Chapter 1

The blizzard came without warning.

My truck had skidded off the remote Montana road hours ago, the engine dead, the cold seeping through the metal.

My leg, the one Ethan' s enforcers had shattered, throbbed with a deep, familiar ache.

I was dying. I knew it.

My phone screen glowed, a final, cruel joke. It was a news alert. Ethan had just won the "Family Values Politician of the Year" award.

The photo showed him beaming, his arm around Brittany. Beside them stood a little boy, their adopted son.

On the boy's wrist was a silver bracelet. A unique, handcrafted piece with a tiny horse charm.

My Daisy' s bracelet.

The one I made for her before Ethan sold her.

My life flashed before my eyes, a reel of betrayals.

I saw myself, a rodeo champion, selling off my family's historic ranch, acre by precious acre, to fund his political dreams. He promised a better life, a "respectable" life.

But he always hated my past. He called me "uncivilized." He was ashamed of my calloused hands, the hands that had won trophies and worked this land for generations.

I saw myself pregnant with Daisy, shivering in the winter. Ethan had taken my only insulated coat and given it to Brittany.

"She's too delicate for this cold, Sarah," he' d said.

I saw the blood, so much blood, after Daisy was born. A post-childbirth hemorrhage. My father had left a rare, life-saving medication in the ranch's emergency kit. Ethan gave it to Brittany. For a "migraine."

The worst memory clawed its way to the surface. The county fair. The crowd. Ethan needed money to cover a campaign scandal, to run away with Brittany. He arranged for Daisy to get "lost." He sold our daughter to a child trafficking ring.

When his deal went bad and the ring's enforcers came for him, he used me as a shield.

"Protect me," he' d begged, "and I'll tell you where she is."

I fought. I fought like a cornered animal, and they broke my leg for it. He never told me.

The cold was winning now. My last breath frosted in the air. I watched the news report of my husband, the award-winning family man, and the boy wearing my daughter's silver bracelet.

Then, darkness.