The world came back to me in small, distant fragments, too bright, too sterile, and smelling of antiseptic and cold metal. For a long minute I thought I was floating, like a feather that forgot which way it was supposed to fall.
Then voices, muffled, urgent, male, female, brought me back in pieces.
"cardiac arrest on arrival, prepare crash"
"Do a full resuscitation, no response, call Dr. Daniel now, "
I tried to open my eyes and my lids were lead. Pain skimmed the edges of my awareness, but it was not the kind that made me scream. It was the kind that said someone had done something to me and the world had decided to accept it.
Overhead light. A nurse's shadow. The press of gloved hands. The clinical click of instruments.
Then a voice I hated and feared at the same time, Edward's voice, too loud, unmistakable even through the fog.
"Do everything you can! Do everything!" he shouted. His words snapped like a whip, but even then, I heard something else under them: not panic but performance. He was loud because he had to be seen. Because, whether or not he felt it, he needed to look like a husband who had lost his wife.
I felt fingers on my throat, checking pulse, then silence. Hands left me like they were leaving a stage.
"Is she…?" someone whispered.
"She's gone," another voice said. Dr. Daniel's voice, low and flat. "I'm sorry. We've done everything."
The room dissolved into cold shapes and the sound of shoes on linoleum. Then nothing. Then a strange, slow darkness that felt like approval.
When the world returned again, it was to the muffled scent of flowers and someone's whispered words: "They say she passed away in the emergency ward. A sudden collapse. His wife… the heiress."
I drifted on the edge of consciousness, hearing too much and seeing too little. A hospital bed. The hum of machines that had been silent a little too quickly. The press of too many hands.
I did not know then that Edward and the imposter celebrated in another room, exchanging quick, private smiles; I could not yet know Dr. Daniel would write an official certificate, that his hospital would be the one to confirm what everyone must believe.
I was a ghost inside my own body.
I woke more clearly hours later to a hand on my wrist, the warm, confident hand of someone I loved enough to trust with my life: my father.
His voice was small and urgent, as if even whispers could be overheard. "Miranda? Miranda, you need to wake."
I opened my eyes for real then, not in the glassy way the doctors had seen, but with the slow, terrible clarity of a person who knows she had been almost taken.
"Daddy?" My voice was a cracked bird.
He leaned over me, eyes like flint. Monalisa stood beside him, my father's PA, her face pale but determined. Behind them, a blanket; the room smelled faintly of disinfectant but also, impossibly, of my mother's orange blossom perfume. Someone had tried to make this place familiar.
"You're awake," Monalisa breathed. "Thank God."
"Where…?" The question was small and stupid.
"In a safe room," my father said roughly. "We moved you. We couldn't risk leaving you there after what they did."
My memory came back in flashes: the dinner, the drops, the dizziness, Edward's voice, the plate shattering, then nothing. Then, hallway lights, stretcher, the frantic people moving me. My chest tightened as I realized how close I had been.
"Did, did they, did they…?" My voice broke. "Did they think I was dead?"
My father's jaw worked. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat and then said plainly, "Yes. Dr. Daniel confirmed you dead at the hospital. Edward… he, he went into shock. The imposter, she was elsewhere and, " He swallowed. "They believed it."
A hot aching anger rose in me so sharp I had to clamp my teeth.
"You let them believe it," I said, and my voice did not tremble.
"We had to," Monalisa said quietly. "We didn't have a choice. The staff were cooperative. You can't expect them to re-open a body that's been examined and documented. The paperwork was done. Your father," She looked at him. "We went to the morgue."
My breath caught at the word. "You, what? You… you went into the morgue?"
"We did," my father said. "We pretended to come to view the body. Monalisa had permission to be with the family. She brought a veil, she cried with them," He's voice trembled now. "And while the staff were distracted… we swapped."
I felt like the ground shifted. Swapped? Swapped how?
Monalisa recounted it to me in clipped sentences like she was absolving herself with action. "There was a transfer scheduled for the morgue at midnight. The clerk was tired, inattentive. We had the corpse of a woman who had passed a few days earlier, similar height, similar build. I signed the documents, I covered her face, and we switched the linens. Their men moved what they were told was you to the van for private transfer. No one thought to recheck. The hospital assumed their certificate was final. We moved you out through the back entrance into the car my father's man had waiting."
Everything Monalisa said unspooled like a rope tightening around me: the smell of the morgue, the cold metal table, Monalisa's fingers trembling as she closed the cover. My father's hand tightened on mine. "We did it because we had to. There was no other way without making a scene and spooking them."
"Edward will think I'm dead," I said, tasting the truth. It felt both hollow and freeing. "He'll be… free to celebrate."
"He will," my father said. "And he already did."
"How do you know?" I asked.
Monalisa's eyes darted away as if she still feared the walls might listen. "I stayed long enough to hear him. He and his," she swallowed, "his accomplice were in the staff room. When the hospital declared you dead, they laughed. They hugged. They spoke about the future."
The image was poison in my veins. Laughter at my death. A celebration.
My fingers curled around the blanket, nails digging into my palm.
"Did Dr. Daniel sign?" I asked.
"He did. The certificate is in their records. He complied. He… he was thorough enough to make it believable for anyone who wouldn't look too close."
My father's voice softened. "We took a risk, Miranda. We needed the hospital's approval to make it look natural. We had to make everyone believe you were gone."
Tears rose unexpectedly, anger, grief, and a strange, blooming relief that I had been spared. I had been taken from the lane of the living, folded under sheets and wheeled out in the belief of strangers.
"Why didn't they check?" I whispered.
Monalisa shook her head. "The morgue staff are overloaded. The paperwork was in order. Dr. Daniel signed everything. They had no reason to be suspicious."
"So they carted me off like I was finished," I said. "As if I were something to be filed."
"That's right," my father said. "Which is why we had to move fast. We brought you here. You were sedated, Mr. Alton made sure the sedative would mimic the state we needed. You were unconscious. You were the perfect body in enemy hands."
The word "enemy" made my breath catch. I closed my eyes and let the rage sit beside the other feelings.
My father crouched closer, his voice low and urgent. "Listen. You must be silent for a few days. We'll announce a private ceremony, a quiet burial. He will not suspect anything if we make him believe every ritual happens. Monalisa will lead the arrangements, she already made calls. I will handle the legalities. Mr. Alton will finalize your documents."
"And then?" I asked, needing the rest of the path mapped out.
"After the ceremony," Monalisa said, "we'll put you on a private flight, a secure route to a new identity. You will have a new name, a shelter, a small team who will protect you while our lawyers begin to dismantle what Edward and the imposter have done, exposing the forgeries, the fraud, everything."
My breath came shallow. New name. New life. It sounded like death and salvation in the same sentence.
"Can I leave?" I asked. "Right now?"
Monalisa's face softened. "Not yet. They are jubilant. They'll be dangerous. We need everything in place. But you're alive. That's the important thing. We have bought you time."
Alone in that safe, sterile room, I let the truth settle. I had been declared dead by the world I had once inhabited: the tabloids, the boardrooms, the parties, the people who had thought they could take me. I had been put into a coffin of paperwork, ceremony, and performance.
And now, while they drank and rejoiced in a victory they thought permanent, I had been quietly stolen back from the brink.
My father's hand closed over mine and squeezed once. "Rest," he ordered softly. "We need you whole."
I closed my eyes and let the fierce plan I had been nurturing in darkness burn brighter. The impostor would not keep my name. Edward would not live on what he stole.
They had celebrated a death that was not real.
They would one day stand at the funeral of their own lies