?Chapter XXX:


    Alex’s hand, hidden in the shadows, slowly curled into a clenched fist. What exactly was Noah ying at with this cryptic visit and vague remarks? Had he found something out, or was he fishing, hoping to shake something loose?


    Noah’s smile deepened with deliberate ease, his gaze locked onto Alex with quiet intensity. “Not even going to offer me a seat, Mr. Howe?”


    Alex’s lips held their curve, but a chill flickered behind his eyes. Something was off about Noah—his presence, his words, his calm confidence. What on earth was he up to?


    “What is it that you really want, Mr. Wall?” Alex asked, his toneced with polite civility. “You didn’t just drop by without reason. Let’s not waste each other’s time.”


    Noah’s smile remained cool and enigmatic as his voice dropped a note lower. “I heard you were at Nirvana yesterday.”


    The moment Alex heard the words, the hand holding the coffee paused for the briefest second. A flicker of tension crossed his face, gone almost as quickly as it came. How did Noah know that? No one should have seen him—not unless someone at Nirvana had talked. But that was impossible. Alex trusted his people to erase every footprint.


    Still, none of that mattered now. What mattered was that this visit wasn’t casual—it was an interrogation dressed in silk.


    “That’s right,” Alex replied evenly. “I went there for a meal. Simple as that.” Then, as if struck by sudden remembrance, he added with a calcted sigh and a touch of sorrow slipping into his voice, “I heard about Miss Delgado’s death. Terrible news. But surely, Mr. Wall, you’re not suggesting I had something to do with it, are you?”


    Alex posed the question with such transparent openness as though he were nothing more than an innocent bystander.


    Noah’s gaze transformed into twin daggers slicing through the air and piercing Alex’s fa?ade. “Yes. I do suspect you.”


    The moment those words tumbled from Noah’s lips, tension thickened in the room like fog rolling in from a storm.


    Behind his back, Alex’s hand curled into a brutal fist, his fingernails carving crescents of pain into his palm.


    The audacity of it all—Noah had the nerve to suspect him so openly, so brazenly.


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    On what evidence?


    Nothing but groundless theories and wild assumptions.


    Rage erupted in Alex’s chest like moltenva threatening to break free. But in the span of a heartbeat, the rigid mask he wore dissolved like morning frost, and he released a low rumblingugh that seemed toe from somewhere deep within.


    The sound carried threads of bitter self mockery woven together with strands of reluctant resignation.


    “Mr. Wall, you certainly have a talent for humor. Miss Delgado is one of Sadie’s dearest friends. I would never bring harm to Sadie or anyone who matters to her.”


    He deliberately emphasized Sadie’s name like a sacred vow or desperate deration.


    Noah studied him with calcting precision, a sh of dark irony flickering across his features.


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