Chapter 10 - ASHES IN THE ORCHARDThe chapel did not explode like buildings did in movies.
It groaned first.
A deep, terrible sound from inside the walls. Then fire burst through the back cabinets, swallowing the medical files in orange teeth. Glass shattered inward. Smoke rolled across the ceiling.
Ethan grabbed Aria with one arm and Richard’s wheelchair with the other.
“Go!” he shouted.
Marcus and two guards dragged Victoria toward the door. She fought them even as smoke filled her mouth.
“My files!” she screamed. “You stupid men, my files!”
Aria twisted back.
Her father’s medical records.
The proof.
The years.
Burning.
Ethan shoved her forward. “Aria!”
She stumbled through the doorway as part of the ceiling collapsed behind them.
Rain hit her face. The orchard spun with smoke, mud, shouting men, and fire eating the chapel roof from inside. Ethan lifted Richard from the wheelchair just before a burning beam crashed down where his legs had been.
For a moment, Richard hung limp in Ethan’s arms.
Aria screamed, “Dad!”
“He’s breathing,” Ethan said.
They ran.
Behind them, the chapel became a furnace.
Victoria stood restrained between Marcus and another guard, her black coat torn, hair loose, face streaked with ash. She stared at the burning building not with horror, but grief.
Not for Richard.
For the documents.
Aria saw it and felt the last childish piece of her die.
“You were going to burn him with it,” Aria said.
Victoria looked at her slowly.
“If you had stayed obedient,” she said, “none of this would have been necessary.”
Aria stepped toward her.
Marcus tightened his grip on Victoria’s arm, but Aria did not strike her.
She only looked at her.
Really looked.
For years, Victoria had seemed enormous—too polished to challenge, too connected to accuse, too cold to wound. But under rain and ash, she looked like what she was.
A woman terrified of losing what she had stolen.
Sirens approached in the distance.
Ethan’s team transferred Richard into an ambulance owned by CrossShield Medical. Lena was already inside, barking orders.
Aria climbed in after him.
Ethan stopped at the doors and looked back at Marcus.
“Police?”
“Five minutes out.”
“Keep Victoria here.”
Victoria laughed. “You don’t have authority to detain me.”
Marcus smiled without warmth. “No, ma’am. But the uneven ground does make walking difficult.”
Ethan climbed into the ambulance.
The doors closed.
As the vehicle tore away from the orchard, Aria sat beside the stretcher holding her father’s hand.
Richard drifted in and out, fighting sedation and pain.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“No,” Aria said, tears falling freely. “No, Dad. Don’t.”
“I tried.”
“I know.”
But did she?
The truth was unbearable because it gave her back love and stole seven years in the same breath.
At the private medical facility, Richard was rushed into treatment. Aria refused to leave the observation room until Lena promised he would not wake alone. Ethan stayed with her.
Hours passed.
Morning became afternoon.
The internet exploded.
Helicopters filmed smoke rising from Montgomery Estate’s north orchard. Headlines changed so quickly no one could control them.
MISSING HEIRESS FOUND.
SECRET STRUCTURE BURNS ON MONTGOMERY PROPERTY.
RICHARD MONTGOMERY ALIVE?
VICTORIA MONTGOMERY QUESTIONED AFTER ORCHARD FIRE.
Then the counterattack came.
A statement from Victoria’s attorneys claimed Ethan Cross had staged a violent trespass, abducted a medically fragile Richard Montgomery from lawful care, and manipulated Aria into a campaign against her family.
Gerald Vance appeared through a written denial calling the accusations “grotesque lies from unstable individuals motivated by money.”
Aria stared at the screen in disbelief.
“How?” she asked. “How can they still lie when my father is alive?”
Ethan stood beside her. “Because truth is not the same as proof.”
“The chapel burned.”
“Most of it.”
She looked at him.
Ethan reached into his coat and placed a small black drive on the table.
“Marcus pulled the office safe ledger from Warehouse 19. Celeste knew where it was.”
Aria stared.
Hope, again.
Dangerous and bright.
“What’s on it?”
“Enough to hurt them,” Ethan said. “Not enough to bury them.”
“Then what buries them?”
A weak voice answered from the hospital bed behind them.
“I do.”
Aria turned.
Richard Montgomery was awake.
His eyes were tired, but clear.
Lena moved to stop him from speaking, but he lifted a faint hand.
“No more silence,” he whispered.
Aria rushed to his side. “Dad, you need to rest.”
“I rested seven years.”
The sentence broke her heart.
Richard looked at Ethan. “Vance moved the original records before the fire. Victoria never knew where I hid the final set.”
Ethan leaned closer. “Where?”
Richard’s breathing grew uneven.
Aria squeezed his hand.
He looked at her, and for one instant, she saw the father who had carried her on his shoulders through hotel lobbies and taught her that people mattered more than marble.
“The grave,” he said.
May you like
Aria went still.
“My grave.”
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