After Death

While I bled to death locked in a storage room, my fiancé Adrian was holding my sister's hand, comforting her.

He hung up on my final call for help, leaving only a voicemail: "If anything happens to Lena, the engagement is off."

My sister once said her birthday wish had always been for me to disappear.

That night, her wish came true early.

But my soul never left.

I watched everyone gather aro...

My husband locked me in a suitcase to punish me for frightening his childhood sweetheart. He said I could come out when I apologized. By the time his assistant warned him about the smell, our baby and I were already dead. But Adrian still expected me to crawl out and beg for forgiveness—and I was trapped beside him, watching.

I died, but my body lay unclaimed in the police station.
The police officer investigating my death was my biological father.
Just on the day I was recognized as his daughter, my fake sister fell to her death off a cliff.
They blamed everything on me.
Even when the kidnapper called,
they thought it was just a ploy of mine to get their attention.
They wished I had died in place of their daughter.
No...

On the morning of the entrance exams, my parents locked me inside the family freezer to keep me from outshining Ethan.
They thought they were saving him from a prophecy.
By the time they realized the prophecy was a lie, I had already frozen to death with my hand still raised against the door.

My husband often made me suffer for the sake of my younger sister, even divorcing me because of her.
My parents gave all their love to my sister and neglected me.
My husband and parents even had my sister perform surgery on me.
But they didn't know that my sister had no idea how to perform surgery.
It didn't matter though, because I no longer cared.
On Christmas Day, when they were celebrating, th...

For six years, I had worked as a contract killer to pay for my brother's leukemia treatment.
Today, I had finally saved enough money to cover his surgery.
But he casually rejected the operation.
"Actually, I'm not sick. And Mom and Dad aren't dead, either. I planned that car accident six years ago."
My husband, Damian Blackwood, followed his confession with one of his own.
"I never went bankrupt, ...

My boyfriend successfully proposed with a spectacular drone light show.
The whole city erupted in celebration: “Mr. and Mrs. Hansen—finally, a couple united!”
Yet, nestled in his arms was none other than his secretary.
The "Mrs. Hansen" everyone speaks of is now nothing more than a forgotten memory, buried beneath the earth.

I’d spent four years slaving away in the hospital basement sorting medical waste.
I thought I’d finally scraped together enough money to pay for my brother Leo’s brain damage treatment.
But he just took the card and tossed it onto the coffee table.
“I got better ages ago. That lousy little paycheck of yours? I blew it on a necklace for Victoria.”
My husband David pushed open the study door. “Tha...

I died the day before my brother Beckett’s state equestrian qualifiers.

Just because Beckett had mistakenly taken sedatives and fallen into a coma, my mother firmly believed that I—a worthless, sickly burden—had deliberately poisoned him out of jealousy to ruin her perfect son's future.

Ignoring my fatal immunodeficiency, knowing that even a microscopic trace of wasp venom would kill me, she dra...

I just got out of prison after three years, and my family wants me to go back in.
"It's only three days," they said. "You survived three years—what's three more days?"
What they don't know: I'm dying. The only thing keeping me alive is my mate bond. Three days away from Everett means death.
For three years in prison, someone sent me food every week. No note, no name. I thought it meant my family s...

On the third day after my death, Massimo got the call.
His arm was around another woman. He didn't even flinch.
"Dead is dead," he said. "Burn her, then call me."
He came to the crematorium two hours late. He took my ashes, dropped them on the floor, and stepped on them like they were dirt.
"Tell Tess," he said, "if she's still alive, she can crawl back and beg. If she's really dead, I'll dig her ...

My husband, the terrifying Mafia Don, dropped fifteen million dollars on a luxury yacht just to throw a lavish, high-profile birthday celebration for his precious first love.

And today marks exactly seven days since I died of an infection in a Detroit slum, simply because I couldn't scrape together a few cents for antibiotics.

At the banquet, an oblivious guest tactlessly brought up my name....

My Alpha once swore to love and protect me. But the night he marked my fake sister while the cruel Alpha with a dozen dead mates dragged me away, I knew it was all a lie.

Now that I’m gone, he suddenly wants me back.

But it’s too late. My story with him ended in blood and fire—
and all I want now… is a new beginning.

My family ignored my calls while I was dying in our basement. They thought I was trying to ruin my younger sister's graduation.
That night, my brother finally came looking for me. My sister wanted the cookies I used to bake for her.
I was right beside him when he demanded that I come home.
He couldn't hear me. My body was still downstairs.

I was murdered. My body was dumped on the riverbank.
The detective leading the case is Brennan Carter — my husband. He has sworn to find the killer of this "unidentified female." He doesn't know the victim is me.
I've been missing for seven days. My colleagues and supervisors keep calling Brennan to ask where I am. Dismissing it as a tantrum, he's spent the week doing one thing: celebrating his mi...

They say the dead go where they belong.

But I didn't.

I drift through the cold winds, watching my husband—the detective who once swore to protect me with his life—diligently investigating a dismemberment case.

He doesn't know that the broken body lying in the morgue is his wife.

He doesn't know that the gentle, caring "psychologist" who brings him lunch every day is the one who killed me.

He ...

As the tyrant ruling the underworld, Victor was ruthless and bloodthirsty, showing no mercy to anyone.

Women who tried to climb into his bed usually didn’t even get a whole corpse, yet I was the only one he kept by his side.

I’d taken a poisoned bullet for him, and nearly bled to death on the rotting floor of a safe house giving birth to his son.

He once kissed the bullet scar on my shoulder an...

In a matter of life and death, the kidnappers forced my husband to choose who would walk out alive: my sister or me.

Declan chose me. My sister, Valerie, was executed because of it.

But in the three years following our rescue, Valerie's death became an uncrossable chasm between Declan and me.

He spiraled into heavy drinking, violently channeling all his resentment onto me.

It culmi...

From a young age, I understood that my asthma was a shackle for my entire family. My parents took turns caring for me, their hearts gripped by the fear of any sign of respiratory distress. In their fervent concern for my health, they even compelled my sister, Sophie, freshly accepted into university, to postpone her studies and return home to assist in my care.
At Sophie's eighteenth birthday cele...

On my birthday, I was dragged up to the attic and assaulted by several men.
I called my parents, brother, and boyfriend for help, but they all thought I was seeking attention and ruining my sister Sophie's celebration.
"Mia, stop it. We're busy preparing for Sophie's party. If you want attention, find another way."
This was the hundredth time they'd let me down.
But there won't be a hundred and fi...