Chapter 2

The whole hall went dead quiet.

Panic finally hit the faces around us, and the crowd started to churn.

"God, she's not actually doing this, is she?"

"Where's her phone? Somebody call an ambulance."

Ryan's whole face changed. He just stood there staring at me.

It took a hard cough out of me to bring him back, and then he started walking my way.

"Alessia, don't scare me."

He was almost to me when Brooke laughed again.

"Oh, that's good. That is really good acting."

She got in front of him, opened her phone, and pulled up a form.

"I had someone look into it ahead of time. This is Alessia's health screening from this semester.

"Look at the internal medicine line. Heart and lung auscultation, no abnormality."

She tilted her head at me, and there was something sly behind it.

"Alessia, if you really took a bullet to the heart and spent ten hours in the ICU, you're telling me a physical wouldn't catch that?"

Ryan stopped moving.

His eyes went from my bloodless face down to the report, and his brows drew in.

"If that report's real, why does she look like that right now?"

The crowd that had panicked a second ago settled, and the murmuring started up in waves.

Brooke stayed perfectly calm and let her eyes drift over my face.

"Why? Because none of it's true, obviously."

She took out the power bank, lined it up with the controller port at my chest, and jammed it in.

There was a beep, and a battery icon lit up on the screen.

Brooke smiled and spread her hands.

"See? It's charging.

"A real medical device only takes its own certified power supply. This thing runs off a power bank. What is it if it isn't a toy?"

Ryan watched the icon blinking, and the last of the doubt went out of his eyes.

"Are you done?"

He looked at me sideways, and his voice came out cold as ice water.

"I really did underestimate you. You went out and bought props for this.

"You pull this on me in private, fine. But it's the graduation ball, and now everybody has to play along?

"Get up. Apologize to Brooke."

He kept going, and I couldn't hear any of it. I was staring at the controller.

Brooke had one thing right. The system only takes its own certified medical power module.

Hook it to anything else and the mismatched current fries it outright.

I tried to reset it. Sure enough, the charging icon flickered once and the screen went black.

The hum coming out of my chest felt like a fist closing slowly around my heart.

For a second, death was all around me.

I was gulping air, and my eyes went around the chapel looking for anything at all.

I'd hit the beacon, but my father still needed time to get here.

And now the controller was dead. If I didn't come up with something fast, I wasn't going to last until he came for me.

My eyes landed on the doors.

I forced myself up onto my hands and knees and started for them, looking for anyone who'd help.

Ryan grabbed my arm.

His eyes were burning.

"I told you to get up and apologize. Are you deaf?

"Brooke asked me for one dance and you invented a disease to make everyone feel sorry for you.

"Apologize to her properly and I'll let tonight go."

My whole face was screwed up with pain, and Ryan looked straight at it and decided it was a performance.

Brooke let out a heavy sigh and put on her most generous voice.

"Let it go, Ryan. I can take a little humiliation.

"She's your girlfriend at the end of the day. Don't fight over me."

Ryan shook his head, and the way he looked at me got sharper.

"Look how big Brooke's heart is. You put on this whole circus and she's still standing up for you.

"Keep going, Alessia, and you and I are finished."

Maybe it was the old wound and maybe it was what he said, but my heart clenched hard.

And everything I'd been holding in came out at once.

"Ryan, when we first got together, you told me you'd always protect me.

"Brooke swapped my medical power supply for a power bank, and you're telling me to apologize to her.

"If I die right here, are you going to regret it?"

Nothing in his face moved.

"Alessia, we've been together long enough that I know your situation better than anyone.

"We're together nearly every day. How would you get shot through the heart? How would you spend days in intensive care without me knowing?"

He paused, and his voice dropped colder.

"And you're an ordinary student. You seriously expect me to believe you're in the mafia and somebody put a gun on you?"

I closed my eyes and let the tears run.

What Ryan didn't know was that my father is the Don of the Bellandi family, the largest Cosa Nostra organization in North America.

All the years we'd been together, I'd wanted to tell him a hundred times.

Tonight, after the ball, I was going to. All of it, everything about where I come from.

There wasn't any point now.

Brooke stood off to the side enjoying it, taking in every bit of the state I was in.

Only when my breathing got heavier did she come forward.

"Alessia, if you're going to insist a bullet went through your heart, then you had surgery, didn't you?"

She took two steps closer, eyes going to the skin below my collarbone.

"Heart surgery leaves a scar. Always.

"So if you're not lying, take the dress off and let everyone see it."