The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 299

Chapter 147-1

The silence in the penthouse has a sound of its own.

Claim

It’s not the thin, fragile quiet of a place that’s empty because no one lives there; it’s the heavy, weighted stillness left behind when a man like Locke walks out the door.

The air still carries the faint, ghosted scent of his cedar-and-leather cologne, lingering near the entryway where his heavy boots usually sit, and the thick rug in front of the fireplace feels abandoned, desolate, lonely.

I sit on the edge of the leather sofa, my knees pulled up to my chest, my hands wrapped tight around a warm ceramic mug of dark roast coffee, staring at the fire.

Outside the thirty-story floor-to-ceiling glass, the city stretches out in a wash of morning gray and pale silver. Traffic down on the oceanside boulevard looks like tiny, distant beetles moving along damp asphalt, completely divorced from the quiet sanctuary up here on the top floor.

Locke left at four this morning.

I didn’t sleep after he slipped out from beneath the heavy duvet. I sat up and watched him prepare to leave, listened to the quiet, rhythmic sounds of his routine:

The heavy pull of a zipper, the soft scrape of his belt buckle, the click of a loaded gun’s safety being activated, the subtle whish of a knife sliding into its leather sheath against his spine.

He leaned over the bed, his large hand coming up to cup my jaw in the pitch-black room. He didn’t say goodbye. He just pressed a hard, lingering kiss to my lips, his thumb stroking across my cheekbone with a fierce, silent weight that said everything he wasn’t allowed to put into words.

“I love you, baby,” he whispered. “I love you, I love you.”

“I love you too, handsome.” I turned my face and kissed his palm. “Be safe.”

And he left.

Dark run.

The phrase sits in the pit of my stomach like a cold lead weight. In the MC world, this means twisted roads, quiet observation, hidden guns, and high-risk precision. It means he’s walking into territory where one wrong step, one miscalculated shadow, can blow a hole right through the club.

And right through his chest.

I don’t know where he is right now. I don’t know if he’s sitting in a blacked-out SUV two states over, or watching a gravel turnout through night-vision optics ten minutes down the road.

My pulse quickens, a familiar prickle of cold panic rising in my throat. My mind, trained by years of survival, immediately tries to drag me down into the spiral:

Mapping out the worst-case scenarios, the phone call in the middle of the night, the heavy footsteps coming up the hallway with bad news.

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Chapter 147+..

Hake a slow, deliberate breath, letting the steam from my coffee hit my nose, and force my feet down onto the floor.

No, I tell myself firmly. We are not doing this today. We are not doing this ever, like at all.

I get up from the couch and walk toward the vast, open kitchen, my bare feet silent against the dark hardwood floors.

Clarm

I stand at the massive island, staring across the pristine space. The kitchen is magnificent, with brushed steel appliances, dark slate countertops, high-end gas burners, and custom cabinetry that runs all the way to the vaulted ceiling. It’s the kind of kitchen you see in architectural magazines, built for entertaining, built to showcase wealth and power.

Standing here in the quiet, my mind suddenly slips backward, drifting through the years like water sliding

over smooth river stones.

I think about my little shoebox apartment that I’m still technically renting, though I haven’t set foot there in

months now.

The entire apartment is smaller than the master bedroom in this penthouse. The kitchen is literally eight steps away from my fold-out sofa bed. The refrigerator hums like a lawnmower, and the arched window is the only source of light.

But I remember the first morning I woke up in that tiny space.

I remember walking down to that corner market, buying a cheap bunch of bright yellow sunflowers, sticking them in a glass jar.

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LUCK DRAW >