Heartbeats Knife Novels & Stories

The wheat has yet to ripen when my Grandma, Julia Simmon, appears to me in a dream. "There will be a plague of locusts in the autumn. Sell off the produce and raise fish to ensure the family has income." I, Vanessa West, convince my parents to harvest the wheat for grain and feed before irrigating the fields to raise fish. Then, a severe drought strikes and the fish die, leaving my family drowning in debt. We're at a loss to know what to do. Then, Grandma appears in my dreams again. "There are gold bars buried under the oak tree on the hill at our old home. Selling them will sort out our debts and leave you with money to spare." After telling my father, Alan West, this, he digs up a whole crate of white powder. The police happen to be staking out the area. They have him arrested, thinking that he means to buy the drugs. For the amount he gets caught with, he faces life imprisonment. My mother, Hannah Smith, is unable to bear the sight of this and faints on the spot. Again, Grandma appears to me in a dream and offers guidance. "Dr. Hank Vance at Central Hospital can cure her. If you don't hurry, she'll be in danger!" Desperate to save my mother, I threaten Dr. Vance with my life, and he agrees to operate on her. Then, my boyfriend gets into a car accident and urgently needs treatment. However, he succumbs to his injuries due to my asking for Dr. Vance. In the meantime, Mom doesn't receive treatment in time. As she is dying, Mom weeps, asking me why I ruined the entire family. Then, she passes away on the operating table. My boyfriend's parents think I am responsible for their son's death, and they stab me 18 times. While being rushed to the emergency room, I see Grandma again. However, she is grinning maliciously as she plunges a knife into my heart, mimicking the stabs I got from real life and giving me a ruptured heart. I died without understanding why Grandma's appearances led to my family's end. I open my eyes and find out that I've returned to the day Grandma told me to sell our crops.

When the earthquake occurs, Kenneth Scott's childhood sweetheart, Gigi Lynch, and I are trapped under the debris at the same time. When I see the rescue equipment that Kenneth has tossed into the debris, I decide to give up on saving myself. So, I let Gigi have the opportunity to get rescued. In my previous lifetime, I successfully got rescued by Kenenth. But Gigi ended up getting crushed to death by the crumbling debris. Needless to say, she died a terrible death. After Gigi died, Kenneth hugged me and cried throughout the night. I thought he was crying tears of relief. That was, until he drugged me and had me delivered to the surgical table. When I woke up, I realized that my face had gone under the knife, making me look exactly like Gigi. I scratched at my face like a lunatic, only for Kenneth to grasp my wrists firmly. "Gigi traded her life to save yours! It's your duty to live this life for her from now on!" But later on, Kenneth was never satisfied with me. He kept criticizing me, saying that my gaze wasn't right, and my voice wasn't the same as Gigi's. All in all, I could never become her. After that, I got pregnant. Kenneth responded by bringing me miscarriage-inducing medication. I sank to my knees and begged Kenneth to spare the baby. In fact, I kept groveling to him till my forehead started bleeding. But Kenneth merely replied icily, "Impostors like you don't have the right to give birth to my child." Then, he gripped me by my chin and forced the bowl of boiling medicine down my throat. I felt as though my throat was being scalded. At the same time, blood kept oozing from my lower region. When my vision went blurry, Kenneth pushed me into a newly-dug pit. "Gigi is too lonely in the afterlife. Why don't you keep her company?" Mounds of dirt kept falling onto me. While I fought for air, I heard Kenneth's cruel laughter drifting from the surface. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the moment I'm about to get rescued.

Before Grandpa passed, he left behind two things: a billion-dollar fortune and three matches. He said, "Each of you gets to pick one. Renee, you're the oldest, so you go first." I did not hesitate for even a second and chose the fortune. That left my adopted sister, Vera Gallagher, with nothing but three matches. What none of us could have known was that those three matches were no ordinary matches. Each one, when lit, could make any wish come true. Vera resented our parents for favoring me, so she immediately cursed them a terrible death. Sure enough, Dad suddenly suffered a heart attack and died on the spot, and Mom was hit by a speeding semi-truck on her way to the hospital. I grabbed a kitchen knife and went straight to Vera to settle the score. I growled, "Didn't I tell you that once you turned 18, I would split Grandpa's inheritance with you? Our parents opened their home to you and gave you everything I had growing up. All these years, you ate the same food and wore the same clothes as I did. How could you betray them?!" Vera's face was filled with greed. "Since they chose to adopt me, they should have thrown you away and given me all the good things instead! I don't want your handouts. Once you're all dead, the money will be mine anyway!" With that, Vera sneered and lit the second match. "I wish Renee would be trafficked to some remote backwoods town, forced to carry and deliver eight babies at once, and die from complications!" I was horrified. I emptied my savings and hired over 1000 bodyguards to protect me day and night, making sure there was not a single weak spot. However, one night, every single bodyguard suddenly passed out at the same time, and I was kidnapped and sold deep into the mountains. I was tortured, abused, and forced to endure things no person should ever have to survive. I did not know how much time had passed before I finally swallowed my last breath in agony and humiliation. When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn on the very day the inheritance was divided.

When I was 18 years old, Luigi Conti, the craziest heir of the Conti family, pulled out a gun at an auction and executed the Don of the Serra family. That man happened to be my foster father, also the one who had me auctioned away as though I were a slave. When he was being dragged toward the armored car by the military police, he kept laughing like mad despite having blood streaking down his face. "Why must I atone for my sins? Since God refuses to save you, let me be your savior! From now on, no one in Sandalay has the guts to clip your wings anymore, my darling Isabella!" Seven years later, Luigi gets released from prison. He looks at me as I wash dishes for a living in the slums before snuffing out the cigar trapped between his fingers. That night, Luigi returns to his family and steals the position of the Don. After we get married, I'm the only person who has the highest access over the vaults under the Conti family. Luigi even forcibly expands the ring that signifies ultimate authority—which has been passed down from generation to generation for a century—and slides it onto my ring finger. He buys half of Sandalay's estates just so he can fill the vineyards with the white grapes I've mentioned in passing. He tells me that his turf is called Isabella. But everything changes when I discover a photo album stashed in a hidden compartment in Luigi's study. All 2,000 photos feature a young woman in a white dress who is reading in the library. That is the female assassin he's planning on training. The woman looks very pure and innocent. She's most suited to conquer certain bigwigs' hearts. But now, it seems that Luigi's the one being conquered by her. When Luigi finds out about my discovery, he throws the photo album into the fireplace and watches it burn in the fire with a stony expression. "I'm just repackaging her so that she can aid me in money laundering. Just pretend you never saw the photo album." I push the signed divorce agreement over to Luigi. "I said, sign the agreement." Frustrated, Luigi pins the divorce agreement on the table with a knife, his expression insanely dark. "Isabella Serra, have you forgotten about the Conti family's rules? There's no such thing as divorce. We can only be widowed."

Isabella Rossi has gotten reborn. The moment she opens her eyes, she sees the divorce agreement that her husband, Enzo Caro, has pushed toward her. He spins the ring that symbolizes his status as the Don of the Caro family, his tone so calm that one would think he's discussing today's weather. "Let's get a divorce, Bella. Sofia is pregnant, leaving her with volatile mood swings. I can't bear to see the love of my life suffering this much. Go ahead and ask for any form of compensation you want." Today is their seventh year wedding anniversary. Enzo has gone missing for one whole night, and yet the first thing he brings up is divorce right after he returns to the seaside villa. As Isabella stares at the man whom she had once loved with all her heart, she finds herself starting to space out. After this moment played out in her previous life, Isabella hadn't wasted her breath on Enzo. Instead, she picked up the fruit knife on the coffee table and plunged it into his chest. His blood had sprayed all over her face. With red-rimmed eyes, Isabella demanded in a quivering tone, "If Sofia's your true love, then what about me and my role in these past seven years?" No one won the battle afterward. Isabella had torn up the divorce agreement and spent the next ten years pestering Enzo. When Isabella slapped Sofia, Enzo dragged her into the interrogation room without hesitation and slapped her for a hundred times. When Isabella smashed Sofia's birthday cake, Enzo locked her up in a basement cellar for three days and nights, where a nest of venomous snakes remained her only company throughout that period. There, Isabella had lost her unborn child. Incidents such as those kept happening throughout the years. Enzo, the man who used to shield Isabella from harm, ended up being the same man who'd then torment her to the point of no return for the sake of another woman. In order to back Sofia up, Enzo made sure to cut off the Rossi family from Millbrook's shipping channels, pharmaceutical lines, and several legitimate financial pipelines. With all their paths cut off from them, Isabella's parents had no choice but to commit suicide by shooting themselves in the head. It's all thanks to this wrongly placed love that Isabella lost her family, her pride as the principessa of the Rossis, as well as her bright and vibrant life. This time, she won't go down the same tragic route, that's for sure!