Chapter 3

Everything in me went cold.

Making me strip in front of the entire graduating class was the humiliation. That was the whole point of it.

Brooke crouched down and put her mouth near my ear, and her voice dropped to something close to a hiss.

"Your heart hurts, doesn't it? Look at your face. You're just about at the end of it.

"Your dignity or your life. You pick."

I bit down on my lip and kept my head low, and I could still feel a couple hundred pairs of eyes on me.

Ryan's brows pulled together again.

"Brooke, that's too far.

"She's my girlfriend. You make her undress in front of everyone, how does that make me look afterward?"

How it made him look. Not whether I was telling the truth, not what I wanted.

No trust. Nobody at my back.

I laughed at myself somewhere down inside. This was the man I'd loved for years.

Brooke's face stiffened at being told no, and then she let out another big sigh.

"Ryan, I'm doing this for her.

"She pulls a stunt like this at the graduation ball. If she can't prove it, she'll be a liar to these people for the rest of her life.

"And I'm not asking her to strip. She only has to show us a surgical scar and the whole misunderstanding goes away."

Ryan didn't say anything.

Then, after barely a moment, with me staring at him in disbelief, he spoke.

"Brooke's right.

"Alessia, you say a bullet went through your heart and they operated. Then there's a scar.

"Hiding it just makes people suspicious. Open it up and let the truth be the truth."

The pain in my chest had gone numb by then, but looking at that face, the one I used to love, my eyes stung all over again.

With Ryan's blessing, Brooke got bolder and jerked her chin at me.

"Take it off. You doing it yourself, or do you want help?"

I shrank back, but my hands were losing even the strength to hold my neckline shut.

"I didn't lie, and none of you has any right to take my dress off me."

Brooke was out of patience. She threw a look at the girls behind her, and they came at me all at once.

I had nothing left in my body. They dragged at me and my vision blacked out and I went down.

The dark came in waves. The dull weight in my chest was like a hand closing around my throat.

Ryan watched me coughing and fighting for air, and something crossed his face.

"Maybe we should stop.

"She looks terrible. I should take her in and have her checked, just in case."

I lifted my head through the haze and a little hope caught in me.

Something ugly went across Brooke's eyes, and then she was wounded again.

"Of course. She's your girlfriend, so naturally you feel for her.

"I don't mind being humiliated. But she embarrassed you tonight too.

"Ryan, I'm pre-med. Do you think I couldn't tell if something were actually wrong with her?"

The worry went off Ryan's face and something much bigger came in behind it.

He looked into my unfocused eyes with nothing left in him for me.

"Alessia, you're still lying to me?

"You think you can hold your own body over my head and I'll give in?

"Enough. Let Brooke check you and quit faking."

And there went the last of it.

Brooke ignored me fighting her and reached straight for the dress.

Her friends pinned my arms on both sides, and a body that couldn't hold itself up had nothing left to give.

As I went under, I heard the silk tear open next to my ear.

At almost the same second, I felt every eye in the room move over me.

The shame of it had me clawing to cover myself, and most of my skin was bare anyway.

Brooke laughed, and it was all contempt.

"See? Told you she was faking. There's not a mark on her."

Laughter went up all around me. I clamped both hands over my chest and forced the words through my teeth.

"My father is going to bury every one of you."

Brooke wasn't impressed.

"What's some nobody going to do about it?

"My father donated an entire building to this school. This whole campus answers to me.

"You should quit while you're ahead. Acting like you're some kind of mafia princess."

Ryan was staring at me with both fists closed, like part of him was still fighting it.

Then the laughter got louder, and my heart stopped for a beat, and white light started going off across my eyes.

Despair closed over me and I couldn't hold on. I quit fighting.

The last second before I went, I thought I heard the doors of the hall come off their hinges.

I got my head up with the last of what I had, and there was a shape in the doorway with the light behind it. I knew it.

"Who here is tired enough of living to put hands on the Bellandi Principessa?"