The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 395

Chapter 193-2

She looks up at me, her face contorted in absolute agony, tears streaming down her cheeks, washing through the dust on her skin.

“Zara, I swear to you,” Willow begs, her voice raw, cracking, pleading. “I didn’t know he knew you. I was so broken that night… I was so hurt. I thought he was just being kind to me… Zara, please… please believe me…”

I look down at her.

In the dim, flickering overhead light, Willow looks utterly destroyed. Her knees press into the dirt floor, her shoulders hunching inward as if expecting a blow. She isn’t a player on this violent board. She’s a woman who spent her life looking for guidance from the universe and the kindness of strangers, only to be turned into a trap for her own sister.

There’s no malice in Willow, and there never was. Knox is a predator who feeds on exposed wounds; he found a woman bleeding from Cobra’s rejection, stepped into her darkness, and manipulated her trust without her ever realizing she was holding the knife.

The worst thing I can say about my sister is that she believed that Locke was her soulmate. That she was looking for love and family and connection – and she thought she found it in him.

How is that so different from me believing in Knox all those years ago, from any woman who pins her heart and hopes on the wrong man?

It’s not.

I don’t look away from her. I track the rise and fall of her shoulders, listening to the authenticity of her breakdown. In the world Cobra built and I was raised in, you learn to spot deception. You learn the micro–flinches of a liar, the calculated tone of someone trying to save their own skin.

Willow has none of that. She’s utterly naked in her grief, crushed under the absolute weight of her own innocent mistake.

“Look at me,” I say.

Willow hesitates, slowly raising her tear–stained face. Her eyes are bloodshot, wide with an agonizing fear of what she expects to see in mine: hatred, disgust, condemnation.

“I believe you, Willow.”

The words land in the room with the force of a sudden thaw in deep winter. Willow freezes,

Chapter 1942

her lips parting slightly, a sound of profound disbelief catching in her throat.

“I know you didn’t mean for this to happen,” I tell her. “I know who Knox is, and I know how he operates. He looks for open wounds, Willow. He finds where people are hurting, and he digs his fingers in until he gets what he wants. You didn’t betray me. He manipulated you?

I sit in the yellow circle of light, tasting blood, watching Knox run a hand through his hair as he paces the floor.

The room is heavy, dark, and toxic, but the air between Willow and me is clean. Knox tried to use her to tear my world apart, but he failed.

Fuck him.

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