They discharged her on a Tuesday.
Cassidy knew because the nurse told her three times while removing the cables, the needles, and that godforsaken tube they'd shoved up her nose. "Today is Tuesday, Mrs. Montero. Tuesday the fourteenth. Do you know what day it is? Do you know where you are? Do you know your name?"
If you ask me the same thing one more time, I'll shove that tube where the sun doesn't shine, Cassidy thought. But she smiled. A crooked smile the nurse interpreted as post-coma weakness and that was actually pure restraint.
"Emilia Montero," she said, because that was what needed to be said. "I'm in a hospital. It's Tuesday."
"And I'm in a body that isn't mine, in an era I don't understand, married to a son of a bitch, and apparently I tried to kill myself with poison. But I'm not going to tell you that, sweetheart."
The doctor gave her instructions. Lots of them. Soft diet, bed rest, no exertion, follow-up in two weeks, pills for her stomach, pills for her head, pills for sleeping. Cassidy nodded at everything without listening. In her previous life, the only remedy she'd known was whiskey for the pain and a bullet for whatever the whiskey couldn't fix.
She signed some papers. With handwriting that wasn't hers, because hers was an illegible scrawl and Emilia's was round, small, the penmanship of an obedient girl. The memories were useful for that: she knew how to sign like her, knew her full name, knew the address of the house. It was like having a map inside her head, blurry at the edges but clear where it mattered.
What the map didn't tell her was what the hell that black, shiny thing waiting at the hospital entrance was.
"Mrs. Montero, the car is ready."
The driver was a short, serious man with a cap and gloves. He was standing next to... that thing. A carriage without horses. Black, long, with tinted windows and a shine that hurt the eyes.
Cassidy stood frozen on the sidewalk.
"Where are the horses?"
Emilia's memories whispered the answer like a distant murmur: automobile, car, vehicle. It moved on its own. With an engine. No animals.
"How the hell does it move without animals?"
The driver opened the back door. Cassidy looked inside. Leather seats. More buttons. A small glowing screen on the dashboard showing numbers and colored lines.
She climbed in the way someone enters a cave without knowing if there's a bear inside.
The driver closed the door and the sound made her jump. Then he sat up front, turned something, and the black beast came alive with a deep purr.
Cassidy gripped the seat with both hands.
"Easy. It's not going to kill you. Probably."
The car pulled away and the city hit her through the window like an avalanche.
Buildings. Enormous ones. Made of glass and steel, so tall they seemed to want to touch the sky. They weren't made of wood or adobe. They didn't have balconies with rusted railings or hand-painted signs reading SALOON or HOTEL. They were smooth, gleaming, cold.
And there were more horseless carriages. Hundreds. Thousands. Every color, every size, moving in orderly lines along black, smooth roads without a single pothole or stone. Some were small, others enormous as stagecoaches, and all of them moved faster than the best horse Cassidy had ever ridden.
People walked along the sidewalks staring at little glowing tablets they held in their hands. All of them. Like they were hypnotized. Nobody looked ahead. Nobody looked to the side. They walked like sleepwalkers with their faces glued to those things.
"What the hell is wrong with them? Are they bewitched?"
Some guy crossed the street without looking and the driver slammed the brakes. Cassidy lurched forward and the seatbelt -- which she hadn't known she was wearing -- squeezed her chest like a rope.
"Son of a--!" she blurted, grabbing the seat in front of her.
The driver looked at her in the mirror.
"Are you all right, ma'am?"
"All right? That thing nearly ripped my ribs out!"
The driver said nothing. He kept driving.
Cassidy leaned back in the seat, breathing hard. Emilia's body wasn't built for scares. Her heart was pounding like a war drum and she was out of breath just from leaning forward.
This body is a wreck, she thought. But not with contempt. With curiosity. The way someone examines a new horse: fat, slow, untrained, but with potential.
"I'm going to get you in shape, chubby. You and I are going to get along just fine."
The mansion was obscene.
There was no other word. Cassidy had seen big houses. She'd robbed haciendas belonging to wealthy ranchers, governors' mansions, luxury hotels where mine owners blew fortunes on whiskey and prostitutes. But this was another level entirely.
A black iron gate opened on its own -- on its own! -- as the car approached. The driveway was white stone, lined with trees trimmed into shapes that looked like animals. The house -- if you could call it a house -- had three stories, a gray stone facade, enormous windows, columns at the front, and a fountain in the center of the garden with a marble angel spitting water.
"Emilia, your father was disgustingly rich."
The memories confirmed it: Aurelio Montero, real estate tycoon, owner of half the city's downtown, dead two years ago from a heart attack. Everything was left in Emilia's name. Everything. The mansion, the properties, the accounts, the investments. All under clauses she'd never read because Sebastian told her there was no need, that he'd take care of it.
"Of course he'd take care of it. The bastard."
The car stopped in front of the main entrance. The driver opened her door. Cassidy got out slowly -- her body was heavy, her legs trembling after a week in bed -- and looked up at the facade.
This is mine.
Not Cassidy Boone's, dead outlaw on an Arizona road. Emilia Montero's. And now, by some whim of fate, the devil, or whoever had shoved her into this body...
Mine.
She climbed the front steps gripping the railing. The front door -- dark wood, carved, bigger than the entrance to any saloon -- opened before she reached it.
A woman was waiting inside. Short, thin, her hair pulled back in a bun so tight it stretched her eyebrows. Black uniform with a white apron. A face like vinegar. Eyes that looked at Cassidy the way someone looks at a stain on the floor.
"Mrs. Montero," she said, without a gram of warmth. "Your room is ready. Follow me."
She didn't ask how she was. Didn't say "welcome back." Didn't offer water, food, a chair. Nothing.
Cassidy followed her in silence. For now.
They crossed the foyer -- white marble, a double staircase that rose like open arms, a chandelier the size of a horse hanging from the ceiling -- and instead of going up... they turned right. Past the kitchen. Past the laundry room. Down a narrow hallway that smelled of bleach and damp.
And they reached a door.
The woman opened it.
Cassidy looked inside.
The room was the size of a cell. Smaller than any brothel room she'd ever slept in -- and she'd slept in plenty. A single bed pushed against the wall with a faded gray bedspread. A nightstand with a lamp that looked like it had been rescued from the trash. And a closet.
If you could call it a closet.
It was a cheap wooden wardrobe, doorless, less than a meter wide. Inside hung five garments. Five. All gray, all old, all worn out, all two sizes too small for Emilia's body. Clothes that didn't fit. Clothes that probably never fit. Clothes someone had chosen on purpose to remind her, every morning, that she didn't deserve anything better.
Cassidy looked at the room.
Looked at the closet.
Looked at the clothes.
And then looked at the woman with the tight bun, who was waiting in the doorway with her arms crossed and a little smirk she barely bothered to hide.
"This is my room?" Cassidy asked.
"Same as always, ma'am."
Cassidy nodded. Slowly. Calmly.
"What's your name?"
"Dorotea. I'm the housekeeper. I've been in this house for six years."
"Six years," Cassidy repeated. "Six years in my house."
Dorotea blinked. Something shifted in her face. Something subtle, like a crack in a wall that isn't noticeable yet but is already there.
"Well, technically the house belongs to Mr. Duar--"
"The house is mine."
She said it without shouting. Without raising her voice. With the same calm she would have used to tell a man at a poker table that he was cheating, right before drawing her revolver.
"The house is mine. Everything inside it is mine. Every piece of furniture, every plate, every sheet, and every tile you're standing on with your servant's shoes... is mine. Do you understand that, Dorotea?"
Dorotea opened her mouth.
"Ma'am, I was only--"
"Is this where Emilia slept?"
"You've always slept here, ma'am. Mr. Duarte arranged for--"
"Mr. Duarte" -- Cassidy savored the name like someone chewing something rotten -- "can arrange his own ass. But not my house. And not my rooms."
Dorotea stepped back half a pace. Her eyes opened a little wider than normal.
"Mrs. Montero, I think the coma affected your--"
"Would your mother sleep here, Dorotea?"
"Excuse me?"
"I asked if your mother would sleep here. Because I'm not sleeping here. I am the owner of this house, and from today on, everyone is going to respect me. Everyone. You, the driver, the gardener, the cook, and that asshole I married. Or you all get out of my house. Because all of this--" she spread her arms, gesturing at the walls, the ceiling, everything -- "is mine."
The silence lasted three seconds.
Dorotea raised her hand and slapped her across the face.
The blow landed sharp. Like a small gunshot. Cassidy's head snapped to the right and her hair fell across her face.
The hallway went silent.
Cassidy didn't move.
Neither did Dorotea. She stood with her hand still in the air, breathing hard, her face red and her eyes full of a contempt she'd been practicing for years. Six years of giving orders to the lady of the house. Six years of treating her like a rag. Six years of knowing she could do whatever she wanted because Emilia never, ever hit back.
Cassidy pushed the hair from her face.
Slowly.
And looked at her.
Dorotea saw something in those eyes she hadn't seen before. Something that didn't belong to the fat, quiet, broken woman she knew. Something that made her exhale and take another half-step back.
"That," Cassidy said, in a voice so low it was barely audible, "is the last time you raise a hand to me."
Dorotea opened her mouth to speak.
She didn't get the chance.
Cassidy backhanded her so hard it sent her to the floor.
It wasn't a technical blow. It wasn't elegant. It was brutal, heavy, with all the force of ninety kilos and five foot five of fury behind it. Emilia's hand was wide, soft, and fat, and when it connected with Dorotea's cheek it sounded like someone had clapped with rage.
Dorotea hit the hallway floor on her backside. Her cap went crooked. Her eyes filled with tears. She pressed her hand to her face and the mark was already there: red, swollen, perfect, shaped like five pudgy fingers stamped into the skin.
Cassidy looked at her own hand. Rubbed it with the other, thoughtful.
"Heavy, but hits hard. I like it."
She crouched down. Not much, because the body couldn't manage much, but enough for Dorotea to see her up close.
"That's the last time you raise a hand or your voice to me. Next time I'll cut it off and feed it to the dog. If we even have a dog. Do we have a dog, Dorotea?"
Dorotea didn't answer. She was trembling.
"I'll take that as a no. Shame. Now get up off the floor -- you're getting it dirty."
She turned around and walked back down the hallway. Slowly, because her legs were still shaking and her heart was pounding, but with her back straight and her chin up. The way she used to walk through the streets of Tombstone after a good heist.
The kitchen went silent when she entered.
There were three people in there: a heavyset cook with a frightened expression, a young woman holding a rag like it was a shield, and a skinny man who seemed to be someone's assistant. All three stared at her like they'd seen a ghost.
The gossip had already spread.
Cassidy ignored them. She opened the fridge -- Emilia's memories told her the big white box was called a fridge and that there was cold food inside, which struck her as pure sorcery but useful sorcery -- and grabbed the first things she found. A piece of chicken. Cheese. Something green that smelled good. Bread.
She sat at the kitchen island and ate with her hands.
The three employees stared without blinking.
"What?" she said with her mouth full. "Never seen someone eat before?"
Nobody answered.
Good.
She went up to the second floor after eating.
The stairs nearly killed her. Every step was a battle. Her knees cracked, her thighs burned, she couldn't get enough air. By the time she reached the top, she was sweating like a horse after a race and had to grip the banister for a full minute to keep from falling over.
"Emilia, did you ever go up these stairs?"
The memories told her no. Emilia lived downstairs. The second floor was Sebastian's territory. She didn't go up because he didn't want her to. Because the sight of her annoyed him. Because Emilia's mere presence disgusted him.
Son of a bitch.
The second-floor hallway was another world. Thick carpet, paintings on the walls, dark wood doors with gold handles. Cassidy opened the first door. Bathroom. Bigger than the room they'd expected her to sleep in. Black marble, a bathtub the size of a horse trough, mirrors everywhere.
Second door. A study. Wooden desk, books, a flat screen on the wall.
Third door.
The master bedroom.
Cassidy stood in the doorway.
The bed was enormous. Gigantic. With white sheets, fluffy pillows, a headboard of dark leather. Heavy curtains, soft carpet, nightstands with museum-quality lamps. And at the far end, a set of double doors standing open, leading to the walk-in closet.
She entered the closet.
The left side was Sebastian's. Suits, shirts, shoes, everything organized by color like a damn catalog. Watches in a glass case. Perfumes lined up like little soldiers. Ties hanging from a rotating rack that Cassidy stared at with genuine fascination for five seconds before moving on.
The right side.
Cassidy stopped.
There were women's clothes. Dresses, blouses, skirts, heels. All fine. All expensive. All in a size that was not Emilia's. Small size. A thin woman's size. Andrea's size.
The bastard wasn't just screwing his wife's friend. He'd moved her in. Given her space in the closet. In the bedroom. In the bed where he was supposed to sleep with Emilia.
While Emilia slept in a servant's room with five old rags in a one-meter closet.
Emilia's memories burned inside her chest. They weren't hers, but she felt them. Every humiliation. Every night alone in that tiny bed listening to laughter upstairs. Every morning cooking breakfast for a man who wouldn't look at her and a woman who'd taken her place. Every swallowed tear, every unnecessary apology, every sorry for existing that Emilia had repeated until she believed it.
Cassidy clenched her jaw.
"You're not here anymore, Emilia. But I am. And I don't forgive."
She started with the dresses.
She ripped them off the hangers one by one. No rush. Calmly. A red silk dress. A black one covered in sequins. A white one that smelled of a cloying perfume that made her nauseous. Designer blouses with labels she didn't understand but that looked expensive. Skirts. Tight pants. Lace underwear that Cassidy held between two fingers with a look of disgust before tossing it onto the pile.
Shoes. High heels, thin, red, black, gold. She pulled them from their boxes and hurled them to the floor like they were garbage.
Because they were.
She bundled everything together. Wrapped it in one of the bedsheets -- Sebastian's sheets, the ones he shared with the other woman -- and dragged it down the hallway.
The staff watched her pass.
Nobody said a word.
Nobody dared.
She went down the stairs dragging the bundle, step by step, sweating, panting, face red and hair stuck to her forehead. The bundle was heavy. She was heavy. Everything was heavy. But Cassidy Boone had dragged corpses through the desert, and a pile of some tramp's clothes wasn't going to stop her.
She crossed the kitchen. Went out the back door. The garden was ridiculous: perfect green grass, trimmed rosebushes, a white pergola, the marble angel fountain, and at the far end, a stone-paved area with a decorative fire pit surrounded by outdoor armchairs.
Decorative fire pit.
Cassidy let out a laugh.
"Rich people put fire out for decoration. Well, today it's going to serve a purpose."
She dragged the bundle to the fire pit. Untied the knot. The clothes spilled over the stones like a corpse made of fabric and lace.
She looked around. Next to the fire pit was a box of long matches -- Emilia's memories told her they were called fireplace matches -- and some white fire-starter tablets.
"Well, at least this era has something useful."
She placed three tablets among the clothes. Struck a match.
The flame danced at the tip, small, orange, alive.
Cassidy looked at it for a second. Just one.
And let it drop.
The silk was the first to burn. It twisted like a wounded animal, shriveling, blackening, releasing dark smoke that smelled of chemicals and burned money. The lace went next. Then the cotton. The shoes took longer, but when they caught fire they gave off a stench of melted plastic that made Cassidy wrinkle her nose.
She sat down in one of the outdoor armchairs. Crossed her legs -- or tried to; Emilia's legs didn't cross easily -- and leaned back with her arms spread across the backrest.
The fire grew. The flames licked Andrea's clothes with a voracity that Cassidy found profoundly satisfying.
One by one, the staff appeared.
The cook poked his head out the kitchen door, eyes wide as saucers. The girl with the rag stood behind him, covering her mouth. The skinny assistant walked out into the garden and froze ten meters away. The driver appeared from the side of the house, still wearing his cap, and stopped dead in his tracks.
And Dorotea. Dorotea came out last, her cheek still red and her eyes swollen, and when she saw the bonfire and recognized what was burning, she went white as chalk.
They all watched the fire.
They all watched Cassidy.
Cassidy watched the fire.
The flames lit up her round face, her dark eyes, the lazy smile of someone who had watched far worse things burn than expensive clothes.
"Anyone want marshmallows?" she asked.
Nobody answered.
The red silk dress disintegrated with a soft crackle, and the last sparks floated up into the evening sky like drunken fireflies.
Cassidy closed her eyes.
"Emilia, I don't know where you are. But I promise you one thing: no one is ever going to treat you like trash again. Not you, not this body, not this life."
"Because now it's mine."
"And I'm not the kind of woman who takes it lying down."
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