The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 213

Chapter 110-1

Two hours isn’t a measurement of time anymore. It’s an endurance test.

Clarm

By midnight, the air in the penthouse has turned thick, cold, and metallic. Byte hasn’t moved from the table, his eyes bloodshot and hollow, staring at a static grid that hasn’t flickered once since the feeds died. Jade is on her knees beside the coffee table, her knuckles white where she’s gripping the edge of the wood, her face buried in her arms.

I’m standing by the floor-to-ceiling glass, watching the dark city skyline. My jaw aches from clenching my teeth. Every time an engine hums in the street thirty floors below, my heart slams against my ribs, waiting for the sudden, sharp echo of sirens that never comes.

He’s bleeding too fast.

The voice loops in my head, over and over, wearing a groove into my brain. I don’t know whose voice it was. I don’t know who was screaming in agony. All I know is the iron taste of copper in my mouth and the suffocating, crushing weight of total dark air.

Then, cutting clean through the dead silence, the penthouse foyer gives a low, electronic ping.

The sound hits us like a physical blow.

Jade shoots up off the floor so fast she knocks her phone off the table. Byte scrambles to his feet, slipping on his own cable wires before sprinting toward the entrance. I’m already moving, my bare feet slapping against the cold hardwood as we bolt as one unit down the long hallway toward the private elevator doors.

We stop ten feet short, grouped together, three breath-choked shadows in the dim light of the foyer.

The brass indicator light above the heavy double doors glows red:

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

The mechanical hum of the cables grinding in the shaft fills the hallway, heavy and slow. My breath catches in my throat. Jade’s hand snatches mine again, her grip so tight I can’t feel my fingers, her whole body trembling violently against my side. Then again:

Ping.

The light turns solid green.

For two long, torturous seconds, the doors don’t move. The hydraulic locks release with a slow, wet hiss of compressed air. My chest burns.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t look away.

The heavy steel doors split down the center, sliding open inch by agonizing inch.

First, the smell hits us before we even see them: a thick, sickening wall of copper, scorched gunpowder, burned rubber, and tear gas that instantly burns the back of my throat.

1/2

Then, the doors clear, and chaos spills directly out onto the floor.

It’s not a clean entry. It’s a desperate, staggering pile of bodies hauling dead weight.

“Move! Clear the fucking Rally Dad roars, his voice completely raw, his face smeared dark with soot and sweat. He’s shoulder-to-shoulder with Mayhem, both of them ducked low, bearing the massive, limp frame of a man suspended between them,

It’s Bishop.

Bishop’s head is pinned back against Mayher’s shoulder, his face ghastly gray, his eyes rolled back until only the whites show.

His right jeans leg is shredded to ribbons, soaked through with heavy, black-red blood that is pooling over Mayher’s boots and dripping directly onto the white marble floor of the foyer. Wrapped around his upper thigh is a thick, makeshift tourniquet cranked down so tight the skin beneath it is purple.

Right behind them comes Stitch, carrying a heavy, battered canvas trauma kit slung over his shoulder, his hands already bright red to the wrists. Hammer follows, carrying another bag of what looks like guns. And backing out of the elevator last, holding the doors open with one massive, blood-smeared arm, is Locke.

My heart leaps into my throat.

Locke is alive. His face is pale beneath a layer of road grime and ash, his black shirt torn at the shoulder, a brutal dark bruise blooming across his jaw… but he’s on his feet. His eyes sweep the hallway, instantly locking onto mine through the haze of terror, holding me steady before I can collapse.

“Get him to the main room!” Stitch barks, shoving past Byte like he isn’t even there. “On the sofa! Right now! Don’t drop him!”

‘Zara, Jade, stand back! Locke’s voice cuts through the noise, hard and authoritative, even as he steps out of the elevator and drops a heavy, iron lock-box onto the floor with a violent crash. “Don’t get in Stitch’s space

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