The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 28

Chapter 25-2

Locke notices pain, pale skin, the fact that my hand shakes slightly when I lift the coffee. I take a defensive bite so he’ll stop looking at me like that.

“So,” I say after swallowing a delicious mouthful. “When do you sleep?”

His gaze returns to the laptop. “When there’s time.”

“That sounds really unhealthy.”

Claims

“Says the woman discharged from hospital five minutes ago who promptly went drinking in a biker bar.”

“It was several days ago.”

“My mistake. Completely healed, then.”

I narrow my eyes, and he looks almost amused, then he opens the notebook. “OK, Zara. All the subsidiary company names first.”

The shift to professional is immediate, and I’m grateful for it, because business gives me something to hold onto that isn’t the memory of his thumb brushing my cheek.

I take a breath and close my eyes. Knox’s office comes back easily:

The polished desk. The folders. The way his hand rested over the documents. I see the first page, then the second, then names, then bank account numbers and transactions. I open my eyes and start talking, and Locke writes.

At first, he doesn’t react. He simply listens, pen moving steadily across the page while I list the companies that Knox showed me, then the properties attached to them, then the accounts that I remember seeing beneath one of the transfer summaries. I give him dates, routing numbers, amounts that have been moved in increments too neat to be accidental.

The eighth company that I tell him about makes his pen stop,

His gaze lifts slowly to mine. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“How sure?”

I hold his stare. “Do you want the address attached to it too?”

For the first time all morning, his expression shifts into something almost like admiration. “I do.”

So I give it to him, and his jaw tightens as he scans the documents on the laptop.

“Locke, what’s going on?”

“I moved a shitload of money out of this company about a week ago, and then forced it into liquidation. I mean, it was a massive transaction, easily thirty times bigger than what I usually do.”

“OK… so?”

Chapter 25-2.

Claim

“So.” Locke’s eyes meet mine. “If someone looks, the paper trail goes directly to you. All the other companies, you’re hidden under about four layers, but this one… it’s all you, and only you. It looks like you walked off with two million dollars, free and clear.”

I look down at the coffee cup between my hands, suddenly aware of how badly I want to throw something. “So if I really piss Knox off, this paper trail sinks me, and Knox just waltzes away. It’s like a – a what? Like an insurance policy to control my behavior?”

“I have no doubt that’s how he sees it,” Locke says grimly. “Listen, does Knox know about your super power? The memory thing?”

“No. He actually knows very little about me.”

“And when you went to see him, did he tell you that he shuttered this company?”

“No.” I sigh. “But he did tell me that I had no idea what I was dealing with, and that he could go to war with me with no problems. You think that’s what he meant? That he could – I don’t know – send this to the police, or the IRS, or the SEC, and get me thrown in jail?”

“Not if we do this right.”

“What do you mean?”

He turns the laptop back toward himself. “Knox thinks that you’re still in the dark, so I say we exploit that to the hilt. We start by rebuilding what you saw, and I match what you remember to movements I handled.”

“And then?”

“Then we decide where to squeeze.”

“Huh,” I say, and then something occurs to me. “Wait – you moved the money a week ago?”

“Yeah, more or less.”

“What day?”

“Ummmm.” He taps on the keyboard. “November twelfth.”

My stomach twists so violently that I forget to breathe. I look at the screen again, at the date sitting there like proof of something that I don’t yet understand but already hate.

“That’s the day after I signed the divorce papers,” I say quietly. “It’s the day that I met Knox in his lawyer’s office, and insisted on going through with the divorce.”

“OK,” Locke says, puzzled. “Does that mean something?”

“It’s leverage,” I say. “He shut that company down and walked off with the money, to make sure that he has an ace to play if I don’t do what he wants in the end.”

The silence after that is brutal.

“He’s going to destroy me,” I say in despair. “I mean – he’s done this, and it absolutely sinks me legally. Right? So I’m going to have to sign the deal that he offered me, and he can just carry on running things the exact same way that he always has… forging my signature and using me as cover. It’s over. Knox wins.”

2/3

Chapter 25-

Locke looks up and I shiver at those gray eyes, cold eyes, goddamn dangerous eyes.

“No.”

I blink. “No?”

The corner of his mouth lifts. “No.”

“But – what can we do?”

Clem

“We’re going to take every fucking penny he has, and we’re going to give it to you, baby. “He flashes me a grin. “Believe me, when we’re done, you’re going to have everything.”.

And God help me, for the first time since I found out that Knox used my name to build his empire, I almost feel sorry for him.

Almost.

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