The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 217

Chapter 112-1

Knox

Clases

Old County Road is quiet. No flashing lights, no sirens, no state troopers poking around with flashlights. A police response brings paperwork, questions, and unwanted eyes… and nobody on my payroll gets paid to answer questions. Not that kind, anyway

Just mine.

I stand at the edge of the tree line, hands jammed deep into my pockets, looking down at the empty stretch of asphalt where my chemical truck was stolen two hours ago. Three of my guys are sweeping the ditch with heavy spotlights, their boots crunching loudly over gravel and crushed pine needles in the freezing night air.

“Stolen logging truck blocked the turn,” Cain says, stepping up beside me. My club Vice-President is holding a cigarette between his teeth, his face pale and sickly under the harsh glare of the work lamps. “Rolled it right across both lanes, cut off all road access.”

“And?”

“And they forced the detour onto this road. They choked the convoy, dropped gas through the side glass, and hauled the rig out before our chase car even cleared the tree line.”

“Where are the escorts?” I ask, my voice deceptively flat, holding back the volcanic rage boiling behind my

ribs.

“In the ditch,” Cain says, gesturing toward the dark woods with a slight tremor in his hand. “Tied up. Gagged.”

I turn on him so fast he flinches, taking a sharp step back into the gravel.

“Tied up?” I snap. “I paid six figures for tactical security.”

“I know -”

“I paid for heavy escort drivers who were supposed to turn this route into an impenetrable fortress… and they let a handful of ghosts roll a logging truck across the asphalt and take my chemical rig without burning through a single magazine?”

“They were caught flat-footed, Knox -”

“I don’t give a fuck if they were caught out!” I shout, my voice echoing off the pine trees lining the dark ridge. “This is the second stolen shipment. The second one!”

I drag a hand down my face, my fingers digging hard into my jaw as the sheer, suffocating weight of the math hits me. Millions.

The first hit could have been an inside leak, a rat in my own operation spilling schedules and routes for a quick payout. I just spent forty-eight sleepless hours tearing my own crew apart, burning through alibis and checking phone records, convinced I had a traitor sitting at my table.

But this wasn’t an inside job, not what happened tonight. A mole gives up coordinates and times; a mole

1.2

Chapter L

decsn’t pull off a military-grade ambush.

“It’s not my people,” I say, the certainty settling into my gut like a block of ice. “It’s an outside crew.”

Clam

“What do you mean? Cain asks, frowning as he shifts the heavy beam of his flashlight toward the ditch.” How do you know?”

“An inside rat would have skimmed the load or tipped off a buyer,” I say, stepping past him into the slick mud, my eyes scanning every inch of the road. “Whoever did this came equipped to overpower a full security detail in under ninety seconds.”

“Okaaaaay,” Cain says slowly. “So….”

“So they knew the blind spots. They knew the response times. There’s someone else operating in this territory… a rival drug operation that thinks they can step into my backyard and carve out a piece of my fucking business.”

I walk slowly toward the driver’s side of where the tanker’s cab had been.

The dirt here is dark, marked by a wide, heavy pool of thick crimson where one of the hijackers got hit.

I crouch down on one knee, not giving a shit about the slushy dirt seeping into my jeans, and I reach down to inspect the dark stain.

But as my hand gets close, a sharp, suffocating chemical stench cuts right through the damp pine air, stinging the back of my throat: concentrated chlorine and heavy oxidizing agents.

I lean closer to the mud, expecting thick, iron-rich crimson, but then I pull my head back immediately.

The blood isn’t dark or gelatinous. It’s a pale, bubbling, grayish slurry, hissing softly against the gravel.

Comments

LUCK DRAW >

Vote

314