The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 49

Chapter 36-1

Zara

The next two hours disappear beneath a mountain of spreadsheets, coffee, and increasingly creative suggestions about what should happen to Knox McVale if any of us happen to find him alone in a dark alley.

Jade’s suggestions are by far the most imaginative. Mayhem’s are probably the most realistic. Dad’s are the ones that genuinely worry me.

The free flow of violent ideas is interrupted by Jade’s phone ringing. A minute later she’s announcing that the last three moving trucks have arrived at the new house that she and Mayhem bought last week, and the guys need help unpacking the furniture.

Chaos immediately follows, with everyone talking at once, volunteering, calling out to the men in the bar

area.

Dad finally holds up both hands. “Enough. Mayhem and Jade need help, so you’re all dropping everything and going over to set up their new house. Nobody leaves until every dish is in the cupboards, the fridge is full, the closets are sorted out, the curtains are hung.”

Jade beams. I get to my feet, but Dad shakes his head.

“Sweetheart, you’ve done enough for today.”

I open my mouth to protest.

“No, Zara.”

Four people speak simultaneously:

Dad. Mayhem. Jade. Locke.

I glare at all of them, and Dad points toward the laptop.

“You and Locke finish reviewing those accounts.” He looks over at Locke. “When you’re done, you take her someplace safe. If you two want somewhere else to stay besides Zara’s place, I’ll arrange it. Maybe a hotel?”

The room goes suspiciously quiet. Jade immediately stops pretending to pile up a stack of papers, and even Mayhem looks interested in the answer.

“It’s OK, Prez,” Locke says calmly. “My place is fine.”

The answer comes so naturally that something warm unfurls inside my chest before I can stop it. Dad nods, and so the decision is made, and no part of me wants to challenge it. The truth is that I’m relieved and also unhealthily curious what Locke Tanner’s personal space looks like.

Within fifteen minutes everyone is gone, and the clubhouse is quiet in a way that I’ve never heard it. The sudden silence feels almost stifling after days of constant noise and activity.

So it’s just me. Just Locke. And the weight of everything that we’ve uncovered.

1/2

<Chapter 36+

Claim

For a while, I keep staring at the spreadsheets, but not because I’m reading them. It’s because I don’t know what the hell else to do.

The numbers are still there. My name is still there. The evidence is still there. Somewhere out in the world, Knox is still breathing and making fentanyl and killing people.

Nothing has changed. And yet somehow, with the bombshell about the drugs, everything has.

The realization should make me fucking furious, and it does, somewhere underneath everything else. But right now, sitting alone in my father’s office with Locke across from me, all that anger feels buried beneath something much heavier.

Exhaustion.

Not ordinary tiredness, not the kind fixed by sleep or coffee or a hot shower. This is older than that. Deeper. Harder. The kind of exhaustion that comes from holding yourself upright long after your body and heart and mind have all quietly begged you to stop.

Across the table, Locke says something. I don’t hear him.

The room has started tilting at the edges, not physically, not enough that I can grab the table and make it stop, but emotionally. It’s as though something inside me has finally reached the end of whatever stubborn reserve has been keeping me moving these last couple of months.

The cancer. Becca and the baby. The accident. The surgery. Leaving Knox. Losing my home. The forged signatures. The bruise on my face. The drugs. The horrible understanding that every time I think I’ve reached the bottom of what Knox is capable of doing to me, the floor gives way again.

I blink hard. Once. Twice. It doesn’t help.

The first tear falls onto the paper in front of me, darkening the corner of a printed transaction record, and for a moment I just stare at it like I don’t understand where it came from. Then another follows. Then another. My hands start shaking so violently that the pen slips from my fingers and rolls across the desk.

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