Chapter 2: The Ghost of St. Jude’s Fire
A decade before the chandeliers and billionaire galas, the Vance summer retreat in St. Jude’s Valley had burned to ash in the dead of winter. Elena had been sixteen, trapped beneath a collapsed mahogany beam in the second-floor library while black smoke swallowed the estate. The emergency sirens were still miles away when an eighteen-year-old apprentice mechanic named Julian Ross kicked through the flaming French doors.
Julian had shielded her body with his own as the fiery rafters collapsed, burning through his jacket and searing his flesh down to the bone. He carried her out through the inferno, handing her into the weeping arms of the paramedics before collapsing on the frostbitten lawn. But by the time Elena woke in the hospital intensive care unit, Julian was gone. Arthur Vance had paid the hospital bills quietly and told his daughter that the hero was a transient who took a settlement check and vanished.
Now, standing under three million dollars’ worth of crystal, Julian looked at Elena not with entitlement, but with quiet relief. "I didn't come for money, Mr. Vance," Julian said, his voice deep, gravelly, and steady. "And I didn't come to cause a scene. I promised myself I would only see for my own eyes that she made it to this day alive, safe, and happy."
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Gregory Thorne, standing beside Elena in an ivory tuxedo, scoffed loudly, stepping between them. "Is this some kind of cheap extortion stunt? Someone call the police and get this grease monkey off the premises!"
Elena didn't look at Gregory. Her gaze was locked on the scars—the identical marks she had felt pressing against her shoulder when the ceiling gave way ten years ago. "Gregory, shut your mouth," she whispered, stepping past her fiancé. "You don't talk to him like that. Ever."
