The Daughter Who Refused to Break

The Daughter Who Refused to Break

Rafaela Kokkotou

5.0
Comment(s)
27
View
14
Chapters

Emily Callahan had finally done it. Full scholarship to the state university, a dream come true for her and a testament to her late father' s legacy, her mother Susan beaming with pride from their beloved Sunrise Cafe. But the aroma of coffee turned to the stench of fear when local crime boss Paddy O' Doyle, whose offers for the cafe were always refused, stormed in. What began as intimidation quickly became a brutal assault, leaving Susan battered and their cafe in ruins. This attack was no isolated incident; it was just the first domino. The police chief turned a blind eye, revealing a pervasive corruption that shielded the O' Doyles from justice. Emily' s scholarship was mysteriously revoked, her future snatched away. Then came the orchestrated smear campaign, turning the community against her, followed by a terrifying home invasion where her dog was brutally murdered and her father' s cherished Medal of Honor desecrated. Now, even her mother' s vital medical care was at risk. How could a hero' s family be so horribly betrayed and abandoned, their pleas for justice met with silence or outright hostility by the very system meant to protect them? The injustice burned, transforming her grief into a searing rage. With every official avenue blocked and nowhere left to turn, Emily clutched her father' s Medal of Honor, a symbol of everything good and true, and embarked on a desperate cross-country journey to seek out the only man who could possibly help: her father' s former commanding officer, a four-star General.

Introduction

Emily Callahan had finally done it. Full scholarship to the state university, a dream come true for her and a testament to her late father' s legacy, her mother Susan beaming with pride from their beloved Sunrise Cafe.

But the aroma of coffee turned to the stench of fear when local crime boss Paddy O' Doyle, whose offers for the cafe were always refused, stormed in. What began as intimidation quickly became a brutal assault, leaving Susan battered and their cafe in ruins.

This attack was no isolated incident; it was just the first domino. The police chief turned a blind eye, revealing a pervasive corruption that shielded the O' Doyles from justice. Emily' s scholarship was mysteriously revoked, her future snatched away. Then came the orchestrated smear campaign, turning the community against her, followed by a terrifying home invasion where her dog was brutally murdered and her father' s cherished Medal of Honor desecrated. Now, even her mother' s vital medical care was at risk.

How could a hero' s family be so horribly betrayed and abandoned, their pleas for justice met with silence or outright hostility by the very system meant to protect them? The injustice burned, transforming her grief into a searing rage.

With every official avenue blocked and nowhere left to turn, Emily clutched her father' s Medal of Honor, a symbol of everything good and true, and embarked on a desperate cross-country journey to seek out the only man who could possibly help: her father' s former commanding officer, a four-star General.

Continue Reading

Other books by Rafaela Kokkotou

More
Love, Lies, And A Second Life

Love, Lies, And A Second Life

Horror

5.0

The air in the room was stale, thick with the smell of antiseptic and despair. They told me I was sick, that grief had broken my mind. My mother-in-law, Martha, would visit, her concern a chilling mask, whispering to doctors how I was hallucinating, a danger to myself and my son, Billy. "She doesn' t understand that David is gone," she' d insist, loud enough for me to hear. But the real horror wasn't my madness; it was the truth. Three days after my husband, David, a decorated police officer, was supposedly killed, I stood at his memorial, expected to mourn. The man in the casket wasn't David. It was Mark, his identical twin, missing the faded scar David always had. That night, I found David, not dead, but alive in our summer cabin, with his childhood sweetheart, Emily Peterson. He confessed it all with chilling indifference: Mark was killed in a shootout, and David seized the chance for a new life, free from me and Billy. "I never loved you," he said, as if explaining a simple math problem. "It was always Emily." I tried to tell everyone-his mother, his captain-but they looked at me with pity, already conditioned by Martha and David' s lies. They had me committed to a white room, and David married Emily. My four-year-old son, Billy, was left in their care, crying for me every night. Then came the unbearable news: Billy was dead, a "tragic accident" from an overdose of cough medicine. My world shattered. Desperate, I fashioned a noose, remembering Billy' s bright laugh, the life David had stolen. My only regret was that David would never face justice. I kicked the chair away. Darkness took me. Then, a blinding light, and I was back on my living room couch, the day David was supposedly killed. I wasn' t dead. I was back. Martha' s face, a mask of practiced sadness, now held a triumphant curl. I heard David' s voice from the hallway, "Is she stable?" "She' s fragile, but she bought it," Martha replied. "She' ll break, just like we planned. We' ll have her committed, and Billy will be ours." "Good," David said. "Make sure she doesn' t get near the body. Mark didn' t have my scar." This time, I was not the grieving widow. I was the executioner.

You'll also like

Marrying My Runaway Groom's Powerful Father

Marrying My Runaway Groom's Powerful Father

Temple Madison
5.0

I was sitting in the Presidential Suite of The Pierre, wearing a Vera Wang gown worth more than most people earn in a decade. It was supposed to be the wedding of the century, the final move to merge two of Manhattan's most powerful empires. Then my phone buzzed. It was an Instagram Story from my fiancé, Jameson. He was at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris with a caption that read: "Fuck the chains. Chasing freedom." He hadn't just gotten cold feet; he had abandoned me at the altar to run across the world. My father didn't come in to comfort me. He burst through the door roaring about a lost acquisition deal, telling me the Holland Group would strip our family for parts if the ceremony didn't happen by noon. My stepmother wailed about us becoming the laughingstock of the Upper East Side. The Holland PR director even suggested I fake a "panic attack" to make myself look weak and sympathetic to save their stock price. Then Jameson’s sleazy cousin, Pierce, walked in with a lopsided grin, offering to "step in" and marry me just to get his hands on my assets. I looked at them and realized I wasn't a daughter or a bride to anyone in that room. I was a failed asset, a bouncing check, a girl whose own father told her to go to Paris and "beg" the man who had just publicly humiliated her. The girl who wanted to be loved died in that mirror. I realized that if I was going to be sold to save a merger, I was going to sell myself to the one who actually controlled the money. I marched past my parents and walked straight into the VIP holding room. I looked the most powerful man in the room—Jameson’s cold, ruthless uncle, Fletcher Holland—dead in the eye and threw the iPad on the table. "Jameson is gone," I said, my voice as hard as stone. "Marry me instead."

Secret Baby: The Jilted Wife's Final Goodbye

Secret Baby: The Jilted Wife's Final Goodbye

Cait
5.0

I sat on the cold tile floor of our Upper East Side penthouse, staring at the two pink lines until my vision blurred. After ten years of loving Julian Sterling and three years of a hollow marriage, I finally had the one thing that could bridge the distance between us. I was pregnant. But Julian didn't come home with flowers for our anniversary. He tossed a thick manila envelope onto the marble coffee table with a heavy thud. Fiona, the woman he'd truly loved for years, was back in New York, and he told me our "business deal" was officially over. "Sign it," He said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. He looked at me with the cold detachment of a man selling a piece of unwanted furniture. When I hesitated, he told me to add a zero to the alimony if the money wasn't enough. I realized in that moment that if he knew about the baby, he wouldn't love me; he would simply take my child and give it to Fiona to raise. I shoved the pregnancy test into my pocket, signed the papers with a shaking hand, and lied through my teeth. When my morning sickness hit, I slumped to the floor to hide the truth. "It's just cramps," I gasped, watching him recoil as if I were contagious. To make him stay away, I invented a man named Jack-a fake boyfriend who supposedly gave me the kindness Julian never could. Suddenly, the man who wanted me gone became a monster of possessiveness. He threatened to "bury" a man who didn't exist while leaving me humiliated at his family's dinner to rush to Fiona's side. I was so broken that I even ate a cake I was deathly allergic to, then had to refuse life-saving steroids at the hospital because they would harm the fetus. Julian thinks he's stalling the divorce for two months to protect the family's reputation for his father's Jubilee. He thinks he's keeping his "property" on a short leash until the press dies down. He has no idea I'm using those sixty days to build a fortress for my child. By the time he realizes the truth, I'll be gone, and the Sterling heir will be far beyond his reach.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book