Montana Falls (Red Diamonds #5)

Chapter Twenty Six

W hen John was dying, he told me something bad.

He said, tell your mother that I’ll miss her.

He said mom was… was her. That she was Cassie.

That’s what Lincoln had told me, in a hospital that smelled like death and pain, as my uncle went through surgery and Widow and Delilah were checked out by other staff.

It was Retta who took us – she’s Cassie.

She’s your stalker and I know how fucking insane that sounds, but you have to trust me . I swear to fucking god it was Retta , and I asked Darius to find proof – and he did… he found proof, Saph .

That’s what Widow had said to me. The second I stepped into his hospital room and found him conscious and irate about being separated from Delilah.

That night I’d changed my plan. The plan that Retta knew to get her to show her face purely because she was mad about me getting married.

That night I’d sat next to her in the hospital waiting room, holding her hand. I’d listened to her kindness, allowed her to offer me comfort until I waited for a doctor to tell me Beau was going to be okay.

I’d let Retta hug me tight and kiss my cheek before I headed home and spent the night sobbing into a pillow on my own, unable to be near Misha or the others when they either didn’t know the truth, or I hadn’t wanted to hide it from them.

Retta had held me when I was little, crying after her sadistic brother had tortured me and my mama.

She’d told me she loved me. She’d insisted I was family – that I was not alone anymore.

She said she loved Malone. She claimed to care for him, need him. Want him as her family.

She’d let her brother murder him in cold blood.

She’d murdered his soulmate in cold blood, as she was pregnant with their child.

All of that was enough to keep the guilt away from me, for allowing my uncle to think I was dead for three whole days. It was enough to make me forget that my boys had been grieving me, too. Even if it was just for a few hours until I’d got to Miguel’s in secret, and was sure Retta genuinely thought I was dead.

A random corpse I’d sourced from Miguel had been put in my place in the hospital, wheeled out in a black bag. Doctors had been paid off heftily, after they’d stitched me up and given me painkillers I wouldn’t take until I was safe. Raya had been the one who confirmed my identity, just liked I’d asked her to with a single twenty second phone call, before she’d left a bag of things in the morgue for me to take.

A gun. Phone. Clothes. Cash.

For the first time in my life, I’d caught a bus. A bus for over two hours, after a twenty minute walk from the hospital. I’d sat on it, a hoody and cap on, face hidden by a mask over my mouth and nose. I’d cried silently about the pain in my shoulder and in my boys.

I’d cried harder when the news reports started coming in, of the violence starting in my city.

Fires. Beatings. Murders in their dozens. Diamond Grove, Hendrix City, Cherry Hill. Even more places beyond that would come.

My uncle lay waste to everything he could get his hands on and as much as it broke my heart to know I’d caused such pain in him; I was only grateful that my thoughts about his reaction were right.

The best way to fake my death had been to let those I loved think it was real. It was the only way I could be sure – the only way I didn’t take a risk I couldn’t afford. And it had worked. It had worked for the hours I’d been in Miguel’s with just him, as he checked over my stitches, made me some soup, and promised me that things would be okay in the end, and if they weren’t okay, then it wasn’t the end.

Then he’d gone to keep an eye on Beau for me. To make sure my uncle didn’t do something entirely irreversible, and he’d left me waiting for the only ones I couldn’t leave for days on end, thinking I was dead.

All the stress and pain was enough to make me deathly patient now, as I lay inside my own coffin for hours on end, still and barely breathing as I waited for my stalker to show her face, as I knew she would.

The scent of wood and flowers surrounded me, cloying and oppressive almost. I could hear the murmur of voices outside, distant, fading as the wake continued in my home. It had been hours of waiting, hours of lying there, hoping, praying that this insane plan would work.

Hours of waiting for Retta to show up and say the goodbye I knew she would feel owed.

Retta .

It still hurt to think of her name, to think of the woman who had been family, who had raised Lincoln and Misha like they were her whole world. Had taken in the other men I loved and cared for them too. But I knew. I confirmed it. Three days was all it took before I had seen enough evidence to prove John hadn’t been lying, from the plethora of it that Darius had been hunting for and provided, the second Widow had texted him as he was kidnapped by her.

John had told Lincoln that he would miss Lincoln’s mother because she was his sister and he had not been lying.

She’d been born Cassie O’Malley and her father had sold her to Charles Montana because he was a sadistic fucker. I had no idea how or why, but before Charles had died, Maggie had saved Cassie, and the little girl had been sent to distant O’Malley relatives in Ireland, never to be thought of again.

Cassie had grown up to fall in love with a classmate, fresh out of college, and have a daughter with the man. The same man she’d named her two sons after years later. A man who’d died after a gang shootout the Red Diamonds had started in a random restaurant that had long ago shut down.

A shoot out that my grandfather – or at least, Ford’s father – had been part of.

Cassie had lost her daughter that night, too. Eight months into the pregnancy and the stress of it all had made her miscarry and shatter entirely.

Just like that, the Montana’s had taken everything from her again, only this time she hadn’t let it slide and allow herself to be pushed into a dreary, gray place, unable to do a thing again.

Multiple personalities. Or dissociative identity disorder, as it was known by now. That’s what Cassie had. Why she could switch between roles and people with ease… because she was different people.

She’d been a different person when she’d inserted herself in Maggie’s life using a fake name, another fake story. They’d become friends and my aunt had no idea that the woman she’d invited into her home was the same one who would wind up putting a bullet in her head.

She’d been Retta when she’d inserted herself into Malone’s life, using him to keep her rapidly fraying connection to Maggie, after her death.

She’d learned how to use a rifle as a teenager, purely just for hunting. But had put those skills to good use as an adult, because she knew that physical fights were not her strength.

She’d worked for decades, planned for decades, all so she could put a bullet into Johnny Montana’s head and avenge her first husband, and herself even more.

Then she’d put one into Ford’s for the same fucking reasons.

Retta had travelled around the world and was often away from home because she worked for doctors without borders. In reality, Cassie had trained as a doctor. But apart from the odd role in a handful of different hospitals where she needed an alibi or medical supplies from, she’d never gone anywhere that I hadn’t been. It had all been a lie, paid for with the O’Malley fortunes her brother had gifted her.

Instead of raising her children, she’d been chasing me around the world. Terrifying me with creepy gifts and promises of a life with her I did not want.

She’d been in my home, had access to my company through her husband’s position on my board. She’d seen Price and I messing around on the phone, and had decided to take him out with a bullet that I had saved him from. She’d seen me and Misha having sex and had… had done far worse.

She’d essentially killed Malone. Taken me. Hurt the others.

She’d been someone I loved and trusted and never once hid things from, and I couldn’t recall a single moment in the last three days I hadn’t spent crying. In sheer fucking agony. The only reason I’d stopped was because I concentrated on the one tiny good thing about her; she hadn’t hurt Misha. She hadn’t killed him or wanted to kill him. That had to mean something, right? That maybe the Retta side of Cassie was someone I could reason with? That maybe she could be fixed and spend the rest of her years in jail, repenting for her sins?

Then I’d remembered the way my daddy had looked at me right before he died. Right before she killed him, and I realized that jail was never going to happen.

Retta, Cassie, whoever she was, whatever she was to me or anyone else… it didn’t matter. She was going to die today because she had taken someone from me that was more important than anything else, and just like she had sought out vengeance for her pain, so would I.

My daddy deserved to have his killer put down, even if it caused me to lose people I loved again.

I could live with Misha and Lincoln despising me, even if it would break my heart into a thousand pieces.

I couldn’t live knowing that I had not killed her after everything she’d done to me .

My heart pounded in my chest, anxiety simmering just beneath the surface. I’d never been this still, this helpless before, and the sensation was suffocating. But I had to wait, and I did.

And then, I heard it.

The soft creak of the door. The hush of footsteps.

She was here . In what had been my mama’s dance studio, then sat empty every year since her death.

I kept my breathing shallow, focusing on the small sounds as they grew closer. My muscles tensed as I heard the faint rustle of fabric, the unmistakable scent of her perfume drifting toward me. My heart clenched in my chest. I had spent years around that scent. It had always been familiar, comforting. Now it twisted into something dark, something tainted.

The footsteps stopped just next to the coffin a moment after the tinkling of a glass against a table. My pulse hammered in my ears.

The lid lifted, and just like that, I felt at peace.

I felt calm .

There she was. Standing over me, her face barely visible in the low light of the room, and my eyes adjusting to the suddenness of it all as I opened them… I could see the cracks, the exhaustion, the bitterness in her eyes. It was Retta.

It was Cassie.

I pushed myself up, locking eyes with her as I whispered, “Retta. Don’t move.”

Her expression didn’t change. She stood still, calm, her face like stone. It was unnerving, that cold silence, that detachment. I expected something — anything. Shock, anger, fear. But no, nothing.

She just cocked her head to the side and kept staring at me with such hollowness I knew that it was not Retta I dealt with.

This was Cassie.

“Aren’t you going to pretend to be shocked I’m alive?” I asked, my voice sharper now, stronger. The pain in my chest flared up, the betrayal cutting deep. “Aren’t you going to pretend to be confused and happy?”

Still, she said nothing. Her gaze stayed fixed on me, and the weight of that silence made me want to scream. How could she just stand there? How could she be so unaffected? I was shaking with anger, my hands clenched tight enough that the gun ought to have crushed. She had been a part of my life, part of all of our lives. She was supposed to be family.

She was looking at me like she didn’t give a fuck that I knew who she was.

Her silence was suffocating, unbearable. I couldn’t take it anymore. My hands trembled, rage and heartbreak pouring out of me as I climbed out of my coffin and damn near shouted, “Why? Why the fuck did you do all of this to me?! To your sons ! To Mal, and my daddy and everyone else who loved you!”

Nothing. Not a word, not a flicker of emotion. She just watched me, her eyes like ice, like none of this mattered.

“I trusted you,” I hissed, my voice trembling. “I fucking loved you! Misha loves you!”

At that, something flickered in her eyes. Something small, barely there, but I saw it. It wasn’t enough, but it was there all the same.

“Go on,” I hissed, “talk to me and tell me something. Anything.” I panted hard. “Or will you not talk to me now that I know? Maybe you’ve finally fucking noticed that I am Sapphire , not Maggie. I have never been Maggie and I wouldn’t want to be.”

I opened my mouth to speak again, to demand answers, but then I heard it — a low rumble, faint at first but growing, the floor beneath me vibrating ever so slightly. The sound made my blood run cold, not because it was familiar, but because it was the same noise I’d heard not so many days ago.

Before I could finish the thought, an explosion hit.

Dozens of them, almost.

A deafening roar shook my home, and I was thrown back against the coffin as the entire room seemed to lurch sideways. Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling, the floor beneath my feet trembling violently. The blast left my ears ringing, the sound disorienting, painful.

I barely had time to register what had happened before Retta moved. She lunged toward me, faster than I expected, and I felt her cold hand clamp down on my wrist as she used my surprise against me. She wrenched my gun from my grip before I could even think to react.

My breath caught in my throat as she pointed my weapon toward me, and I felt my home cave in on itself.

I watched my home start to be ruined just as much as my family had.

“Get up,” she commanded, her voice low and controlled. She might have seemed calm, but the tension in her body told me everything.

This was no accident. No freak explosion from a gas leak and poor luck.

She had planned this.

I swallowed hard, my mind spinning as I tried to process everything and work out a way around the switch up of control. But I had to do it fast, because the entire house was still falling and burning, and Retta was marching me toward the wall where a window had once been, the grip on the weapon steady, determined, as she ordered me out of the crumbling bricks.

“Retta-” I began, but she shoved the barrel of the gun against my side, cutting me off.

“Move, Maggie.”

I had no choice.

My legs carried me forward, out of the room, into the cool air. My heart was racing, grief and confusion mixing into a nauseating cocktail. The distant rumble of the explosion and screams still echoed in my ears, and all I could think about was the others. Were they okay? Had they been hurt? I didn’t know how powerful the bombs had been, or where exactly they had gone off.

All I knew was that my home was on fire.

The place my mama had lived and been happy. It was falling apart and dancing with red flames.

The place my daddy had loved me was crumbling and ruining in a way that would never be repaired again.

Was it foolish to cry over a house? Did it make me insane that I was crying over the wreckage of the Montana mansion as Retta all but marched me across the grounds, into the surrounding woods?

Did it make me pathetic to be more angry about my home than the gun pointed at my skin?

The trees loomed tall and dark around us, the scent of pine and earth filling the cool night air and colliding with the stench of smoke and death with far too much violence.

“Stop here.” She ordered, and before I could ask another question, she pulled a small detonator from the purse strapped around her shoulder, clicking it without a single word.

Another explosion. Another bang and static and ringing in my ears that I doubted I would ever get rid of.

Another part of her twisted plan I ought to have guessed because she was a fucking psycho who dished out explosions like they were candy.

I felt a sickening lurch as the ground beneath our feet gave way, the trees and foliage tearing away like ragged curtains as the world fell into chaos around us.

My screams were swallowed by the roar of collapsing earth. Everything was spinning, dark and disorienting, and then — a sudden, brutal impact. Pain shot through my body as I hit the ground. I lay there, dazed and gasping for breath, the darkness of the hole around us pressing in. The sound of debris settling, the muffled shouts of distant voices, and the eerie silence that followed the collapse filled my ears.

I tried to move, to get up, but my limbs felt heavy and unresponsive. I turned my head, squinting into the gloom, trying to make out anything in the oppressive darkness. My hands scraped against the cold, rough soil as I pushed myself into a sitting position and desperately tried to get my bearings and figure shit out.

I didn’t want to be taken again. I would die before that. But I much preferred the idea of living. Living and being happy. That was what I wanted…

As I lay there, struggling to regain my bearings, I could hear Retta’s breath, uneven and strained. But there was no time to find a new plan or salvage things. She was on her feet, dragging me up with a force I could not stop, even without the gun still held my way.

“Move,” she ordered. Her voice was cold, and it cut through the disorientation like a knife. “We’re going to walk.”

The word ‘walk’ felt like a death sentence. I struggled to keep up as she led me through the darkness, in what was clearly a tunnel designed for someone as wicked as her. I had a vague memory about learning of old, abandoned prohibition tunnels that were deemed unfit for use, and I was fairly sure the local government had them blocked off decades ago, but clearly not well enough.

Retta had been using them. Using them to wander my city undisturbed and sneak around as she did whatever horrid things she planned.

She’d used them to be undetected in my city; everywhere I was.

We walked for what felt like hours. The ground was uneven and treacherous, making each step a struggle and yet she walked with an ease that told me just how many years they had been her home.

“How did you know of these tunnels?” I asked.

“My father used to use them to run drugs and things without being caught.” She said softly, speaking with far more words than I had expected. “I took them as mine when he died.”

She went silent again. For the age it took us to walk and walk and walk. It was only when we began to ascend, that she bothered to open her mouth.

“How did you know it was me?” She asked. “Did Widow tell you? He was supposed to die when the cabin blew up – you weren’t supposed to rescue him. You were supposed to be with me, and the others would die.”

“No.” I lied a little, what with Widow not telling me first. “Lincoln did. The same Lincoln you just said you sent to die in that cabin.”

She almost faltered her steps.

“Lincoln knows?”

“John told him as he died.” I swallowed hard, my anger burning bright. “John sort of told him before; he said that Lincoln had the devil in his DNA but it wasn’t his fault because all O’Malley’s have it. He also said Lincoln was his favorite and a whole host of other bullshit that I killed him for.”

“Does Misha know?” She said, not taking my bait about murdering her brother.

“No, Misha doesn’t.” I kept the conversation going, waiting for my chance to take her unaware and get my weapon back as I told the truth; in all the chaos, I hadn’t wanted to tell Misha about his mother. Neither had Lincoln. So we just… we hadn’t. Even if it was fucked up. “Do you think Misha would forgive you for all of this?”

“No. He’s a good boy; he would want me to go to jail and repent for my sins.” She paused as we came to a sudden stop a few feet away from an old wooden door. “I never asked John to kill your mother. Or Malone. I never told him to do it. I don’t kill innocents and Lucia was innocent even if she married a Montana.”

“Don’t speak about them.” I snapped. “You have no right to mention them, least of all my mama.”

“You’re angry with me.”

“More than angry.”

“Would it help if I said I let Lincoln live, too, for a while? I don’t even like him as much.” She tilted her head, casual in the way she dismissed her first born child. “She loves him, but I don’t. He has anger inside his soul and he always looked at me funny – like he knew who I really was, but he couldn’t figure it out. But I let him live, even when I could have pulled the trigger. I only had to kill him now because he knew. I swore he knew something, and I was right – he did know.”

“He’s your son , and he is a good man. A great one that you did not deserve.” The urge to hit her was overwhelming.

She scoffed as she pulled a key out of her purse, shoving it into the door’s lock. “He’s not my son. I don’t have children.”

“Retta has children. Two of them that-”

“Three.” She corrected. “She had Charlotte first. Pretty little Charlotte with her big green eyes and blonde curls.”

“Your daughter. The one you lost.” I swallowed my nerves as I wondered what was behind the door and if I would ever get out of it again.

“She never lost her.” I could see her temper flare as the door swung open. “Charlotte was taken. The Montana’s took her like they do with everything… now move .”

Retta pushed me forward, her grip on my gun unyielding. As we entered a basement of some kind, the air was cold and stale, but the slight hum of alcohol in the air was almost familiar.

It only got worse when Retta shoved some old shelves and storage items out of the way, clattering them to the floor and opening up the rest of the space.

I knew this basement.

I owned it.

“Move,” Retta said again, her voice carrying the same cold authority. She guided me through the basement and up the stairs, each step echoing through the empty club.

My club…

She’d brought me to Sapphires through a tunnel I hadn’t known existed. A tunnel that shouldn’t have been there, let alone in such an obvious place that nobody had ever once wondered what it was. One I was instantly sure Elaina had used to get in and out of my club undetected, when she had hurt Misha all those months ago.

As we reached the main floor, the club was deserted, save for a few shadows moving in the distance. The remnants of my engagement party lingering in the air.

Nobody had done a real clean since I’d died here. Not that I could blame them.

Retta moved with purpose, her expression unreadable as she led me through the deserted club and toward the stage. Her calm demeanor was unsettling, but I refused to let it bother me. Not now. Not in my club, in the place that my ghost roamed, my daddy at my side.

I didn’t let anything bother me as she ordered me to stand in the exact spot he’d taken his last breaths, as she pointed her gun at my head and sighed.

“You have a choice, Maggie.” Her voice was almost lifeless. “You can come willingly and be the person I know you are.”

“Or?”

“Or you can lie and pretend to be someone you’re not. You can be a Montana and you can die like the rest of them.” She blinked at me. “So tell me; what’s your choice? Are you a Montana or not?”

I should have lied. Honestly, it was a hot girl in a horror movie sort of move, to not just bob my head and pretend to be Maggie and not a Montana like all the rest. To not make smart choices. But for some reason I couldn’t do it. My lips moved, words fell out, and yet I couldn’t control them in the slightest.

“My name is Sapphire Rain Montana.” I swallowed hard. “My daddy called me after his favorite gem, and my mama named me after his eyes because they reminded her of a storm and I had those eyes too.” My chin was raised high as I stared her down. “And if you want to kill me for that, Retta . Then fine. Go ahead and pull the trigger because I am a Montana and I am fucking proud of it.”