My Last Plea Was His Worst Mistake Chapter 04

My Last Plea Was His Worst Mistake Chapter 04

My mother, Helen Moore, nearly fell at the door when she arrived at the fire station.

She was in poor health, leaning on a cane, her coat buttons all mismatched.

The moment she stepped inside, she grabbed Ethan’s sleeve.

“Where’s Luna?”

Ethan had just come out of the meeting room, holding a thermos.

I’d given him that thermos. There was a small scratch on it—from when I’d accidentally knocked it against a table while keeping him company at the hospital after his first serious injury.

I’d been so upset back then. He’d laughed it off, “It’s just a cup. Why are you more worried than I am?”

He’d kept using it ever since. I thought he treasured it.

But now Chloe was holding it, filled with hot tea.

My mother’s gaze locked onto the cup. Her hand trembled on the cane.

“That was Luna’s gift to you.”

Chloe shot up immediately. The lid wasn’t tight, and the tea splashed out, scalding the back of her hand red.

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Moore. I didn’t know I shouldn’t touch it.”

Ethan instinctively stepped in front of her, pulling her wrist toward the sink.

“Run it under cold water.”

My mother stood frozen, staring at the scene, her face pale.

“Ethan, my daughter is missing. Her last call was to you, and all you care about is that little burn on her hand?”

Ethan turned, exhaustion and irritation flickering across his face.

“Ms. Moore, Luna’s done this before. She’s pulled this exact act more than once to get me to cave.”

My mother slapped him.

The whole office went dead quiet.

Ethan’s head turned with the blow. He worked his tongue along the inside of his stinging cheek but didn’t fight back.

” She has gone too far this time.”

He moved Chloe behind him.

“She turned a real fire into a jealousy stunt. What if everyone did that? What about the people who actually need help?”

Wyatt couldn’t hold back anymore.

“But we found a body on the east wing.”

Ethan whipped around.

“That doesn’t prove it’s her.”

Wyatt placed the call-location records and the preliminary scene reconstruction report on the desk.

“Luna’s last call came from the mall. She said she was in the east wing storage room. We were only—”

Ethan slammed his hand down on the report.

“Enough.”

Wyatt stared at him.

“What exactly are you trying to avoid facing here, Chief? ”

Ethan didn’t answer right away.

Chloe stood behind him, head down, twisting a loose thread on her sweater cuff. She pulled it longer and longer, winding it around her finger until it dug into her skin.

“You’re all being played by her. I know Luna better than any of you. When she gets jealous over Chloe, she’ll go to any length.”

My mother stepped back half a step, staring at Ethan in disbelief. She braced herself against the table to keep from falling.

“Ethan Carter, remember this. If Luna never comes home, it wasn’t the fire that killed her. It was you—because you decided she was just jealous, and you sealed that door shut.”

Someone came running from the decontamination room.

“Chief, we’ve made a key discovery while processing evidence..”

Ethan looked up.

He said nothing, only swallowed, his chest rising once.

Inside the decontamination room, on the table, were the items recovered from the east wing basement: blackened keys, a warped phone, the broken necklace, and a ring twisted out of shape by extreme heat.

The ring was fused to a fragment of blackened finger bone. It wouldn’t come off.

Chloe had followed them in. She stopped at the door, took one look at the ring, and started twisting that loose thread again.

The thread snapped and fell to the floor. She quickly pressed it under her shoe.

Wyatt fixed his gaze on her.

“What are you afraid of?”

Chloe’s eyes instantly welled up with tears.

“It’s just so horrible.”

Ethan’s brow furrowed. He stepped half a pace forward, blocking her from Wyatt’s view.

“Watch your tone, Wyatt.”

Wyatt let out a bitter laugh.

“You’re still protecting her?”

Ethan’s eyes fell on the ring, and his whole body went rigid.

A technician used a cotton swab to wipe the soot from the inside of the band.

Three letters slowly emerged.

Ethan.

The cold, stubborn mask on Ethan’s face crumbled piece by piece.

He stepped forward, raised his hand as if to touch it, then snatched it back.

Wyatt’s voice cracked, his eyes red.

“Chief… it has your name engraved inside.”

Ethan didn’t respond.

A technical analyst pushed the door open, holding a tablet with the reconstructed thermal imaging footage.

“Chief, we recovered the east wing data.”

The screen lit up. On the heat map, a human-shaped red outline was curled behind the storage room door.

On the other side of the corridor, another heat signature—labeled with Ethan’s ID—paused for seven seconds.

“At that moment, you were only thirty-six feet away from the trapped civilian.”

On the tablet, the red figure was pounding on the door.

After seven seconds, Ethan’s heat signature turned and walked away.

The archived radio dispatch recording began to play simultaneously.

His own voice came through the speaker.

“Seal the east wing fire door. Shift all search operations to the West Wing sector.”

The analyst pulled up the ambient audio from the scene—fire, alarms, radio static.

Cutting through it all was a woman’s voice, hoarse and broken by smoke.

“Ethan… don’t close the door… I’m in here…”

The tablet slipped from Ethan’s hand and crashed to the floor, the screen cracking.

That heat-warped promise ring was still fused tight to the charred finger bone.