Chapter 235

Noah twined his hand in my hair, pulling me closer. He parted his lips with my own and flicked my tongue with his. This was the most playful and passionate that I had ever seen him, and I could barely get myself to go through the motions.

Suddenly, he stopped as a noise from his pants drew his attention.

Noah reluctantly pulled away from our kiss as his phone started to buzz. He looked down at the screen and sighed.

“I should take this,” he said.

He put a finger up to indicate silence and answered the call.

“Hello. This is Noah Bernard.”

Noah paled as he listened to the speaker on the other end of the line. I was tempted to use my werewolf hearing to eavesdrop, but I decided to give Noah his privacy.

“But how could he possibly…yes, I understand what you’re saying. Could you just go over the argument with me?”

I wasn’t sure why, but my stomach was in knots hearing Noah’s end of the conversation. I just hoped that my instincts were wrong and that it had nothing to do with me.

“That’s ridiculous. How could anyone have fallen for that?”

Noah paused. He tried to flash me a reassuring smile, but it more came across as nauseated.

“Yes, yes, I get the premise,” he continued. “I just don’t see their logic.”

As he grew more agitated, Noah began to pace the length of the couch. The speed at which he walked only served to make my stomach more upset.

“Well, thank you for the heads-up. I should go tell Crystal now. Talk to you later, bye.”

Noah hung up the phone and tossed it onto the couch. He stopped pacing in front of me and stared at me for several minutes. I waited patiently for him to say something, anything.

He ran his hand over his face.

“Bob is free.”

I felt the blood rush from my cheeks.

“What?”

“He won the trial. They declared him innocent.”

“I…what…how?”

Noah shrugged.

“Prosecution was able to angle it as self-defense.”

My mouth dropped open.

“Self-defense? He broke into the man’s home! How did they justify that as self-defense?”

“I don’t know. I asked my contact in the courtroom, but I couldn’t make sense of his description of the argument.”

“So, that’s it? He gets no jailtime?”

Noah nodded.

“That’s what it looks like.”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“There’s no way. This can’t be real.”

I pulled up a search engine on my mobile web browser and searched for Bob’s name and the words “murder case”. The first thing to pop up was a news article on the trial from less than an hour prior:

ALPHA KING’S SON-IN-LAW TO SEE NO JAILTIME FOR ACCOUNTANT’S MURDER

My hand shook as I read the article. With a few more details, it corroborated what Noah’s contact had told him. Bob would not go to prison, not even for a second, and all because he had somehow convinced the jury that he had killed in self-defense.

I scrolled down to the comments section. If Noah had thought that our reputations were suffering before, he would think that they were decimated now.

I knew it had to be self-defense! one commenter said. This was all just that Crystal Blanchard trying to make Bob look bad.

He shouldn’t have even been on trial in the first place, another added. That vile Crystal is just trying to bring him down. Crazy bitch ex!

Andrew better watch his back, a third remarked. If this is how Crystal treats her exes, who knows what she’ll do to him?

I took my phone and threw it aside so that it landed next to Noah’s. I pounded my fist on the arm of the couch, unsure of what else to do with the angry energy surging through my body.

“Damn it!” I yelled. “Damn it! Damn it!”

Noah, though obviously terrified by the idea of Bob being free, raised his hands to placate me.

“It will be all right,” he said in a soothing tone. “We’ll figure something out—”

“Figure what out?” I exclaimed. “We blew our one chance to pin Bob down, and I probably screwed up Andrew’s investigation, too.”

Noah tilted his head at me.

“Andrew’s investigation?”

I cringed. I wasn’t supposed to mention that.

“Crystal,” Noah said, “what do you mean, ‘Andrew’s investigation’?”

I sighed.

“Before we broke up, Andrew hired a private investigator to look into Bob and see if he was connected to the stuff that was happening to me.”

“Stuff?”

“The stalking, my kidnapping, the vampire attack, the assassination attempts, even Lisa’s car bombing. He wanted to see if Bob was involved in any of it.”

Noah’s lips formed an “o”.

“Did it go anywhere?”

I nodded.

“It seemed like it was, at least. Andrew kept saying that they were close to getting the evidence that they needed to put Bob away without him being able to wiggle out of it.”

“So why did you go ahead with our cases, the financial one and the murder case?”

“Because he was taking forever!” I snapped.

I took a deep breath to force myself to calm down.

“He kept saying that they were close, but they never made their move. It was taking too long, and people were getting hurt, people I care about. I couldn’t let that happen.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose with my forefinger and thumb in an attempt to stop the tears from coming out of my eyes. I shook my head.

“Dear Goddess, he’s going to hurt more people,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper this time. “I can’t let him do that. Not again.”

Noah knelt in front of me so that I was forced to look him in the eye. He grabbed my upper arms gently and ran his hands along their length, raising goosebumps on every inch of my skin.

“Crystal, listen to me,” he said. “You’re not alone. We’re in this together, and you have…Jeffrey to help protect you.”

It seemed to pain him to bring up my ex’s guard, but at least he was willing to acknowledge Jeffrey’s value.

“We don’t need to take this lying down,” he continued. “We have options.”

I could tell that he wanted to bring up the idea of us going to a new pack, but he decided not to push those buttons. I was grateful for that.

“We will get through this together. I promise.”

I smiled briefly, then frowned and pushed away from Noah.

“You don’t understand. You don’t know what Bob is capable of. He has connections and means beyond our reckoning.”

Noah hesitated, as though thrown off by that remark. Nevertheless, he persisted.

“Then we’ll just have to outsmart him,” he said. “He’s not all-powerful.”

I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to tell him that he hadn’t been through what I had been through, that he didn’t know the levels that Bob would stoop to—the things that he would do and could get other people do in his name. At the same time, I knew that Noah was just doing his best and that he didn’t need this kind of stress at the moment.

“You’re right.” I leaned forward and hugged him tightly. “He’s not all-powerful.”