The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 68

Chapter 46

Knox

By the fourth day, the lie has become difficult to maintain, even for me. On day four, I stop pretending that I’m sitting here outside Zara’s apartment building by accident.

The first afternoon, I convinced myself that I was simply driving past in Cain’s truck. The second, I told myself that I wanted to know whether Zara was staying at her little shithole apartment or hiding somewhere else. By the third, I stopped bothering with explanations altogether.

Now I just sit. Coffee growing cold in the cupholder. Engine off. Eyes fixed on the entrance to her building.

Waiting.

The realization that I’m actually staking out her place should probably concern me, but it doesn’t. What do es concern me is that I haven’t seen her. Not once in four days.

The lights haven’t come on. The curtains haven’t shifted. The mail sits in her mailbox in the lobby uncollected. Nothing. No sign of her. And the longer that continues, the more pissed off I become, because the bitch seems to have disappeared.

Then movement catches my eye, a motorcycle. I sit up straighter as the bike turns into the lot. And there

she is.

For a moment I simply stare. Not because she’s beautiful, though she is. Not because I miss her, because I don’t. It’s because she looks happy, and the sight genuinely annoys me.

My annoyance kicks up several notches when I see who’s driving the motorcycle, who’s helping her take off the helmet, who’s taking her hand and walking her to the front door.

Motherfucking Locke Tanner.

For years, Tanner has been the one person in Cobra’s organization that I could never quite figure out. Everybody else made sense, everybody else had tells, and weaknesses, and patterns. You learned enough about people and eventually they revealed themselves.

Not Tanner though. He never chased attention. Never chased women. Never chased status. The man handled millions of dollars every year and somehow still managed to remain a stone-cold mystery.

But he’s not cold now – not at all, because when Zara stares up at him, I see it.

The look he gives back to her. Not like a man showing off, or a man enjoying a conquest. He’s looking at her like a man who genuinely cares.

Him being with Zara isn’t revenge, and it isn’t a rebound, and it definitely isn’t an accident. Somewhere along the way, Locke Tanner fell for my wife.

I watch them disappear inside the building. Five minutes pass. Then ten. Then twenty. By the thirty-minute mark, I’m furious. I know exactly why they’re taking so long, and my imagination begins filling in details I don’t want. Details that I can’t stop thinking about.

Thirty-five minutes. Forty. Forty-five. When they finally emerge, over an hour later, I wish they hadn’t,

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<Chapter 46

because Locke is carrying a full duffel bag, and that bag tells a story. A simple one, an obvious one:

Zara isn’t staying at her apartment anymore.

Claim

Now I understand why she vanished, and why the lights haven’t been on, and why the place has felt abandoned. She’s somewhere else. She’s fucking with him… and she’s fucking him.

When she climbs onto the back of his bike, wrapping her arms around him without hesitation, I start the truck, and follow them. I don’t think about it, I simply do it.

The city unfolds around us, until eventually Locke turns into the gate of one the most expensive residential buildings in the city. For a moment, I assume he’s visiting somebody. Maybe Zara’s lawyer, maybe a club investor, definitely someone who rolls around in cash naked every day.

Then the motorcycle disappears into the private underground garage, and realization crashes into me:

No. Not visiting. Living.

My chest tightens, because I know this building. Everybody knows this building. Apartments here start around two million. Start. The penthouses are worth considerably more. I stare at the gleaming glass towers, the modern architecture, the private concierge, the valet parking for guests.

For several seconds, I simply sit here, trying to make the fucking math work, trying to force reality back into a shape that makes sense.

Locke Tanner isn’t supposed to be this. He’s supposed to be a biker, a fixer, a shadow standing behind Cobra, a simple club accountant. Not this. Not a man living in a multi-million-dollar apartment overlooking the ocean. Not a man who can offer Zara a life a thousand times better than the one she had with me.

The thoughts hit me like a volley of punches. And for the first time since this whole bullshit situation with Zara began, something that feels dangerously close to panic begins creeping through my whole body.

My phone rings now, and I answer without looking. “What?”

There’s a pause, then Becca’s voice, the fucking pathetic one that I genuinely can’t tolerate.

“Jesus, Knox. What’s your problem?”

I close my eyes.

Jesus fuck. Not now. Not her.

“Where are you?” The whining tone in her voice sharpens. “You said you’d be home.”

Home.

The word almost makes me laugh, because suddenly the house feels very far away. The pregnancy feels very far away. Everything feels far away except the image of Zara climbing onto the back of Locke’s motorcycle and them gliding into the parking garage of the most upscale address in the city.

“I’ll get there when I get there,” I snap. “Go eat something and gain some more weight, huh?”

I hang up, and the silence returns. The building remains exactly where it is. Unmoved. Untouched. Mocking

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(Chapter 46

All of this is getting away from me. The divorce, the businesses, the club, Zara.

Every piece is slipping.

Claum

And somewhere above me, in an apartment that probably costs ten times the value of my own house, Locke Tanner is becoming a problem that I should have dealt with a long time ago. Every time I see Zara with him, every time I watch her become happier, stronger, more independent, something inside me reacts the same way.

It makes me angry, very fucking angry. Because somewhere along the way, this stopped being about the divorce. Stopped being about money. Stopped being about business.

Now it’s about him.

Locke Tanner.

My grip tightens around the phone, around the steering wheel, around my every thought. Because maybe I’ve been handling this wrong, maybe I’ve spent too much time trying to regain control of Zara.

When the real problem has been Locke all along.

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