a woman from Brooklyn's slums needed constant reminding of her place.

Just last night, kidnappers sent photos of my brother's severed finger, and I got on my knees begging him to sign that goddam...

My ex-husband found me selling hair clips at a flea market. Rosie was asleep in her stroller.
"Come home. She's too young for this."
I said yes.
After that, I stopped checking his phone.
Rosie stopped crying when the other girl took her toys.
He spent the night at Simone's—we didn't call.
We ran into them at the mall—we walked the other way.
We finally became what he always wanted. Easy. Quiet. No...

My stepsister and I tumbled down the stairs together. As someone with a blood clotting disorder, my spleen ruptured—I was bleeding internally, desperate for surgery to stop it.
But my mother—the renowned chief of surgery—pulled every specialist from the ER. To consult on my stepsister's condition.
All she had was a sprained ankle. Not even a scratch. Yet mom insisted on running every test in the b...

In his eyes, I had always been "understanding." Understanding enough not to fight, not to make scenes, not to ask for status.

He said we couldn't go public now, but it was for our future.

Only later did I realize that his "future" never included me.

He chose power, chose arranged marriage, chose to keep me hidden. When I finally left, he started having regrets, started saying he loved me.

But ...

An hour ago, at the company’s press conference, I had just helped my husband Carlisle quell the ninety-ninth scandal of his affair.
Now, he has my assistant Russell pinned against my office desk, kissing him, his hand slipping under Russell’s miniskirt and groping wildly.
In that moment, I’ve already planned the publicity spin for the hundredth time.
But I’m not sure if my dear husband Carlisle an...

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...

Five years in hell, my beloved and best friend joined hands to push me into the abyss. The savior I trusted was actually a deadly fraud. Reborn from despair, Vito came through the light. I tore apart the scumbag and the evil woman, settled all debts, broke free from the shadow, stepped into the light, and lived the rest of my life only for myself.

I took a bullet for my husband five years ago. He married me in the ICU before the anesthesia wore off.
Raffaele Santoro—heir to the most powerful mafia family in Italy—told me I was his everything. He bought a castle and named it after me. He reserved a grave beside his parents so we'd lie together for eternity.
While I was pumping my body full of hormones for our fourth round of IVF, he was acro...

I saw a post on Reddit, "Urgent! How do I convince my wife to donate bone marrow to my mistress?"

I scoffed and typed back, "What a piece of shit."

Right after I hit send, my husband came home. He grasped my hand, his voice shaky: "You have leukemia... but it's okay, we found a donor."

His right eye twitched—he always did that when he lied.

Then I remembered the worst comment on that post, "Tr...

Three years of marriage. Three pregnancies.

Every time I confirmed I was pregnant, my sister-in-law Ophelia would walk into the chapel behind the manor.

Then my in-laws would drag me to the hospital and force me to abort the healthy baby.

The night after my third miscarriage, I dragged my weakened body to follow her into the chapel.

The moment I pushed open that door, my blood ran cold.

In th...

The ultrasound photo caught fire slowly, curling at the edges before the flame swallowed it whole.
I watched it burn in front of my mother's grave.
Eight weeks. That was how far along I had been.
Three days ago, on the anniversary of her death, I came here to talk to her. To tell her she was going to be a grandmother.
Instead, I found my husband fucking his ex-girlfriend against the oak tree twent...

My husband never wore condoms with me. Said they ruined it for him. So I swallowed birth control pills for four years until they made me sick.
Then I found a half-empty box in his glove compartment. And a thong under his backseat.
That wasn't even the worst part.
The necklace I'd made from my mother's ashes—the one I'd been grieving over losing for a year—was dangling between his twenty-three-year...

All because I was unaware that Sophia had followed me on the mission, leaving her stranded in the chaotic dockyard.
My husband, Dante, was furious. He ordered his bodyguards to throw me into a seafood transfer warehouse.
“Cool off in the cold storage. Maybe then you’ll understand how helpless Sophia felt trapped in that container.”
It was a refrigeration unit for seafood, kept at a constant zero d...

After dreaming of making love with Anthony for the 99th time, I finally decided to confess my feelings to him.
But just as I reached the bodyguards' private lounge, I saw him under the moonlight, reverently kissing a photo of my sister Seraphina.
After he released his desires, a werewolf quietly appeared:
"Alpha Anthony, if Thea knew your true identity as the king of the Thunder Tribe, she’d proba...

Ninety-nine pearl necklaces correspond to ninety-nine fractures in my heart.

He was accustomed to using extravagant pearls to atone for his transgressions, yet on the day of my mother’s funeral, he chose to vacation with his mistress while plotting to take from me the ancestral home my mother left behind.

When the hundredth pearl arrived, I presented him with the divorce papers. The pain of my...

"You useless thing."
My husband Cassian stared at me coldly. "I thought marrying a Costa daughter would get me something, but it turns out to be nothing. And your sister, on the contrary, has become the family heir."
With that, he wrenched off our wedding ring and smashed it violently onto the ground.
"I should have chosen her in the first place, not you." Those were his final words to me.
In my p...

I am the Seer of the wolf pack, the Alpha’s wife, yet I have never truly known love.

My parents called me a bastard; my sister stole everything from me, even my husband’s heart.

Now, she blinds herself and frames me, forcing me to give up my own eyes.

No one knows that when a Seer loses her sight, she dies.

I thought that making the ultimate sacrifice would finally earn me a shred of affection...

As the only daughter of a mafia family, I learned early that trust doesn't come cheap. When my father got sick, he gave me an ultimatum: if I want to take over the family, I have to get married first.

Everyone assumed I'd pick my childhood friend, Vincent Moretti—son of my father's right-hand man. Hell, even I thought so. Until my last life, when he left me to burn.

Father died in an ambush. I w...