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Found 329 short novels in Revenge
I am Elaina Sherman. "I saw them," I told myself like an accusation. "I saw them together." They were the two people who had built the map of my life—Atlas Green and I used to joke that maps led to treasure; Annabelle Chang and Carter Malik were part of my coastline, my safe harbor. Now that coastline had been cut by a jagged reef. "I can't believe she would do this," I said out loud to the empty room, because speaking softened the ache a little. "You have to decide," Atlas told me...
They told me the job would be quick. They told me to trust a man who posted in a group about shoots and bookings. I wanted work. I wanted money. I wanted a chance. "My name is Hilary," I said into the phone one afternoon when a man in the WeChat group said he had a shoot. "I can do it. I'm available." "You look like a good fit," he answered. "Meet me tonight. Come alone." "What's the pay?" I asked. "Three thousand, day job," he said. "Pretty face, can last long hours. Come to the...
I woke up to the smell of cheap coffee and the wrong weight of a stranger’s arm across my ribs. My head felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to it. I blinked, and a face I had loved from afar for four years loomed above me. “Gavan?” I whispered, my voice a sandpaper sound. Gavan Thompson blinked back, eyes glassy, his temple still red from drink. He looked shocked like a statue that had been dropped. “Everly,” he said, stunned. “What—” We both froze. The room smelled like sweat and...
I don't know why the police arrived right when Gerard and I were at the loudest point of our fight. "You two—what's going on here?" the woman who barged into my apartment asked first. Short hair, neat uniform, face that would be soft in other lights but not now. Her name tag read Juliana Garcia. "I'm telling you, he's trying to kill me," I said. My voice was raw from yelling. "He switched my pills. He gave me things that thin my blood. He wanted me gone." "I only saw you two arguing...
I woke up and thought I had escaped a nightmare. "Emily? You okay?" Colin Thompson's voice came from the bed, casual, like the question always was about laundry, not survival. I couldn't move my arms. The memory of a world turned to a feeding ground crawled through my skin — last time, teeth and hunger had taken everything. Last time I had been left in a stairwell while they closed the door and walked away. The taste of iron and rot filled my mouth in memory and made me retch. "I—" I...
I never imagined the night a hospital called would be the hinge that flipped my life inside out. "Sebastian's in emergency," the nurse said. "A muscle rupture. He needs surgery." "He's supposed to be on a business trip," I said, because I needed something sensible to hang onto. "Sign here," she answered, and pushed a consent form across the plastic counter. I drove through a winter night that tasted like glass. My hands shook so badly I almost missed a turn. Sebastian Vasquez and I...
I remember the first time I discovered the message: it was a line on a small glowing screen that called my wife "baby." The room smelled of coffee and the Christmas tree lights were still blinking from the night before. I watched the word "baby" appear and felt a light, ridiculous grin crawl across my face. "Who is 'baby'?" I didn't ask it like a man confronting an enemy. I asked it like a man reading the weather. Violeta looked up from the breakfast table and said, "My friend. She has a...
I still remember the first time my body betrayed me on a borrowed bicycle. "You look pale, Lila. Come sit, let me fan you." Dustin Lane waved his cheap palm fan like a man rehearsed in small comforts. He was easy to trust then—retired from the city hospital, back in the mountains with a neat little clinic. He had a white coat, a steady hand, and a voice that sounded like the inside of a safe. That voice made me say things I never planned to say. "Mr. Lane," I said, "it itches there... and...
When I was fifteen, Shane Cummings took my hand and promised me the moon. "I'll keep you safe," he said then, like a vow carved into bone. "Whatever comes, I won't leave you." I believed him the way children believe in tides. I believed him until the winter when the snow fell so hard it erased the world and showed me the shape of his lies. "I have to tell you something," I whispered into the sterile light of the clinic, clutching the pregnancy slip between my fingers. Shane didn't...
I woke up drenched in a memory I had lived again and again. "I dreamed it again," I told no one in particular as I sat on the worn couch. "He loved her in the dream. He took everything." "My lady, the rent—" Joann Carlson, my assistant, hissed into the phone with the landlord. "They say if we don't pay today—" "Okay," I said, and I put on sunglasses. "Then go pay it. I'll be fine." Joann's voice trembled. "You can't just—" "I know what I am," I said. "I'm Genesis Campbell. I know...
I remember the exact words like a stone hitting my chest. "Just sign it, Juyun. It's easier for everyone," my grandmother snapped from the doorway, her voice sharp and dry as old broom straw. "No," my mother said. "I won't sign. I won't leave my children and my work for nothing." I was twelve then, but I had a clarity that felt older. I remember the scrape of straw on my shoulders as I came up with a bundle of pig grass, the way the sun cut the yard into clean, hot shapes. I remember...
I am Giulia Reid. I was, for a long time, a much-feared widow in the valley town of Yunxi. "How many husbands have you had?" the butcher's wife hissed once, across a courtyard when she thought no official would hear. "Five," I told her. "Five perfectly timed inheritances." The truth was blunt and small: I had money, acres, a yard large enough to plant silence. I had a gold tea set that pleased no one but myself, and a mattress wide enough to sleep without dreaming. "You're a witch,"...
I remember the night Alessandro Avery first struck her in front of everyone. "Is she a fake?" he barked, his voice cutting through the hall like a whip. "She—" a new captive who had arrived with the envoys stuttered, "I saw her before. She is not the true princess from the south." "Lie," Hazley whispered, barely audible. "Tell me the truth," Alessandro said. "Are you the southern princess they brought as tribute?" Hazley Schneider sank onto her knees. Her hands folded so...
I remember the way the chamber smelled of new linens and iron. I remember how small the baby was, no bigger than my palm, how it cried a thin, puzzled cry as if the world had startled it awake too early. I remember the doctor’s hands—so steady—and the way Leonardo Dawson’s face was like winter: handsome and utterly cold. “My lord,” the doctor said softly, holding the child as if it were porcelain. “Fresh as it is, the blood will be purer. The ancient notes say a newborn from a Nine-Yin...
I never expected to be excited about meeting a mother-in-law. "I mean it," I told my colleague Andrea one morning, stirring my tea with too much energy. "If she's as loud as they say, I want to see it. My mom—she taught me how to shout back. This could be like watching two old champions spar." Andrea blinked. "You're serious? Most people would be scared." "I'm not most people," I said. They whispered at work about Hudson's family like it was a local legend. "Is that the Black...
I found the camera when an electric toothbrush wouldn't charge. "I thought the outlet was faulty," I said out loud to the empty apartment, "and then I found that tiny dot." The dot was no bigger than a fingernail. It sat inside the bathroom outlet like a quiet eye. I pulled the charger out, and the world tilted. "I've been watched," I whispered. "All of this time." I remember the smell of detergent from the towels, the faint steam clinging to the mirror, and my knees going soft. I...
I woke to a desert sky so wide it swallowed my breath. "Are you really going to run?" Corbin Collins asked, the guard who had ridden beside me until the road narrowed and the world felt small. "I am," I said, and my voice did not tremble. "Tell those who sent me this far that I will not be their prize." "Serena," he said, and there was pity in his tone that I couldn't bear. "Think of your mother." "Think of my mother?" I laughed. "My mother disappeared so long ago that even the...
"I need you to sound like me for three nights," Gemma said, voice low over the phone. "I can do it," I answered, keeping my spoon from clinking. "Promise me you won't blow it," she warned. "Promise," I said. "Good." She sent a voice clip. "He likes a soft, girlish tone. Sing a lullaby, hum a little—he won't tell." I practiced Gemma's cadence for a whole day and night. My twins, Everleigh and Addison, slept through my rehearsals. I hooked my work account, slipped into the...
"I opened the heavy iron gate and the cold sun hit my face." I squinted and saw a black car waiting by the lot—a Bugatti I used to dream about. "Ms. Moretti," a voice said, flat and clean like steel. Evren Belyaev stepped out of the car with a guard at his side. He looked like every poster of a perfect man. His eyes looked like nothing at all. "Mr. Belyaev," I limped forward and bowed, my knee whispering pain through wool and bone. "It's been—" "Two years," he cut in. "Be grateful...
I heard it first from a wind that slid through the palace eaves. "Ethan Dominguez is dead," the wind seemed to say. "What?" I set the cup down so hard the wine trembled. "Dead how?" "A body at a small shrine in the flowered valley," a servant told me. "Half a chicken stuck in his teeth." "Half a chicken?" I laughed, but my laugh was a thin thing. "That sounds like Ethan." "He lay with his chest torn open," the servant added, lowering his voice. "Ethan?" I repeated. "No. Not...
