The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Zara

The next day

Claim

The Night Howlers clubhouse is quieter than I expect, especially as it’s full of large men watching me. I feel their eyes as I cross the main room with Mayhem by my side, but I don’t return their stares and glares. I don’t want to look like a woman entering enemy territory… even if that’s exactly what I am.

Knox’s office is at the back of the building. I watch Mayhem settle himself at the end of the hallway, then go into the office alone. For a moment, Knox and I stand across from each

other with the desk between us.

“You told me that my name is tied to things,” I say without greeting or preamble. “Show me.”

He watches me for a second longer than necessary, surprise flickering in those icy eyes, then he reaches for the folder on the desk.

It’s thick enough to matter, to mean actual business.

He opens it, spreading layers of documents across the polished wood. Corporate filings. Property deeds. Account summaries. Transfer records. Pages built to bury meaning beneath structure, to make crime look administrative if nobody looks too closely.

But I look closely.

“This is the first property,” Knox says, tapping a page. “And this is the second one, purchased six months later. The third is held through a company listed under your name.”

I don’t touch the papers; I don’t need to, not with my photographic memory. I scan the details instead, letting them settle where they always do, clean and exact, the way information does when my mind decides something matters.

Company names. Filing dates. Routing numbers. Addresses. Not everything, maybe, but enough. Enough to start pulling threads.

Knox keeps talking, his voice low and steady, as though this is a normal business meeting, and not the unveiling of three years’ worth of betrayal.

“Two businesses,” he says. “Several accounts, and the movement on them is clean as long as nothing changes. Your involvement keeps it all insulated.”

I look at the papers a moment longer, look at my name scrawled everywhere, on almost every

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sheet. My signatures, except not mine. Not one of them is mine.

Now Knox pulls another sheet from the folder and places it in front of me.

“What’s this?” I say.

“Terms between us for going forward.”

Claim

The page is dense, deliberately so, but I catch enough. Continuation of legal marital status. Asset protections. Non-disclosure. Mutual non-interference. A monthly allowance dressed up as support, because even now he thinks every woman has a price if a man names it carefully enough.

“Cut the bullshit, Knox,” I say. “What’s this really about?”

He blinks in surprise, then collects himself, watches me as he speaks. “We stay married, but only on paper. You live wherever you want, do whatever you want, and I don’t interfere. You get your freedom, Zara. Money from me every month, no questions, no expectations.”

“You’ve never given anything away in your life,” I say wryly. “So what do you get in exchange?”

“Nothing changes on the club’s end.”

I look down at the pile of papers between us.

“My name stays on your properties. My name stays attached to your businesses.” I give him a level stare. “My forged signature keeps protecting your club.”

His eyes sharpen slightly at the word forged, but he doesn’t deny it. “Yes.”

For a moment, the absurdity of it settles over me so completely that I almost laugh. Maybe this is the most honest form of our marriage after all: no romance, no performance, no false hopes. Just paper. It was always just paper.

“So,” I say. “You’re asking me to remain legally tied to illegal activity that I never consented to.

“I’m offering you the only version of freedom you can expect.”

And there it is, the only kind of freedom that Knox understands, which is not freedom at all. It’s just another one of Knox’s cages, polished carefully enough to look like a choice.

I fold my arms loosely, my gaze steady. “And if I say no? If I instruct my lawyer to start an investigation into this forgery and fraud as part of our divorce proceedings?”

His expression goes still. “Then accounts get flagged, properties and companies get looked at. The club loses protection, and you lose the insulation that keeps people from asking the

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wrong questions about where your name shows up.”

I hear the threat beneath the words, but I also hear something else.

Need.

Knox needs me right where I am because I’m useful. My name has become part of the machine, and removing me would cost him everything that he’s built up around it.

“You’re not giving me freedom in any form,” I say. “You’re buying my silence.”

“I’m keeping you safe from some really bad people.”

Clairn

“You don’t give a shit about that.” My voice stays calm, and that calm feels like its own kind of blade. “You’re protecting yourself.”

His mouth tightens. “You walk out of here without signing these terms, you go to war with

me.”

Even three weeks ago, that would have frightened me. I step back from the desk, slow and unhurried, and the air in the room changes. He feels it, I know he does. It’s at this precise moment that he understands I’m not negotiating anymore.

“Jesus Christ,” I say as I turn to the door. “You really thought that I’d agree to this.”

“Zara, listen. You don’t have the first fucking clue what you’re doing.”

For a second, I think about the woman that I was when I married him. How easily she mistook being chosen for being safe, how much of herself she handed over because she thought love required trust and trust required blindness.

Then I think of the documents behind me. The signatures that look like mine. The life that was an even bigger lie than I believed.

“I know exactly what I’m doing,” I say. “For the first time ever with you, it appears.”

“You leave now, you’re dead meat, bitch.” His voice drops, harder now. “Just do this, Zara. Take the money, take the new life. Just fucking take it.”

I look back at him over my shoulder, and I smile radiantly. “No deal, asshole.”

Then I open the door and walk out to my brother – carrying in my head every single detail that I need to bring my husband to his knees.