Her Suspected Billionaire

Chapter 35

Alice was woken up again by the nurse, a cheery and robust woman in her late fifties, who came to serve her a breakfast of mashed potatoes with warm chicken broth. There was also a croissant and two sunny side up fried eggs in the tray, with a bottle of water.

“Are you lactose intolerant or have any history of allergies we should know about?” the nurse asked Alice as she dropped the tray on a small makeshift bed table that sat in front of Alice on the bed.

“No, no allergies,” Alice replied.

“Okay then. Breakfast is served,” the nurse declared. Turning to Evan, she added as she headed to the door, “Your husband is such a kind soul – offering to stay with you and all. Bless you, dear.” Evan and Alice shot glances at each other. Alice stifled a laugh as she saw the shocked expression on Evan’s face.

“She’s not my…” Evan began, but the nurse was already out of earshot and rolling her trolley down the hallway to go give the patient in the next room breakfast. Alice could feel Evan’s staring at her, but she ignored him and busied herself with stirring her chicken broth.

“You’re not gonna explain to her?” he asked, standing up from the couch.

“What? I’m the patient here. You want me to run down the hallway and yell that you’re not my husband till she hears? You can do that,” she replied him.

“Or, you could just ignore her, you know? What, am I so terrible that you can’t bear to be married to me just one day?” she continued, batting her eyes at Evan.

“That’s a lot of work,” he replied with a snicker. Alice gasped in mock shock making Evan burst into a full fit of laughter.

“You should laugh more often. It suits you,” she said, spooning some broth from the plate into her mouth and spitting it out almost immediately.

“Yuck!” she exclaimed. “What is this? Flour mixed with water?”

Evan came over and peered into the bowl. He made a face, turned around and sat in the chair.

“For a moment, I thought you wanted to taste the broth,” Alice said, picking up her croissant. The croissant tasted better so she decided to eat it after eating the mashed potatoes.

“I don’t eat what I don’t desire on sight. And that… oh, I could never desire that,” Evan replied.

“Hey, Alice!” Sheila’s voice rang out as the door to Alice’s room swung open. Walking behind Sheila were Steven and Nathan. Steven was holding a large picnic basket. Sheila went over to Alice and gave her a little hug, being careful not to upset the tray that sat in front of her.

“Hey, Evan,” Steven greeted with a little wave. Evan nodded in reply and got up to give him and Nathan a hug.

“Look at you watching over someone in hospital. I’m so proud of you, bro,” Nathan teased, patting Evan on his back as the hug broke up. He noticed Nathan actually looked as delighted as he said he was. He was just glad he wasn’t upset with him any longer.

“We got you breakfast. I know hospital food is bleh. When my mum was ill, she couldn’t eat it either,” Sheila informed, taking the tray of food from the makeshift bed table and handing it over to Steven before he could protest.

“You’re a lifesaver, Sheila,” Alice said, as Sheila unpacked plates containing chocolate chip red velvet pancakes, buttercream cookies and a bottle that had minty mocha hot chocolate from the basket Steven had come in with.

“Woah, this is a feast,” Nathan noticed. Sheila shrugged.

“People who’ve been through a lot need to eat a lot. It’s called comfort food,” Alice explained making Nathan and Evan laugh. Steven came out of the bathroom where he’d cleaned up the plates the nurse had brought in for Alice.

“The croissant isn’t all that bad,” he said, while chewing.

“I know,” Alice agreed.

“Did you taste everything on that tray to decipher that, Steven?” Sheila asked, a look of disgust on her face. Steven took one look at her and knew he shouldn’t say yes.

“I’m just saying. Try the cookies first, Alice,” he said and changed the subject.

​Sheila had truly packed enough for a feast and when Alice was full, there were a lot of leftovers to go round all of them. While they ate, Sheila and Steven updated everyone about what had gone on at the station that morning.

​Clinton Clark was going to be charged to court for three charges – murder of his nephew, Julian Storm, attempted murder and s****l harassment of Alice and breaking and entering into the office building of Sterling Industries. He was also being sued by Kings’ Group for s****l harassment of female and mismanagement and embezzlement of funds.

“He’s going to go away to jail for a long time. There’s no way he’s coming out of it,” Sheila said, smiling down at Alice.

“Apparently, he hadn’t come with the intent to do anything to you that night at the rooftop, Alice. He never even knew you were in the premises at the time,” Steven said.

“I don’t understand. What do you mean he didn’t plan to…” Alice asked, genuinely confused.

“The stalker was Julian Storm. He kept tabs on us, mostly you, and reported back to Clinton, who didn’t want anybody, or least any of us, to know he had a sidekick in his mission. He wanted to take the glory for pulling off the successful elimination and molestation of you himself,” Steven began explaining.

“Psycho,” Sheila muttered.

“He saw the chat we had with Storm that night and that put him in crazy mode. While Julian stalked us, he stalked Julian,” Steven continued.

“It was easier for him to stalk just Julian, than stalk all three of you because he still had to go to work,” Evan deduced.

“Exactly!” Steven agreed, giving Evan a thumbs up. “A few days ago, he was fired from his position at Kings’ Group. He had tried to harass an intern there. He didn’t know the intern was a daughter to one of the men who sat on the board of Kings’ Group and when they investigated her allegation, it turned out they saw this had been going on for a while. Everyone who worked at HR were also fired, because they had slid every complaint given by harassed staff, including you, Alice, under the carpet. Every single one. Kings’ Group is literally on the verge of going bankrupt too so it wasn’t hard to let any of them go. They were going to lay off staff anyways.”

“This guy was one serious sicko,” Nathan said, scoffing. He looked visibly angry as he listened to Steven.

“Definitely is. Further investigation saw he had been embezzling funds meant for production and providing inferior supplies to companies they had contracts with making the companies never renew their contract,” Steven continued.

“That was why…” Alice began and then fell silent, flicking her eyes up to look at Evan who was still munching a buttermilk cookie. Everyone looked at him too when they saw Alice turn to look at him. He simply nodded without looking at any of them.

“He tricked Liam into signing a contract to supply Sterling Industries with cotton. We didn’t renew the contract and Liam got suspended from the board for even signing it,” she concluded.

“He didn’t trick Liam. My brother was just not meticulous in the affairs of contract signing. He thought his signature was a plaything. Well, now he’s suspended, it is a plaything,” Evan explained.

“Right,” Steven said and continued. “What all this meant was that he was the reason why Kings’ were going bankrupt. Their expenditure far exceeded their income and that was why he was fired. And then he had time to decide to stalk you, but first he had to get rid of Julian since he knew we were aware that he wasn’t working alone. How they ended up going to the rooftop of the office building of Sterling is what we don’t know yet. But he tased Julian so bad, after they had fought and argued for a while, to the point he passed out. And then he tried to leave the body there and walk away like nothing happened. But the door that led to the rooftop was jammed. It couldn’t open from the inside.”

“Oh, that’s why. I tried to leave after he’d attacked me the first time but I couldn’t get the door to open,” Alice said, nodding

“He had told you he had me because he knew you’d come for me. He just wanted to use you to open the door so he could get out. But then you entered and shut the door behind you so both of you were technically trapped and he decided he could finally deal with you once and for all,” Steven continued.

“So why were my car tires slashed?” Sheila asked.

“The police don’t have an answer to that yet. They think it’s possible that Storm might have done that as part of the plot to remind you that they were still watching us,” Steven replied.

“And why weren’t you picking your calls? If you’d picked, I wouldn’t have gone up there in the first place,” Alice asked. Steven looked away and scratched the back of his neck. Sheila began looking around the room. Nathan caught their expressions and burst into laughter.

“Don’t tell me,” Alice replied, turning her face away from them. Sheila put her arms around her.

“I was with Sheila when you called, Alice,” Steven confessed.

“We’re so sorry,” Sheila said sweetly.

“I didn’t hear the phone ring and when I tried calling you back, your number wasn’t connecting,” Steven continued.

“That’s because he’d smashed my phone by then,” Alice explained.

“Who?” Nathan asked, taking a quick glance at Evan.

“Clinton Clark. Who else?” Alice answered.

“Ahh, yes. The psycho,” Nathan said nodding. Evan nudged him in the shoulder. He knew Nathan thought he was the one that had smashed Alice’s phone.

“And when you called me, I was working,” Sheila said. “But look on the bright side, all this is finally over because we didn’t answer our calls.”

Alice scoffed. Sheila was right, but then again, she could have lost her life if she hadn’t eventually messaged Evan.

​There was a knock on the door and the nurse came in to get the tray. She smiled sweetly at Alice and Evan after the others had greeted her.

“It’s always nice to have family around you when you’re going through a hard time as a couple,” she said, before leaving. Alice covered her face with her hands so nobody could see her laugh while Evan began walking slowly to the couch.

“Couple?” Nathan asked, with a snicker.

“Yes. The kind nurse married Evan and I,” Alice explained, in between her laughter. Nathan walked over to Evan to laugh in his face. Sheila and Steven were exchanging glances and laughing too.

“Please, don’t smother my husband with a lot of laughs. He’s really sensitive,” Alice teased and another bout of laughter seized them all.

​Evan chuckled slightly as he watched them all laughing. It has been a while since he’d been in a room filled with so much happiness. He was glad Alice was safe and so were her friends. He was also glad that Clinton Clark had been caught. He rubbed his chin as he thought of suing Clinton for damages as well for delivering substandard goods, so at least some of the money lost could be recovered. Alice caught him staring at nothing.

“Thinking about something work related, eh?” she asked.

“You know me too well,” Evan replied.