The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 529

Chapter 260-2

Because really, I naively thought the worst–case scenario was simple:

A bullet. A body brought back wrapped in a tarp.

+25 Points

A funeral in the rain where I’d have to stand beside Locke’s brothers and watch them lower the only

man who ever truly saw me into the cold earth.

I had prepared myself for grief. I had rehearsed how I would survive the silence of our penthouse, how I’d raise our baby alone, telling our child stories about a father who fought like a titan to

protect them.

I thought I knew what loss felt like.

But I was wrong. So wrong.

Death would have left me his love.

Death would have left the memory of his mouth against mine, the lingering warmth of his hand over our baby on quiet mornings, the way his hard eyes went liquid–soft whenever I walked into the

room.

If he were dead, he would still belong to me.

But this man – this living ghost walking through the clubhouse – is a far more insidious horror.

And then there are the rest of the men standing in the clubhouse. Dad, Mayhem, Stitch, Bishop, Tucker, Rook, Bear, Diesel, all of them.

They aren’t just club members. They’re the family who raised me, the heavy hands that kept me safe, the men who taught me how to stand when everything else crumbled.

I think about Dad’s bloodless knuckles, about Mayhem’s bowed head, about Stitch’s ruined, hollow expression when he watches Locke look past me, and a fresh wave of panic claws at my throat.

What happens when the men who ground and protect you start to shatter?

I envision the nightmare scenario unfolding step by step:

I see myself in this shoebox, carrying a newborn with Locke’s dark, storm–gray eyes, while the real Locke rides past our building like a stranger.

I see him looking at me across the clubhouse lot three months from now. His gaze is indifferent, sharp, assessing me as nothing more than the President’s daughter.

I see him taking another woman into his bed because he doesn’t remember the wild, dark vows

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< Chapter 260-2

whispered against my skin.

+25 Points

picture him looking at the woman who replaces me with the same fierce devotion he used to reserve for me, while I stand on the sidelines, clutching our child, invisible to the man who was

once my entire universe.

I imagine the brothers tearing themselves apart trying to choose between their brother and the

woman they swore to protect.

I see Dad turning his back on a man he raised in the club because he can’t stomach the cruelty of

I see the day where I finally stop waiting for a ghost to draw breath. The day I stop looking for the tiny flecks of warmth in his eyes, stop waiting for his fingers to trace the curve of my lip, and accept that the man who loved me isn’t coming back.

Every nightmare I’ve ever had was about losing the people I loved to the grave.

I can’t live on obligation. I can’t let him build a life around me out of guilt, duty, or security protocols.

Locke is a man of fierce, uncompromising honor. Even with his brain broken, his instinct is to shield me, to provide security, to step up because he saw a photograph in his penthouse and knows he’s the father of my baby.

But if he never remembers – if the fog never clears, if his heart stays blank – living as his ‘duty‘ while watching him slowly slip away to someone else will tear me apart until there’s nothing left of me to give this child.

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