What He Fights (What He Wants, Book Ten) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) by Hannah Ford

 
 
    WHAT HE FIGHTS (What He Wants, Book Ten)
    By Hannah Ford
    Copyright 2015, Hannah Ford, all rights
reserved.   This book is a work of fiction,
and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

 
 
 
 
    NOAH

 
    She looked so innocent.   Her hair fell in a soft wave over her
forehead, her cheeks flushed.   She
sat down with the folder I’d given her and took a deep breath, the way I
imagined she would before she was getting ready to take a particularly hard
test.
    Then she opened the folder.
    And I saw it.
    I saw her face cloud with confusion, and
then panic.  
    I struggled to keep myself calm.   I’d been through hundreds of these
hearings -- they didn’t have any bearing on what was actually going to
happen.   The prosecution would pull
out their big guns, would rush around throwing evidence at the wall, hoping
something would stick.   It was an
intimidation tactic.   Whatever was
said at an evidentiary hearing almost didn’t matter.
    The state would never bring charges
against someone unless they were certain they had enough evidence to get a
trial – they did not want to look foolish.   But evidence presented at an evidentiary hearing was just
that.   It had no bearing on a
trial.    No one could be sent
to jail because of what was presented at an evidentiary hearing.
    That’s what I would have told a
client.   That’s what I was telling
myself.   But telling myself was the
easy part.
    Something foreign pulsed through me.  
    Fear.
    Not about the case.
    Not about being found guilty or about
going to jail.
    But about Charlotte, about her not
believing me.
    She turned to look at me, and I opened my
mouth to speak, to tell her all the things I would tell a client to keep them
calm.   It’s just an evidentiary hearing, it does
not mean anything, this is not what we will see at trial.
    I stopped when I saw the emotion in her
eyes.   It wasn’t doubt.    It wasn’t fear.   It was something else.   Something far more powerful, more
intense.
    It was anger.   Accusation.   Not
burning bright, on the surface, but bubbling slowly, underneath, the kind of
emotion that was far more serious.   Emotions that exploded off of people tended to burn themselves out
quickly.   Once the fuel of that
emotion had been exhausted, there was nothing left.   But emotions that simmered under the surface were much more
dangerous.   They had the ability to
boil and roll, so slowly that you were somehow able to convince yourself you
didn’t even feel them.   Until one
day you woke up and realized they’d ruined everything.
    Charlotte turned to me.   Her eyes were watery.
    “Who did…” she trailed off.
    She said it at a normal volume, but to my
ears, it sounded as if she was whispering.
    “What?” I asked.   “What is it?”   I was struggling to keep calm, struggling to keep the panic
out of my voice.   It was a strange
feeling. For the first time in a very long time, I felt the first tiny bit of
my control start to slip from my grasp, the first crack in a carefully
controlled existence.
    “Who did you tell about us?” she
demanded.   “Who knows?”
    “No one. Why?”
    “Because I’m on the witness list.”
    The crack suddenly got wider.   It wasn’t slow, the way a crack in a
carefully built foundation would split over time.   It was immediate, deep, devastating.
    They would call her to the stand.
    They would ask her about us.
    They would ruin her.
    I’d seen it happen, over and over.
    They’d take a fiancé or a girlfriend
– never a wife, since spouses had spousal privileges – put her on
the stand, try to trip her up, to make her say something incriminating.   If the person decided to be stupid and
lie, the prosecution would threaten them with a perjury charge, only to swoop
in later and offer them a deal – testify against your boyfriend and that
pesky little perjury charge will go away.
    They were going to try to play with her.
    And