A Mother's Love, A Daughter's Fury

A Mother's Love, A Daughter's Fury

Dorine Koestler

5.0
Comment(s)
174
View
11
Chapters

My father, Richard Sterling, built his empire on control, and I, Ava, was just another asset in his meticulously ordered life. My mother, Dr. Eleanor Vance, the brilliant AI ethicist, was deemed inconvenient, a "disaster" to be managed. One day, she was gone, taken by men in dark suits on my father's orders, her privacy twisted into shame. He paraded his new assistant, Charlotte Hayes, her smile triumphant, pregnant with his "new beginning," while my mother lay in the woods, a body identified only by a stranger. He dismissed my pleas, my fears, my desperate attempts to uncover the truth, painting me as hysterical, a nuisance to his carefully crafted narrative. He celebrated on a yacht in the Maldives, sipping champagne, while I clutched a fragmented data drive, a digital breadcrumb trail that whispered of murder, not accident. How could the man who taught me to ride a bike, who promised to never let me fall, betray us so completely? How could society believe his lies and brand my mother an unstable genius? My heart screamed for justice, for the truth to shatter the polished facade of Sterling Dynamics. With the help of my uncle and grandmother, I began to piece together the chilling reality: my mother wasn't just gone, she was silenced, murdered by the very people who claimed to love her. And I would make them pay.

Introduction

My father, Richard Sterling, built his empire on control, and I, Ava, was just another asset in his meticulously ordered life.

My mother, Dr. Eleanor Vance, the brilliant AI ethicist, was deemed inconvenient, a "disaster" to be managed.

One day, she was gone, taken by men in dark suits on my father's orders, her privacy twisted into shame.

He paraded his new assistant, Charlotte Hayes, her smile triumphant, pregnant with his "new beginning," while my mother lay in the woods, a body identified only by a stranger.

He dismissed my pleas, my fears, my desperate attempts to uncover the truth, painting me as hysterical, a nuisance to his carefully crafted narrative.

He celebrated on a yacht in the Maldives, sipping champagne, while I clutched a fragmented data drive, a digital breadcrumb trail that whispered of murder, not accident.

How could the man who taught me to ride a bike, who promised to never let me fall, betray us so completely?

How could society believe his lies and brand my mother an unstable genius?

My heart screamed for justice, for the truth to shatter the polished facade of Sterling Dynamics.

With the help of my uncle and grandmother, I began to piece together the chilling reality: my mother wasn't just gone, she was silenced, murdered by the very people who claimed to love her.

And I would make them pay.

Continue Reading

Other books by Dorine Koestler

More
Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Mafia

4.1

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

The Secret Genius Ex-Wife's Cold Revenge

The Secret Genius Ex-Wife's Cold Revenge

Modern

5.0

I spent three years playing the role of the perfect, invisible wife to Dillard Bentley, the billionaire heir of Manhattan. While he graced the tabloids with socialites, I stayed in the shadows of our penthouse, waiting for a man who treated me like a piece of furniture. One rainy night, the facade finally shattered. Dillard came home smelling of another woman’s perfume, and I handed him the divorce papers he never expected. But before the ink could dry, a violent pain ripped through me during a family lunch, and I collapsed in a pool of blood on the pristine marble floor. While I was being rushed to the hospital, Dillard’s mother dismissed my agony as a manipulative trick, and Dillard chose to believe her. He didn't follow the ambulance; he went to a gala to protect his mistress instead. I woke up in a cold emergency room only to be told I had lost the baby I didn't even know I was carrying. Because of the toxic "vitamins" his mother had been force-feeding me, my blood wouldn't clot, and I had to undergo surgery without a single drop of anesthesia. I bit down on a leather strap, feeling every agonizing scrape as they cleared the remains of my child, while my husband laughed at my pain over the phone. "Stop the drama, Erica. Tell her the divorce terms are non-negotiable. I'm busy." He hung up, leaving me to scream in silence. I realized then that the man I had once loved was the same man who let his family poison me. The "vitamins" weren't supplements; they were a death sentence for my unborn child, and he didn't even care enough to show up. Dillard thinks he’s divorcing a penniless nobody, but he’s about to find out that the world-renowned medical genius he’s desperate to recruit is the wife he left to bleed alone. I walked out of that hospital, threw my wedding ring in the trash, and reclaimed my true identity. Dr. N is coming to the global summit, and I’m not there to save the Bentley empire—I’m there to burn it to the ground.

His Obsession, My Hell

His Obsession, My Hell

Romance

5.0

My marriage to David Miller was a picture of perfection, a dream life built on his charm and our shared happiness. Then came the call: my mother in an accident, and David, my husband, utterly unreachable. Hours bled into sterile dread in the hospital waiting room, a dread far deeper than my mother' s condition. An unknown text arrived, a single photo: David, arm around another woman, intimate, familiar. It was my aunt, Sophia Hayes, my mother' s estranged sister, her smile painfully like mine. My world, once perfect, splintered into a million icy shards under the humming hospital lights. He returned late, weaving slick lies about dead phones and urgent meetings, as if I were a child to be placated. But as he signed the papers I put before him, oblivious, a chilling sense of irony settled heavy in my gut. The man I thought I knew, the husband who murmured of naming our child "Sophia," was a stranger. I found his study, not an office, but a shrine to her, filled with desperate letters and a diary detailing his monstrous plan: I was just a "perfect-looking replacement" to bear "his Sophia." The love, the marriage, the baby-all a grotesque fabrication, designed to resurrect his lost obsession. The pain threatened to split me, but beneath it, a cold, hard resolve began to form, sharper than any grief. He thought he' d signed investment papers; he' d signed his divorce, and my consent to end the lie he' d so carefully constructed within me. I walked out that night, leaving his diary open, his delusion exposed, ready to erase every trace of his monstrous fantasy.

One Night With The Rival Alpha

One Night With The Rival Alpha

Werewolf

5.0

My mother had been dead for four years, and my father, the Alpha of our pack, was now a hollow shell controlled by his new wife, Marley. I was a ghost in my own home, watching from the shadows as they celebrated a wedding that felt more like my execution. During the reception, Marley cornered me and demanded my mother's last heirloom-a blood-red ruby-to pay off her family's secret gambling debts. When I refused, her guards pinned me down, and in the struggle, the ancient stone hit the marble floor and shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. Framed for grand larceny by my own stepmother, I fled to a dive bar and sought refuge with Caleb Sterling, a rival Alpha who radiated power and danger. We spent a night of soul-shattering passion that I was certain was our mate bond, but the next morning, he tossed an envelope of cash at me and called me a high-end escort. When the police arrived to arrest me, he simply stepped aside and watched them drag me away in handcuffs, cold and indifferent to my screams. "Do what you have to do," he had told the officers, his eyes devoid of any warmth. I was a fugitive, stripped of my title, and discovered I was carrying Caleb's child-a baby cursed by his bloodline to never survive the womb. I couldn't understand why my father had abandoned me to a monster, or why the man I was destined for had sold me out just to save his own reputation. After a brutal ambush that left my only friend in a burning wreck, I stood at the border of the forbidden North. I clutched the jagged shards of my mother's ruby and looked the Northern Warlord in the eye, ready to trigger a war that would burn my father's legacy to the ground.

You'll also like

His Discarded Gem: Shining In The Ruthless Don's Arms

His Discarded Gem: Shining In The Ruthless Don's Arms

Temple Madison
5.0

For four years, I traced the bullet scar on Chace’s chest, believing it was proof he would bleed to keep me safe. On our anniversary, he told me to wear white because "tonight changes everything." I walked into the gala thinking I was getting a ring. Instead, I stood frozen in the center of the ballroom, drowning in silk, watching him slide his mother's sapphire onto another woman's finger. Karyn Warren. The daughter of a rival family. When I begged him with my eyes to claim me, to save me from the public humiliation, he didn't flinch. He just leaned toward his Underboss, his voice amplified by the silence. "Karyn is for power. Ember is for pleasure. Don't confuse the assets." My heart didn't just break; it incinerated. He expected me to stay as his mistress, threatening to dig up my dead mother’s grave if I refused to play the obedient pet. He thought I was trapped. He thought I had nowhere to go because of my father’s massive gambling debts. He was wrong. With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and texted the one name I was never supposed to use. Keith Mosley. The Don. The monster under Chace's bed. *I am invoking the Blood Oath. My father’s debt. I am ready to pay it.* His reply came three seconds later, buzzing against my palm like a warning. *The price is marriage. You belong to me. Yes or No?* I looked up at Chace, who was laughing with his new fiancée, thinking he owned me. I looked down and typed three letters. *Yes.*

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book