The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 13

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Chapter 13

Zara

My first full day in the apartment is absolutely perfect.

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The space doesn’t echo the way the house did, doesn’t stretch into something too large for me to fill, doesn’t leave me listening for footsteps that never come. I stand in the middle of the room with the window cracked open just enough to let the city breathe in, and I realize that quiet can feel different depending on who it belongs to.

This one is mine.

The paint that I bought is cheap, the kind that comes in small tins with labels that promise smooth finishes and flawless coverage that I already know I won’t get, and still I open it with something close to anticipation. I chose a beautiful soft yellow, like a sunrise through mist, and I already love it.

I brush the color across the wall, and I find myself smiling without meaning to. I’m not smiling because it’s a professional job, not because it looks the way it would in a magazine, but because it’s uneven in places, because it’s imperfect, because I’m doing it myself.

No one is here to judge it, no one is here at all. And instead of my new home feeling empty, it feels amazingly full… because no one else has ever touched this space.

Not him. Not anyone tied to him.

Just me.

The sunflowers sit in a chipped glass jar on the table, their yellow too bright for the muted tones of the room, almost out of place and yet somehow exactly right. I bought them this morning without thinking, grabbing them from a street vendor with a few loose coins in my pocket and a quiet certainty that I wanted something alive in here.

The sunflowers turn slightly toward the window, toward the light. I understand that instinct more than I expected to.

The music comes next.

I don’t even think about it at first, just reach for my laptop, open Spotify, scroll without urgency until something feels right. When the sound fills the room, it shifts the space again, threads through it in a way that feels intimate, like a quiet declaration that this, too, belongs

to me now.

I move with the music, letting the rhythm settle into my body as I return to the wall above my

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bed. The brush glides more easily now, my movements are less careful, less restrained, and I realize, somewhere between one stroke and the next, that I am… happy.

It’s been a long time since I felt this. Or maybe I never have, not this way.

As the first coat of paint dries, I turn my attention to my clothes. There aren’t many, certainly not compared to what I left behind.

The wardrobe in the house had been filled with things I barely touched, dresses I wore for appearances that meant nothing, soft fabrics that brushed against skin that never felt seen. As I fold what Mayhem took for me into five narrow drawers, I realize how little of what I had I actually needed.

I’m just closing the last drawer when my phone vibrates on the table. The sound feels slightly out of place in this new soft-yellow room, like something from another life reaching into this one, and I hesitate before answering.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Callahan,” my lawyer’s voice is measured and professional. “I wanted to inform you that Mr. McVale has requested a meeting.”

“When?” I ask, my gaze drifting back toward the wall, toward the paint still drying in uneven

lines.

“Tomorrow,” he replies. “At his lawyer’s office. He’s asked that you attend in person.”

For a moment, I don’t answer, because the question isn’t whether I understand what this demand from Knox means.

The real question is whether I care.

“He hasn’t signed the divorce papers yet,” Mr. Meade adds. “His lawyer told me that on the phone just now.”

I know. Of course I know. After all, Knox has never been a man who lets things end without trying to reassert control over the way they do.

“I thought you should be aware,” he continues. “You’re not legally obligated to attend, since you did sign the papers. But there may be further delays if you deny Mr. McVale’s request.”

Delays. Deny. Dickhead.

“I understand,” I say quietly.

“Would you like me to confirm your attendance?” he asks.

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Chapter 13

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I look around the room again, taking in the smallness of it, the uneven paint, the sunflowers, the music still playing softly in the background. I think about how I finally feel like I’m standing in something that belongs to me, instead of trying to fit myself into something that never did.

And then I think about Knox. About the way that he expects things to return to him, to orbit back as though nothing has truly changed. About the way that he moves through the world, as if everything single goddamn thing will just fall back into place around him.

As if I will.

A slow breath leaves me. “Yes. I’ll come.”

I agree not because he made a demand, and not because I owe him anything…. but because I want to see it. I want to witness the end of my marriage with my eyes wide open, and on my

terms this time.

“Very well,” my lawyer replies. “I’ll let Mr. McVale’s representative know, and I’ll text you the details.”

“Thank you, Mr. Meade. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I put the phone down on the table, the music filling the space again, the flowers turning more resolutely towards the sunlight. I pick up the paint brush, return to the wall to start a second coat, the movements just as easy as they were before Knox’s final grasp at control.

Because whatever happens tomorrow, all of this… this is mine.

And I’m not fucking giving it back.

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