The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 75

Chapter 50

I lift one eyebrow. “Jade Callahan.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Hi Jade.”

“No, no “hi”.” She waves her arms. “No, we’re addressing this first.”

“Addressing what?”

“Don’t you play stupid with me.” She gestured around herself again, apparently at a complete loss for words for possibly the first time in her life. “This isn’t an apartment. This is where Bond villains have cocktails. I mean… when exactly were you planning to mention that you’re secretly Batman?”

Mayhem walks toward the windows, squints at the view, then turns back to me. “You live here?”

“No,” Jade says before I can answer. “Men don’t live in places like this. They brood, drink expensive whiskey, and plot bloody revenge. Like Bond villains and Batman.”

Claims

Cobra smiles now, and it’s the first hint of ease I’ve seen on his face, and even that disappears when his gaze shifts toward the hallway. “How is she?”

“She’s sleeping,” I say. “Finally.”

Cobra’s eyes come back to mine. “Bad night?”

I don’t soften it. He wouldn’t want me to.

“Yes. Really bad.”

Cobra sets his untouched coffee on the counter. “Can I see her?”

I lead them down the hall, and nobody speaks as we enter the bedroom.

I’ve seen these people loud. I’ve seen them drunk, furious, laughing, armed, bleeding, unreasonable, impossible. But standing in the doorway of my bedroom, looking at Zara asleep after her first round of chemo, every one of them becomes quiet.

Cobra sits carefully on the edge of the bed, and for one long moment he simply looks at his daughter. His hand lifts, hesitates in the air above her hair, then settles gently against her forehead before brushing a strand back from her cheek.

His face changes.

I’ve seen Cobra in club meetings, seen him make decisions that would send other men reaching for whiskey or prayer, but I have never seen him like this. Unarmored. Hollowed out. Filled with such helpless love that it makes something in my chest feel too tight.

He bends and kisses her forehead. “My sweet girl,” he whispers.

Mayhem lasts exactly four seconds after that, and then he turns away. It isn’t weakness, though, it’s love.

1/3

Chapter 50

Cham

Jade slips past all of us without asking permission, because Jade has never once considered permission a meaningful obstacle. She moves to the other side of the bed, kicks off her boots, and climbs carefully on top of the duvet beside Zara, arranging herself close enough to be there but not close enough to wake her.

Cobra looks at her. “What are you doing?”

Jade pulls a romance paperback from her tote bag. “She’ll wake up confused.” She opens the book, then adds softly, “You guys go talk, I’ll stay with Zara.”

Back in the kitchen, Cobra finally drinks his coffee, then he says, “We found another transfer.”

I set my mug down. “Knox?”

“Through one of the companies Zara remembered. Brick and Hawk are running down the warehouse now.”

Mayhem turns from the window. “It ties to the drugs?”

“Looks that way,” Cobra says.

I nod slowly, already sorting through possibilities. “We need shipment schedules, customs paperwork if it crossed any border, and whoever is running logistics on his end.”

Cobra’s gaze sharpens. “You think he has a second operation.”

“I think a man like Knox always does.”

Mayhem mutters something under his breath that sounds like a promise and a threat in equal parts.

For the next twenty minutes, we talk business in low voices. Names. Dates. Men who can be leaned on, and men who should be watched before anyone touches them. Cobra listens more than he speaks, which is how I know that he’s already planning five steps ahead. Mayhem contributes less often, but when he does, it matters.

This is the other side of family. The part that sharpens knives in the kitchen while someone beloved sleeps in the next room.

Eventually, the conversation fades. Mayhem exhales and scratches the back of his neck, looking suddenly uncomfortable in a way I’ve never seen from him.

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this without sounding like an asshole,” he says.

Cobra’s mouth twitches. “Ambitious.”

Mayhem glares at him. “Not helping.”

I lean back against the counter. “Say it, man.”

“I trust you. With club business. With money. With my life, if it came to it.” Mayhem’s gaze flicks once toward the hallway. “But she’s my little sister.”

There it is. The heart of it.

“I watched Knox make her smaller,” he says, voice roughening around the edges. “She stopped laughing. Stopped coming around. Stopped calling me when something good happened, because eventually there w eren’t any good things.”

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Chapter 50

Clam

Cobra looks down into his coffee.

“I like you, Locke. I’m glad it’s you. If it had to be somebody, I’m glad it’s you.” Mayhem’s jaw tightens. “But if she gets hurt like that again, I don’t think I can watch it.”

“I can’t promise we won’t hurt each other,” I say quietly. “People do, even when they don’t mean to.”

Mayhem nods; he knows. We all know.

“But I can promise you this.” I look from him to Cobra, because it belongs to both of them. “I will never be the reason that she forgets who she is.”

The silence that follows is long. Then a faint sound comes from the hallway, and all three of us turn at

once.

Jade appears in the doorway. “Sleeping Beauty’s awake.”

I’m moving before she finishes the second word. Cobra says something I don’t catch, and by the time I reach the bedroom door, none of it matters because Zara is awake.

“Hey, baby,” I say, moving to her side. “Guess who’s here to see you?”

Her voice is fuzzy with sleep. “Did the entire club invade your apartment?”

Mayhem appears in the doorway. “Technically, we were invited.”

Cobra stands next to his son. “This place is big enough to handle us, sweetheart.”

Jade pokes her head in. “Hey, did you know he’s Batman?”

Zara laughs then, softly, weakly, but it’s real.

The Callahans don’t love quietly. They love with cinnamon coffee and threats and showing up in penthouses with romance books and fear in their eyes. They love like a siege. Like a promise. Like an oath. Like nobody gets left behind.

And as Zara’s fingers tighten weakly around mine, I realize that I’m no longer standing outside that love, looking in. Somehow, without anybody making an announcement or asking permission, they’ve made room for me in it.

And God help anyone who tries to take her away from that love now.

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