The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 462

Chapter 227 1

Chapter 227-1

Zara

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“Zara, sweetie… please sit down,” Jade says softly, her voice breaking slightly as she looks over at

1. “You’ve been standing at that window for two hours. You need to rest. For the baby”

The baby.

The word echoes hollowly inside my head. My left hand drifts downward, slipping beneath the

thick fabric of my oversized knit sweater to rest over my lower stomach.

I’m barely past my first trimester, and there’s barely a visible swell yet, just a subtle, firm roundness under my palm. But inside me, a tiny heart is beating, completely reliant on my body to stay alive while my own heart feels like it’s being crushed in a vice.

A sudden, sharp wave of nausea hits me, fast and violent. I gasp, pressing my back against the

glass as my throat tightens.

“Zara!” Willow is instantly on her feet, gliding across the hardwood floor toward me. She catches my arm with a touch as light as a feather, guiding me gently away from the window toward the sofa. “Deep breaths. Down into your belly. Let the air settle the fire.”

“I can’t…” I choke out, swallowing back the bitter taste of bile, my knuckles digging into Willow’s wrist. “Willow, something’s wrong. I can feel it. It’s too late. They should have called. Byte said the convoy hit the cut three hours ago.”

“Shh, no, don’t go into the dark before you’re forced to,” Willow murmurs, her voice a calm, low hum beside my ear. “Locke is a mountain, Zara. You know this. A mountain doesn’t crumble because a

storm hits it.”

“He’s not a mountain,” I whisper, my eyes stinging with hot, furious tears that I refuse to let fall. “He’s a man. He bleeds just like the rest of them.”

Xena whines softly, sitting up on her haunches and pushing her wet nose against my knee. I drop

one hand onto the puppy’s broad head, burying my fingers in her soft fur, drawing whatever comfort I can from her solid, warm presence.

Suddenly, a heavy, mechanical clunk echoes through the quiet apartment.

The private elevator doors at the end of the foyer begin to rise, to come up, and then with a ping, the doors slide open.

I don’t wait. I don’t think. I push away from Willow and sprint toward the foyer, my bare feet

slapping against the cold hardwood, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I can

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Chapter 227 1

hear Jade and Willow running behind me.

“Locke!” I scream into the quiet hall. “Locke!”

The elevator doors open fully.

Three men step out into the low warm light of the foyer:

My father. Mayhem. Stitch.

The sight of them hits me like a physical wall, knocking the breath straight out of my lungs.

They don’t look like men returning from a victory. They look like ghosts dragged straight out of hell.

My father’s leather cut is shredded across the chest, caked in thick, drying gray quarry mud and dark, rusty stains of blood. His face is smeared with black soot, deep lines carved around his eyes, his mouth set in a grim, hollow line that I’ve never seen on him in my entire life.

Beside him, Mayhem is leaning heavily against the mirrored wall of the elevator, his knuckles raw and bleeding, his tactical vest hanging loose around his frame.

And then there’s Stitch. He carries two heavy black medical trauma kits slung over his broad shoulders, his dark eyes wide, bloodshot, and completely devoid of their usual quiet humor.

I stop dead in the middle of the foyer, five feet away from them.

I look at my father. I look past him, staring into the bright, empty steel box of the elevator behind

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