Reborn as the Scorned Heiress
The bullet wasn't meant for her.
That was the first thing Cassidy Boone thought when she felt the lead punch through her back, right between the shoulder blades, like a fist from God.
The bullet was meant for Roy, that idiot Roy, who was supposed to cover the right flank of the stagecoach while she handled the driver. A clean job. Quick. Like the last twelve they'd pulled together on the dusty roads between Tucson and Tombstone. But Roy, the goddamn moron, had gotten into an argument with the new kid -- some eighteen-year-old punk who didn't even know how to ride -- over who got to keep the gold watch off the fat passenger.
A gold watch.
Cassidy Boone, the woman who'd pickpocketed the sheriff of Prescott himself without the old man feeling so much as a tickle, the one who drew a revolver faster than any man west of the Mississippi, the one who'd survived ambushes, shootouts, a snakebite, and three attempted hangings...
Died over a goddamn gold watch.
The stagecoach guard -- one she hadn't seen because he'd been hiding among the trunks on the roof, because of course they hadn't checked, because Roy was too busy fighting over his stupid trinket -- shot her in the back.
In. The. Back.
She didn't even get the honor of dying face-first.
Cassidy fell off the horse like a sack of potatoes. Face in the red dirt, dust forcing its way up her nose, the taste of iron and grime in her mouth. She heard Roy's screams, a second shot, horses bolting. She tried to move. Her body wouldn't respond.
Shit.
She was twenty-five years old. She'd killed eleven men -- well, thirteen, but two didn't count because they were self-defense and one was a bastard who deserved it. She'd stolen more than she could spend in three lifetimes. She had no home, no family, not even a dog to bark at her when she walked through the door.
And she was dying in the middle of nowhere, face in the mud, because of an idiot and a watch.
What a stupid way to die, she thought.
It was the last thing she thought.
After that, there was nothing.
No light at the end of the tunnel, no angels, no demons waiting with a list of her sins. No divine judgment, no reunion with her mother -- not that she was particularly eager to see her anyway. Nothing at all.
Just darkness.
A black, thick, silent void.
And then...
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
A sound. Constant. Rhythmic. Irritating as a fly trapped inside her skull.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Cassidy tried to open her eyes. Her eyelids felt like someone had placed coins on them -- like they do with the dead, she thought, and the irony wasn't funny. She tried to move her fingers. Something tugged at her hand. Something squeezed her arm. Something was shoved up her nose.
What the hell...?
The light hit her like a gunshot. White. Brutal. Nothing like the yellow glow of oil lamps or the desert sun. This light was cold, flat, unnatural.
She blinked. Once. Twice. Three times.
The ceiling was white. Smooth. No wooden beams, no cobwebs, no water stains. White as the snow she'd once seen in the Colorado mountains and swore never to see again because she nearly lost her toes.
She turned her head. Slowly, because her neck cracked like an old door.
There were... things. Things she didn't understand. A box with a green line that rose and fell in time with the beep beep beep. Transparent tubes coming out of her arm -- her arm? -- connected to a bag hanging from a metal pole. Wires. Buttons. A wall with a hideous painting of flowers that looked like they'd been painted by someone with no hands.
Cassidy looked down.
The hands she saw weren't hers.
They were soft. White. No calluses, no scars, no cigarette burn on the left one from when she was fourteen. The fingers were short, pudgy, with clean, even nails. Hands that had never held a revolver. Hands that had never picked a pocket. Hands that hadn't done a damn thing in their life.
She lifted her arms. They were heavy. Everything was heavy. Her entire body was... more. Bigger. Softer. More everything.
"What the hell is this?"
She tried to sit up. The tubes pulled. The beeping box sped up. Everything hurt: her throat like she'd swallowed glass, her stomach like someone had reached inside and stirred up her guts, her head like a horse had kicked her skull.
But Cassidy Boone was not the kind of woman who stayed in bed.
She ripped out the thing in her nose -- a tube, who the hell shoved a tube up her nose? -- and the pain made her let out a rough grunt. She looked at her arms, covered in purple bruises around where the needles went in. Needles. They'd stuck needles in her.
"Is this hell? Because it sure looks like it."
The door opened.
A man in a white coat walked in, tall, with glasses and a clipboard in his hand. Behind him, another man. This one wasn't wearing a coat. He wore a suit that looked like it cost more than everything Cassidy had stolen in her entire life combined. He was handsome, with a sharp jawline, dark hair slicked back, gray eyes as cold as a gun barrel in winter.
And at his side, clinging to his arm like a tick wearing perfume, a woman. Blonde, thin, with the fakest smile Cassidy had ever seen -- and she'd known plenty of con artists.
The one in the coat spoke first.
"Mrs. Montero, good to see you awake. You've been in a coma for a week. We performed three stomach pumpings. The substance you ingested..."
The words entered her brain as if he were speaking underwater. Mrs. Montero. Coma. Stomach pumpings. Substance.
The one in the suit didn't move. Didn't come closer. Didn't take her hand. Didn't ask how she was. He stood three meters from the bed with the same expression someone would have checking whether the meat at the market was still fresh.
"Can she talk yet?" he asked the doctor. Not her. The doctor.
"She needs rest. Her body suffered severe trauma. The gastric damage--"
"I asked if she can talk."
The doctor pressed his lips together.
"She should be able to, yes."
The man in the suit looked at her. For the first time. Directly.
"Emilia."
He said it the way someone calls a dog.
"I hope this little stunt doesn't happen again. Do you have any idea what kind of scandal you caused? I had to pay a fortune to keep this out of the press. A fortune. Are you listening to me?"
Cassidy stared at him.
She didn't understand a damn thing.
"Emilia? Who the hell is Emilia?"
The blonde let out a little laugh. Small, venomous, barely audible. She covered her mouth with her fingers and looked at Cassidy with eyes that oozed a sickening pleasure.
"Oh, Emi," she said, in a sweet voice that reeked of rot. "We were so worried about you. So worried."
And then it happened.
Like a bucket of ice water. Like a lightning bolt splitting her skull. Like a thousand images forcing their way into her head, one on top of another, without order, without mercy.
"A chubby little girl crying in a corner while other children laughed."
"An old man""gray hair, sad eyes, expensive suit""hugging her:"Forgive me, sweetheart. It's for your own good.""
"A wedding. A white dress. A groom who wouldn't look at her."
"An enormous kitchen. Her cooking. Cleaning. Serving. In her own house."
"The blonde""that same blonde""kissing the man in the suit in a hallway while she watched through a half-open door."
"A bottle. Pills. No, liquid. Something bitter. The burn going down her throat. The floor rushing up. Darkness."
Cassidy -- or whatever she was now -- grabbed her head with both hands. The pudgy, soft, foreign hands. The pain was unbearable. The memories weren't hers, but they felt real, heavy, soaked in a sadness so deep it turned her stomach -- or what was left of it after three pumpings.
"Emilia Montero. Twenty-six years old. Only daughter of Aurelio Montero. Married to Sebastian Duarte. Best friend: Andrea Rios."
The blonde.
"The one hanging off her husband's arm."
"The one screwing her husband."
"The one laughing in her face."
Cassidy lowered her hands. Slowly.
She looked at the man in the suit. Sebastian. The husband.
She looked at the blonde. Andrea. The best friend.
She looked at the doctor, who was reviewing his notes and pretending there was no tension in the room.
And for the first time since a bullet entered her back on a dusty road in Arizona, Cassidy Boone smiled.
It wasn't a pretty smile.
"You know what?" she said, in a hoarse voice she didn't recognize but liked. "I'm starving. Is someone going to bring me something to eat, or do I have to get it myself?"
Sebastian blinked.
Andrea stopped smiling.
The doctor looked up from his clipboard.
None of the three recognized the woman staring at them from that bed.
And that was fine.
Because Emilia Montero was gone.
And what woke up in her place was much worse.
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