Empire High Betrayal (Empire High #3) - Ivy Smoak Page 0,115

call her again. I’ll just call her. You’ll see.” I fumbled with my phone in my pocket. All the missed calls and texts were blinking back at me.

Mason put his hands on my shoulders. “They didn’t know her mom died of heart disease. Mr. Pruitt seemed shocked when I told him that. They were under the impression that it was cancer like her uncle.”

No.

“She’s gone, Matt. Her heart gave out on the operating table. She didn’t make it.”

“She’s not gone.” What the hell was he talking about? Surgery? She just had a doctor’s appointment. Not a freaking surgery. “Brooklyn!” I yelled.

“I’m sorry, Matthew,” Mr. Pruitt said.

I turned around. Mr. Pruitt was in his wheelchair in the middle of the foyer. His IV wheeled in right beside him. “I owe her everything. She saved my life.”

You fucking prick. “She never agreed to any surgery!”

“She did. She signed the papers. I have a copy of them in my office if…”

“One of your contracts? They’re a million pages long. No one reads those things, you psychopath.”

He looked at me like I’d slapped him. “I can’t change what happened now. It’s done.”

How could he talk about his daughter like she was just a finished business transaction? “This is a joke, right? This is all a joke?” But I didn’t have the energy to call out her name again. Because no one was looking at me like this was a joke. She can’t be dead. She can’t be.

Mr. Pruitt pulled Brooklyn’s ring out of his pocket. “She would have wanted you to have this back.” He held it out to me.

If Brooklyn was alive she wouldn’t have taken it off. She’d promised me forever. She’d promised. I didn’t want the ring back. I just wanted her.

He grabbed my hand and pressed the ring into my palm. “I’m sorry. I’ll be in touch with the funeral arrangements. I know she would have loved for you to give a speech.” Mr. Pruitt snapped his fingers and one of the bodyguards wheeled him away.

I looked down at the ring in my hand and it became blurry through my tears. “This isn’t real. She can’t be dead. She can’t be.”

I wanted to run around the house looking for her. I wanted to see her laughing at one of my jokes. Or even crying because I was being an idiot. I just wanted to see her face. I needed to see her face.

Mason hugged me.

This isn’t real. I closed my eyes and opened them again. But I was still standing in the middle of the Pruitts’ foyer, Brooklyn’s ring digging into my palm.

Brooklyn was gone. And the last thing I’d ever said to her was that she was a liar.

I looked down at the rose petals all over the floor. I wasn’t even aware that I’d dropped the bouquet. What the fuck had I even brought them here for? Flowers couldn’t fix anything. They couldn’t bring her uncle back. And they couldn’t bring Brooklyn back either.

My whole body felt numb.

“It’s going to be okay,” Mason said.

How was anything going to be okay? Brooklyn was dead. And she’d died thinking that I hated her.

Chapter 40

Wednesday

Matt

I was still numb. I’d gone from rage to despair. I’d called the cops on Isabella, convinced that she was somehow behind it. I’d hired a private investigator, thinking maybe Brooklyn was still alive and out there somewhere alone and scared. Hell, I’d even thought I’d seen her in the street. But I’d just scared some random girl half to death when I grabbed her arm. From rage to despair, all the way back to…numb.

I looked over at the coffin. I wanted to climb inside and stop breathing. I wanted to stop feeling this hollowness in my chest. I just wanted my fucking girl back.

Someone in the church cleared their throat.

And I realized I’d just been standing up here saying nothing. “I was supposed to marry Brooklyn next month,” I said into the microphone. The mic made a squealing noise, like it was rejecting the past tense words that didn’t make any fucking sense coming out of my mouth. “And I don’t really know what to say about our ending, when all I was thinking about recently was our beginning.” I swallowed down the lump in my throat.

“I wrote my vows to her a few weeks ago. Before…this.” I looked over at the coffin again. How could she be dead? How was this happening? I took a deep breath and pulled out the folded up piece of