Spoiled in a Sweet Marriage Count on a Boss

In the fifth year of my marriage, at a cattle auction, I saw my husband with my cousin—a woman everyone believed had been dead for five years.

She was holding their son.

I quickly learned my entire marriage was a lie, a cover-up orchestrated by my husband and my own grandmother to protect the woman who had tried to murder me.

I wasn't a wife. I was an alibi.

On the day they planned to drug me so they could celebrate their son's birthday, I signed away every penny of the family fortune, filed for divorce, and disappeared.

Chapter 1

GRACE'S POV:

In the fifth year of my marriage, at a cattle auction of all places, I saw my husband's mistress—a woman everyone believed had been dead for five years.

She was standing just on the other side of the auction pen, a little blond boy in her arms, her other hand linked intimately with my husband's, Caleb.

Her name was Madison. My cousin. Five years ago, she'd tried to kill me by orchestrating a cattle stampede. When her plan failed, she'd supposedly killed herself out of guilt.

At least, that's what they told me.

The auctioneer's drone, the lowing of cattle, the murmur of the crowd—it all faded as if a switch had been flipped. My world compressed to that one, searing image: the three of them, looking for all the world like a normal, happy family, bathed in the blistering afternoon sun of the Texas plains.

I shrank behind a massive wooden support pillar, a cold dread snaking its way up my spine.

Madison's syrupy voice drifted over, laced with a smugness she didn't bother to hide. "Honey, I really can't thank you enough. You and Loretta. If it weren't for you two, I'd probably be rotting in a cell right now."

Loretta… my grandmother. The matriarch of Blackwood Ranch.

An icy hand clamped around my heart, squeezing until I couldn't breathe.

Caleb's low, gentle voice followed—the voice I used to love. "Don't be silly. The way things were back then, Grandma had to destroy the evidence. It was the only way. Why do you think she bought you the neighboring ranch? So we could see each other."

"I still feel bad for Grace, though," Madison said, her tone dripping with false sympathy. "Making you stay married to her for five years. You've suffered so much."