Page 44 of Borrowed Bride

“I already cut the line,” says the voice. “But go to town.”

The voice is right. Lifting my hand, the alarm button is attached only to two inches of cable. The rest is cut and out of sight. My heart pounds against my ribs so hard it’s a wonder the bones don’t break, and a wave of dizziness washes over me.

“Who are you?” I demand hoarsely, scanning the darkness and straining my eyes. “Show yourself!”

“Careful,” says the voice. There’s a click and the small lamp beside the couch turns on, revealing the owner of the voice. “You’ll wake the baby.”

A beautiful woman clad in leather pants, a white T-shirt, and a leather jacket sits on the couch, watching me with dark-lined eyes. Her ruby-red lips purse into a small O as she toys with the sleek, sharp knife in her right hand.

Our eyes meet, and there’s a familiarity about her that I can’t quite place through the haze in my mind. All I can think about is the knife and that this stranger is in the same room as my baby.

Stitches be damned, I will protect her.

“Are you here to kill me?” I ask. My voice wavers from the force of my heart racing, and I swallow around the dryness parching my mouth. “Here, in a hospital?”

“No,” the woman says. She stands slowly and her heeled biker boots clack softly against the floor. “I’m not here to kill you, Gianna.”

“You know my name.” I can’t remember what name I gave to the doctors when I arrived here, but I’m certain medical staff don’t dress like her. She looks like an assassin right out of some kind of action movie, and I can’t take my eyes off her.

“Of course I know your name,” the woman says as she wanders slowly toward the end of my bed. “You don’t recognize me?”

I squint through the low light, mapping out the slopes of her angular jaw, small nose, and the flow of jet-black hair. Should I recognize her?

“I’m hurt,” the woman says, sounding not very hurt at all. “I would have thought you’d recognize me instantly.”

“I just had a baby,” I mutter, tensing as she walks closer and closer to where Freya lies sleeping next to me. “I barely remember my own name.”

“Think,” the woman says. The knife glints dangerously in the light as she stops next to the crib, and my heart leaps into my throat as a pulse of sickly fear washes over me.

I stare at her, then at Freya, wracking my brain for any inkling of recognition.

And then, as the woman leans over the crib to stare down at my daughter, it clicks like the snap of a lock in my mind.

“Amanda?”

She straightens up suddenly, and smiles coldly. “Of course. I forgot I went by a different name when we met. But you know my real name too, don’t you?”

I nod slowly, thinking back to Marco’s reaction when he found that picture of my past. To me, that woman was Amanda. To Marco?”

“Fawn,” I say softly. “You’re…you’re really not dead?” Part of me had hoped Marco was just mistaken but here she is, standing in front of me and very much alive. “I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t.” Fawn rests one hand on the edge of the crib and I can’t take my eyes off it.

I’m terrified she’s about to do something to my daughter and I’m useless, with only a few staples holding my insides where they’re supposed to be.

“You look…good,” I say, searching for the right thing to say.

Fawn eyes me through narrow lids. “Leaving behind a life of sex work does wonders,” she says. “But you, my little dove. Imagine my surprise whenwecrossed paths again. From the look in your eyes, you really are as clueless as I suspected.”

I have no answer for her, unable to breathe until she removes her hand from Freya’s crib.

“Maybe you can enlighten me,” I say weakly, watching as she walks slowly back to the end of my bed. “These drugs aren’t kind on the mind.”

“Killer painkillers though, right?”

I nod. “Sure.”

“Well, Gianna. It’s been a long time since we saw one another so I’ll be straight with you. We have history beyond what you could ever imagine. My name is Fawn Deleware but my real name?” She spins the knife in her hand. “Fawn Simone.”

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