Chapter 16 #2
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.
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 my chest, 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.
But I saw it.
The tension threaded through him like something pulled too tight beneath the surface. The faint flex of his jaw. The minute tightening of his fingers against his knee before he stilled them again.
“Case number—” the clerk began, voice echoing softly through the room.
Everything in me sharpened. I held my breath.
This is it.
The prosecutor stood first.
Measured. Efficient. Already halfway through the opening motions before the room had fully caught up.
Words like incident, altercation, complaining party, review of evidence moved through the room with practiced ease, stripped of emotion, stripped of context, stripped down to something clinical and distant.
It shouldn’t have bothered me.
It did.
Because none of it sounded like what I had seen. What I had read. What I had spent nights untangling and reframing and trying to analyze before it spun too far beyond reach. Because none of it sounded like him.
Alois didn’t move. Didn’t react. Didn’t so much as shift in his seat as the prosecutor laid it out—brief, controlled, already pulling back before pushing forward. There was no grandstanding. No drawn-out narrative. Just facts. Or what passed for them in a room like this.
Defense stood next. Alois’s attorney didn’t waste time. “Your Honor, we move to dismiss.” The words cut clean through the room, precise and deliberate, landing with a weight that shifted something subtle but immediate in the air.
A pause.
Not long.
Just enough.
“The evidence before the court,” his attorney continued, voice calm, controlled, “clearly establishes that Mr. Müller acted in self-defense. Multiple independent witnesses corroborate the sequence of events, and video footage supports those accounts. The complaining party initiated physical contact, and my client responded proportionally under the circumstances.”
My heart thudded in my chest.
Self-defense. The phrase echoed in my head, cleaner than anything I had been working with for weeks. Cleaner than the headlines. Cleaner than the narrative.
The judge leaned forward slightly, eyes moving between the documents in front of him and the two parties standing before the bench. There was no rush to it. No urgency. Just careful, measured consideration that stretched the moment out longer than it should have.
Or maybe that was just me. Because every second felt like something tightening. The prosecutor didn’t argue.
A brief acknowledgment. A measured response. A quiet, professional agreement that the evidence… complicated the case. That the likelihood of conviction was… limited. That further proceedings would not serve the interests of the court.
Careful language. Controlled retreat.
My fingers tightened in my lap. Because I knew what that meant. Because I had been hoping for it. Because hearing it out loud felt nothing like I thought it would.
Another pause.
Then—“Given the evidence presented,” the judge began, voice even, carrying easily through the room, “and the statements made by both parties, this court finds that the defendant’s actions fall within the bounds of self-defense.”
My breath stalled.
“The motion to dismiss is granted.”
That was it. No build up. No drama. No moment.
Just—done.
A quiet shift moved through the room. Not applause. Not reaction. Just the subtle release of tension as people adjusted in their seats, papers shuffled, conversations began again in low, contained voices.
Beside me, Alois didn’t move.
Didn’t exhale.
Didn’t react at all.
If I hadn’t been watching him—if I hadn’t been paying attention the way I had been for weeks now—I might have believed it hadn’t touched him.
But I saw it.
The smallest drop in his shoulders. The slight release in his jaw. The way his hand flexed once against his knee before going still again.
Relief.
My chest tightened. Because it didn’t feel like relief.
Not really.
The court cleared him.
Clean. Clinical. Final.
And yet—I could already feel it.
The way the narrative would twist. The way the headlines would reshape themselves around something easier. Something louder. Something that didn’t require context or nuance or understanding.
The way this wouldn’t be over.
I turned my head slightly, just enough to look at Alois. He stared straight ahead, expression unchanged, posture as stiff as it had been the moment we walked in.
A man who had just been cleared of criminal charges and looked like it had cost him nothing at all.
And for the first time since this started, I understood something that settled deep and uneasy beneath my ribs.
The court had decided what Alois Müller wasn’t. He was not dangerous. A criminal. Nor Guilty.
But it hadn’t answered the part that mattered. The part I felt every time he stepped too close or not close enough, every time he looked at me like he saw something I hadn’t meant to show him, every time he did something that didn’t fit the version of him the world had already decided on.
I didn’t understand him.
Not even a little.
And sitting there, in a courtroom that had just cleared his name—I realized that might be the most dangerous part of all.