SPARE PARTS

Romance

On our third anniversary, my husband canceled our dinner, claiming a sudden work emergency. I tracked his phone to an exclusive French restaurant, only to find him tenderly fastening a blessed bracelet—one I had flown across the world to get for him—onto his college ex-girlfriend's wrist. The sheer shock triggered a violent placental abruption. Bleeding out in my car just across the street, I frantically called his number. Through the window, I watched him glance at his screen, frown in annoyance, and press decline to focus on his lover. While I was wheeled into a freezing operating room for an emergency C-section utterly alone, he took his mistress back to our marital bed. He didn't even bother to check if I was alive, completely oblivious that our premature daughter was fighting for her life in the NICU. I soon discovered our entire marriage was a sham. He had used my family's wealth to save his company, and now he was trading me to secure a massive business deal with his ex's father. The man I loved didn't exist; he only saw me as a disposable asset. "I'm going to make him wish he had never been born." After secretly securing my baby in a private retreat, I ordered a medical-grade silicone pregnancy belly to hide my flat stomach. I stepped back into our penthouse, ready to burn his precious empire to the ground.

Mafia

I stood at the altar, about to marry Enzo, a notorious and bloodthirsty Mafia Capo. Suddenly, my own mother stormed the blood-red carpet, hurling illicit photographs at my face to frame me as a woman of scandalous ruin. She screamed to the armed guests that I was ruined, and pulled out my hidden, "pure" twin sister Sienna to take my place. Enzo immediately discarded me, possessively taking Sienna's hand and announcing her as his real bride. But he didn't let me go; he dragged me into a soundproof room, his eyes scanning my face like a surgeon evaluating a transplant. That was when I learned the horrifying truth: my mother and sister had sold me. Enzo didn't want a wife; he wanted a perfect donor for a procedure to restore his scarred childhood sweetheart, and I was just the backup spare. For years, I had scrubbed floors and surrendered my youth to pay off my mother's crushing medical debts. I couldn't believe my own family had faked the illness just to drain my blood, only to hand me over to a monster's operating table for a massive wire transfer. But before Enzo could take my face, the ruling Don raided the estate, exposing the hidden underground lab where Sienna had already lost her life. Looking at my bankrupt mother begging on her knees in the dirt days later, I didn't feel a shred of pity. "You signed the contract." I stepped around her sobbing form and got into the Don's car, completely dead to my toxic past.

Mafia

I stood at the altar, about to marry Enzo, a notorious and bloodthirsty Mafia Capo. Suddenly, my own mother stormed the blood-red carpet, hurling illicit photographs at my face to frame me as a woman of scandalous ruin. She screamed to the armed guests that I was ruined, and pulled out my hidden,

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

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

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

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