SPARE PARTS

Modern

My five-year-old daughter was dying in the ICU, her heartbeat replaced by the continuous, electronic scream of a flatline. I gripped her cold hand, my throat sealed shut by a terror so absolute I couldn't even cry out. I dialed my husband Grayson's private number, the one reserved only for me and his assistants. He declined the call instantly. A second later, a text buzzed against my palm: "In a meeting. Do not disturb. Stop calling." Five miles away, Grayson was at a luxury gala, adjusting his silk tie and laughing with Belle Escobar. He told her I was just being "dramatic" and using our daughter's "fever" as an excuse to avoid the event. He had no idea Effie's heart had already stopped. When I finally reached our penthouse, soaked from the rain and carrying Effie's small socks in a plastic bag, Grayson didn't even look at me. He snapped at me for ruining the hardwood floors and asked if I'd left Effie with the nanny just to "feel sorry for myself." Three days later, while I buried our daughter in a small, lonely ceremony, Grayson was at the Hamptons. Belle posted a photo of him golfing with the caption: "A mental health day with the boys." He didn't even attend the funeral, but he returned home demanding I clear out Effie's room to make a study for Belle's son. The injustice burned through me until there was nothing left. I swallowed a handful of sleeping pills, desperate to join my daughter. But instead of the darkness, I woke up to blinding lights and the scent of Grayson's expensive cologne. I was standing in a ballroom, wearing a blue silk dress I had already burned. Above me, a banner read: "Happy 5th Birthday Kaiden & Effie." I was back, exactly one year before the tragedy. This time, I wasn't going to be the grieving wife. I was going to be their worst nightmare.

Literature

The Parts Men Play by Beverley Baxter

Modern

My bodyguard, Grant, took the full force of a speeding car meant for me. In that moment, I realized I loved him. He was my protector, and I thought his fierce devotion was mine alone. But in the hospital, I overheard the truth. He hadn't saved me; he'd saved my kidney. I wasn't the woman he loved.

Literature

Chance(1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is "like a beggar, without a right to anything but compassion." After her bankrupt father is impris

Literature

P>'It is a mighty force that of mere chance, absolutely irresistible yet manifesting itself often in delicate forms such for instance as the charm, true or illusory, of a human being' In Flora de Barral, the slender, dreamy, morbidly charming daughter of a parvenu financier, Conrad creates his most

Mafia

I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile

Modern

I wore my favorite emerald silk dress to Per Se, thinking our third anniversary would finally be the night Darius came back to me. My heart was pounding with hope, but the moment he covered the rim of my champagne glass with a cold, marble-like hand, that hope died. He didn't bring a gift; he broug

Werewolf

The drill's whine was the only thing in my world, vibrating through my skull and drowning out my own screams. I was strapped to a cold metal table, paralyzed by wolfsbane, while surgeons bored into my hip bone to siphon my essence. "Just a little more," the surgeon muttered. "Isabella needs the bo

Literature

20000 Lieues sous les mers Parts 1&2 by Jules Verne

Literature

Example in this ebook As will be seen, this work is compiled from the private letters of M. Mouhot to his family and friends, and from his journal. I had also the benefit of the paper destined by my brother for the Archæological Society of London, on the interesting ruins of Ongcor. Among the do

Literature

The Rolliad, in Two Parts / Probationary Odes for the Laureatship & Political Eclogues by George Ellis