The question came from somewhere behind the main crush of cameras, ugly in a way that had nothing to do with volume. It slid under my ribs and stayed there, meaner because it knew exactly what it was doing. For half a second, the world narrowed around it. Not the courthouse. Not the case. Just that ugly little implication, offered up for public consumption like bait.
Concerned for my safety.
As if I was some trembling girl being dragged along by a brute too powerful to escape. As if the thing unraveling me was fear.
As if it wasn’t the much more dangerous truth that I was worried about Alois—not his image, not the team, not the spin, not even what this hearing might cost my already fraying professional life, but him. Whether he’d walk out of this untouched. Whether the pressure was carving into him deeper than he’d ever let anyone see. Whether the rigid, discipline he wore like armor would crack under the weight of cameras and judges and people who had decided what he was long before today.
He was supposed to be an assignment.
A difficult one. A career-defining one, sure. A problem to solve. A reputation to stabilize. A man whose edges I managed, not one whose silences I noticed. Not one whose tension I felt in my own muscles. Not one whose face I found myself thinking about at stupid, unguarded times—standing in line for coffee, answering emails, staring blankly out a conference room window while somebody droned on about optics and exposure.
This was not part of the plan. And I was starting tounderstand, with a clarity I deeply resented, that it hadn’t been for a while.
We hit the first step. Then the second.
Alois never let go.
The courthouse doors loomed ahead through the blur of bodies and cameras and winter light, brass handles dulled by age, stone darkened in patches from melted snow. Security called something I didn’t catch. Legal pushed forward. The crowd tightened. My lungs felt too small for the air I was trying to drag into them.
Then, without warning, a new body slammed hard through the side of the pack.
I only caught fragments at first—greasy dark hair flattened beneath a damp knit cap, yellowing teeth bared in something that wasn’t a smile, a microphone thrust forward while his other hand carved through the crowd toward me with ugly, entitled confidence.
“Bea—Bea, one question—did the team tell you to sleep with him or was that your idea?”
The words hit like open-handed slaps.
I reeled back on instinct, my hand slipping from Alois’s grasp. My shoulder collided with cold stone as I twisted away, but there was nowhere to go. Bodies boxed me in from the front, courthouse wall at my back, noise detonating from every side as my pulse went white-hot and furious beneath my skin.
The reporter followed. He crowded in, close enough that I could smell the stale coffee and nicotine clinging to his damp wool coat, his mouth already opening for something else—something worse—when his hand shot out and clamped around my arm.
Big mistake.
Everything after that fractured into motion.
One second I was pinned between stone and noise and the sour press of a stranger’s breath.
The next—Alois.
A wall of dark wool and broad shoulders and contained, simmering violence, moving with a speed that didn’t make sense for a man his size until something cold and certain snapped into place inside me.
His hand tore the reporter’s grip from my arm in one clean, decisive movement, only long enough to shift me behind him—out of reach, out of sight—his body stepping into my space with an instinct so immediate, so absolute, it knocked the air from my lungs.
Protective.
Primal.
Claiming in a way that made something dangerous flicker low in my stomach.
“Take your hand off her.” His voice didn’t rise. It was gravel dragged slow across concrete, each word deliberate, controlled, and far more threatening for it.
For the first time since stepping out of the car—the crowd hesitated. Security closed in rapidly. Hands. Voices. Movement.
The reporter was pulled back into the crush he’d come from, swallowed just as quickly as he’d appeared, his protests cutting off under the weight of authority and the sudden, sharp recalibration of the crowd. Cameras surged again—faster, louder now—but something had shifted. The energy had cracked, just enough to fracture the rhythm.
Alois didn’t look back.
He didn’t acknowledge it.