Chapter 24 Someone Still Waited
She wasn’t some orphan girl from nowhere.
She was the heiress of Capital City’s Johnson family.
Stella hadn’t come back to abandon him.
She’d come home.
When Shane heard she was holding a ceremony to bury her mother’s urn, he just wanted to talk. But what he found instead was a hall engulfed in flames.
Now, with fire crackling around them, he didn’t hesitate-he grabbed her arm.
“Forget the rest-your life is what matters!”
Life?
Without her mother, she never would’ve had a life to begin with.
A “useless urn”? That wasn’t some random piece of wood. That was her mother’s name. Her soul.
Fury surged through Stella, and she found strength she didn’t even know she had. She yanked her arm free and lunged into the flames.
Shane tried to stop her.
She slapped him hard across the face, eyes blazing red.
“Mind your own damn business! Get lost!”
She shoved him away and rushed forward, grabbing the urn with trembling hands. Overhead, a burning beam crashed down-she screamed and dove aside, refusing to accept even a finger’s worth of help from him.
Outside, the crowd screamed.
Shane’s chest clenched. Seeing her dodge the wreckage hurt worse than being hit himself.
He dashed in and dragged her out the side door.
The moment they were outside-
Stella wrenched free from his grasp.
“I didn’t ask you to save me! Go away! Thank God… thank God Mom’s urn is okay…”
She cradled the urn in her arms, checking it carefully. The style and engraving were all chosen by her
mother. One of a kind.
Shane’s heart pounded.
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She could’ve died in there.
Who the hell cares about some urn?!
He stood firm.
“Star… I just want to talk to you.”
Stella didn’t answer.
A scream suddenly echoed from the front of the hall-Raine’s.
“See?! I told you this day was unlucky! The priest was right all along!”
“Stella! We let you put her urn in the cemetery-and you set it on fire? Our ancestors are there!”
Gasps erupted from the other relatives.
Stella walked around from the side, stepping into full view-just in time to catch the triumphant glint in Raine’s eyes.
Of course.
This fire… it had her fingerprints all over it.
Raine seized the moment.
“Why aren’t you saying anything, Stella? Feeling guilty? Of course it was her! She’s always hated us elders. She was just waiting for a moment like this! Didn’t you hear how she spoke to us earlier?”
The accusations piled up.
Until Stella stepped forward-
And rolled up her sleeve.
Her arm was raw and blistered, scorched from the flames.
Her voice was like ice.
“Looks to me like someone just tried to kill me. Burning beams and falling banners-if I hadn’t dodged in time, I’d be dead.”
“So if you really think I set that fire-go ahead. Call the police. Let them investigate whether this was arson, and whether someone meant to kill me–or whether I just tried to burn this place to the ground.”
Silence fell.
Her wounds were real. No one sets a fire just to burn themselves.
Some of the elders began to look uneasy.
Raine’s face twisted.
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She couldn’t let Stella call the cops.
If they traced the fire back-if they found out where it started….
“It’s not like that! This is a family cemetery-we can’t have outsiders investigating! I believe it’s just an ancient. Stella’s young, but she knows better. She wouldn’t be an arsonist-it must’ve been a mistake. Just a misunderstanding…”
Raine was drenched in cold sweat.
Some even tried to praise her: “Being a stepmother’s not easy. Cleaning up her messes too-what a headache.”
Stella nearly gagged.
She clutched her mother’s urn and walked away.
She needed to find a clean, quiet place.
A place to properly honor her mother.
Just past the gate, a hand clamped down on her wrist.
Shane.
She forgot he was still there.
Stella turned around. “Let go of me.”
“This-this is what you came back to?” Shane’s voice was sharp, bitter. “That stepmother of yours is a snake. Your relatives are blind idiots. They treat you like garbage.”
“Come back with me. I’ll deal with them all for you.”
Stella slapped his hand away.
“Delusional. I don’t need your help. I just need you to leave me alone.
She didn’t look back.
Didn’t stop.
Just walked straight down the mountain.
“”
She held her mother’s urn tight.
One step after another, unsteady and sore.
Out of the winding forest trail, she emerged onto the main road and pulled out her phone to call a ride.
A horn honked.
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She looked up.
A sleek Bentley was parked by the curb.
The window rolled down, and the driver waved at her.
“Mr. Moses had other matters to attend to-but he asked me to wait here for you.”
Stella’s nose stung.
Her legs ached, her arms burned from carrying the heavy urn all this way.
She hadn’t expected anyone to wait for her.
And yet… someone had.
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