Surviving As Parents

Modern

Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire. I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper. I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he'd dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family's land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock. I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim. "If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned. So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell-the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months. Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I've suspended Hugh's executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I'm just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout. But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back.

Fantasy

An MIT acceptance letter lay on my desk, a full-ride scholarship, my ticket to a dazzling future far from my foster home. But my foster father, Rufus, scoffed, his voice flat: "You're not going." Instead, he' d arranged a "tech internship" out West, promising big money and opportunities, while my

Romance

The spotlight burned on Dr. Julian Thorne, my mentor, as he claimed credit for my life's work. I clutched a crumpled program, every clap of applause a slap, as he casually dismissed my contributions, citing my supposed "unpreparedness" for the pressure. But his true betrayal was revealed as searin

Horror

The Arizona desert stretched endlessly before us, a shimmering ribbon of highway cutting through red rock and scrub. My best friend Emily and I were three days into our cross-country road trip, the initial excitement long gone, replaced by heat and boredom. Then Emily pointed. "Are you seeing this

Adventure

I am Princess Aurelia, but now, I am Torian Vance-my missing twin brother. I came to Wolfden Academy not for glory, but for revenge. Everyone who approaches me is a potential suspect in his murder. I must play the part of a weakling, an imposter, to uncover the truth from the shadows. But my disguis

Fantasy

So? I'm a big girl. I'm not scared of the dark." My Aunt halts at my words. She's frozen, facing into the living room, and I'm glaring at her back so hard that I'm surprised she can't feel holes burning through her ribcage. Finally, ever so slowly, she spins to face me. Her green eyes are piercing,

Modern

Working during summer vacation, a strange customer threw hot milk tea at me and even damaged the machines in the store. The milk tea shop sided with the customer and even took all of my wages to compensate for the damages. When I went to argue about it, I was crushed into minced meat by a large tr

Romance

It's kind of hard to live a pretty fulfilling life without your parents. A very hard life that begins for me. After my parents' funeral, I had to leave the family home with my grandmother Amandine and my little brother Idriss to manage. I met Stéphane, a neighborhood neighbor who helped me a lot. A

Fantasy

I died in the apocalypse, only to wake up as Kenzie Banks, a bankrupt high-society monster in an interstellar beast-world. But before I could even process my new reality, a cold AI voice informed me of my impending death. "Your contract beast-husbands possess the legal right to execute you at the

Horror

The smell of grain and something sour-a barn in my suburban kitchen-was the first sign of something deeply wrong with my seemingly normal life with my mother, Eleanor. Standing over the blender, humming an unsettling tune, she poured what looked like chicken feed into it, her eyes wild with a grim,

History

The Great Depression had gnawed away at everything, leaving my family-my parents, Mark and Susan, and me, Sarah-scrambling for survival in a city choked with despair. Then, they found Buddy, a stray golden retriever, shivering in an alley. Suddenly, my meager cannery wages, meant for rent and food

Romance

A girl who has to struggle to meet her family's needs alone while her two older siblings are very pampered by her mother, since her father had an accident the family's burden has been carried by her. her mother really hated her and thought her daughter was bad luck for her family. Will he be able to

Romance

Autumn woke up with a brutal headache and a glowing red warning projected onto her retinas. She had been bound to a ruthless system as the "Elite Girlfriend" to Harrison Jennings, the wealthiest, most robotic student on campus. But her status was a death sentence: Cannon Fodder scheduled for delet

Mafia

I was lying in a sterile hospital bed, recovering from a severe hemorrhage that had just taken my baby. Hours later, a police officer handed me a bloodstained watch, informing me my parents had been killed in a car crash rushing to see me. My husband, the city's most feared Mafia Don and a brillian

Modern

After my family's business collapsed, I married my first love's older brother. On the wedding day, even though Jase Mitchell begged me with tears, I never looked back. Four years later, my husband Kade Mitchell passed away from illness, and his stepmother Katie Fuller drove me and my son out o

Literature

As Seen By Me by Lilian Bell

Literature

Strong as Death by Guy de Maupassant

Young Adult

A boy with an ice-cold nature named Alizter made Morin curious to death. Why is that boy so closed off and so difficult to approach? Morin felt curious, she wanted to approach Alizter, but it wasn't as easy as she imagined. There is something going on with Alizter, and Morin wants to get to know t

Romance

“I don’t care if you don’t have money. Because I know a way how you can pay me back.” After he dropped those words, his gray eyes scanned her from head to toe. “Use your body.” ****************** Agatha Simon signed a contract that will change her life forever. In order to pay off her father's

LGBT+

An embarrassing incident took place on Jaylene's Hall Of Vintage Collection opening day. While his grandmother was giving her appreciation speech with a proud smile on her face and was about to name Jaylene the next CEO. The light goes off and reappears with a sex video of him and his boyfriend di