The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 159

Chapter 89-1

Knox

The leather interior of Cain’s SUV is cold, but I don’t turn on the engine. Engine noise draws eyes, and out here on the curb three doors down from the glass-and-steel high-rise palace where Zara is playing house that prick Locke, eyes are the last thing reed.

I light a cigarette, letting the tip glow orange in the dark, and blow a thin stream of smoke against the frost-coated windshield. Through the cleared circle where the defroster died an hour ago, I have a perfect view of the penthouse entrance.

I sit here a lot. Three, sometimes four nights a week, much to Becca’s never-ending fucking whining irritation. Watching the lights on the top floor. Watching Locke’s motorcycle pull into the subterranean garage. Watching Zara shadow and form move through the floor-to-ceiling glass, thin and fragile, like a ghost trapped in a very expensive cage.

She thinks she’s escaped me. She thinks running back to her father, hiding behind the Grinning Skulls, and throwing herself into the arms of Cobra’s favorite lapdog is going to wipe away years of marriage, of business. She thinks just saying that she’s divorced cuts the thread between us.

It doesn’t. Zara is still under my thumb, in my control. You don’t just throw away something you built, something you owned, just because it wandered away a little.

I take another drag, leaning my head back against the headrest. The street is quiet, wrapped in the muffled stillness of the bitter cold spell that has turned into a steady, drifting snowfall over the city.

Then the heavy glass doors of the penthouse lobby burst open. I straighten up, my thumb instinctively rubbing over the smooth metal of the lighter in my pocket.

A girl stumbles out onto the slush-covered sidewalk. She isn’t wearing a jacket, just a thin, soaked tank top that clings to her shivering frame and jeans dark with melted snow. She looks utterly wrecked, her dark hair plastered to her skull, her hands clutched tight against her chest like she’s trying to keep her ribs from caving in.

She pauses under the yellow glow of the streetlamp, gasping for air, her whole body shaking violently.

I narrow my eyes, leaning closer to the glass.

She turns her head toward the street, the light hitting the hard, sharp angles of her jaw, the high cheekbones, the striking, fiery black eyes. Eyes that I recognize all too well.

My chest tightens. The breath catches in my throat.

Zara.

For two seconds, I actually think that it is Zara. But as the girl takes a ragged, desperate step forward and nearly slips on the icy pavement, the subtle differences settle into place. The posture is all wrong, it’s too wild, too jagged. The mouth is thinner, twisted into a bitter, pathetic grimace. Zara carries herself like royalty even when she’s bleeding, and this girl looks like something dragged out of a damn gutter.

Yet the bloodline is unmistakable. The chin. The turn of the nose. The eyes. Cobra’s dark, arrogant DNA

Chapter 834

mixed with that pale, delicate aesthetic Zara inherited from her dead mother.

Cobra has another daughter. A spare.

Claim

A slow, cold smile spreads across my face, breaking through the numbness in my jaw. I feel a rush of pure, golden warmth flood my veins, sharp and intoxicating.

Well, well, well.

All these weeks spent watching the penthouse, looking for a crack in the Skulls’ armor, waiting for Locke to slip up, or Cobra and Mayhem to lower their guard. And here’s one of Cobra’s dirty little secrets, thrown out into the snow like trash.

I kill the kill-switch on the dash, step out of the vehicle, and shut the door with a quiet, solid click. I don’t want the engine running to spook her.

Across the street, just a hundred feet down at the corner, the neon sign of a 24-hour diner buzzes through the falling snow, a cheap, red-and-blue beacon of warmth cutting through the gloom.

I don’t rush her. I know how to handle frightened, bitter women. I’ve spent years mastering the exact tone, the exact posture, the exact balance of threat and safety that makes a woman relax. To get her where I want her, to lull her into false sense of security before I take what I fucking want.

H