Trapped in the Don's Vow novel Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I’d heard those words before. He used to say it all the time.

“Summer is just my sister. You’ll always be the one I love.”

I closed my eyes, suddenly exhausted.

Go home? What home did I have left?

As he pushed me into the car, my stomach lurched violently and I retched.

It wasn’t drunkenness.

It was a physical revulsion, a reflex my body had learned over five years of nightmares.

Julian’s “death” had been ruled an accident in that warehouse fire.

That day had been our third wedding anniversary.

I’d booked the restaurant and waited for him to get off work.

By nine, he still hadn’t shown. I couldn’t reach him by phone.

At ten, an unfamiliar number called. A man spoke on the other end, breathless.

“Nina… Julian’s trapped in the old warehouse in Westbrook. The fire’s too big. He told me to tell you… he

loves you…”

Behind the words came crackling flames.

And Julian’s hoarse shout, barely audible. “Nina, don’t come…”

I panicked and ran straight there.

Fire trucks surrounded the scene. Police tape sealed it off.

I heard someone shouting, “Julian Hayes is still inside!”

Without thinking, I ran straight in.

Through the choking smoke, I saw Julian collapsed beside a storage rack.

I lunged for him, trying to pull him up, when a burning beam snapped and crashed down.

He shoved me away with all his strength. The blast threw me back.

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When I looked up again, there was nothing but fire.

Later, the investigation report stated that a family member had unlawfully entered the fire scene, disrupting

rescue efforts and causing firefighter Julian Hayes to die while protecting her.

My in-laws threw me out of the house.

My mother called me, sobbing.

“Nina… I know you’re hurting, but Miles has a girlfriend now. Her family heard about what happened to you…

they’re uncomfortable with it. For now… don’t come home, okay?”

Even the people closest to me didn’t want me anymore.

So I started trying to end my life.

The first time, I slit my wrists in the bathtub.

The landlord discovered me because of a water leak from the ceiling and rushed me to the hospital.

The second time, I jumped into the river.

It was winter.

The water was ice-cold, and just as I sank, an elderly man who was winter swimming pulled me out.

The third time was sleeping pills again.

This time, I thought I was being careful.

I went to a cheap motel outside the city.

But the owner sensed something wrong and called the police.

During the stomach pumping, the doctor looked at me with a complicated expression.

“Miss, the person who died for you would have wanted you to live well.”

But no one wanted me alive. Except Zoe Bennett.

Zoe was Summer’s cousin and my college classmate.

When she found me, I was running a high fever in a rental room, having gone three days without food.

She didn’t try to persuade me.

She cooked meals, sat by my bed, and said calmly, “If I were you, I’d live. I’d live better than anyone else, so

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the people who wronged me would have to watch.”

“Dying is easy. Living is hard. Are you brave enough to live instead?”

I looked at her and suddenly broke down crying.

After that, Zoe came often.

She took me out to eat, forced me to leave the house, even helped me find a new job.

“You need to stand up, Nina,” she said. “Not for anyone else. For yourself.”

I thought I had finally grabbed hold of a lifeline.

But just as I was slowly recovering and preparing to start over, something happened to Zoe.

A car accident. The other driver was drunk.

He slammed into her car, and she died at the scene.

At the morgue, a police officer handed me a burned phone found in the wreckage.

The last message was addressed to me but never sent.

It read: [Nina, I found something wrong with that fire. It might be connected to Summer…]

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