Awakened For Sin

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.”