The MC President's Forsaken Wife

Chapter 6

Zara

By the time Jade walks into my hospital room later that afternoon, I’ve already mentally planned out what to do next.

She doesn’t knock, because Maggie ‘Jade' Callahan has never moved through the world as if she needs permission from anyone.

There’s something strangely comforting about that as she pushes the door open with one hip, a black duffel over her shoulder, her jade-green eyes (the reason for her nickname) taking in the bed, the bruises that have faded to a sickly yellow, before meeting my gaze with a softness that she’d deny if anyone named it.

“Well,” she says, dropping the bag into the chair beside my bed, the chair Knox never even once occupied. “You look like hell. I mean, better than when I saw you two days ago, but still… like hell.”

For the first time in weeks, I almost smile. “I feel better than I look.”

“Good,” she says, already unzipping the bag. “Because Mayhem is about two bad thoughts away from burning down Night Howlers territory, and I’m pretty f*****g tired of talking him out of felonies before breakfast.”

Mayhem is Jade’s husband and my brother. My tormentor, protector, favorite person, and nemesis, all rolled into one – but then again, what else is a big brother?

Jade pulls out folded clothes, my laptop, my charger, a small pouch of fresh toiletries, and then sets them on the bed with an efficiency that says she’s done this sort of thing too many times before.

I feel something settle around me that’s almost protection, and also relief at having my own things again. I’ve been living in hospital gowns and socks, and on gift shop supplies.

“How did he get my personal things?” I ask, though I already know enough about Mayhem to not really need the answer.

Jade’s mouth curves. “He broke into your house.”

I close my eyes briefly. “Of course he did.”

“He also broke into Knox’s office safe,” she continues, completely unapologetic. “Cleared out all the cash and jewelry, took anything that looked like yours, and grabbed the divorce papers sitting by the door.”

The papers.

For a moment, I can see them there again, waiting in that house like a version of me had set them down and then died before she could finish becoming who she meant to be.

“Where’s all that stuff?” I ask. “The money, the papers?"

“At the Skulls clubhouse,” Jade says. “Locked up in your Dad’s safe. All of it.”

I look at her then, really look, and she meets my gaze without blinking.

“Knox won’t go after anything there,” she adds quietly, answering my unasked question.

No, he won’t.

Not because he’s afraid in the simple way men like him pretend they never are, but because the Grinning Skulls MC isn’t a line he crosses carelessly.

Whatever else our marriage was, whatever transaction put me between his club and my father’s, that balance still matters to him.

More than I ever did.

The thought should hurt, but it doesn’t. That’s how I know something has changed, for real and for good.

I reach for the laptop slowly, my body barely protesting at all as I shift.

I open it up, and the glow of it spills across the blanket, ordinary and familiar in a way that feels almost impossible after everything else.

“What are you doing?” Jade asks. “What was the rush to get your hands on a computer?”

“I’m looking for somewhere to live.”

She stills. Not dramatically, not enough that anyone else would notice, but I do.

“Good,” she says after a moment.

Just that. Good.

No questions about whether I’m sure, no careful suggestions that maybe I should wait until I’m stronger, no warnings about the fall-out for my Dad and brother’s club.

And she doesn’t do any of that because Jade already understands what I’m only beginning to see myself: that strength isn’t always a thing you wait to feel before you move.

Sometimes – just sometimes – it’s what arrives because you finally do.

I smile at her, then type in my search:

Studio apartment. Immediate availability.

The listings come up in neat little boxes, each one trying to sell me a life with bright photos and polished phrases.

I scroll past anything too large, too pretty, too expensive, too much like a place that would expect me to become someone’s girlfriend or wife inside it again.

I don’t want beautiful or impressive, I don’t want rooms waiting to be filled by someone else’s absence.

I want a place where silence belongs to me because I chose it, not because a man left it behind.

I find one near the old market district, above a closed tailor’s shop.

It’s a single room with a decent kitchenette, an arch-shaped window, high ceilings, chipped flooring, and walls that look like they desperately need a fresh coat of paint.

It’s perfect, and my finger hovers over the contact button.

For one second, I think of the house that I’ve lived in since my marriage, of all that space, all that cold beauty. The separate bedrooms, the untouched sheets, the long hallways where I learned how to move quietly so I wouldn’t have to hear myself wanting more.

Never again.

Then I press the button, and my message is short and sweet: ‘I’m very interested, and I can move in right away’.

Jade glances at the screen. “That's the one?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“You sure you want something that small?”

I look at the little square of a room, the narrow bed, the tiny table beneath the window, the space that would force me to own only what I wanted, and nothing that kept me tied to what I had survived.

“Yes,” I say. “I want something that can only fit me.”

I close the laptop carefully, resting one hand over the warm cover. Suddenly, I understand, with a quietness that goes deeper than excitement, that this is the first thing that I’ve chosen that has nothing to do with Knox, or my father, or the clubs.

This is just a room, just a door…. and I’m the only person who has a key for that door. Never again do I stand outside of a locked space, begging to be let in.

All I need is a door to a life small enough to begin again. On my own terms.