No Vow, No Mercy

Sadie Kowalski has worked behind the same hardware store counter since she was fifteen. She married Dean two years later, the same summer her mother died, and thought she knew every inch of the man. Then she finds a second phone in his truck and a hotel receipt from their anniversary weekend. Worse than the affair: Dean has been selling her mother's store out from under her, with a signature on the deed that is not hers. Sadie does not cry. She calls a lawyer, changes the locks, and starts turning the store into something her mother would actually recognize. Dean wakes up to a deputy at his door. He doesn't send flowers. He admits the forgery in open court, hands over his truck, and works the loading dock for free until the debt is paid. Sadie doesn't want a husband back. She wants proof, in shifts and hand-painted letters, that the man she loved is still somewhere behind the lie.