Emotional Depth Synonym Novels & Stories

My grandfather was a thief. He stole my grandmother’s name and her identity. He used them to escape a poor, forgotten corner of the rural West, then ran off with another woman. He became a law professor, standing at podiums and lecturing about justice. She became a famous painter, giving interviews about integrity. My grandmother spent her whole life trapped in that same dying farmland. Everyone called her an old maid. She never stopped waiting for him. Not even on her deathbed. Fifty years later, I clawed my way out of that godforsaken place on the strength of two generations, my grandmother and my mother. I made partner at a top law firm. It was graduation season. I sat in the lead interviewer’s chair. Across from me sat a girl. Polished. Confident. The most outstanding graduate from the best law school in the state. I opened her résumé and flipped through it page by page. Then I stopped at the family information section. I stared at that name for a very long time. I looked up at her and said quietly, “You didn’t get the job.”

"What even are the specs on this thing?" My coworker Zack slid it back across the desk, frowning hard. I was still fixing a design draft and barely looked up. "Latest model. Core Ultra 9, RTX 5090, 128 gigs of RAM. Why?" "No shot." Zack shook his head. "I opened Photoshop and it froze for, like, three minutes straight. My busted three-year-old laptop runs better than this. And look." He tapped the bottom panel. "There are screwdriver marks back here. Looks like somebody opened it up and slapped it back together." My chest tightened. I grabbed the laptop and flipped it over. Two fresh scratches sat near the vent. The edges looked like they'd been pried up. I went still. Three months ago, when my cousin borrowed it, the laptop had been perfectly fine.

My son, Andy, had a sudden liver failure and needed a liver transplant. The only compatible match was my wife, Vivian Grant. I had begged her for 20 days to give Andy a liver transplant. Finally, she caved in. I waited the entire day in front of the operating theater, but she didn’t appear. On the same day, her first love, Jason Sanderson posted on his social media. [20th day of traveling around the world. Dr. Grant had given up her career to help fulfil my son's dream of traveling the world.] Only then did I find out that Vivian had been travelling the world with Jason and his son, Luke, since day one. That night, I received a call from Vivian. "Charlie, Luke had gotten full marks on his exam. His wish was to have his Daddy and Mommy travel around the world with him. As you know, he doesn't have a Mommy. I couldn't bear to watch him not get his wish. "We'll return in three days. We can have the surgery for Andy then." She had no idea that what awaited her at the hospital was Andy's lifeless body.

The day my parents divorced, I turned my back on the mother who loved me and clung desperately to my cheating father. In my previous life, I chose my mother without hesitation. Because the family never accepted me, she spent the rest of her life suffering for my sake, enduring endless scorn and hardship. This time, as I looked into her heartbroken eyes, I walked away without a backward glance. Five years later, I was scraping by at a seafood market, spending my days gutting fish amid the stench of saltwater and blood. Just as I expertly sliced open a fish's belly, my mother appeared. Her heels clicked across the damp floor as she navigated around puddles left by melting ice and approached me. She covered her nose in disgust, looked me up and down in my stained, shabby clothes, and let out a cold laugh. "No matter how hard you wash, you still reek of fish. This is the life you chose when you picked him over me. “The Cooper family's notorious young heir is about to form an alliance with our family through marriage. “As long as you kneel and beg me, I'll give you a chance to live a better life. What do you think? “You know I always mean what I say.” The contempt in her voice was unmistakable. I swallowed the metallic taste rising in my throat, flashed a carefree grin, and stepped closer. “Not only am I not kneeling, but you’ll have to kiss me first if you want me to go.” Just one kiss would be enough to get me through the last month of my life.

After years of living abroad without children, I decided to return home to handle my inheritance matters. However, before I could step into my house, I was stopped by a group of people at the entrance. The woman leading the group pointed at me and started screaming. "I can't believe someone as young as you is seducing a man old enough to be your father! How disgusting can you be?" I watched her, noticing how much she resembled my older brother, and I was shaking with rage. They pulled out my fingernails, broke my ribs, and slashed my face, dragging me around the neighborhood as I begged for mercy. Yet, they remained indifferent to my pleas. Just as I was on the verge of losing hope, my brother, Edward Grange rushed over.  Through a mouthful of blood, I managed to choke out, "Ed, I’d rather die than let her inherit my inheritance…”

I get cyberbullied by the elderly people in my community. Apparently, they've uploaded videos, claiming that my charity kitchen that sells one-dollar meals not only sells bad food, but I've also sold them at ridiculously high prices. During the first year of the kitchen's establishment, I've sunk 420 thousand dollars and given it my all in running the kitchen. But all I receive in return is the Internet's backlash on me, which calls me for being a vile person. So, I decided to go along with the public opinion by shutting down the kitchen entirely. Then, I transform the venue into a card room that costs ten dollars per hour. As soon as the notice is posted, the entire community goes nuts. The elderly people's children soon show up on my doorstep and beg me to reopen the kitchen.

I've gotten reborn on the night before Christmas. The first thing I do is send my boss, Jack Davenport, a resignation letter. Then, I board the next flight to Coral Bay for my vacation. In my previous lifetime, my colleague, Julie Trent, had called me when I was on vacation. She told me that the numbers on the account ledgers wouldn't add up, and the IRS would be conducting its audit soon. That was why she pleaded with me to save her. After hearing Julie's pleas, I boarded the earliest flight back to the city before hurrying back to my company. There, I double-checked all the accounts, leading to the discovery of the deficit in the accounts. So, I used my own money to pay off the deficit, allowing the company to pass the IRS' audit process. Even so, the submission of our accounts went past the deadline, resulting in the company receiving a fine. Julie decided to pin the blame on me. "There's a deficit in the accounts because Annie wanted to secretly embezzle the company's funds!" I quickly explained everything to Jack. But the very same boss, who used to be understanding and rational, just looked at me. "I thought you were on a vacation, Annie. Why did you return to the company all of a sudden? Did you plan on making the company suffer from a deficit in the accounts right before the IRS audit just because you're about to switch companies? "Anyway, you're the one causing the financial loss, to begin with. That's why you must compensate the company for the loss!" Later on, Jack hired the best lawyer and took me to court, completely disregarding whatever relationship we had as employer and employee. In the end, I lost the lawsuit, which meant I had to pay double the compensation to my company. On top of that, Jack even spread the word so that no one in the same industry would hire me. After that, I sold all of my assets, yet I still couldn't gather enough money to clear the debt. So, I could only take on the grungiest and lowliest of all jobs. As I couldn't eat my fill for a long period of time while having to take on huge amounts of work, I ended up dying from exhaustion in the end.

On my eighth birthday, I begged my mom to video call my dad, who was supposedly working late. The moment the call connected, a version of him from ten years in the future appeared on the screen. My mom held me close and smiled, asking him, "Ten years from now… our Lily has grown up. Was her coming-of-age ceremony a big celebration?" Dad replied coldly, "She kept trying to one-up Sarah's kid, so I sent her abroad. Too bad her luck ran out—her plane went down." My mom's face went pale. On the other end, my dad let out an icy laugh. "Claire, back then, you lied to me. You said if your 'plan' didn't work out, you'd die. I believed you. I gave up Sarah and her child to marry you." My mom's body started trembling. I reached out toward the screen. "Daddy, when are you coming home to celebrate my birthday with me?" Dad sighed and looked at her calmly. "The truth is, I wasn't working late that night. I was celebrating Sarah's daughter's birthday. Now you know everything. What you do next is up to you." Suddenly, a cold robotic voice echoed in my ear: [Host, do you choose to abandon the original world and stay here forever?] I wiped the tears off my mom's face and, barely understanding what was happening, said, "Mommy, does that mean Daddy doesn't want us anymore? Then let's not want him either. Okay?"

My sister, Judy Easton, skipped school and started dating way too early, but our parents sent me, the straight-A kid, to a juvenile behavioral correction center, saying it was to teach her a lesson. "Judy, take a good look at William. Act up again, and you're going there, too." My family showed up to visit every so often. The first year, an instructor blew out my eardrum. I was covered in blood, gripping the bars, begging for help. Dad pointed at me while talking to Judy. "Look at him. Still can't follow simple instructions. If you don't listen to us, you'll end up just like him." The second year, the instructor broke both my legs. My parents stood over my bed and said, "Look at you, lying there like a useless wimp. We came all this way to see you, and this is the welcome we get? How ungrateful." The third year, the instructor pumped me full of hormones. I swelled up like a whale. The instructor smirked. "That's probably shot now. Let's see how you go after girls now." Judy stood outside the cage holding her acceptance letter to a top college. The whole family looked pleased. "William, Judy got into a top college. You did your part. I'm taking you home." I blinked, my vision hazy, trying to make sense of it. "Who's William? They all call me Runt."

At the company celebration dinner, I had just led my team through a major project and was about to go onstage to give my report. Then someone snatched the microphone right out of my hand. Freya, the newly appointed director, strode onto the stage and claimed all the credit for herself with a single speech. “I’m the CEO’s younger sister. My brother sent me to this branch to gain some experience. “From now on, everyone here answers to me. I promise I’ll get him to give this branch more resources, and I’ll lead all of you to bigger and better things.” I was so angry I almost laughed. I asked her what proof she had. To my surprise, she actually listed several of the CEO’s private habits, things an outsider shouldn’t have known. Then she even pulled out a photo of them together. I was about to argue, but my boyfriend, Chuck, grabbed me and dragged me off the stage. “Are you insane? If she’s the CEO’s sister, then just put up with it. Don’t cause trouble for the company.” I looked at Freya, who stood onstage with a smug smile on her face. Only one thought filled my mind. Since when did my brother have another sister?