Awakened For Sin
Rebirth with a Twist.
Fawn Jones doesn't get a chance to resolve the issues with her marriage. No, she gets murdered in her own bathtub. Drowned by the husband she hated after he had moved his mistress into their bed, Fawn's last lucid thought is a promise before death. "I will not stay weak. I will make you pay. If not in this life, then the next." Then she wakes up. Different room. Different body. Different life. Cassandra Huntington – rich, infamous, beautiful in a way Fawn never had been. Cassie had been in a coma for six months after a car crash. Her billionaire husband, Blake, had just signed the paperwork to turn off her life support when she suddenly started breathing on her own. Now everyone thinks Fawn is Cassandra. The media calls it a miracle. Blake calls it complicated. The woman wearing his wife's face is softer, sharper, funnier... and so tempting he hates himself for wanting her. Fawn calls it an opportunity for revenge. Her killers are still out there. Her old body is in the ground under a lie. And the only weapons she has now are Cassandra's money, Cassandra's reputation... and Cassandra's husband. So, she plays the role. Learns to walk in six-inch heels. Smiles for the cameras. Seduces a man who once couldn't stand his wife and now can't seem to stay away from her. While she quietly buys into the company that ruined her old life. While she gets close enough to the man who killed her to watch him crack. They drowned the wrong woman. Now she's awake. And she's not done.
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Chapter 7
Fawn’s POV
Of course it was psych time. We’d done the poking, the tapping, the lights-in-the-eyes; now they needed to make sure I wasn’t going to flip a table or start speaking in tongues. Fair, I guess. But who could blame me for being a little freaked out? I was a body snatcher.
“As long as you’re not here to take more blood,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve donated enough for three vampires and a large family of blood-sucking leeches. With a name like Dr Butcher, I’m not sure I would want you anywhere near me. You know, you really should consider changing that. It gives a bad first impression.”
“I hear that a lot, but I think my husband would be upset if I didn’t keep his name.” Her mouth twitched. “But I promise no blood. Just some questions.”
She then glanced toward Blake. “Would you prefer to speak alone, or is it all right if Mr Huntington stays?”
I thought about that for a second. Alone meant they’d press harder. With Blake here, I’d have an audience, but at least there’d be a witness if they decided to cart me off in a straightjacket. Not that I’d put it past them.
“He can stay,” I said finally. “Nothing I was planning to say in here is that exciting.”
Blake shifted in the chair, but didn’t argue, which was telling in itself. I had a feeling he didn’t want to be here, but he couldn’t make himself leave. I knew the feeling, only I didn’t think they would let me leave.
Dr Butcher dragged a chair closer, sat so we were roughly eye level. She had kind eyes. That didn’t mean I was about to pour my soul out to her, because she could still lock me up.
“The team mentioned you’ve been through quite a lot today,” she began. Understatement of the century. “I just want to get a sense of how you’re feeling and what you remember. There was some mention of… drowning?” She looked at Blake for a second. “Your husband drowning you.”
Oh, so that’s why she asked if I wanted him to leave. Nice of her.
Blake shrugged.
I let my head fall back for a second, eyes closing briefly, then opened them again and went for the lie that would cause the least damage.
“I had a dream,” I said. “It felt real at the time. You know how it is… no one ever dreams about sitting quietly and filing out their taxes. It’s always absurd and dramatic. I woke up choking, thought for a second that…” I trailed off, let my shoulders lift in a shrug. “They tell me I was in a car accident, so I’m assuming my brain just slapped the wrong movie over the top.”
“How vivid was it?” she asked gently. “On a scale of, say, a flicker to feeling like it actually happened?”
“Somewhere around Oscar-season-hopeful,” I said. “But I’m not stupid. I know dreams aren’t reality just because they feel like it. The facts say car crash. I’m not about to sit here and argue with the truth. I’m guessing it’s okay that my brain is a little mixed up. Give me a day or two and I’ll be as right as rain.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Blake’s head tilt slightly, that small reaction like he’d noticed I’d tempered what I’d said earlier. Good. Let him notice. Let him see I wasn’t completely unhinged. He might still believe I was playing games. But after being drowned by my husband, I wasn’t my normal self, so no one would blame me.
“Do you feel unsafe?” Dr Butcher went on. “Like someone might be trying to harm you now?”
Yes. My husband. My ex-husband. My murderer.
Because he was not this body’s husband. Richard had been married to my old body… weak Fawn. So I saw myself as divorced.
I swallowed that down. No one here knew Fawn Jones existed, not really. To the world, she was just a name in a file, a tragic little accident, from what I understood of how Richard and Gemma were going to frame it. Was Fawn’s body in the hospital morgue right now? Forgotten. The only people missing me would be my parents. Mom and Dad. Their only daughter dead. The only two people in the world mourning the loss of Fawn. While Richard and Gemma rubbed their hands together in glee.
What about Cassie—would anyone be mourning the loss of her? I would find out over the coming months what sort of person Cassie was. If anyone loved her.
But for now, Fawn needed to go away while I became Cassie.
If I started shouting about being Fawn Jones, the best-case scenario was medication. Worst case, they’d lock me somewhere with soft walls and no door handles, talking in group circles about my feelings, and drugged up to the eyeballs every day.
“No,” I said, and even managed to sound like I meant it. “I feel… overwhelmed. My body doesn’t feel like mine. My life doesn’t feel like mine. But no, I don’t feel like someone’s about to jump out from behind the curtain and finish me off. I just feel like I’ve woken up with my brain scrambled, and considering what I’ve been through, I think that’s understandable.”
Her gaze softened. She nodded like that was reasonable. “Yes, that’s a very understandable reaction to waking from a coma, especially with some memory gaps. What about your mood? Any thoughts of harming yourself?”
God, they really did have to tick all the boxes.
“I’ve just come back from the dead,” I said. “I’m not in a rush to do the return journey. Sorry if that disappoints.”
She laughed once, quietly. “Humour is usually a good sign. I won’t keep you long.” She tapped something into her tablet. “From what I’m seeing so far, you’re oriented, engaging appropriately, and not actively distressed. We’ll check in with you again in a few days, but there’s no indication right now for anything more formal.”
Translation: We’re going to watch you like a hawk, but we’re not dragging you away today. Saved from the straitjacket for one more day.
“Lucky me,” I murmured.
Blake was watching me with narrowed eyes.
She thanked me for my time, thanked Blake for his, then slipped out, the door closing softly behind her. The room felt bigger again and strangely emptier without her professional calm soaking up some of the weirdness.
“You walked that back very quickly,” Blake said after a beat, his voice low. “Earlier you were adamant about getting murdered.”
“Yeah, well, earlier I’d just come back from being a corpse,” I said. “Forgive me for not having my script polished.” I picked at a loose thread on the blanket. “No one believes the crazy coma woman anyway. Might as well stick to the story that gets me fewer pills.”
His gaze sharpened. “Is that what you think it was? A story?”
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8.9
My father was marrying a gold-digger, the mother of my cheating ex-boyfriend.
To end the charade, I crashed their luxury wedding with a ten-foot funeral wreath.
In front of hundreds of elites, my father slapped me across the face, calling me a vicious bitch while his new wife smiled in victory.
I triggered the estate's fire system to ruin them, but a terrifying stranger in the VIP section bypassed my military-grade hack in seconds.
He was Kavon Velasquez, a dangerous billionaire heir who had been missing for twelve years.
Instead of exposing me, he shielded me from my father's second blow.
When my pathetic ex tried to drag me away, I grabbed Kavon and kissed him to humiliate my ex.
I shoved a $500,000 check into Kavon's pocket as hush money and left.
I thought that was the end of it.
But why did this apex predator move into the penthouse right next to mine at 2 AM?
Why did he violently crush my ex's face the next morning just for grabbing my arm?
"She is my woman. If you ever come within ten feet of her again, I will bury you."
I didn't understand why a man with lethal skills was suddenly hunting me.
Then I found out he had just blackmailed my father with undeniable proof of corporate money laundering.
His demand wasn't money. It was me.
He ordered my father to announce our engagement by tomorrow sunset, and this dangerous game officially began.
9.6
Minutes before announcing her grand engagement, Darla caught her fiancé sleeping with her stepsister.
She publicly exposed them and canceled the wedding on the spot.
Furious, her adoptive mother demanded Darla marry a fifty-five-year-old predator to save their broken business deal.
"If you don't do exactly what I say, I'll let your father rot in prison for the rest of his life."
Desperate to escape her family's control, Darla grabbed a massive, intimidating hotel security guard she bumped into in the hallway.
She shoved all the cash in her purse at him—eight hundred dollars—and begged him to fake-marry her.
They signed the papers at City Hall that same day.
But the nightmare didn't end.
That evening, Darla received a cold phone call from the state penitentiary.
Her father had been found dead in his cell, and her company, owned by her ex-fiancé's family, fired her immediately.
They had taken everything from her, leaving her completely broken and sobbing on the floor of her tiny apartment.
She thought she had nothing left but a broke, fake husband to keep her company.
She had no idea that the "poor security guard" holding her in his arms was actually Anson Prince, a ruthless billionaire CEO.
And he was already making the calls to tear her abusers' empires to the ground.
8.9
At my million-dollar wedding to the Hoffman heir, the priest was interrupted by a ringing phone.
My groom, Elijah, didn't silence it. He answered it right at the altar, yanked his arm from my grasp, and walked out because his "true love" Jalyn needed him.
I was left standing alone in front of three hundred elite guests, blinded by mocking camera flashes. My own mother rolled her eyes in disgust, later threatening to freeze my trust fund and sell me to a notorious playboy to recoup her losses. Elijah even had the nerve to call me, demanding I take the blame for the canceled wedding to save his PR, while live news feeds showed him cradling a fragile Jalyn in the hospital.
I had spent two years bending over backward to be his perfect bride, only to be discarded like trash. What made it sicker was finding out that Jalyn's sudden "medical emergency" was actually a ruptured cyst caused by having vigorous sex with Elijah right before he walked down the aisle.
I refused to let them destroy me.
Kicking off my six-inch heels, I stepped down from the altar and walked straight to the back row where Cristian Lowe sat. He was the ruthless iceberg of Wall Street and Elijah's most terrifying rival.
I looked up at his sharp jawline and asked the craziest question of my life.
"Will you marry me?"
He stood up, his dark eyes locking onto mine.
"As you wish."
9.2
Lainey spent her last life destroying herself for Larry, only to become the woman he discarded most cruelly. He never loved her, never wanted her, and made no secret that his first love still owned his heart.
On their wedding day, he abandoned Lainey at the altar for that woman, then later used Lainey as nothing more than a stepping stone for his company's rise. In the end, he even had her kidney ripped from her.
Reborn at the very moment everything began, Lainey called off the wedding without hesitation. But after losing her, Larry begged desperately.
Lainey shot him a cold look, then turned and walked straight into the arms of a powerful, aloof man, who stared down at Larry with pure contempt. "She's my wife now."
7.5
I was tied to a concrete pillar in an abandoned warehouse, the heavy stench of gasoline suffocating me.
Ten steps away, a masked kidnapper slammed a loaded Glock onto a metal barrel and forced my husband, Alvie, to make a sick choice.
"The wife or the mistress. You only get to walk out of here with one."
Alvie didn't even blink.
He walked straight toward the dark corner where his mistress, Gail, was crying. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, shielding her, and guided her toward the exit.
He never looked back. He didn't cast a single glance over his shoulder. To him, I was already a corpse, just trash left on the pavement.
The kidnapper laughed and tossed a lighter onto the soaked concrete floor.
A wall of ghostly blue fire erupted instantly, swallowing me whole. The absolute agony of my skin blistering and melting shattered my sanity.
In my last moments, consumed by the inferno, I couldn't understand how the man I had loved and served so submissively could leave me to burn alive. My heartbreak quickly morphed into a hatred far deeper than the flames.
Then, I violently jerked awake.
I shot up from the bed, gasping for cold air, my hands frantically checking my perfectly smooth, unburned skin.
I looked at the desk clock. I had returned to exactly four years ago, the morning of the annual Gallagher family gathering.
The fragile, naive wife died in that warehouse. This time, I am going to destroy them both.
8.9
I was married to billionaire Alessandro Dorsey for four years. The only person in his cold, elite family who truly cared for me was his grandfather.
But when his grandfather suddenly passed away, my husband dragged me to the freshly dug grave and threw a newspaper in my face. The headline blamed me for his death.
Before I could process the grief, Alessandro forced me to my knees in front of dozens of flashing cameras.
"Admit your negligence, or you will never see the sun rise in this city again."
He threatened to destroy my own family if I didn't publicly apologize for a crime I didn't commit. Back at the estate, his mother falsely accused me of stealing a priceless family heirloom. I begged my husband to believe me, but he just looked at me with disgust, froze all my personal bank accounts, and handed me a divorce agreement. Sign it, forfeit everything, and erase my identity, or go to prison.
I was stripped of my dignity, my money, and the man I loved. I fled New York with nothing, only to discover I was pregnant with his triplets. For years, the injustice burned in my chest. How could the man who once meant safety throw me to the wolves without a second thought?
Five years later, I stepped back into the city with my three children. This time, I wasn't the broken woman he discarded, but a powerful gemologist ready to tear down his empire.