One Lock between Life and Death

In One Lock between Life and Death, Mitch’s world shatters when his mother-in-law falls critically ill. His rescue efforts are thwarted by Jake, a security guard sponsored by Mitch’s own wife, Jenna. Jake clamps the responding ambulance, claiming he is simply following protocol. While Jenna coldly defends the guard and accuses her mother of faking the crisis, the situation turns dire. When the doctor announces the patient’s heart has stopped, the petty enforcement of rules becomes a race against time.

Chapters

Chapter 3

My heart sank, and suddenly, I didn't feel like arguing with Jenna anymore.

It wasn't about the money—I had plenty of it. What angered me was Jenna and Jake's attitude.

Even though Kelly wasn't my mother, she had always treated me well. I gritted my teeth and stepped forward to transfer another 600 dollars to Jake.

"Can you unlock the clamps now?"

Jake gave me a small smirk, then quietly leaned in close to my ear and mocked, "See? You should've done this from the start, but you just had to go against me. Did you really think Jen would take your side?"

I felt something bubble inside me, but Kelly's condition mattered more. I didn't want to waste another second arguing with him, so I hurried back to the ambulance.

Kelly was Jenna's mother, after all, so I urged her, "What are you standing there for, Jen? Hurry up and get in!"

She shot me an impatient look. "You can just go by yourself. She's making such a big fuss over a little illness. She only knows how to trouble people."

"We really need to leave now. The patient's condition doesn't look good," Dr. Goldberg called out. "Let's go."

Trevor quickly started the ambulance and drove toward the exit. Just as we reached the main gate, the ambulance came to a sudden stop.

"Why did we stop? We need to leave," I said, panicking.

Trevor's exasperated voice came from the front. "We can't leave. The gate's been locked."

What?

I felt like I was about to fall apart. I'd just unlocked the clamps on the ambulance, and now the main gate was locked, too?

Trevor shouted toward the security booth, "What's going on with this complex? Open the gate right now! There's a patient in the ambulance who needs to be taken to the hospital right away!"

Jake sauntered over from a distance. "Stop shouting. I'm the only one on duty today. I'm the one who locked the gate."

I glared at him. "I already paid you. Why did you go and lock the gate now? This is an ambulance! An ambulance—do you even understand that? It's here to save a patient! Open the gate right now!"

But Jake only looked even angrier than I felt and shot me a glare. "So what if it's an ambulance? This is a residential complex. No one gets any special privileges. Everyone must follow the community's rules and regulations."

"Didn't we already follow your rules? So, why aren't you letting us out now?" I demanded, extremely anxious.

"Mitch, it's not that I don't want to let you out," he said with a sigh. "But when the ambulance arrived earlier, it didn't park in the designated spot. That's a violation of community regulations and requires a fine."

"You just need to pay the fine, and I'll open the gate for you."

I was beyond shocked. "Fine? I called for an ambulance inside my own residential complex, and now I need to pay a fine? I'm a homeowner here!"

"Who gave you the authority to issue fines?" I snapped again, anger surging through me. "I'm telling you right now—I'm not paying that fine! You'd better open that gate right now!"

The next second, his expression suddenly changed. His lips trembled, and he looked so wronged that he was about to cry.

"Jen, my supervisor, the head of security, said anyone who doesn't park according to regulations must pay a fine, or else he'll dock my wages.

"Even though you sponsor me, I don't want to keep spending your money. I'm really not deliberately targeting Mitch, but no matter what I say, he refuses to pay the fine. If I let him through, my supervisor will definitely punish me."

I turned around and realized that Jenna had followed us out at some point.

She shot me a look of disgust after hearing his words. "I followed you out here precisely because I was worried you'd bully Jake if I wasn't around. And sure enough, here you are bullying him. How can you be so vile?

"Jake's still so young. Why must you make things so hard for him?"

Continue to next part

After being reborn, the protagonist faces Rebecca Schwartz, the impoverished student they once sponsored out of blind infatuation. When Rebecca demands her companion Freddie join them or she won't leave the orphanage, the cycle of manipulation finally breaks. Remembering how this pair caused their previous demise, the protagonist rejects the demands with icy resolve. Instead of humbling themselves to keep the peace, they leave the duo behind to rot, vowing to never again be a victim of such despicable betrayal.

Action Modern Romance Young Adult

8.4

Flash Marriage To My Ruthless Professor

8.4

I signed a prenuptial agreement with a cold-blooded Wall Street predator just to unlock my trust fund and fight my greedy stepmother. We were nothing more than legal roommates bound by a strict three-year contract. But to survive the corporate war at my family's company, I skipped my mandatory university finance class and paid a guy to answer the roll call for me. The stand-in was immediately caught and kicked out by the notoriously ruthless new professor. That night at dinner, I complained to my contract husband about the professor. "He's an unreasonable, arrogant dictator who gets off on torturing his students," I complained bitterly. My husband just calmly cut my steak and listened as I bragged about how I was going to fake-cry and manipulate the professor the next morning. I even rushed to the faculty office the next day and performed a desperate, tearful apology to an elderly man I assumed was the tyrant. I thought I had perfectly balanced my corporate war and my academic life. I thought I had fooled everyone. But when I confidently sat in the front row of the massive lecture hall, the heavy wooden doors pushed open. The terrifying new professor walked onto the podium and aggressively wrote his name on the chalkboard: Elliot Dillard. It was my contract husband. He looked down at me with cold, merciless authority, knowing every single lie I had told, and slowly called my name.

Action Modern Romance

7.5

His Betrayal Forged Her Empire

7.5

I run my family's political dynasty with an iron fist. From my father’s Senate votes to my own calculated engagement, every move is mine to control. Then, in a single evening, my ambitious stepmother made her play. She used our housekeeper as a spy and orchestrated a scandal involving my fiancé and stepsister, designed to shatter my reputation and power. They thought they could break me. Within twelve hours, the spy was dead on the marble floor of my foyer. My fiancé’s family was blackmailed into silence. My stepsister was exiled to a Swiss boarding school, and I stripped my own father of his authority for his weakness. As for my stepmother, Bronte, I had her declared mentally unstable and forcibly taken to a remote facility in Montana, completely cut off from the world. Everyone saw a cold-hearted coup, but they didn't know the secret I held. I had proof that Bronte had systematically orchestrated my brother’s death years ago, all to position her own son to inherit everything. This wasn't about power; it was vengeance. But winning the war at home has put me on a much deadlier board. Now, I'm preparing for a dinner with Eldridge Marsh—the most dangerous man in Washington—who wants to decide if I'm a player he can use, or a threat he needs to destroy.

Action Billionaire Modern

8.3

HIS LUNA, HIS PRISONER.

8.3

Bound by fate, Torn by desire, Forbidden by choice. Rhyna, a healer omega, never asked for war, or to be taken prisoner. But when the feared Alpha, Conan, drags her into the heart of enemy territory, her world flips upside down. He claims she is his Luna, destined by a bond she refuses to accept. She is determined to fight, to resist, to survive... but Conan's dominance, power, and the pull of their inexplicable bond test everything she thought she knew about love, loyalty, and herself. In a world where packs clash and hearts are weapons, can a healer survive the Alpha's desires, and resist the pull of a mate she never wanted?

Action Romance Werewolf

9.5

His Secret Savior: The Alpha's Rejected Mate

9.5

For eight years, she endured the burn of Wolfsbane, masking her scent for an Alpha who never looked her way. He called her his quiet Omega—his obedient shadow—until a loud-mouthed fraud arrived, claiming the voice of the girl who once saved him. He gave Serena the Moonstone and gave his true mate a black card with one cold command: Disappear. She gave her a cliff and a frozen river. As water filled her lungs, the cruelest truth surfaced: she was that girl. The thirteen-year-old who dragged his bleeding body into a cave. His fated mate. But the river didn't kill her—it cleansed her. Now her wolf is white, ancient, and unforgiving. When Silas kneels in the rain, begging for a second chance, she will smile and give him the only answer he deserves.

Action Fantasy Mystery Romance Werewolf

9.4

Not Her: The Shadow Bride's Great Escape

9.4

I was the invisible daughter of a low-level mobster until Ethan Cole, the city’s most terrifying Don, plucked me from the streets. He claimed it was love at first sight. He married me, draped me in vintage diamonds, and treated me like a fragile porcelain doll. I thought I was living a fairytale until I found the secret room in his library. It was filled with photos of a dead woman named Olivia. A woman who had my hair, my eyes, and my face. I wasn't his soulmate. I was a replacement part for a broken machine. When I became pregnant, Ethan didn't hug me. He placed a possessive hand on my stomach and whispered, "The heir." He didn't see me. He only saw an incubator for a ghost's legacy. My father tried to warn me and died for it. I realized that once I gave Ethan this child, I would be trapped in his gilded cage forever, a broodmare for a man in love with a corpse. So, I did the unthinkable. I walked into a clinic and paid cash to remove the one thing he valued more than his empire. I went home, collapsed on the marble floor in a pool of blood, and looked up at the monster who thought he owned me. "I lost it," I screamed, tearing at his lapels. "I lost our baby!" I watched his heart break, knowing I had just declared war.

Action Horror Romance

One Lock between Life and Death

Chapter 3

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