The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 511

Chapter 251-1

The silence of the elevator ride up to the top floor is a heavy, suffocating thing.

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I’m alone. I made sure of that. When Dad tried to grip my elbow in the hospital lobby, his hand

shaking with a rare, terrifying helplessness, I pulled back.

When Mayhem offered to drive me, to sit in the living room just so I wouldn’t be by myself while I

readjusted to my life, I shook my head.

I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t sit in the back of my father’s truck feeling their crushing pity, feeling the weight of two

massive, lethal men trying to hold their breath so they don’t break me.

I needed to do this on my own. I needed to walk through this door on my own two feet, because if

don’t face the ghost waiting on the other side right now, I never will.

The private elevator gives a soft, mechanical chime. The polished chrome doors slide open with a

whisper.

The foyer is pitch–black, the single lamp in the living room the only faint light in the distance. Beyond the entrance, the massive floor–to–ceiling windows across the great room frame the stars twinkling above, painting the dark hardwood in cold, jagged sheets of slate blue and charcoal.

I step across the threshold, and the silence hits me like a physical blow to the chest.

Before the heavy doors can even finish closing behind me, there’s a sudden, urgent skittering of

paws against the wood.

A dark shape hurtles down the long corridor from the back bedrooms. Xena.

The German Shepherd puppy – her ears still ridiculously oversized and floppy at the tips – comes to an abrupt halt three feet away. Her nails click loudly against the floorboards. She tilts her head, her dark eyes gleaming in the shadow, her heaving chest catching my scent.

She gives a single, low thrum of her tail against the wall, but she doesn’t leap up. She senses it immediately. She feels the dark, suffocating heavy cloud hanging over my shoulders, the raw smell of hospital antiseptics, tears, and exhaustion clinging to my skin.

Xena whines softly, stepping closer. She presses her nose firmly against my calf, then nudges her

broad head up under my hanging palm.

“Hey, sweet girl,” I say. The sound of my own voice in the vast, empty room is raspy and thin stripped completely raw from screaming in the ICU corridor last night. “I’m here.”

sink down onto my knees right there on the hard floor, uncaring of the sharp ache in my hips. I wrap my arms around her neck, burying my face in the thick, soft fur of her shoulder. My fingers twist into her collar, and a single, ragged sob tears out of my throat, shuddering through my entire

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