The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 48

Chapter 35-2

“I sure did.” Locke cocks his head. “I heard no complaints.”

The room promptly loses its collective mind. Jade giggles as she pours me a coffee, Hawk misses an easy shot at the pool table, Brick mutters something that sounds suspiciously like legend.

I close my eyes. “I’m moving away. I’m thinking New Zealand.”

Dad’s laughter is low and warm, and when I open my eyes, the teasing is still there, but so is something else. Relief. Pride. Happiness that he isn’t hiding quite as well as he thinks he is.

“Despite that nasty bruise, you look better today, sweetheart,” he says. “You look good, actually.”

I do, and I know that I do. I saw it in the bathroom mirror as I was powdering the bruise on my cheek, in a pointless attempt to cover it up. I look lighter somehow, as though a door inside me opened overnight and I finally remembered there was air on the other side.

“I feel better,” I say, taking a sip of coffee.

“Yeah, I just bet you do,” Mayhem says, his dark eyes dancing.

I clear my throat. “Could you please all go back to committing felonies, or whatever the hell you were doing before we showed up?”

“Yeah, well, speaking of felonies.” My father gets to his feet, nods at me and Locke. “My office. Now.”

Ten minutes later, we’re set up with coffee, notebooks, laptops, and a paper bag full of breakfast sandwiches. Locke apparently communicated something to someone (probably Jade, let’s be honest), and now the entire clubhouse has decided that I require feeding every ninety minutes.

“I’m not a houseplant,” I mutter as he sets a bacon sandwich in front of me.

“No,” Locke says, opening his laptop. “Houseplants require less supervision.”

Jade, who followed us in, because of course she did, points at him. “I like him.”

“You liked him before,” I say.

“I like him more now.”

I unwrap the sandwich, and my stomach growls. “Everyone leave.”

“Nuh-uh,” Mayhem says from the doorway. “Not a chance.”

“Especially you.”

He grins. “Absolutely not. Today, we’re working with you two.”

Dad settles behind his desk while Locke takes the chair beside me, close enough that his knee brushes mine beneath the table. At the contact, I glance at him, but his eyes are already on the screen.

And so work begins.

<Chapter 35.

Clam

Hist company names. Locke traces transfers. Dad listens without interrupting, which is how I know he’s worried. Mayhem paces behind us with too much restless energy, and Jade sketches out a complicated flow chart on the board, with lines and arrows showing connections between companies and accounts.

For nearly three hours, the pieces move and connect. Slowly at first, then faster.

Then Locke stops dead.

“What?” Dad asks.

Locke doesn’t answer immediately. His eyes narrow on the screen, one tattooed hand braced beside the laptop, the other moving the cursor back through three different pages of records.

I know that stillness now. It means something has gone very wrong.

“Locke?”

He looks at me first. Not Dad. Me. And the concern in his eyes makes my stomach drop.

“What is it?” I ask.

He turns the laptop slightly so I can see. “I thought these were freight payments.”

“OK. But they’re not?”

“No. These company codes aren’t freight. They’re pharmaceutical supply classifications.”

Dad sits forward slowly. “Meaning what?”

Locke taps one line on the screen. “Meaning that Knox has been moving chemical precursors through shell freight companies.”

Nobody speaks. Even Jade freezes.

I stare at the screen, at the numbers that were just numbers five seconds ago and are now something ugly enough to make the room feel colder.

“What kind of precursors?” Mayhem asks.

Locke’s jaw tightens. “The kind used to manufacture fentanyl.”

The word hits the office like a gunshot.

Dad rises from his chair, and the President is in the room now. Cobra looks at the screen with a coldness that makes even Mayhem stop pacing.

“You sure?” he asks.

Locke nods once. “Yes.”

My stomach twists. “And my name is attached to this?”

Locke doesn’t look away. “It is.”

For a second, I can’t hear anything except the rush of blood in my ears.

2/3

ਨ

<Chapter 352.

Fraud was bad.

Forgery was bad.

Money laundering was bad.

But this this is different.

Clam

This is poison. This is people dying in alleys and bathrooms and bedrooms, while Knox hides behind clean. paperwork and my signature.

Dad’s voice, when it comes, is low enough to make the hair on my arms rise.

“Knox is manufacturing drugs in some fucking lab, and then moving and selling them – all through my daughter’s name?”

Locke’s answer is immediate. “That’s right.”

The silence that follows is terrible.

Then Jade whispers, “Jesus Christ.”

I look at the screen again, and something hard begins to form beneath the fear. Rage. Useful rage. The kind that has a direction.

Because whatever this was yesterday, whatever we thought Knox had done, whatever damage we believed we were untangling, it’s just become something much worse.

Dad looks at me, and the love in his face is fierce enough to hurt. “We’re getting you out of this, sweetheart. You can fucking count on it.”

I nod, though my throat is tight. “I know, Dad.”

And the strange thing is, I do know, because I’m sitting in a clubhouse full of dangerous people who love me. Because Locke is holding my hand beneath the table like he has no intention of letting me face any of it alone. Because Knox built a cage out of paper and signatures and drugs, and for the first time since! learned the truth, I can see exactly where the bars are weakest.

Locke turns back to the screen, his face cold and focused and beautiful in the worst possible way.

“OK,” he says. “New plan. We’re going to kill this motherfucker’s drug operation. Let’s get to work.”

And just like that, I know that I’m part of a ‘we’, for the first time in a long, long time.

Comments

LUCK DRAW >

299

19

Vote