The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 266

Chapter 133-2

“You told me, baby.”

Clam

“At first, I made excuses for him. I told myself he was under enormous pressure, that the MC was broke, unstable, and on the brink of falling apart, and that his mind was just elsewhere. I thought it was temporary. I thought if I was patient, things would change.”

I pause, swallowing down the sour, humiliating taste of those early months.

“A few weeks in, I tried to initiate,” I say, the memory burning my cheeks with old shame. “I brought him a drink, sat on his lap, and tried to kiss him. He pushed me off him so fast I nearly fell off the sofa.”

“Oh, my God.”

“He looked at me with pure disgust and told me I was too fat for him to even look at, let alone touch. He said no man would want a woman who looked like me.”

Locke’s body goes rigid beneath me, his chest hitching in a harsh breath, but I keep my eyes on the fire, forced to get the truth out.

“I believed him,” I admit. “I was so desperate for his love, so desperate to make our marriage work, that I literally starved myself. I killed myself to lose weight. For weeks on end, I lived on water and black coffee and carrot sticks. I was weak, dizzy, and hungry every single day.”

“Jesus fuck, Zara.”

“When he started complaining about the state of the house, I quit my job. I became a full-time housewife, keeping the place spotless, and cooking elaborate meals he never came home for. I convinced myself that if I could just make him happy, if I could just be thin enough and perfect enough, he’d finally treat me like a real wife.”

Locke slides his large, calloused hand up my back, pressing his palm firmly between my shoulder blades, his breathing heavy and tight.

“Less than three months after we stood at the altar, I found out he was cheating,” I say. “I caught him on the phone with another woman. And the sickest part, Locke? It didn’t make me leave, it just made me diet harder. I thought I was losing him because I hadn’t lost enough weight yet.”

I shake my head bitterly.

“And then Becca came along,” I say. “She wasn’t just a random club girl or a one-night hookup from his territory. She was his old high school girlfriend, and she’d always been around.”

“I remember.”

“She became his regular thing. She was the woman he openly paraded around while I sat at home, starving, weak, and lonely. When he brought her into our life, it completely broke me. I was devastated, heartbroken, and completely trapped in a cage I’d helped build.”

Locke’s grip on my waist tightens, his jaw clenching hard enough to strain the heavy muscle along his neck as he pulls me tighter against his chest, filling the cold void of those years with his solid, fierce warmth.

Chapter 133.

Clam

Hfeel a small tremor run through my shoulders, not from fear, but from the raw indignity of looking back at how much I allowed him to warp my reality.

Locke notices the faint shake instantly. He slides his large hand down my arm to cover mine, giving it a solid, grounding squeeze that brings me right back into the warm living room.

“He was a classic narcissist,” I continue. “He spent months isolating me from my family and the Skulls, slowly chipping away at my confidence until I doubted my own instincts about everything. He stopped letting me see my old friends from work, telling me they were a bad influence and that they didn’t respect the club lifestyle.”

Locke’s voice takes a dangerous, dark tone. “Why didn’t you go straight to Cobra?”

“Because I was terrified, Locke,” I admit. “Not just for myself, but for my Dad.”

Locke tilts his head slightly, as he listens to the complex, ugly web I’d been trapped inside.

“You know how fragile the truce was between the Howlers and the Skulls back then,” I remind him. “By that point, our clubs were deeply, dangerously entwined in joint business operations because Knox had orchestrated it that way from day one.”

I pause, letting him absorb the political weight of what I was carrying as a twenty-five-year-old woman.

“Millions of dollars in commercial logistics, shared shipping routes through the docks, and joint security were all tied directly through our marriage,” I explain. “Knox made sure of it.”

“Yeah,” Locke says, heaving a sigh. “I mean, that was my whole job, right? Dealing with these complex financial ties.”

“Knox would drop subtle, casual comments at the dinner table about how much money Dad stood to lose if our union ever hit a rough patch. He made it crystal clear without ever raising his fist: if I caused drama, if I walked out, or if I ran to Dad crying, the business alliance would collapse into dust… and the violence would start.”

I swallow the lump in my throat, resting my forehead against his solid collarbone for a brief second. Locke’s chest rises and falls beneath my cheek, a strong, rhythmic rhythm that comforts me completely.

“I really thought that if that alliance broke,” I say. “A bloody, brutal war would break out between the Skulls and the Howlers instantly. Men would die on both sides. My Dad would be right on the front lines, taking bullets over my failed personal life.”

“So you took the hit yourself.”

“I took the hit,” I say. “I couldn’t live with the thought of my Dad getting hurt or my family’s club being dragged into a war because my marriage failed. So I hid the reality from everyone in my life.”

I close my eyes, recalling the sheer exhaustion of keeping up that lie goddamn day after day, month after month, year after year.

“I told myself that if I just worked harder, kept the house cleaner, or became a better, thinner wife, maybe he’d change back,” I say. “I stupidly told myself that the charming man from the coffee shop was still in there somewhere. I kept foolishly believing it would get better with time.”

Locke growls, a sound of pure dark fury. “Three fucking years, baby.”

213

Chapter 133.

Claim

“Three years,” I echo. “From twenty-five to twenty-eight years old, I lived in that iron cage, suffocating in absolute silence while my spirit died.”

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