Page 37 of Thunder with a Chance of Lovestruck

I couldn’t help but look toward my uncle, who was wearing one of his seemingly endless three-piece suits that looked as if it was out of time and place. It reminded me of something from the ’20s.

The newspapers had been having a field day with him, listing his theft of body parts along with the fact he was considered to be incredibly handsome by most. His dark gaze was aimed forward, locked firmly on the judge as it had been throughout the whole of the trial thus far. Nile rarely blinked—which was unnerving.

I’d seen the judge squirm in his seat more than once during it all.

Nile hadn’t looked at me or spoken to me since the basement incident. He’d not asked to see me either. He met with Henry nearly weekly, but not me.

I didn’t need to be told that he blamed me for his arrest. Had I not been making out with the enemy, no one would have been any wiser about what he’d been doing down there.

I shuddered to think of what he’d been planning to use all the body parts for. While he and his attorneys claimed he was insane and had only been collecting them for use in a private display (which was bad enough), I strongly suspected he’d been planning to carry on the Frankenstein family legacy.

That he’d been at the starting stages of making monsters.

Nile continued staring intensely at the judge, paying me no mind. But I had a funny feeling that he was acutely aware of the fact I was looking at him. That he was making a point to snub me.

The same couldn’t be said for my brother, who was seated directly behind our uncle. Henry’s expression was even, his gaze anything but. He was furious. Not a shock. He’d basically been in that state the whole of the trial. What had set him off the most was the fact I’d been called as a witness for the prosecution. I was testifying against our uncle—against our family.

“Ms. Frankenstein,” said the judge, his tone even. “Answer the question, please.”

I blinked up at the judge and then out at the crowd again. My gaze landed on my brother. My heart screamed at me from within to lie. To side with Henry and tell them all that Nile had merely snapped. That he’d had a moment of insanity and hadn’t been in his right mind. That he wasn’t evil. That he was full of love and would normally never harm a fly. If I said as much, it would make Henry happy. It would mend the divide that only seemed to grow between us with each passing day. He’d stop looking at me as if I was betraying the family.

But my head said if Nile was permitted to go free or got a lighter sentence, he’d be on the streets again before long, and he’d go right back to what he’d been doing. Only he’d go all the way. He’d create the monsters my father had told cautionary tales of.

That couldn’t be allowed to happen.

There was no telling what hell Nile could rain down on the world if he was left unchecked.

The judge covered his microphone with his hand and leaned toward me slightly, looking down from his bench. “Would you like Mr. Goodfellow to repeat his question, Ms. Frankenstein?”

“Yes, please,” I said in a hushed response.

The judge’s expression softened slightly. He nodded to the prosecutor.

My focus returned to the prosecutor. Goodfellow had been nice to me despite what my uncle had been accused of. He was a handsome man in his mid-thirties who was rumored to be leaving the district attorney’s office to pursue a career in the private sector.

All I knew was that the media loved him just as much as they did my uncle. Goodfellow’s photo was splashed across every magazine and newspaper out there.

His green gaze was on me and held nothing but patience and understanding. I was thankful for that since I felt like I was sinking in a life raft on a sea of hostile water.

Goodfellow repeated the question.

I did my best to focus as my heart raced and my palms began to sweat. The room felt as if it was closing in on me.

ChapterFourteen

Drest

Drest grabbed his badge,which hung on a chain, and put it around his neck before locking and closing his car door. He’d lucked out finding a parking space that wasn’t too far from the courthouse. It helped that uniformed officers had blocked off a section of parking reserved for law enforcement and those involved directly with the case—not the media and spectators who had been flocking to the area in the hundreds.

Nile’s trial had come on the heels of a number of high-profile cases all dealing with what human media termed the occult. Of course, they’d painted Nile and what he’d done with the same broad stroke they’d handled the other cases. Splashing words like “devil worshiper,” “occult,” and “rituals” across the headlines sold papers. The fact that Nile’s last name was Frankenstein had only played into the narrative, making it more sensational.

And Rachael had been there, dragged through the mud, grouped in with Nile’s depravity, as if she’d had anything to do with it.

She been utterly clueless as to what her uncle had been doing. To the fact he’d been breaking into funeral homes and mortuaries, helping himself to what he saw as an all-you-can-take buffet of body parts.

Drest had witnessed the raw emotion on Rachael’s face when she’d seen what Nile had been up to in that basement room. Her screams echoed in his head at night. The way she’d clung to him, trembling, shaking her head in disbelief, still haunted him.

She’d been traumatized that night and for months following. Hell, she was still being traumatized. Between the media and the trial, it was a nonstop onslaught for her, and he was powerless to help. He’d sworn to her that everything would be all right. He’d lied.

---