Chapter 4

Ten years ago, Ivana had shouted the same words at me.

After Lucy's note was made public, everyone started to turn against me.

They all wanted to know who the rapist was.

At first, Ivana didn't believe I would protect a criminal.

Yet, it only took her less than one day to start doubting me.

Only she knew I hid in a cave with Bruno.

When the villagers found us and began to skin Bruno alive, I begged her for help.

She stood at the mouth of the cave and watched.

"Tell me who the rapist is," she said. "And I'll make them stop."

Bruno howled. His cries echoed off the stone walls.

I couldn't speak. The name was lodged in my throat like a fish bone—too sharp to swallow, too deep to pull out.

Because the name I carried would destroy her.

"I can't," I whispered.

She turned and walked away.

Bruno died that night.

On the stage, the crowd saw this memory unfold. Some of them shifted uncomfortably.

"She really went through all that for keeping the secret?"

"So what? Lucy went through worse. Lucy is dead."

Ivana's jaw was tight. She wouldn't look at the screen anymore.

"Increase the voltage," she ordered.

The tech hesitated. "Ms. Priscilla, if we go higher, the subject's brain could suffer irreversible—"

"I said increase it!"

The needles dug deeper. My body arched off the chair. Blood poured from my nose.

But I didn't stop fighting.

Not because I wanted to protect the rapist.

Because I wanted to protect Ivana.

The truth I'd carried for ten years was simple and devastating:

The man who raped Lucy was Ivana's father.

On a rainy night, I'd gone looking for Lucy after she didn't come home. I found her in the woods near my house, clothes torn, sobbing into the mud. And standing over her, zipping his pants with trembling hands, was Mr. Priscilla.

He saw me. His face crumpled.

"Selena… I was drunk. I didn't know what I was doing. Please—please don't tell Ivana. It would kill her."

I was sixteen. Terrified. Staring at Lucy's broken body and the face of my best friend's father.

He stumbled away into the dark.

I ran to Lucy, held her, tried to take her home. But she wouldn't move.

"Don't tell anyone," she whispered. "Especially not Iva. She loves her dad."

Three days later, Lucy jumped into the river.

And I became the keeper of a secret that ate me alive.

I didn't protect Mr. Priscilla because I cared about him.

I protected him because Lucy asked me to. And because telling the truth would have shattered the only person we both loved.

On the stage, my body was breaking. I could feel the machine cracking through my last defenses.

The memory was surfacing.

"Iva," I gasped. "Please… stop. For your own sake."

She leaned in close, her voice a blade. "Nothing you say will stop me."

"Then I'm sorry," I breathed. "I'm so sorry."

The screen flickered.

And the memory of that rainy night began to play.