Awakened For Sin

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.