by Becca Little
BREAKING LITTLE EMILY
BECCA LITTLE
[email protected]
Copyright © July 2017 by Becca Little
First E-book Publication: July 2017
Cover created by: Domestic Discipline Publishing
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: The unauthorized reproduction, transmission, or distribution of any part of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
This literary work is fiction. Any name, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.
Please respect the authority and do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials that would violate the author’s rights.
If you want to join my ARC team, email me at the address above.
Prologue: Emily
Prologue: Stark
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue: Stark
Epilogue: Emily
The Evolution of Little Julie
EMILY:
He was supposed to marry my sister before the accident. A year later he showed up on my doorstep and he made it very clear he was there to claim me in her place.
I resisted, but Stark Bradford isn’t the kind of man who takes no for an answer.
His house is a homage to Victorian times, complete with a special room specially designed to break any woman who dares to resist him.
He says he’s going to break me and make me his Little Emily.
I’m scared because it’s exactly what I want him to do.
Each “My Little World” book is a standalone story and can be read without reading any of the other books.
Little Bethany & The Warden (My Little World, Book 1)
Becoming Little Jenny (My Little World, Book 2)
Little Sylvia & Judge Cole (My Little World, Book 3)
Breaking Little Emily (My Little World, Boo 4)
Book 5 – Coming Soon!
Prologue: Emily
They say your life flashes before you when you’re about to die. Mine never did. All I saw was blood—lots and lots of blood.
“Kayla!” I called out to my sister, who was beside me before our car slid off the road.
I got no response. It was like looking through a filter of crimson and I could barely make out any details. I started struggling to breathe. It felt like my ribs were broken and every time I forced my lungs to draw breath, I got a mouthful of smoke to go with the agony of sharp shattered bones scraping flesh.
“Mom? Dad?” I reached out to try and push myself up with my hands, but broken glass dug into my palms.
I was trapped. The car had folded around me and while I survived, I couldn’t get free. I fell forward into the broken glass, feeling it cut into my chin as I landed with a thud. The car was my coffin. I could feel heat beneath my feet and I knew the engine was on fire. My strength was fading fast as the blood I still had inside me slowly seeped out and what remained mixed with carbon monoxide instead of oxygen.
“Kayla! Kayla where are you!?” I heard a voice yelling from outside the car.
We were on our home from Kayla’s engagement dinner. Her fiancé, Stark Bradford, was behind us with his parents. The voice I heard was his. I tried to call out to him but all I do was sputter. I tasted copper and knew my mouth was starting to fill with blood. The darkness called to me. The void of death. There was no white light, no flash of what had been or what would never be, it was just the claws of darkness pulling me into the final moments of my life.
“Emily!” I heard a voice and I opened my eyes to see a glimmer of light creasing through the blood.
Strong hands reached through the despair and pulled me from my coffin. I was vaguely aware they belonged to Stark, but my mind was clouded. Once I was out of the car, I could see the devastation in full display. A plume of dark smoke billowed from my father’s BMW. He loved that car. It was a symbol of thirty years of hard work rolled into one luxury sedan.
“Stark! Bring her over here.” I heard a woman’s voice say. It wasn’t my sister or my mother, so I knew it had to be Stark’s mother.
“Mr. Grant didn’t make it.” I heard an older male’s voice say.
“Neither did Mrs. Grant.” Stark’s mother replied.
If I could have screamed, I would have. Even with all the pain I was in, it felt like those words ripped out what little bit of life I had left. My parents were dead. It was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare. I was going to wake up in my bed and find out it was nothing but my brain processing the horror movie I had watched the night before.
“I found Kayla.” I heard Stark say. His voice was quaking.
“Oh my God, Stark.” I heard his mother say. “I’m so sorry.”
“Emily’s the only one who made it, but she’s in really bad shape.” His father said. “The ambulance is on the way. I hope they can save her.”
I didn’t want to be saved. I wanted to lay there on the grass until I joined my family in whatever afterlife there was. If there wasn’t one, that was okay too, because I had lost everything I lived for. I heard sirens. They played the symphony of my survival. Strong arms took me again, but they didn’t belong to Stark. I felt straps on my arms, something around my neck, and then I was being moved again. As I felt them load me into the ambulance, I lost consciousness.
Prologue: Stark
Kayla was everything I wanted from the moment I first laid eyes on her. She was beautiful and pure, with a kind soul. We were from very different worlds. My family was rich, powerful, and I was the sole heir to everything. Her family was poor, wasteful, and struggled to even get by.
“Your father has a BMW?” I asked as we turned into her parent’s driveway.
“Yes.” Kayla sighed. “He felt like he deserved a nice car…”
“That’s not very practical if you had to help him pay the electric bill last month.” I parked the car and stared at the expensive vehicle in front of me.
“Trust me, I’ve had that conversation with him already.” Kayla replied.
Like all couples, we struggled as we tried to integrate ourselves into each other’s world. There were very little similarities and while it had been a whirlwind romance, the foundation was starting to crack. I proposed because I wanted to save the relationship, but I was already having doubts.
“Listen…” I took her hand in mine. “I know things haven’t been going well for us recently, but I do want to make a good impression on your family. Do you think we can get through this evening without fighting?”
“I don’t know.” She pulled her hand away. “Maybe we should call off this engagement. I’m not sure I even want to marry you anymore.”
“Don’t say that.” I reached for her hand again. “You know how much I love you.”
“Let’s just get this dinner over with.” She opened her door. “Look, your parents are here.”
***
The guilt of our last conversation gnawed at my stomach as I sat in the emergency room waiting area. Kayla was gone. The evening had not gone very well and she wouldn’t even ride back to her parents’ house with me. If she had, she would still be alive. I stared at my hand
s, which still had deep crimson stains despite the fact I had tried to wash them twice already.
“Stark, your mother and I are going to head back to the hotel.” My father said. “Are you sure you won’t come with us?”
“I’m not ready to leave.” I replied. “I want to wait until Emily is out of surgery at least.”
“You don’t owe that girl anything.” My father said. “Kayla practically broke up with you on the way out the door.”
“I know.” I sighed. “I just can’t leave. Not yet.”
“Okay. Call us if you need anything.” My father clasped his hand my shoulder and then headed towards the door.
***
Emily looked so pale and fragile in the hospital bed. She looked a lot like Kayla, but their personalities were wildly different, at least from what I had observed over dinner. Kayla was fiercely independent and strong. Emily was timid and unsure of herself. I had no idea how she was going to survive all alone in the world.
“She made it through surgery and she should be out of danger now.” The doctor said as he walked into the room. “Does she have any family to contact?”
“I don’t think so.” I replied. “I believe her sister mentioned an aunt maybe, but they weren’t close.”
“I’ll see if I can locate her.” The doctor replied.
I listened to the beeping as long as I could and finally took my leave. She wasn’t going to wake up for a while and I needed a shower. Once I was finally underneath the hot, scalding water, I felt my emotions break down. I couldn’t even remember the last time I was sad, much less the last time I cried.
Chapter 1: Emily
Six Months Later
My body healed but my heart refused to find solace in my recovery. It was a long way back from the brink of death, but as the months went by, I found myself going through the motions of real life.
Stark came around a few times after I was out of the hospital. He was a little further along in the grieving process than I was since I was in the hospital for a while. He took me to dinner a few times and brought food by. The visits got less frequent as time went on, but I didn’t complain. He had a life to live that didn’t include me, and I doubted he wanted to be constantly reminded of my sister. We looked similar, although she had a few years on me.
I was lost in the adult world but I did the best I could. I tried to find peace through religion and it did help some, but it couldn’t heal everything.
“You’ve been coming to this support group for a couple of months now, but you’ve never shared your story.” The church pastor filled his cup with coffee as he spoke to me.
“I don’t think I’m ready.” I shook my head. “It’s tough to talk about it.”
“I get that.” He replied. “But sometimes it can help to talk about things. Everyone here has lost someone they care about.”
“I know.” I nodded.
I walked out of the church feeling lower than I did when I walked in. I knew they understood what I was going through, because they had been there as well, but I wasn’t at a point where I could talk about it with them. As I started walking home, a car slowed down beside me and the passenger window started to lower.
“Hey Emily.” I heard a voice call out.
“Stark?” I bent down to look inside. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for you. The people at your work said you were probably at the church.” He brought the car to a stop. “Hop in.”
“Okay…” I opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat. “Why were you looking for me?”
“The lawyer I hired to help with everything while you were in the hospital said you haven’t come by to sign any of the paperwork and you won’t return his calls. He said all of the bills are behind and the Power of Attorney has expired now that you’re out of the hospital.” Stark said as he drove towards my house.
“Yeah.” I admitted. “It just feels like doing that is officially signing away all that is left of them. I need the insurance money, don’t get me wrong, but I’m just not ready.”
“I can help you with anything you need financially.” He stated.
“You don’t owe me anything, Stark.” I shook my head.
“We were almost family.” He replied in a firm tone. “I’m here to help.”
“I appreciate it, but I’ll figure it out.” The car rolled into my driveway.
“You should at least get back in school.” He said as he exited the car. “You can’t get by on a minimum wage job.”
“I know.” I let out a long sigh. “I’ll get there, Stark. Thank you for the ride home.”
There was a part of me that wanted to just let Stark write me a check, curl up in a ball under the covers and stay there forever. I knew that wasn’t reality, but it was still a thought in my mind. Instead, I went inside and curled up in a ball with all my monetary problems still present. The next day, I did go see the lawyer and sign the paperwork, even though I didn’t feel ready at all.
***
3 Months Later
Time passed and my life settled into a routine. I got up in the morning, went to work, and came back home when the day was done. I tried to be smart and use the money left over after the life insurance policy to pay off the house. My father had an insurance policy on the car that would replace it, but I didn’t want a BMW, so I settled for something with good gas mileage and a lot of safety features.
I wanted to go back to school, but the bills required me to work, and I knew I couldn’t do both if I was working overtime just to get by. I wasn’t really living, but I was existing. I certainly wanted to withdraw from the world, but I just couldn’t do that.
“Thank you for opening up today.” One of the parishioners said as I fixed my second cup of coffee in less than hour. “Your story is so powerful.”
“It is tough to tell it, but Pastor John said it would help to talk about it, and he was right.” I nodded.
“I’m David, by the way.” He extended his hand.
“Emily.” I shook his hand. “I guess you already know that from my story.”
“Yeah.” He stared down at the floor. “Um, do you think you would like to go out after this, maybe get a cup of coffee?”
“Coffee?” I raised my eyebrows. “No, I think this is going to be my last cup for the evening.”
“Right…” He nodded. “Well it was nice to meet you.”
As David was walking away, I suddenly felt a strong slap of realization hitting me in the face. He was asking me out. It was no wonder I was single. A guy walked up, asked me out, and I just shot him down like he was the last person on Earth I even wanted to drink coffee with. I walked out to my car and slid behind the wheel, feeling quite embarrassed.
I got home and considered my options for food. It looked like another night of frozen hamburgers in a skillet or microwaved hot dogs. Neither sounded especially appealing, but I did have some cheese, so I figured I’d go the cheeseburger route. I opened the fridge and looked around. When I spotted some bacon that wasn’t expired, I suddenly had more of an interest in making a hamburger. As I stood there with my head in the fridge, I heard a knock on my door. I walked over quickly and saw Stark standing in the doorway, a yellow rose in his hand.
“Stark? Hi, come on in.” I pushed the door open and took the flower. He walked into the living room while I dug a dusty vase from underneath the counter and propped it up in the middle of the otherwise empty kitchen counter.
“How have you been, Emily?” He unbuttoned the middle button his jacket as he took his seat.
“I’ve been okay. I wasn’t expecting you. Are you hungry? I could whip up a mean frozen hamburger. I even have some bacon.” I hoped the buns were fresh.
“Actually, I was hoping I could take you out to dinner. I know I should have called, but stopping by was kind of an impulsive decision.” He shrugged as I walked back into the living room.
“No, it is okay. You’re always welcome here.” The idea of going to dinner with
him sounded a lot better than eating frozen food from the fridge.
“I’d love dinner. I assume you’re paying?” It wasn’t like it was going to set him back. I just hoped I had something to wear.
“Of course. I’d pay anything to have the most beautiful woman in Tampa dine with me tonight.” His face spread into a smile.
I tilted my head. He had never called me beautiful before, and it caused me to blush, but I dismissed it.
“Well you know I’ll eat dinner with just about anyone if they’re buying.” I gave him an awkward smile.
I headed to the bathroom so I could adjust what was left of my makeup in to a face passable at a fine dining establishment. My sister had mentioned that he rarely ate cheap, so I hoped I had something appropriate I could wear. I settled on a dress that I could slip on easily and found matching shoes to go with it. Once everything was put together, I followed him outside where he opened the door for me and waited for me to get seated before closing it.
It was a strange gesture since he normally just let me get in on my own. I knew he was quite chivalrous from the way he treated my sister, but we had just been friends, and I didn’t really demand such nonsense. I wasn’t real sure what was going on, but as he climbed into the car I dismissed his actions and we drove to the restaurant.
As expected, he did not choose one I could not have afforded on my own. We sat down and he ordered a bottle of wine I could not pronounce. After the first glass, it was rushing around in my head and we were eating salads which probably cost more than my last few meals. He had taken me out to dinner a couple of times since the incident happened, but it normally something quick. A fine dinner out was a drop in a bucket for him and a real luxury for me. I learned to accept it after being told multiple times he wasn’t going to let me pay, and he certainly wasn’t eating anywhere I could afford.