His hand found mine again without hesitation, grip firm, as legal pushed us forward and the courthouse doors finally opened.
Warmth hit next. Stale, institutional, heavy with old wood and polished floors and too many bodies moving through too small a space. The noise dulled the second the doors shut behind us—not gone, but muffled, contained, like the world had been forced to lower its voice whether it wanted to or not.
I didn’t realize how tight my chest had been until I could breathe again.
Barely.
Alois slowed, just enough to let security move ahead, his hand still locked around mine as we stepped fully inside.
The tension didn’t leave him. It compressed. Drove inward. His shoulders stayed squared. His posture controlled. His expression unreadable in that precise, deliberate way he wore like armor. But I was too close now. I had been too close for too long.
I saw the way his jaw tightened once, sharp and quick. The way his fingers flexed against mine before stilling. The way his breathing didn’t change at all.
“This way,” someone from legal said, already moving, voice low and efficient.
We followed.
Down a corridor that smelled faintly of paper and dust and something older—something that had nothing to do with hockey arenas or locker rooms or the fast, loud world Alois usually moved through. Everything here felt slower. Heavier. Permanent in a way that made the air sit differently in my lungs.
I should have been thinking about strategy.
About optics.
About what came next.
Instead—I was still thinking about his voice outside.
The way it hadn’t risen.
The way the crowd had.
This is getting messy.The thought came back, sharper now. More insistent.
I tightened my grip on his hand before I could stop myself.
He noticed.
Alois didn’t look at me, but his thumb moved in slowly, calm circles—barely there—against the inside of my glove. Not enough to be seen. Not enough to be called anything.
My breath caught. And I hated that it did.
We reached the courtroom doors. Security paused. Legal stepped ahead. There was a brief exchange—quiet, controlled, procedural—and then the doors opened.
The room inside was smaller than I expected. Wood-paneled walls. Rows of benches already partially filled. A low hum of conversation that dipped the second we stepped in, eyes turning, attention shifting in that subtle but unmistakable way people did when something—or someone—entered the room with weight.
Alois didn’t hesitate. He guided me forward, his grip firm, as if the madness outside had never happened, as if his body hadn’t betrayed him in a dozen tiny ways only I had seen. As if he wasn’t standing on the edge of something that could fracture far beyond a headline.
I stayed with him. Because I was supposed to. Because somewhere between the tea in the mornings and the silence at night and the way he had stepped in front of me without thinking—I didn’t know how not to anymore.
We took our seats.
And for the first time since this entire situation started—since the bar fight, since the headlines, since the shift from damage control to something far more complicated—I understood, with a slow, sinking clarity that settled heavy in mychest, that whatever happened in this room today…wasn’t the part I was afraid of.
Alois released my hand when we sat. The absence of it was immediate. Noticeable in a way that felt disproportionate to the contact itself, my fingers curling faintly as I folded them into my lap. I kept my posture straight. Controlled. Professional. Every inch the strategist I was supposed to be.
This is your job.I repeated silently, like I could force it to stick.
Alois sat beside me, still and composed, his presence filling the space without effort. From the outside, he looked exactly as he always did—imposing, contained, unreadable. The kind of man who didn’t fidget. Didn’t shift. Didn’t give anything away.