LULU
I was going out of my mind with worry. Once Noah coded, I knew he was gone. The pain in my chest had been so severe that when I was thrown out of his room, I barely took two steps before I nearly collapsed. Thankfully, someone else had been hovering nearby, and was able to come to my rescue. I had clung to Gabriel as he caught me, then swept me up into his arms. After, he carried me to the waiting room and set me down where I had been sitting before.
“What happened? Is Noah going to be okay?”
“H-he...” I couldn’t even say it. The tears streaming down my cheeks said what I was unable to say, and I heard the other man curse.
“Is he dead?” The terror in his voice was a direct reflection of mine, and unsure, I could only shrug my shoulders.
“I don’t know. He coded, and they made me leave. Oh God, he has to be alright. He just has to be.”
“Shhh,” Gabriel told me as he pulled me into his arms.
I didn’t deserve the comfort he was offering, but I took it anyway. Gabriel pressed his chin against the top of my head as he slowly rubbed my back. “Just calm down. I’m going to go see what I can find out, okay?” I nodded, then hiccuped on a sob. “You have to promise me that you will stay right here.”
“I will,” I promised, if for no other reason than my need to know what was going on.
Noah and I had been talking, then his expression turned into a blank stare before he had what I assumed was a seizure. Amanda had them as a child each time she took antibiotics. By the third one, they realized her penicillin allergy, and she had thankfully never had one again after that. As scary as those were, watching the man I love struggle to breathe as his heart slowed to a stop was more than I could handle.
Gabriel got up, and I forced myself to stay where I was as he had asked. I knew Gabe loved Noah, and vice versa. The two were inseparable as kids from what both had told me. It was no wonder the two were thick as thieves now. I trusted him as much as Noah did, so I leaned back in my seat and did the only thing I could think of at this moment. I prayed. Not just for me, and for Noah, but for my children. If what Noah had told me about the car was right, my earlier encounter had not been an accident. Whoever it was, they were coming back to finish the job. I had no enemies that I knew of, unless you counted the father of my children.
Cade did not own a silver sports car, or at least he hadn’t when the two of us had been together. It had to be him, though. No one else would have anything to gain from my death but him. He would not have to pay alimony or child support, and he would have full, uncontested custody of our kids.
“I was going to give you a final chance to come to your senses. All you had to do was call off the divorce and give us another chance, but you wouldn’t. Now, you’ve left me no choice... I’m suing you for full custody of the kids... I had a nice talk with my lawyer. He seems to think that I have a case... My reputation won’t be on trial, though. Yours will, and I can guarantee you will not be able to sweet talk your way through this one like you and your lawyer did the last time. I have made sure of it.”
As all of his earlier threats replayed in a loop in my head, all I could wonder was this what he meant by making sure of things. Had he planned to get rid of me? Was the driver of that car actually him? Or had he used his connections as a Titan to put this deadly chain of events into motion?
Overcome with nausea, I quickly leaned over to my left side where a garbage can sat, then I threw up the bile sitting in my throat. I would’ve gone to the bathroom, but Gabriel had made me promise to stay here. I at least needed some water. Spying the vending machine across the room, I rummaged through my purse for my wallet. After locating a dollar, I walked over to the machine and tried to feed the bill into the machine. My hands were shaking so badly, and I almost sighed in relief as it started to go in, only to curse under my breath when it was spit back out. I actually related to it completely. Since I had heard about Noah, life seemed to constantly just chew me up and spit me out. I was nothing more than a wrinkled up bill.
I snatched it, or tried to, but I missed it and the dollar fell to the floor. I bent down to retrieve it, but a hand beat me to it. I looked up and saw that it was Gabriel once more.
I slowly stood back up, and watched as he flattened it out, then fed it into the machine. It was accepted this time, and when he selected the water, I waited for the bottle to appear in the plastic. Once it did, I went to get it, but he once again beat me to the punch.
“Here, let me,” he said.
I offered no protest and the two of us were soon seated back where we had just been. After drinking a small bit of the cool liquid to soothe my irritated throat, I had to ask.
“Noah. Is he...?”
“They were able to revive him. Noah’s resting comfortably in his room.”
“Oh, thank God.” It seemed as if one of my biggest wishes was now answered, although I was still afraid for him.
“The police are back at his room.”
“I’m glad,” I told him, finally letting out the breath I had been holding. Cade, nor anyone else, would be able to hurt him with them around.
“One of the detectives would like to speak to you. I think it might have something to do with the case.”
“Yes, of course. Where is he?”
“I’ll go get him. Stay right here.”
I didn’t plan to go anywhere right now. As I waited, I took another few small sips from the water and had just put the cap back on when a detective darkened the doorway. “Mrs. Davis. I was going to ask you to come down to the station, but since we’re both here, I thought it would be best to conduct this interview here.”
“Absolutely,” I told him, straightening up in my seat as he approached me.
Gabriel closed the door allowing me and the detective privacy, and when the man had finally taken his seat, I opened my mouth to speak, but he started things off instead.
“I’ve been at the station watching the security footage from your parking garage. Do you mind telling me again why he had your car that particular day?”
I shook my head, then I told him about the issue I’d been having with my brakes. I advised that it was taken to the dealership, but I had gotten swamped at work so he had volunteered to get it for me after his practice ended. It was not new information that Noah was a football player, and the Porsche dealership could confirm anything I was saying.
“And he was going to drop my car off, then pick me up in his.”
“Why would he be picking you up?”
What wasn’t public knowledge was our relationship, but I had nothing to hide. “We had a date that evening.”
“A date? So the two of you are an item?”
“Yes,” I answered proudly. “We have been seeing each other for months.”
“I see. During your courtship, did you ever come across anyone who might wish to harm you over your relationship with him?”
I meekly smiled. “We both know that a Titan can’t even sneeze without someone seeing, so we did not broadcast our relationship to the tabloids or society pages. Someone did know about us, though.”
“And that would be?”
“My ex-husband, Cade.”
The detective exhaled sharply. “And how had he taken the news?”
I hated to even suggest that they look at him, but it was so clear to me now, even though I wish it had been weeks earlier. I could be accusing an innocent man, but that adjective would never be able to accurately describe the cheating louse of a husband I gave the best years of my life to.
“He wanted us to reconcile, and I refused. After, he said a few things, but I took them with a grain of salt.”
“What kind of things?”
I gave a rundown of the conversation I had with Cade that morning in my bedroom. After I was finished, I could see the way the detective was looking, and I knew he had to see what I now did. It was hard to imagine that a man so revered in the community could do something so heinous. After all, this detective and Cade had even played a few rounds of golf together in the past. All Titans were newsworthy in their own right, but not for this type of thing.
“How had he been after that day?”
“To be honest, he went back to acting like his normal self. There were no more confrontations, threats, or anything else. I had actually thought that perhaps my threat of hauling him back into court had worked its magic. I’m now seeing that I was wrong. You see, something else happened that I didn’t report, but I have a witness who was on the scene.”
“On the scene?”
I then launched into the events that had happened that one night when walking home from work. If he wanted to go back and look, I could likely find the exact day and time by simply reviewing past credit card statements. I offered to send him that information, and I even gave him John’s contact information. Finally, I knew I had to tell him what Noah had told me before his seizure.
“Noah had told me a little while ago that the shooter was also in a silver sports car. Do you think these two encounters might be connected? I mean, I guess Noah could have been wrong about the color?—”
“He wasn’t,” the detective told me, then he pulled a picture up on his phone.
My face paled when I saw the car. It was definitely the same one that had nearly run me off the road. “That is the same car.”
“We’ve run the plates on it, and the tag was registered to a stolen sedan in Peoria. It was not for the Maserati. In fact, the only Maserati that matched make, model, and color is owned by Rita Berman. If I’m not mistaken, she seemed to have an intimate relationship at one point with Cade.”
“It wasn’t her, though. The one in the car the night of my roadside mishap was definitely a man. I know Rita and she is petite. The driver that night was not.”
“We followed the car through the city via different security cameras. You are right because when the car finally stopped just outside of town, the masked gunmen exited that car, then got into a lime green Corvette Stingray.”
“Cade had just gotten one those. Amanda saw it in his garage after her last overnight with him. She told me that he planned to teach her how to drive in it.”
“We’ve got some men on the way to his office to pick him up. I thank you for talking with me, and confirming the things we were already able to piece together. With that said, I wanted to let you know so that you could shield the kids if needed from the media. Once he is brought down to the station, we intend to book him on attempted murder charges, among others.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” I told him.
He then got up and as he left the room, I called Olga who was still at the house. I asked her to get the children ready and to have them meet me downstairs. I then left the hospital so I could go and pick them up. Once the news broke of Cade’s arrest, their cell phones would be ringing off the hook. They deserved to hear this all from me and not some reporter who was just trying to attach their name to a hot story.
God, they were going to be devastated. Despite the issues I had with their father, he loved them very much. They had never been mistreated or neglected when with him, so they would take this all so hard. I finished the bottle of water in the elevator, then tossed the empty bottle away as I hurried to my rental car in the parking garage. These structures now gave me anxiety, so I checked all around the vehicle before getting inside. I didn’t have time to waste, so I started the ignition, then headed to the penthouse where the children would be waiting for me in the lobby. This was going to be a very difficult, but much-needed conversation to have with them. I only hoped they didn’t blame me like I was already doing to myself.