Bart was rich and his life was already complete by having Stella.
He had detested the idea of remarriage, and had hired many nannies for Stella, hoping to improve her behaviour. But all of them had been driven out by Stella, no matter how much Bart proposed to pay to them.
Finally, believing that it was maternal love Stella lacked, Bart decided to remarry.
He was not looking for love or money or power by the marriage, all he wanted was to find someone who would love Stella like a mother.
For this reason, he married a widow from the countryside. Susan was her name, and she was a widow with two boys, Derek, aged seven, and Darwin, aged four. Bart believed that herself having kids, Susan would be able to love Stella as her own. And that Stella would be happy growing up with kids of her age.
But Bart was wrong, Stella's behaviour hardly changed, and if it did, it changed for the worse. Stella bad mouthed Susan and refused to acknowledge her as her mom, she always bullied the timid Darwin and had fights with Derek.
A few months after remarrying, Bart fell ill. His illness was declared as chronic by the doctors and he died a few months after.
This had a huge change on Stella's life as she suddenly became an orphan, as she refused to acknowledge Susan. But her behaviour hardly changed, though did the consequences.
When before, Stella could walk around yelling at Susan and all Suan would do was tell Bart not to be hard on a child, now Susan began to yell back and punish her.
When Stella used to have fights with Derek before, they both would be scolded and their wounds dressed, now Stella was punished for fighting, usually locked up in the attic, still bleeding as Derek was now growing stronger.
The only person whose behaviour didn't change even after the death of Bart was Darwin. He was still the meek kid who Stella could bully all she liked and he would not even complain to Susan.
So Stella grew up like that, gaining more and more scars around her body due to her fights with Derek and his friends. She was fighting his friends now too, and they never went easy because she was a girl. And also some scars from when Susan was too angry and hit Stella to punish her.
One night, Stella had been sent to the attic without any dinner, because she was not given any dinner if she did not prepare it, and today she had had a pretty nasty fight with Derek's gang, and she was in no condition to cook. Stella was sitting on the floor of the attic near the window, and she was trying to wash her wounds by the light of the moon, that came from the window.
Stella's head turned around with a snap as she heard the trapdoor creak. She tip toed to the entrance and had her sharp nails at the throat of whoever was coming even before the person's shoulders appeared.
"Oh, it's you. I thought maybe Derek had come looking for revenge. It would have been great if he did." Stella said as she released Darwin and went back to the window.