SPARE PARTS

Modern

I stood at my mother's open grave in the freezing rain, my heels sinking into the mud. The space beside me was empty. My husband, Hilliard Holloway, had promised to cherish me in bad times, but apparently, burying my mother didn't fit into his busy schedule. While the priest's voice droned on, a news alert lit up my phone. It was a livestream of the Metropolitan Charity Gala. There was Hilliard, looking impeccable in a custom tuxedo, with his ex-girlfriend Charla English draped over his arm. The headline read: "Holloway & English: A Power Couple Reunited?" When he finally returned to our penthouse at 2 AM, he didn't come alone-he brought Charla with him. He claimed she'd had a "medical emergency" at the gala and couldn't be left alone. I found a Tiffany diamond necklace on our coffee table meant for her birthday, and a smudge of her signature red lipstick on his collar. When I confronted him, he simply told me to stop being "hysterical" and "acting like a child." He had no idea I was seven months pregnant with his child. He thought so little of my grief that he didn't even bother to craft a convincing lie, laughing with his mistress in our home while I sat in the dark with a shattered heart and a secret life growing inside me. "He doesn't deserve us," I whispered to the darkness. I didn't scream or beg. I simply left a folder on his desk containing signed divorce papers and a forged medical report for a terminated pregnancy. I disappeared into the night, letting him believe he had successfully killed his own legacy through his neglect. Five years later, Hilliard walked into "The Vault," the city's most exclusive underground auction, looking for a broker to manage his estate. He didn't recognize me behind my Venetian mask, but he couldn't ignore the neon pink graffiti on his armored Maybach that read "DEADBEAT." He had no clue that the three brilliant triplets currently hacking his security system were the very children he thought had been erased years ago. This time, I wasn't just a wife in the way; I was the one holding all the cards.

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