Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 329 short novels in Revenge
"I can't breathe," I said, though the room smelled like smoke and alcohol and someone else's success. "You're overreacting," Tyler Reynolds laughed, his voice thick with cheap whiskey. "Relax. It's all in good fun." I forced a smile I didn't feel. "Mr. Reynolds, I really should—" "Save it," he cut me off and grabbed my wrist. "You fly in from overseas and act so innocent. Come on, Emilia. Don't be that frozen statue." "Let go of me," I said. He tightened his grip, and his hands...
They carried me to the great house at the hour the town clock called unlucky, and I felt no fear of men anymore—only a patient, hollow sort of cold that matched the dusk. "Open the cover," a voice said. I kept my eyes closed. If they wanted me dead, fine. I could meet death like a tired traveler. "Kaia?" someone whispered. I blinked. The name left me raw. "Jonas?" Jonas Espinoza stood there, stunned, the lamplight catching on his damp hair. He looked exactly like the boy who had...
I woke up to lanterns and screams, to silk and blood and a thousand eyes that had only ever seen me as a joke. "Help! The bride's dying!" somebody shouted, and the wedding music cut like a snapped string. Someone lifted me out of the carriage—eight men had carried the palanquin—and I tasted metal and fear. My wrist was a wide, black wound. A knife lay on the boards, slick and cruel. "Bring her inside! Call the medic!" the steward barked. They dumped me on the bridal bed and left the...
I remember the cold first, a blade of wind that seemed to cut right through my heavy cloak and straight into my bones. "Margot," Ella hissed, pressing a warming brazier into my hands. "Stay back. Don't—" "I will not leave," I said. "Let me see them." "Your blood will run ice," she whispered, and wrapped my cloak higher. Her voice trembled, but her hands were steady. That steadiness had saved me countless times. I held the brazier and watched. Before me, on the raised platform, my...
I remember the first night like a bruise—thick and impossible to ignore. "You don't have to be afraid," he murmured, voice low enough that the room kept our secret. "I am," I whispered back. "I'm really scared." He kissed my forehead then, soft and sure. "I'll take care of you. Always." That was how it began. I gave my first time to Ulrich Roy. He was trouble in sneakers and a smile that could stop a room. He fought, collected debts, and slept where it was cheapest. At eighteen...
I remember the wedding day by three images: the projector's light, the red paper rose in Rafael's pocket, and the sound of a chair cracking against glass. "I want to show the guests our story," the master of ceremonies said, voice warm and slow. "Let us watch the happy moments of Lauryn and Rafael." Rafael squeezed my hand so hard I felt his knuckles bruise my palm. He smiled—one of those rare smiles that promised people nothing but danger. "You know we have our good memories," he...
I still remember the exact sound my pulse made the first time I saw her again. "Do you know her?" Sebastien asked as she came down the staircase. "Who?" I said, but I knew. She wore white like a princess: a filmy dress, designer shoes, a smile that shone because it had never needed to carry shame. "Brooke," Sebastien said, and his voice had that warmth I had loved for years. Angelina Archer laughed as she reached the bottom step and swung an arm around his elbow. "This is my...
I woke up with the same cold in my chest as always and a different kind of memory lining the edges of my mind. "I can't—" I heard a voice in the dark of my old dream, the voice that had haunted me. "Half an hour, I can't make it—" "Shh. Stay still. I—" Another voice, close, tender, but wrong. The scene broke like thin glass. I sat up, heart hammering, and for a second I tasted iron and felt a shame that wasn't mine anymore. Then the truth hit me: that wasn't a dream. That was last life,...
I am Colton Burke. This is my fifth year loving Emma Yamamoto. January of that year, Rafael Albrecht’s company held its annual gala. I slipped in and stood in the dim corner of the ballroom, watching her. She went up on stage as the company’s Employee of the Year. Her speech was steady, her face cold. She seemed even farther away than the first time I met her five years ago. That quiet, distant shell around her had thickened, like frost over water. I had already found her music...
"I can't feel my own name." Rain hit the tile like a hand, hard and steady. I opened my eyes and tasted iron. My throat burned as if someone had scrubbed it raw with lemon. The room smelled of wet cloth and cold skin. Lightning made the world flicker into white, then back into shadow. A woman lay beside me on the straw pallet. Her face was pale as moonstone. Her belly was gone flat, a crude patch of stitches and blood-dark fabric. "Is she breathing?" someone whispered. I sat up....
"I don't want you to leave me," he mouthed against my hair. I opened my eyes to the dark, to Greyson Fisher's face close enough to see his breath fog the space between us. His hands were hard as stone, his chest rising, falling. For a second my mind blanked, then memory exploded—ten years, a party, a drugged cup, a bed that wasn't mine. "Greyson?" I whispered. My voice felt small. He nodded slowly. He read lips. He had always read mine. The room smelled like stale perfume and...
The first day I died, he brought his first love home. They kissed on the sofa I had bought. They ate the celery dumplings I had learned to make for him. They laughed with the game console I had wrapped for his birthday. I floated by the ceiling like a bad lightbulb—clear, useless, and too close to everything. I wanted to scream at them to stop. I wanted to shove the lamp off the table, to clap my transparent hands over her mouth. But I couldn't touch them. I couldn't change the sound of...
I still remember the exact moment the rumor started, how it spread from mouth to mouth like a spilled jar of ink, staining everything it touched. "You see her? That's Stella Gallo. Caught cheating on the last math exam," someone whispered the first day I returned to the new classroom after the transfer. "Wait—Stella? But she entered City One as the top scorer in the whole district," another voice replied, incredulous. "Her dad is the education bureau director. Heard they arranged seats...
"I didn't drown," I said, because saying it made my throat less heavy. "Then why are you green around the eyes?" Flynn smiled and leaned closer. "You look... wrong. Did you not sleep? Did someone pour bad tea on you?" "You're enjoying this," I said. "Am I?" Flynn Henry tilted his head. "Claire, I—" "Don't call me that," I snapped. "Call me my name properly. Call me Claire Fitzgerald." He blinked like a child and then, with a softness that used to be rare in him, answered,...
I never imagined the worst, boldest thing I would ever do at twenty-seven was to use a lie to take what I wanted for one night. "You said we'd pretend nothing happened after that door," I told him across the table at Peninsula Coffee. "And yet you're here," he said. "I said what I meant." "You meant to pry," he answered, calm as a cold lake. "I meant to get back at a coward," I said. I was Isabella Diaz. I was a urology doctor assigned to the VIP clinic at Kyoto General, the...
I woke up to the smell of antiseptic and someone's awkward kindness. "You're awake," a man said. "Don't talk yet. Breathe slowly." I tried to answer and a nurse shushed me like a child. My throat felt like gravel. "What day is it?" "Two days after surgery. I—" he swallowed. "I stayed." He was always good at small confessions. I looked at his face and didn't know it as well as I thought I did. It was Tomas Garnier's face, the same hands that tied my shoelaces for me, the same...
1 I was nine when the first terrible night happened. "It will be all right. Don't make a sound." Elena whispered, her face wet with tears. She shoved me toward the bedroom window before she locked her fingers on mine. "No matter what, you stay quiet. Promise me." "I promise." I was small enough to squeeze through the iron bars. I could hear the living room door slam. Someone was banging on the bedroom door. Hard. "Who is it?" came a man’s voice low and sharp. "Open! Open this...
I woke up in another life with my hands stained by cold dust and my cheeks wet from tears that weren't mine. "Don't call him my son," my father snapped as if the words could carve a separate world. "I will not!" I answered, but the voice felt thin in my mouth. Someone pushed, someone shouted, and I remembered the two struck palms between my father and that ragged man — the pact not finished. A hand came down toward my face. I shut my eyes and fainted. When I opened them, a quilt...
I woke up with the taste of iron on my tongue and hands that belonged to a different life. "Monica," someone said, voice low and patient. "Are you awake?" I stared at the face over me—Avery Mahmoud's face—but when my hand flew to my throat to steady my breath, the fingers were mine. Not his. My heart kicked as if it had been hit with a mace. "Are you hurt?" the face asked again. "It hurts," I said, and the voice that came out was his. I looked down and saw the heavy cloak, the...
I remember the snow because of how it made everything honest. It did not hide footprints; it showed every stamp, every pleading forehead pressed flat into white. When I was small I watched a boy kneel for three days in snow that cut through his sleeves. "He will not stand," I thought then. The boy later became the man who took our house, and my life, and whose name I could not look at without tasting cold. "Lauren." My brother called me that like a bell. "Come. Eat." "Later." I said. I...
