The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 513

Chapter 252-1

Reach out and push it back. The quiet creak of the hinges sounds like a scream in the empty

apartment.

The room is mid–transformation. The far wall is painted a soft, muted sage green, half–covered in blue painter’s tape. Beside the window sits the half–assembled crib we ordered together after hours of arguing over safety ratings – modern, dark wood, solid as a rock – still surrounded by half–unpacked cardboard boxes and rolls of bubble wrap.

On the floor beside the woven rug sits Locke’s leather tool roll. It’s spread open on a canvas drop cloth, his screwdrivers, hex keys, and tape measure organized in neat, precise rows. It sits. beside a set of heavy brass drawer handles he was installing on the changing table before he was taken.

I step into the nursery, my knees trembling so violently that I have to lean my shoulder against the

doorframe to keep from dropping.

I remember sitting in the oversized armchair in the corner of this room, my feet tucked under me, just watching him work on that changing table.

He had stripped off his flannel, sitting on the hardwood in a tight white tank top, the dark, intricate ink covering his shoulders and broad back gleaming under the warm lamp light. His brow had been furrowed in intense concentration as he carefully balanced the wooden drawers with a tiny

brass level.

He looked so big, so lethal, sitting on the floor of a baby’s room with a tiny screw held between his heavy, scar–mapped fingers. He looked up, catching me staring, and that small, rare smile – the one reserved exclusively for me, the one no patch or brother in the club had ever seen – completely transformed his hard, ruthless face into something soft, warm, and entirely mine.

“What?” he asked softly, tossing a brass screw into his palm. “What’s up, baby?”

“Nothing,” I answered, my chest aching with a love so huge it felt dangerous. “Just watching my

man.”

He set his tools down, walked across the room on his knees in a way that made me laugh, and wrapped his arms around my waist. He held me with a fierce, quiet intensity that said every single thing he couldn’t put into words.

I reach down now and pick up the brass screwdriver resting on the canvas drop cloth.

The steel is freezing. It feels heavy, dead, and utterly meaningless in my hand.

I clutch it against the center of my chest, my shoulders shaking violently as a fresh wave of grief

14

Chapter 252-1

rips through me, hot and suffocating.

He doesn’t know this room exists.

+25

+25 Pomer

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