The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 402

Chapter 197-2

Willow immediately tosses the knife aside, stands up, and grabs my elbows with a firm, grounding grip.

“Up. On your feet,” Willow says, her tone leaving zero room for argument. Her small frame carries surprising leverage as she helps haul me out of the chair. “We have a window. We’re taking it right now, before anyone comes.”

“Like who?”

“Maybe the police. Who knows who heard what.”

I stand, my knees wobbling for a fraction of a second before my balance catches. My stomach and side aches from where that thug punched me earlier, my lip is swollen, and my whole body feels bruised and battered from hours of immobility. But looking at Willow’s fiercely set face, I draw strength from her resolve.

“My car is around the back,” Willow continues briskly, keeping her arm linked firmly through mine as she steers us toward the door. “We go straight to the Skulls clubhouse.”

“Right,” I nod, leaning into her support as we take our first steps toward freedom. “Let’s get

out of here.”

We take three fast, deliberate paces toward the cool night air blowing through the shattered doors. Freedom is right in front of us. The wind smells of pine needles and snow, washing away the stench of blood and gunpowder.

We take two more steps.

Then, a sound cuts through the quiet. A sound so wet, ragged, and horrific that it instantly locks my boots to the floor.

Gurgle… rattle… gasp.

Willow freezes beside me, her grip tightening on my arm. I turn my head back toward the

light.

Knox isn’t dead yet.

He lies on his side in the dirt, his body curled into a tight, unnatural crescent. The two suppressed rounds Vane had placed into his chest didn’t destroy his heart after all; they punctured his lungs.

And now he’s drowning in his own blood.

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His cut is drenched in dark, heavy red, the pool beneath him widening with every passing second. His chest hitches violently, his mouth opening and closing like a fish pulled from water, thick crimson foam bubbling over his lips with every ragged attempt to draw air.

Rattle… gurgle… cough.

His glassy, unseeing eyes roll wildly in his head, searching the empty rafters for a breath that won’t come. His fingers claw weakly at the floor, as he flails and suffers on the filthy ground of the warehouse he brought us to.

“Zara,” Willow says, her voice low, quiet, but steady. She doesn’t pull on my arm in panic; she simply watches my face, reading the sudden change in my posture. “We need to go. He did this to himself. He made his choices. The universe brought him here, because this is where he truly wants to be.”

My mind commands my feet to keep walking toward the door, but the whole time, my mind is racing:

He’s a monster. He hit you. He bound you. He threatened your life and tried to extort your family. He dragged Willow into a nightmare. He deserves every second of this dying agony.

I take a half-step toward the exit.

Knox lets out another terrible, choked sound – a high-pitched, wet whimper of absolute, terrifying agony. A man dying entirely alone in the dark, shot by the criminal he tried to fool, abandoned by the woman carrying his child.

My feet stop completely.

I stand in the narrow space between the open night and the execution floor.

Despite everything – despite the bruises purpling on my jaw, despite the welts burning on my wrists, despite the years of trauma, anger, and betrayal that Knox brought into my life – something deep inside me refuses to step outside.

If I walk away now, if I leave a human being to choke to death on his own blood without looking him in the eye, I leave a piece of my soul in this warehouse.

Knox wanted to turn me into a victim. Vane operated like a cold, unfeeling machine. If I walk

out that door while a man drowns in the dirt, I let their coldness win.

My humanity – that raw, stubborn, indestructible core of who I am- superglues my feet to the ground.

I gently loosen Willow’s firm grip on my arm.

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“Zara…” Willow murmurs, her eyes softening with sudden, deep understanding as she looks at me. “Are you sure?”

“I have to,” I say. “Go to the car, Willow. Start the engine. I’ll be right behind you.”

Willow holds my gaze for a long second, then she nods and walks out the shattered doors.

I turn around and walk back toward the dying man.

9

My boots make a quiet, deliberate crunching sound over the scattered glass and gravel as I cross the floor. I walk past the two dead guards without looking down, stopping right at the edge of the dark, thick pool surrounding Knox.

“Zara,” he chokes out, a thick wave of blood spilling over his jaw, his chest hitching in a desperate, rattling gasp. “You – you stayed?”

Knox stares up at me, his fingers trembling as he reaches out, his hand weakly catching mine. The panic in his eyes begins to recede, replaced by a striking, terrifying clarity that only comes when the veil of life is being torn away.

The words come out wet, broken, but completely devoid of the deceit that had coated his voice for years. There’s no manipulation left in him. No angle to play.

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“I’m so fucking sorry,” Knox rasps. “For all of it. For… for cheating on you. For hitting you tonight, and before. For… for taunting you with Becca. For using Willow and dragging her into this hell…”

He swallows hard, a wet click sounding in his throat.

“I ruined everything I ever touched. I thought… I thought if I got enough money… if I proved I was big enough… people would finally have to look at me.”

“Knox, you don’t have to –

“No, let me say it,” he interrupts. “Please. I don’t have much time, Zara. Let me say it all.”

I nod.

Knox takes a long breath, his eyes trailing down from my face, pausing as he looks down at my stomach.

A faint, incredibly soft smile touches the corners of his bloody lips – an expression so genuine, so profoundly gentle, that it looks entirely foreign on his face.

–

“Look at you,” Knox says, his voice softening. “You’re you’re glowing, Zara. Even bruised and bloody and in a shithole like this… you look incredible.” He looks back up to my eyes, his gaze remarkably clear. “You’re going to be an amazing mother, you know that? That kid – that baby’s going to have the strongest, best mother in the world. Locke’s a lucky bastard.”

A sudden, sharp knot forms in my throat. Years of anger, hurt, betrayal, and lingering resentment seem to dissolve in the quiet air between us, burnt away by the sheer absurdity and grace of the moment.

A small laugh escapes my lips, a watery chuckle that breaks the heavy tension hanging over

the warehouse.

“Look at you,” I say, my voice trembling with a bittersweet regret as tears finally reach my eyes. “You’re pretty damn wonderful now that you’ve been shot.”

Knox pauses for a beat, processing the words, and then a low rumble starts in his chest.

He laughs with me.

It’s a real, warm, genuine laugh. It’s a sound that belongs to two old friends, not two people sitting in a pool of blood in an abandoned warehouse. He cough