The MC President's Forsaken Wife

Chapter 3

Knox

I didn’t look at the passenger side of the car.

That’s the part that will stay with me, the detail that won’t shift no matter how many times I run it back, because I was standing right there.

As I pulled Becca out, I was close enough to feel the flames, to smell the fuel, and still, somehow, I never once thought to check the passenger seat.

Becca is in my arms, shaken but conscious, her fingers gripping my cut like I’m the only solid thing left in the world.

“I’ve got you,” I tell her now, already tracking the movement of the paramedics, already calculating how fast this f*****g mess will be cleaned up so me and the boys can get back to our rally point.

They take Becca from me, easing her onto a stretcher, and I stay close enough that she can still see me, because that’s what she expects.

I’m not good at the mushy bullshit, but I know what to do to keep her happy. If standing nearby shuts her up, it means things are simpler for me.

I glance over, see that the fire is already pretty much handled, the flames doused, the first responders moving in with the kind of efficiency that I trust. Whatever is left of the wreckage doesn’t concern me in the slightest.

After all, everything that matters to me is accounted for and in its proper place: my timid little wife at home pining away for a bit of my attention, my side-chick in one piece and not too beaten up, so her looks are still intact.

Then the voices around the smouldering wreck change… not louder, though. Sharper, somehow.

“Hey, careful, man. She’s pinned pretty tight in there –”

She.

The word catches, just enough to pull my attention.

“Her legs are trapped – don’t move her yet.”

A beat, then:

“Her pulse is barely there… we’re losing her!”

I c**k my head in a bit of confusion about who they’re talking about, then realize that it must be the driver of the truck that crashed into Becca.

The b***h dying has nothing to do with me, and my attention drifts to my MC brothers, who are standing right next to the firemen feverishly working on the woman in the pile of twisted metal…. and my guys are staring pretty damn hard.

“What’s the deal?” I raise my voice and say to Cain, my Vice-President. “Why are you watching a perfect f*****g stranger kick the bucket?”

A glance passes between Cain and Bones, quick and deliberate, and then they look over at me.

Neither seems eager to speak, and I feel my temper rise.

“What?” I say, walking over to them. “What’s the goddamn problem?”

“Knox,” Becca whines from the ambulance. “Knox, I need you.”

“Wait a sec,” I tell her.

“Knox…”

“Shut the f**k up!” I snap. “Stop f*****g –”

A fireman steps to one side of Becca’s car now, and I can see just enough of the scene inside to freeze my blood and kill my next words.

Long, curly dark hair. A familiar silk robe, normally pale-pink and cream, now soaked bright-red.

And a delicate finger with a gold band like mine.

For a second, my brain rejects outright all of this information, refusing to connect what I’m seeing to anything real, because it doesn’t fit.

It simply doesn’t belong anywhere in the version of tonight that I understand. Then the paramedics’ words cut through the roaring in my ears:

“She’s critical! No breath sounds, weak pulse –”

“Get her out now –”

Something cold slides through me, cutting through my trance.

“Who is that?” I ask my Veep. I know that I already know the answer, but I seem to need the words spoken aloud to me. “Tell me.”

Cain hesitates, looks around at his MC brothers for support, but nobody is meeting his eyes. Then he says:

“It’s Zara, man.”

And everything f*****g tightens. It just compresses into something sharp and suffocating as the words settle into place, connecting pieces that I still don’t want to look at head-on.

“No,” I say immediately, because it’s a hell of a lot easier than adjusting, easier than letting the truth land. “She’s not – why would Zara be –”

But they’re pulling her free, and there’s no mistaking it now. The slim shape of her curves. The way her body isn’t holding itself. The blood covering her stomach.

“We’ve lost her… get the paddles!”

Lost her.

The words hit, but not in the way that men usually experience when they see their wife dead in front of them.

They hit because of what she is, what she represents.

My wife is the connection that keeps things stable between two motorcycle clubs: mine and Zara’s family’s. Our clubs don’t trust each other, but the Grinning Skulls MC tolerates me because of Zara, because of the marriage.

Zara has never been difficult, never loud. She’s just been there. Useful and convenient and undemanding.

But now –

“Clear!”

Her body jerks violently under the shock, but the steady drone of the flatline shrieks in the night air.

“Again! Clear!”

Another jolt. Still nothing.

This isn’t supposed to happen, not like this. Not in a way that takes all control out of my hands.

I step forward without thinking, my focus locking onto the scene, unable to ignore it, unable to step back into distance. I fully understand now that this b***h is slipping through my fingers, taking everything with her as she lies on the cold ground, her stomach gushing blood, flatlining.

Zara. My f*****g leverage.

Suddenly there’s a break in the monotonous screaming, then a beep. Another. And another.

“We’ve got rhythm back –”

“Get her into the ambulance, now!”

“We have about ten minutes to get her to the hospital –”

They move fast, lifting her, securing her, voices tightening into that clipped urgency that means things are surely going to go wrong again, and probably faster than they can fix them.

As I watch the ambulance speed away with my wife in the back, I understand, with a cold certainty that settles deep…

I should have looked at the passenger side of the car.