Best Bias Stories & Novels Collection

"Cut it out, Clara. Vivian’s game is what matters right now."
Those were my father’s last words to me before hanging up. My dad was the city’s legendary narcotics detective; my mom, the chief medical examiner. Now, they have finally arrived. Not to save me, but to process an unrecognizable corpse rotting in a dark warehouse.
"Brutally tortured. A vendetta," Dad mutters, while Mom snaps on latex ...

"Sign the rejection papers, Elena. If you refuse to be the test subject for Vivian's ritual, I will sever our mate bond."
My fated mate, Alpha Adrian, shoved the documents at me.
My parents stood behind him, eyes full of disgust.
"If you don't save your twin sister, you are no longer our daughter!" they sneered.
They all thought I was the strong, selfish one who owed my frail sister everything...

A year into our engagement, Julian Vaughn kept telling me that, as the family’s future Donna, I couldn’t expect him to make every little decision for me, even about dinner.

As the young Don who ran Philadelphia’s docks and casinos, he already had plenty of people waiting for him to tell them what to do.

So I’d finalized my resignation and accepted the job in Seattle. When a friend asked me to br...

Before summer break, we'd already planned a beach trip to Nantucket.

A few days before we left, Chase, my boyfriend of two years, said he wanted to hit the water park outside town first, kind of like a warm-up for the beach.

I even bought a new swimsuit for it, thinking it'd be a day for just the two of us.

Then I got to the gate, and my best friend Skylar was standing there in a bikini that wa...

To get out of an engagement my family had set up years ago, I sent the Carringtons a doctored photo of myself, my face covered in freckles and my skin dull and sallow.

The Carringtons were the richest family in New York, and everyone knew their only heir, Damian Carrington, was picky to the point of obsession.

If he didn't like the way you looked, you weren't getting within ten feet of him.

So ...

The day we submitted our college applications, Chloe cried a little, and that was all it took. My two childhood best friends were ready to throw away their shot at the Ivy League and follow her to a community college.

Nothing I said got through to them, so I went behind their backs and called their parents.

Their parents rushed over that same night and made them switch their applications back, w...

My boyfriend of three years, Blake, had promised to propose at my twentieth birthday party.

But that night, he walked right past me with the ring and got down on one knee in front of my stepsister, Chelsea.

The whole room clapped. I just stood there, frozen, in the white dress I'd picked out for my engagement.

Everyone was just waiting to watch me fall apart.

Then Grayson, heir to the Hale fam...

"My family's company went bankrupt, and my father was critically ill.

I dropped out of school and worked multiple jobs every day.

Debt collectors beat me and broke my ribs, but I couldn't afford painkillers.

Every penny I earned went to expensive medicine, all to save my father.

Until I saw my father, who should have been bedridden on oxygen, holding a champagne glass at a hotel banquet hall.
...

Ask anyone in Westbrook who the richest man in town was, and the first name out of their mouth would be Graham Thorne.

Hardly anyone knew he'd been married for years. Or that his wife was me.

For five years, every time he went off to see his first love, Vivian Hale, another priceless necklace showed up in my jewelry case.

By the time the ninety-ninth one went in, he finally sensed something was...

When I was diagnosed with leukemia, the first thing I felt was relief.

I wasn't really their kid anyway. If I died, I wouldn't owe anybody anything.

When I was six, my little sister Sloane and I fought over a limited-edition doll. Mom dragged me into a corner and said it slowly, making sure I didn't miss a word.

"You're not our real daughter. Everything you have in this house is a handout from ...

Jaxson Rourke, head of the Rourke family, had one unbreakable rule: at 9:00 PM every night, he stopped taking calls.

Even in the early days of our relationship, his 9 PM blackout was absolute.

I only broke that rule once. Followed by a rival crew late one night, I called him in a panic.

His voice was ice-cold. "Handle it yourself, Soraya. You know my hours."

I spent the entire night alone at t...

With thirty minutes left before the Common App portal closed, my entire family was huddled around Lumina's laptop.

"Columbia," my older brother, Kael urged, tapping her screen. "I'm already there. I'll look out for you."

"Yale," Cove, our childhood friend, countered, sliding a glossy brochure across the kitchen island. "We promised, Lumi. Four more years."

Behind them, our parents beamed.

"Any...

A year ago, I stood at the altar in my wedding dress, about to marry into the Vitale family.

We were halfway through the vows when my fiancé, Theo, turned and ran out of the church.

His adopted sister, Bianca, had climbed onto the roof of the estate and sworn she'd jump if he didn't come back.

The pews were packed with people from all the major families, and every one of them was waiting to wat...

My husband, Callum, had threatened me with divorce more times than I could count, always to guilt me into sacrificing myself for my sister, Sloane.

My parents did their part, too. Give Sloane the good stuff, they'd say, or get cut out of the will.

In the past, I would have cried and made a scene.

But the hundredth time Callum waved divorce in my face and ordered me to test drugs for my sister, ...

"You're adopted, you know. Mom and Dad got you out of foster care."

My sister said that to me during a fight when I was eight.

I ran to my parents in tears, needing them to tell me it wasn't true. Instead, they pulled her into their arms and nodded at me.

"It's true. Your real parents didn't want you."

For the next fifteen years, I lived like a package that could be returned to sender at any m...

"I had the hospital put your mother back on treatment. Now behave yourself, and quit making up excuses to get money out of me."

The call came from my husband, Silas Crane.

The Don of the Crane family had noticed I hadn't gone to his assistant for money in five whole days. He probably figured I'd finally been trained to be a proper Donna.

Before he hung up, he added, "I know life's tough for peo...

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, ...

It was my fifth engagement party, and my fiancé, Adrian, didn't show up. Again.

Guests from every family showed up, and one by one, they left again.

Adrian was the Don of the Severino family. We'd been engaged for three years.

His father, Vincent, New York's old Godfather, had arranged the match himself. Every family in the city knew I'd be the next Severino Donna.

My mom, Diane, didn't rush i...

After the woman Adrian Cole had always loved pushed her out of a helicopter as it lifted off, Summer Bennett handed in her notice.
She remained the most dependable assistant in Cole Group's executive office. But everyone noticed small changes.
She no longer carried Adrian's coffee into his office herself. Lunch came from the company cafeteria instead of the private chef who had prepared his carefu...

For as long as I could remember, my family had insisted Vivian needed more because I could take more.
The pony I loved. The occasions meant to celebrate me. Time with my mother. If my twin wanted any of it, I was the one expected to go without.
Our induction into the Mafia Family was meant to be the exception. We were both daughters of Don Moretti. A crown was supposed to be waiting for each of us...

The five of us wanted to go to a concert.

I used four devices, with every ticketing app I could find open, and managed to get five tickets.

But on the day of the show, when I met everyone outside the arena, my best friend had brought another girl.

“This is Lily, my coworker. She's been a Luke Morgan fan for twenty years!” Jenna said. “When she heard we had five tickets, she asked if we could sp...

When we moved to the estate on the hill, all the bedrooms had already been assigned.
My parents had the primary suite.
My brother, Adrian, had the east wing.
The south suite, with its view of the Hudson—the nicest room in the house—was marked Grace's Room.
There was no room with my name on it.
In the hall, a worker was fastening brass plaques to the bedroom doors.
Not one of them read Claire.
Ten ...

In our family, fairness was the one rule nobody broke.

My brother Brody and my sister Raegan are twins.

Growing up, if one of them got an extra cookie, the other would tear the whole house apart.

To keep the peace, Mom and Dad split everything down the middle. Half went to Brody, half went to Raegan.

Which meant nothing in this house was ever mine.

I was the third kid. The one my parents neve...

On the day of my marking ceremony, my mate, Ryan Mercer, is caught kissing my sister, Paige Frost, in the dressing room. The whole pack gets to laugh at my humiliation.

Then Alpha Ethan Vale steps forward. With everyone watching, he gives me his mark.

Once we're married, Ethan couldn't be kinder to me. But we can't conceive a pup. At last, I try IVF, and I finally get pregnant.

He becomes even ...

The five of us had an unwritten rule: we never discussed plans. We guessed.

What to eat, where to go, who was paying—everything was a guessing game.

They called it the kind of connection you developed after ten years together.

Somehow, I was always the only one who got it wrong.

Two weeks before our fall vacation, I asked the group chat, “Where are we going?”

All four of them gave the same an...

The night I graduated from college, Bianca Moretti asked what I was going to do next. My Mafia family had only recently brought their biological daughter home.
I didn't get a chance to answer. The four men I'd grown up with answered first, each taking his turn.
They all had paperwork showing that they were moving to California.
Then Dante Romano, the future head of one of Chicago's most powerful c...

“Look at yourself, Aurora. You’re thirty. You’re not the queen of hockey anymore.”

Ten years ago, Aurora Vale stood on the Olympic podium, a rising legend with the world at her feet. Then she fell in love with Liam Harrington and gave up her dream to become his wife and the mother of their son, Ethan.

She thought love and sacrifice would earn her a lifetime of happiness.

She was wrong.

After t...

For eighteen years, I was my family's invisible daughter.
My sister got a $100,000 graduation gift; I got a free promotional tote bag.
They promised her a $7,000 monthly allowance for college; I was told to survive on $700.
She got a custom gown; I was told to wear a plain shirt and hide in a corner.
Even Silas, my boyfriend of three years, chose to stand proudly by her side.

They thought I w...

Ninety-nine times.

That was how many times Bianca used me to test her mob-boss fiancé.

Ever since I was brought back to the family, the fake heiress tried to prove that Roman Falcone would always choose her over me, the real daughter.

She locked Roman and me in the same room. She passed his expensive gifts right to me. She even made me wear the exact same dress as her to see who he would look a...

Our company's year-end retreat was a ski trip to Silver Peak, and it took until day three for Cole, the guy I'd been in love with for years, to finally ski a run with me.

We were only halfway down a green run when he pulled up at the bottom of a pitch and shook his head, clearly annoyed.

"Your balance is awful. I've shown you a hundred times and you're still doing the same thing."

One of our co...

Three years together, and the texts I'd sent Nolan Garrett could probably fill an entire medical chart.

Pasta or salad for dinner. Rain boots or sneakers when it was pouring. I ran everything by him.

Then one night, right in front of me, he muted my texts.

"Can you grow up a little?" He didn't even look up. "Not everything has to go through me."

After that, I really did stop asking.

I signed ...

My coworker was so jealous of me that she found a way to switch our bodies.
She rushed toward my husband, who was posing on his motorcycle. “A tall, rich, gorgeous husband with an eight-pack? Here I come!”
Without a word, I opened the passenger door of a Mercedes S-Class.
At last. I was free of a husband whose perfect appearance owed everything to drugs and cosmetic work.
This time, I was the one ...

I sat alone at our engagement dinner, having waited for eight long hours.

When my phone finally buzzed, Jasper sounded rushed.

"Lira? I'm so sorry. Things went sideways on my end. Your parents didn't stick around, did they?"

I stared at the melted ice in the champagne bucket.

"No," I said, my voice hollow.

He sighed. "Let's push it to next week, alright? I'll call your parents tomorrow and ex...

On my wedding day, my identical twin sister refused to take off my couture gown.
 
"Liora, the bridal party is here," I pleaded.
 
But my father just smoothed her tulle train. "Let her wear it. You're twins, nobody will notice the difference."
 
My mother agreed, tossing a dusty-rose bridesmaid gown at my chest. "It's just a ceremony, Elowen. Just play along."
 
It was always like this. From the l...

Chase Harrington hadn't willingly spoken to me since I hit puberty and got fat.

So, when my childhood best friend actually handed me a Diet Coke on the morning of our Yale alumni interviews, I should've known it was a trap. Instead, my stupid heart fluttered. I thought he still cared.

I drank it.

When I woke up, my hair covered the hardwood floor.

Sloane Kensington, the undisputed queen bee of...

"You owe us for raising you. Strip off your silks, put on those rags, and work off your debt like the lowly servant you are."
To satisfy my twin sister's twisted jealousy, my parents faked a bloodline test and stripped me of my Silverthorn name. They threw me out of the estate, broke my spine, and handed me over to a feral, exiled brute. They watched me bleed, laughing it off as a "temporary lesso...

The second the graduation ceremony ended, my parents took us all to the nicest restaurant in town.

They said they wanted to properly celebrate having "two graduates" in the family.

Pierce, my boyfriend of four years, showed up last with a huge bouquet of champagne roses in his arms.

I'd just gotten up from my chair when he walked right past me and handed the whole bouquet to my friend Brooke. "...

To celebrate landing our biggest client of the year, the company rented out the entire terrace of a beachside bar.

When it was time for the team photo, the only open spot left was next to my boyfriend, Harrison Kent.

I'd barely moved over when he waved toward the back of the crowd. "Lacey, come stand here."

Lacey Monroe was my best friend. She squeezed in beside him with a smile. The second the...

I was the most in-demand wedding planner in Boston. I'd run more than three hundred weddings, and not one of them had ever been off by a single second.

The only wedding I couldn't pull off was my own.

My fiancé, Graham, and I had been together for seven years, and everyone knew he was a perfectionist.

Everyone called his executive assistant, Sloane, Miss Punctual. She was also my best friend.

...

The night of my coming-of-age ceremony, Elodie asked us to sit around the bonfire and talk.

Elodie was my adoptive parents' real daughter. They had brought her home three months ago.

She smiled at me across the fire. "Wren, which academy are you choosing?"

Before I could answer, the four boys I grew up with spoke first.

One by one, they held up acceptance receipts. All four said Silverhaven.

...

After I discovered my boyfriend, Julian Vance, was cheating on me, my anxiety spiraled out of control.
It got so bad that I would wake up in the middle of the night, pacing the entire house barefoot just to make sure he was still in the guest bedroom.
To pacify me, Julian had a custom tracking bracelet made. "This way, you can check where I am anytime," he said.
But this very bracelet became the c...

One drunken night. One baby. One Don who married me out of duty.

I was the family doctor, a nobody, when I got pregnant with Don Rafael Salvatore’s child. I thought if I stayed quiet, stayed good, and made myself useful, he would eventually love me and our daughter.

Seven years later, I’m still waiting.

Rafael never let Nina call him “Daddy.” When she was two, she said it by accident in public,...

In the ten years I was with Chase Holloway, I got used to him "forgetting" things.

The night he proposed, he showed up empty-handed and said the ring was still at the jeweler's. The day we went to City Hall for our marriage license, he dug through every pocket of his coat and said he'd left his paperwork at home. On our wedding day, he didn't show up at all.

I found out later he'd been in the ba...

"Thanksgiving's at Garrett's new place this year!"

My sister Paisley dropped a location pin in the family group chat, followed by a string of party emojis. My fiancé, Garrett, ran a real estate company, and the pin pointed to a model home they'd just finished building.

That evening, I grabbed a pumpkin pie fresh out of the oven and caught a rideshare to the address. When we got there, the driver...

I barely spoke a word before I turned six. Behind our backs, he townsfolk whispered that some foul thing had sealed my tongue.
The first time I truly spoke, I was pointing at our neighbor, Emily.
She was flying a kite just outside our fence. Floating right above her head was a stark, blood-red number.
"Three."
My mom poked her head out of the kitchen, asking if I had just spoken.
I nodded and poin...

Ninety-nine. That's how many times my family chose my sister over my life. The final time was three hours ago, on the exact day I was supposed to step out of the shadows and be inducted as the syndicate's first female Consigliere.

I was locked in our underground vault, choking on my own blood, while they hosted a lavish graduation party for Camilla upstairs. Out of everyone, only Julian—my fian...

“Know who you belong to.”

For three years, Levi had only one answer. Then a stranger asked her what she wanted.

She escaped the man who owned her and hid in the one place he would never look.

At 25, Levi has spent three years as mafia don Matteo Calderone’s obsession, controlled, punished and displayed. With a stolen ledger and forged papers, she crosses the river and becomes Lena Hart, a waitr...

In my family, there was always room for Eden. There was never room for me.

At dinner, every dish was my sister's favorite: truffle risotto, seared scallops, chocolate soufflé. When she won a prize, my parents toasted her until the glasses rang. When I mentioned my own business, my mother laughed and called it a hobby.

I stopped waiting to be chosen. I learned to stand in the corner and let Eden ...

Beneath the sprawling oaks of Bramblewood University, my parents hovered like proud paparazzi. In the center of their screens stood Liora, my childhood best friend, and Kael—my boyfriend of four years.

They stood pressed together, Liora's blonde curls brushing Kael's jawline. My parents shouted directions with absolute adoration. You'd think she was their flesh and blood, or the one wearing hi...

My twin sister Mallory and I were the kind of girls who could gain two pounds just from smelling fries. On top of that, we both loved to eat, and we both had the same dream: walking the runway at Fashion Week.

Right before our eighteenth birthday, Grandma got so tired of us begging that she went into the woods outside town to find a witch. She came back with two glass jars.

One held a hunger wor...