Blake’s POV

Tuesday 9:24 AM

The machine near the bed beeped too loudly for a room that was supposed to be quiet. Mainly because she was so still and silent.

I sat in the hard plastic chair by the bed, elbows on my knees, my suit jacket off and folded over the back of the chair. I had only planned to stay long enough to sign the paperwork and leave. That had been my plan, but I still hadn’t signed the paperwork.

It was like most days that I visited her. I hated having to come, but then I couldn’t make myself leave. But today was different… today was the last day. I would never have to come here again and sit by her bed in this room while she lay motionless.

I could hear the hum of the air-conditioning. Monitors blinked and beeped. But Cassie lay in the bed like a perfect wax version of herself, all sharp cheekbones and glossy black hair that didn't match the emptiness behind her closed eyes. I paid for someone to come in and clean her hair, give her a facial, and do her nails every week. Knowing she would hate letting it go or leaving it to the nurses. Hospital care wasn’t the same as being pampered, and Cassie had loved the pampering that only a beauty professional could give.

She didn’t make a sound and hadn’t since the car accident six months ago. I will never get the image of her crashing her car into that tree out of my head as long as I live. The sound of crashing metal and the birds scattering out of the tree in shock. It played over and over again in my mind. She had healed during the last six months; the bruises and broken bones had healed… just not her brain. That hadn’t changed. So here we were, my gorgeous wife looking her best even while in a coma.

She’d always liked being looked at. Worshipped and adored. Now the only ones looking at her were doctors assessing brain function and nurses adjusting her position. The current nurse in the room kept glancing at the clock, probably wondering when I was going to sign the damn papers so she could move on to her next patient. But I needed to be sure.

I turned away and stared at the clipboard in my hands. It was heavily stapled, heavily worded paperwork. But with all the wording, it all boiled down to one simple instruction: turn off the machines. Let my wife die. Cassie would be gone forever.

“And you’re sure there’s no… chance? No hope?” I asked, for the fourth time in twenty minutes. No, it was a lot more times than that, but it was four times since I had been here today.

The older doctor, grey hair and a face carved out of fatigue, shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Huntington has shown no neurological improvement. The scans confirm everything we expected. She’s been clinically brain-dead for six months, since the day of the accident. The only thing keeping her alive is the ventilator and supportive care. Without them, she would pass away. She can’t breathe on her own.”

Alive.

I almost laughed. Cassie would’ve hated the idea of being called “supportive care.” She liked being essential. Center of gravity and unavoidable. Everyone had strong feelings about Cassie; they either loved her or hated her. I thought I had loved her once. I knew now she had represented a challenge. She had been the woman every guy had wanted. I had been the one to win her over. Cassie wasn’t honest with anyone.

My jaw clenched. I’d spent the year before that fateful night gearing up to divorce her. I’d told her three weeks before. She had refused to sign the divorce paperwork. The car accident had done that part for me but also trapped me in this limbo. But that limbo was about to come to an end. All I had to do was sign. It should be easy. There was no love between us; she had told me she hated me just before the accident. If I was honest, I hated her too…had then and still did.

Cassie had been hell to live with. She’d lied, cheated, manipulated, stolen, and could be mean and nasty to everyone around her… and somehow it still felt wrong that I was the one to end it. Like I was finishing what fate had started, and that made me complicit. This was so Cassie. It was like she was having the last laugh. She was stopping me from moving on with my life while she still clung to hers.

The younger doctor shifted, clearly uncomfortable. The nurse kept her gaze politely fixed near the foot of the bed now.

“If you’re not ready—” the younger doctor began.

“I didn’t say that.” I cut in. My voice sounded flat, even to my own ears. “I just… want to be clear.”

Clear that I did everything right. Clear that I didn’t kill her. Clear that when I walk out of here, this doesn’t follow me into every minute, every hour of every day, and even every fucking night for the rest of my life. There was no one else; only I had the power to do this. As her legal husband, this fell on my shoulders.

I didn’t want to dream about this like I did about the crash.

I looked at Cassie. At the once-glossed lips that weren’t glossed anymore, just dry. At the long dark lashes that had once fluttered over crocodile tears. At the woman who had done her best to bleed me emotionally dry and almost succeeded. Cassie had been an energy vampire and sucked everyone around her dry and destroyed them. She loved no one, and I wasn’t even sure if she liked herself. It was like she had hit the self-destruct button on her life and wanted to create as much chaos as possible along the way. Not caring who got hurt.

“I hated you,” I thought, and the honesty of it tasted bitter. “But I didn’t want this for you.” I would have been happier if she lived, just not in my life.

I looked at the monitor by the bed as it beeped in slow, even intervals. Her chest rose and fell mechanically, the ventilator doing all the work. Once the machine was switched off, Cassie would stop breathing forever.

The older doctor held out a pen. “We can give you more time if you—”

“No.” I took it. My hand didn’t shake, but my throat felt tight. I lowered my gaze to the line where my name needed to go. “Let’s just… do this.” The longer I sat here, the harder it was going to be.

The pen hit the paper as I signed my name and dated it in the appointed location. I’d signed mergers, acquisitions, deals worth billions with less weight than this one signature. But this signature scarred my soul. If I was having this much trouble with a woman I didn’t love or even like anymore, how did people do it for people they did love?

“There,” I said, trying not to hear how rough the word came out. “You have what you need.” Handing the paperwork over.

The nurse stepped forward, hands gentle as she removed Cassie’s IV. The older doctor nodded to the younger doctor, some silent medical conversation passing between them. I wasn’t listening or watching them they were just there. It meant nothing to me now. She wasn’t coming back.

I stood. I couldn’t watch them disconnect her, but they had already started to remove the tube from her throat. I’d done my part; the rest I didn’t need to—

Once the tube was gone, Cassie’s body jerked.

I froze in place near the door. My eyes glued on Cassie.

At first, I thought it was nothing. Maybe a reflex. Surely. It must have been nerves firing. Bodies did strange things at the end; I’d seen enough death to know that. I’d lost both my grandparents to cancer. I was there as they had taken their last breath.

Then her chest heaved, not the machine forcing air, because that machine was no longer working. The tube already gone… but a raw, dragging inhale like someone breaking the surface of deep water filled the silence.

I knew something was wrong when the nurse yelped, stumbling back. The younger doctor grabbed the rail. The heart monitor screamed to life, the flat, steady rhythm crashing into a chaotic spike as lights flashed.

Cassie sat bolt upright.

Her eyes flew open, not dull and empty as they had been for the last six months, but blazing and wild. The icy blue glare locked onto my face. I felt frozen in place by that look.

“Jesus Christ,” the younger doctor breathed.

My heart slammed hard enough to hurt. What had I done?

I had signed papers to have her machines turned off when she wasn’t… gone.

Because my dead wife had just come back to life.

And the way she was staring at me…

You’d think I had been the one to put her in this hospital in the first place.

Fawn’s POV

Air ripped into my lungs like I’d swallowed knives.

I jerked upright, hands flying to my chest, half-expecting water to gush out of my mouth as I gulped in air. For one panicked, blinding second, I was back in the bath, drowning. No, not drowning… being murdered as I fought to stay alive. But I hadn’t fought them off; they had been stronger. I could still smell lavender oil for a second before it was gone. Like a snap.

Now everything smelled like bleach and plastic and something harsh that stung my nose. I wiggled my nose to stop myself from sneezing as I focused my eyes, or tried to.

The light above me was too bright. Everything around me was white, sterile, and clean. Not my bathroom. Not home. Not even anywhere I recognized. There was a plastic rail at my side. A beeping that was fast and frantic. It was damn annoying.

I became aware my throat hurt, and I needed a drink of water, and I was dizzy.

“Easy—easy!” Someone’s hand hovered near my shoulder, not quite touching.

I blinked, vision clearing.

A man stood at the foot of the bed. I had been looking in his direction.

He didn’t fit… Not Richard.

No. This man was taller, broader, in a shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a loosened tie. His jaw was sharp and dark with stubble, his mouth a hard line, his eyes a steel gray that made my stomach twist because I knew that face. Which didn’t make sense. I blinked once.

Blake Huntington.

My husband’s rival. The man Richard ranted about after too many whiskeys. The “arrogant prick,” the “smug bastard,” the name he spit whenever a deal didn’t go his way. Or when Mr. Huntington had won a project he wanted. Both Richard and Blake had businesses in construction, and they often placed bids for the same jobs.

So why the hell was he in my hospital room?

Then it hit me, I was alive. They hadn’t killed me after all. I must have passed out, and they thought I was dead. It didn’t explain the out-of-body experience. But how had I gotten here? Had they called the police to say I had drowned, but instead of the police finding me dead, I had been very much alive?

The room wobbled a little, then snapped into focus in jerks. Blake wasn’t the only one in the room with me. Two men in white coats… I would take a guess they were doctors; both stared at me like I’d just crawled out of my own grave. Maybe I had, after Richard and Gemma tried to kill me. Also, a nurse stood pressed against the wall, one hand over her mouth, eyes huge. I almost felt the urge to check myself and make sure I still had a head, but my eyes were working, so my head had to be on my shoulders, right?

The older doctor recovered first. “Cassandra,” he said slowly, like he was testing it. “Can you hear me?”

Cassandra? My ears were working, but that wasn’t my name.

I frowned. The effort made my head throb. “That’s… not my name,” I tried to say, but the words barely made it past my dry lips. Had they mixed up my files with another patient’s? Well, that was embarrassing. For them, not me. “I’m… That is… I’m…”

My voice wasn’t right; it stopped me from going on because I was so shocked by the sound. It was deeper, huskier, like I’d smoked a pack a day for ten years, and there was this weird… accent? No, not an accent. Just not mine. The voice was a New Yorker’s voice, but it was sexy, and my voice wasn’t sexy. Was it a side effect from the almost drowning. Well, I hoped it stayed.

Blake Huntington took a step closer to the bed; those grey eyes locked on me as if he could somehow pin me in place with his stare alone.

“Cassie?” he said, and his voice was rough. “You… you weren’t supposed to—”

Die? I thought, and a hysterical little laugh bubbled up that I swallowed down. Too soon for that joke yet, I was guessing.

“I… I don’t…” My throat still felt like sandpaper. Not surprising when I had swallowed a bath full of water. “Water.”

The nurse jolted into action, grabbing a cup, pouring some water into it, then fitting a straw and guiding it to my lips. I sucked greedily, the cool liquid tasting like heaven, not like the bathwater I had swallowed.

As she took it away too fast for my liking, my hands dropped to the sheet, to the hospital gown hanging off my shoulders. The fabric was thin and scratchy. I had hospital tape on the back of my hand where it looked like an IV would go. My fingers looked… different and, well… wrong.

The fingers were longer. The nails were neater, longer. I couldn’t keep my nails that long; they chipped and broke all the time. My wrists were different as well…slimmer.

Okay. Weird. I’d lost weight. Or maybe almost dying was a great detox plan.

Had I been in a coma? Was that why I had lost weight? How long had I been here for? I had so many questions.

My gaze darted past Blake, catching a glimpse of myself in the reflective surface of a dark TV screen on the wall.

And my brain just… stopped. Frozen as I stared.

The woman staring back at me was gorgeous in a way I had never been. Not cute. Not “you have a nice smile” pretty. No. This was the kind of gorgeous that made people stop mid-sentence. And what was that saying… stop traffic. Yes, the woman staring at me would definitely stop traffic.

Long black hair spilled over her shoulders in a glossy mass, almost blue in the fluorescent light. Her skin was pale, with high cheekbones and a full mouth that could’ve sold lipstick in a magazine ad. Her eyes—I couldn’t tell, because the TV screen didn’t show that sort of detail well enough.

I stared. She stared back. I blinked. So did she.

“Okay,” I thought, grasping for logic while my heart hammered against my ribs. “So either I’m dreaming, or I hit my head without knowing it, or I’m in some kind of post-drowning coma hell where I have to live as a supermodel.”

The monitor beside me beeped faster, betraying me. No, my eyes must be playing tricks on me. I would not panic… panicking had been in that bath. I had lived through that.

“This shouldn’t be happening; she was… was brain-dead,” the younger doctor whispered to the older one. “She… was unresponsive. She shouldn’t—”

That snapped me out of whatever shock my brain had gone into.

“I can hear you,” I croaked. I hate it when doctors talk over your head, don’t you?

All three of them… two doctors, one nurse flinched like I’d slapped them. Well, what did they expect? They had been rude.

Blake didn’t move. He just kept staring at me with an expression I couldn’t read. Shock, yes. But under that, something else. Wariness. Guilt. Like he’d been about to do something unforgivable, and I’d caught him right in the act. Why would he care? He hadn’t… hadn’t tried to kill me. That was something I did know.

My last clear memory before waking up in the hospital slammed into me.

My bath. The scent of my lavender oil. Gemma’s nails biting into my arms. Richard’s hands on my shoulders, pushing but not bruising. The water in my lungs. The burning pain in my chest as my lungs were starved of oxygen. How would they explain Gemma’s nail marks as an accident? Richard had been careful not to bruise my skin, but Gemma hadn’t. Now I was alive; there was no way I would let them get away with trying to kill me. I would not be silenced.

Then the promise I’d made as the darkness had taken over. The way my soul had peeled away from my body like smoke. But I was back and alive.

I would make them pay… but I would make it hurt and hit them where it hurt.

My stomach churned.

“I… almost drowned,” I whispered, more to myself than anyone. “He… my husband tried to kill me with his mistress. They tried to kill me.”

Fawn’s POV

I watched three pairs of eyes turn on Blake. What they didn’t think—

“Mrs. Huntington,” the older doctor said carefully, drawing my attention back to him. “You were in a car accident six months ago. You’ve been in a coma. Do you… remember anything? Anything at all?”

Everything inside me went still.

Mrs. Huntington?

“Mrs. Huntington? Car accident?” I repeated.

“Well, that’s one way to describe being murdered in a bathtub,” my brain supplied. My tongue stayed wisely silent. Was that how they’d covered up what they’d done? Put me in a car before crushing it… thinking I was dead.

My heart pounded harder, like it was trying to break out of this too-perfect chest. Six months? Coma? No. I’d been in a bath. Flashes like freeze-frames from a movie flickered through my mind like some black-and-white Hitchcock film. Lavender to help my headache. Gemma grinning at me. Richard’s calm, cruel voice. My lungs burning as I struggled to breathe while more water rushed into my mouth. The panic was still very real.

It hadn’t been a dream… I was here, in a hospital, after all, wasn’t I? Everything was so confusing…

No. I wasn’t. Not really.

After seeing that person in the reflection on the TV, I knew I was no longer Fawn Jones. I didn’t know what was going on… but I would.

I tried to sit up straighter. My body responded, muscles engaging in ways I didn’t recognize—but they worked. Definitely not coma-soft. My… breasts felt different. Higher. Fuller, in a way that didn’t match the rest of the slim, toned frame. Great. Either reincarnation came with an upgrade package, or this body had expensive taste in surgeons. I had the urge to reach up and touch them, to see if they were real—but I’d wait until everyone left.

Then the room tilted.

A wave of dizziness crashed over me. The monitors shrieked again.

“Lie back,” the younger doctor said quickly, hands up like he was soothing a wild animal. “Please. Your body’s been inactive for a long time. We need to assess—”

“Inactive?” I snapped, then winced as my throat protested. “Yeah, sure, that explains why I feel like I could run a damn marathon.” I lay back as he asked. I felt weird. Off.

Blake’s mouth twitched, just for a second, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to find that funny.

He stepped closer to the bed, ignoring the doctors’ subtle attempts to shift between us. To keep him back. I had just said my husband had murdered me.

“Cassie,” he said quietly. His voice dropped lower, almost intimate. “Do you know who I am?”

My gaze flicked to him. “Blake,” I said before I could stop myself. “Blake Huntington.”

Something flashed in his eyes. “So you remember me.”

I swallowed. Did I? I remembered him from the cover of GQ and Richard’s bitter rants, from interviews on business channels when I’d been bored enough to watch. I’d seen him at one charity gala, across the room, laughing with someone important while Richard muttered about sharks and vultures and huge egos. Blake Huntington had never spoken to me, though.

And I had never stood this close to him. Never had those grey eyes focused on me like that… sharp and intense—but not in a loving way.

“I… know of you,” I managed.

The older doctor glanced between us, frowning. “Mr. Huntington, we’ll need to run a full neurological workup—”

“Do whatever you need,” Blake said, not taking his eyes off me. “Just tell me how this was possible… how you didn’t pick up this was even a possibility. You told me she wouldn’t be waking up.”

That stung, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know him… knew of him, yes, like I’d said. But he didn’t want me here. That was clear from his tone.

“I’m right here,” I muttered. “Please stop talking like I’m not. It’s rude.”

The older doctor cleared his throat. “Can you tell us your full name?” he asked gently.

That should’ve been easy.

I opened my mouth.

“I’m F—”

The word stuck in my throat, caught on something jagged and invisible. A sharp, stabbing pain shot through my skull, like someone had shoved a needle behind my eyes and twisted. With the thought came a mental image. Yuck. That only made it worse.

My vision whited out for a second. The heart monitor spiked, shrill and panicked as my pulse jumped.

“F…” I gasped. “Err…” I squeezed my eyes shut, fingers clawing into the sheet, riding out the flash of agony.

The pain eased as soon as I stopped trying to force the name out. I exhaled shakily, sweat prickling at my hairline.

When I opened my eyes, the room felt… wrong. No. It wasn’t the room. It was me.

I wasn’t the same. I already knew that. Everything sort of went fuzzy again.

I stopped trying to talk. If I wasn’t the same woman, they know who I was? I didn’t know what was going on, and until I did, maybe I should play dumb. They hadn’t called me Fawn… what had they called me? My brain hurt so much, it took me a moment to even focus on the people in the room. I felt like I was going in slow motion but everything around me was at normal speed.

“Why don’t you tell me who I am first?” I said instead.

They had called her Cassandra or Mrs Huntington. But who was she? The nurse had gone completely pale. The younger doctor looked like someone had just told him ghosts were real. The older one recovered first, his face smoothing into that professional blankness I was starting to really hate. They must think I’d lost my mind… and maybe I had. Tick that box… being murdered probably did things to a person.

“I think we’re dealing with some confusion,” he said in that calm, patronizing tone doctors use when you say something they don’t like. “Your name is Cassandra Huntington. Cassie. You’re twenty-five. You were in a car accident six months ago. Before that, you lived here. In this city. You’re married to—”

“Ex. Soon-to-be ex,” Blake cut in automatically. His gaze flicked to the older doctor, jaw tight. “We were in the process of divorcing.”

Wait. What?

They thought I was Blake’s wife.

The older doctor nodded once. “Separated, then.” He turned back to me.

The room seemed to drop a few inches, like the floor had tilted. I swallowed hard, forcing air into my lungs.

After a moment, I said before I could stop myself, “Well. Tell all of that to the part of me that watched my husband and his mistress hold me under bathwater.”

Silence crashed down.

Blake’s head snapped toward me so fast I was surprised he didn’t give himself whiplash.

“What are you saying?” he demanded.

The doctors exchanged looks. The younger one scribbled something on a chart like that would fix any of this.

“I think,” the older doctor began carefully, “that we may be dealing with some… delusional memories. It’s not uncommon after traumatic brain injury. We’ll schedule an MRI and—”

“I don’t have brain damage,” I snapped, then gave a humourless little laugh because, okay, I could practically hear the universe going sure. “Or if I do, it’s the least of my problems.”

I dropped my gaze to my hands again, flexing my fingers. The muscles responded beautifully. This wasn’t what a body should feel like after six months in bed. This wasn’t what my body had ever felt like.

Somewhere deep inside, that same tug I’d felt when I was ripped out of my own body stirred again. Less violent now. More… anchored. Like something had clicked into place.

'If not in this life… then in the next. I will make sure they pay.'

My own words echoed at the back of my mind—the vow I’d made while dying. I’d assumed that meant heaven or hell or nothingness. Not waking up in some stranger’s hospital gown with my husband’s enemy staring at me like I’d crawled out of the grave just to spite him.

Maybe I had.

Blake stepped closer again, ignoring the doctor’s attempt to move between us.

“Cassie,” he said, voice low. “What’s the last thing you remember before… this?”

“I told you, my name’s—” I started, then stopped. Pain flickered behind my eyes again. Less intense, but a clear warning.

Fine. I won’t say my name then.

It was like something was holding me back.

“Bath,” I said instead. “Lavender oil. Headache. Richard being… overly polite. Gemma hovering like the rat she is. Then hands pushing me under, holding me there. And a pull. Then… nothing.”

Blake’s eyes darkened. “Richard?” he asked slowly. “Who the fuck is Richard?”

My husband. Past tense. The word curled bitter on my tongue, and I couldn’t help saying it. “Husband.”

Blake went very still. “You know who I am, and my name isn’t Richard,” he said quietly. “So unless you married a second time without me knowing… why do you remember being murdered in a bath but not the car accident that put you here?”

“Are you seriously arguing with the murdered woman about the details?” I shot back, because apparently near-death didn’t kill my sarcasm.

The nurse made a strangled sound that might’ve been a laugh if she weren’t clearly freaking out.

The older doctor sighed, rubbing his forehead. “We’re moving you to ICU for monitoring,” he said firmly, slipping back into full authority mode. “Mr. Huntington, we’ll need you to step out while we run tests.”

For a second, Blake looked like he might refuse. His gaze stayed on my face, searching for something. Recognition. Maybe proof I was insane.

Well, I was fresh out of sanity. After being murdered, no one would be surprised.

Whatever he saw, it wasn’t enough.

But he nodded.

“Fine,” he said, straightening, pulling his shoulders back, sliding the mask of the controlled, untouchable billionaire back into place. “But I’ll be back.”

The way he said it sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with the cold hospital air.

He turned to leave, grabbing his suit jacket, then paused at the door. When he looked back at me, his expression was unreadable.

His gaze took everything in.

“Don’t think this changes anything.” His jaw tightened. “We are still over.”

The doctors ushered him out. The nurse busied herself with wires and lines and things I didn’t want to think too hard about.

I sank back against the pillows as the adrenaline ebbed, leaving me shaky and cold.

I should’ve been dead. I had been dead. I remembered floating above my body, lifeless in the water.

Instead, I was here. Alive. Breathing. In someone else’s flawless, expensive body with great hooters. In a room belonging to a woman everyone apparently believed was Blake Huntington’s brain-dead wife.

I knew that look in his eyes. I’d seen it in the mirror when I thought of Richard. I’d hated Richard long before the end.

And somewhere out there, my husband and his mistress thought they’d gotten away with murdering me.

I stared up at the ceiling, letting the beeps and hums settle into a rhythm around me.

“Okay,” I whispered to the universe, to whatever had yanked me through darkness and dropped me here. “You wanted me to come back?”

A slow, dangerous calm slid over me, coiling with the fire I’d found at the bottom of that bath.

“Fine. I’ll come back.”

I curled my fingers into the thin blanket, feeling unfamiliar muscles tighten, a stranger’s heart thudding hard in my chest.

“But this time, it will be different,” I promised. “I’m not going to be the weak one.”

And somewhere deep inside, that vow settled like a seed.

Awakening. Not for redemption.

For sin. For revenge.

I might really go to hell by the time I’m done.