“What the hell is going on? Where is she?”
Mr. Pruitt just shook his head. “We didn’t know how weak her heart was until it was too late.”
Too late? Too late for what?
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m going to miss her just as much as you.”
What the fuck was he talking about? I didn’t realize I was stumbling backwards until I ran into Mason. Mason grabbed my arms like he was expecting me to fall over.
But this was just a sick joke. Brooklyn was fine. I’d just seen her last night. She’d just left me dozens of messages. There was no incident. I pushed Mason off of me and ran out into the foyer. “Brooklyn!” I yelled.
My voice echoed in the empty foyer.
“Brooklyn!” I ran up the stairs. “Brooklyn, please just talk to me!” I ran down the hall to her bedroom. “Brooklyn?” The room was empty. I ran back out into the hall. Where the fuck was she? I started opening up random doors. “I’m sorry, baby. Please just talk to me.”
“I told her she wouldn’t live to see her wedding day,” Isabella said.
Her words sent a chill down my spine. I turned to see her standing in the middle of the hallway with a huge smile on her face.
She had no clue what she was talking about, though. Brooklyn was fine. “Get out of my way, Isabella.” I walked past her. “Brooklyn, where are you?!”
“Those morgue people came and took her away hours ago.”
Panic was starting to settle into my chest. “Brooklyn!”
“They just wheeled her cold, lifeless body out,” Isabella said. “Like a bag of trash. Because that’s what she was.”
I lunged at her. I didn’t realize or care that anyone was watching us, but two bodyguards grabbed me before I could wrap my hands around Isabella’s throat.
Isabella laughed.
“Get off me,” I yelled. “Brooklyn, where are you?!”
“Exactly where she belongs,” Isabella said. “Six feet under with her whore mother.”
I ripped my arm away from one of the security guards and grabbed the front of Isabella’s sweater.
She screamed at the top of her lungs.
“What did you do?” I yelled.
The security guards pulled me away.
This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t real.
“I didn’t have to do anything,” Isabella called after me as I was being pulled down the steps. “I had a wonderful plan, but I didn’t even have to use it. She died because she was weak.”
“Don’t you dare fucking call her that.” I tried to lunge up the stairs again, but Mason stepped in front of me.
“She died in surgery,” he said.
I shook my head back and forth. “No. What the hell are you talking about? She wasn’t having surgery today.”
“She’d agreed to give her dad her kidney. There were complications.”
No. “She would have told me if she was doing that.” I just kept shaking my head as the tears started to fall down my cheeks. “She’s okay. She’s alive. I’ll 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.