Shattered Vows,The Heiress They Tried to BuryChapter 1

On the day of my wedding, my fiancé said he had a surprise for me.

He blindfolded me. Moments later, I lost consciousness.

When I woke, I was in a village I'd never seen before, deep in the mountains. A hulking brute of a man told me he was my husband. There was a three-year-old boy, too, clinging to my legs, begging me to hold him.

I was beaten into five miscarriages. Locked in the house day after day. One wrong look, one wrong word, and the fists came down. My mother-in-law was no better, obsessed with getting a grandson, treating me like a broodmare who'd failed her only purpose.

Three years. Three years, and my body was a map of scars. I'd given up fighting. I'd given up hoping. I was choking down folk remedies and bitter herbal concoctions, doing everything I could to carry a boy to term, because a son was the only thing that might keep me alive.

Then a helicopter descended onto the hilltop.

And out stepped my best friend and my fiancé, arm in arm.

Rebecca Fletcher. Jacob Delgado. Walking toward me like they were strolling through a garden party.

"Marina Henson." Rebecca's voice floated across the dirt yard, light and amused. "Three years out here, and it looks like you've really gone native. Fully embraced the whole village-wife thing, haven't you?"

I lifted my head. My voice came out shaking. "Why?"

Jacob didn't even bother looking at me when he answered. "You're the one who set Rebecca up on that blind date. Tried to marry her off to some blue-collar nobody." He examined his cufflinks. "She's supposed to be your best friend, and that's how you treated her? So we thought you should get a taste of it yourself."

Three years.

For three entire years, I'd racked my brain trying to make sense of what had happened to me. I'd wondered if I'd somehow slipped into another dimension, another timeline, some cruel parallel universe.

But never once had I suspected that my best friend and my fiancé had engineered the whole thing.

——

Now, standing in the dirt with the truth laid bare before me, I threw my head back and laughed. I laughed like a madwoman. I laughed until tears streamed down my face and my ribs ached and the sound tore out of me raw and broken.

Rebecca and Jacob both froze, caught off guard.