I Died In The Fire While He Married My Best Friend Chapter 06

I Died In The Fire While He Married My Best Friend Chapter 06

The car screeched to a sudden stop in front of the city police department.

Zachary didn’t even close the car door before he rushed into the lobby.

The officer on duty stopped him.

“Who are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for Serena!” Zachary shouted, his eyes bloodshot. “The Serena from the news. Where

is she?”

The officer frowned and looked him over.

“Are you family?”

The word family cut into Zachary like a blade, and he froze where he stood.

“I’m…” His lips parted. “I’m her boyfriend.”

“Take me to see her.”

The officer opened the logbook.

“Her remains are at the medical examiner’s office. You can’t see her. Do you have your driver’s

license?”

Zachary fumbled through his pockets. He had left in such a hurry that he hadn’t brought anything

with him.

He grabbed the officer’s arm, his voice shaking.

“There was a ring. She had a ring on her hand. It was a plain band, engraved inside with Z&S. I gave it to her.”

The officer checked the records.

“There was indeed a ring. It was warped by the fire. If you were her boyfriend, why didn’t you report her missing back then?”

Those words were like a knife driven straight into Zachary’s heart.

Why hadn’t he reported me missing?

Because that night, Olivia handed him a letter.

The handwriting looked like mine. It said I was sick of being poor, that I was going to find someone rich, and that he shouldn’t look for me.

The older school security guard also said he had seen me get into a black car.

Zachary believed it.

He never questioned whether the letter was real. He never questioned the security guard’s words,

He stubbornly decided that I had betrayed him.

He didn’t even go to the science building to look.

“I want to see that ring,” Zachary said hoarsely.

The officer took him to the evidence room.

Inside a clear evidence bag lay a blackened, misshapen silver band. Beside it was a burned phone.

Through the bag, Zachary touched the hard outline of the ring.

“School was already out for break when the fire happened,” the officer said with a sigh.

“Based on the scene, a support beam crushed her legs. She couldn’t run.”

Zachary went rigid.

“The medical examiner said she didn’t die from the flames.”

Zachary’s head snapped up.

“She died from smoke inhalation. The whole process lasted about twenty minutes. She suffered badly. The bones in her fingers showed severe abrasion, which means she clawed at the floor desperately before she died.”

Zachary couldn’t hold himself up anymore.

His knees gave out, and he dropped to the floor.

One hand clutched the front of his shirt as he gasped for air and dry-heaved again and again.

Nothing came up. He could only cough, tears and snot running down his face as his suit pants became covered in dust.

I stood in front of him and watched him fall apart like that, then let out a quiet sigh.

Zachary spent the entire night sitting in the lobby of the police department.

At dawn, he didn’t go home.

He drove to the bank downtown, the same bank where he had kept his seed money seven years ago.

At nine o’clock, the bank had just opened.

He stormed inside and slapped his driver’s license onto the counter.

“Pull the records,” he said hoarsely, his eyes threaded with blood. “The account ending in 0421 from seven years ago. I want the statements, every transaction, and where the money went. Print

everything.”