Chapter 32:
"I don't know what you mean," he hedged, trying to find the words he needed.
"You're the one always saying that there's more to Lex than meets the eye. You talk about his reputation and vague business deals, and you make it very clear that you don't like the guy. Honestly, I thought you were just jealous, but now I'm thinking you might be onto something."
"I don't think—"
She leaned over the table, hands planted firmly on the desk. "Clark. I never gave you a chance before. I'm handing you the mic, open forum. Why don't you like Lex Luthor?"
Clark ran a hand through his hair, buying time seeing as she didn't waste any. The gloves were off and it was off to the races. Fine. He could handle that. "Look, honestly, it probably did start out as a jealous rivalry sort of thing. When I was first building my brand, I had a hard time figuring out where to start. I didn't really know what I was doing, and Lexcorp was a good example, in a way. I compared a lot of what I did to how Lex manages his company. I thought it was a healthy competition, a way to measure up. If Lex Luthor did it in six months, I did it in three." He paused, transitioning from the truth to something a little less honest but still not entirely untrue. "But there were all these little things he did that didn't add up. Businesses he'd purchased and liquidated, money that floated across hands without leaving a paper trail. As time went on, I learned there was much more to it than that, or so I heard. "
She waited impatiently for him to go on, and he let her wriggle like a worm on a hook for a minute before giving her a taste of what she wanted. Clark grimaced, hoping it didn't come across as smug.
"You know the crazy amount of organized crime you mentioned when we were talking with Bobby?"
Lois froze, rooted to the spot. A pin could have dropped and people across the office could have heard it. He watched the shock that spread across her beautiful features, and he wondered if maybe he misjudged how much she had wanted to know.
Oh well. They would have had to have had this conversation at some point for his plan to work. So what if he was skipping over some of the slower parts of the plan.
"Are you trying to tell me that you think Lex Luthor is the Boss?"
He held his hands up defenselessly. "I don't have the evidence to back me up. But yeah, I do."
She blinked at him several times, and Clark waited as the pendulum swung above his head, waiting for it all to come crashing down. She could snap, yell at him, tell him he was being ridiculous and she knew the man better than he did. She could see right through his lies, turn it all around on him. She could leave altogether.
But the pendulum kept swinging as Lois sunk into her chair, deflated. "Lex is the boss." She repeated, more resolutely.
His heart started beating again. Clark nodded slowly, hardly daring to breathe.
"Oh my God," she leaned her face into her palms, distraught and shaking. "Lex is the Boss. I can't believe it. Oh my God..."
"Hey," he got up and moved to her side of the conference room table, placing a soothing hand on her back. "I'm sorry. I could be wrong."
She snorted derisively. "Thanks. That's real helpful, Kansas."
"I'm serious. Don't just take my word for it. Even if I'm right, we're gonna need proof."
She nodded slowly, finally looking up at him. "Thanks, really."
Clark smiled gently, his heart stirring. How he wanted to comfort her with his lips in that moment, but he kept his distance, kept things professional. "Don't mention it."
"It's not like it's such a surprise, really," she continued, as he pulled up another chair, this one closer to her side. Just so he could torture himself a little more by being within an arm's length of her touch. "He's always been a nice guy, but maybe a little too nice. Like he was being fake. And there's been more things recently, like how he treats you, and even the good guys, the superheroes—"
Clark cocked his head to the side innocently. "What?"
A flash of recognition spread across her face. "Oh, that's right. I didn't tell you. All those tests on the man of steel? Lex was behind them. I caught them fighting about a week or two ago."
He pulled a face, doing his best to look the part. "You mean even the bombing? And..." He stopped abruptly as an even more horrifying revelation crossed his mind, and he felt his blood go ice cold. He'd been so caught up in the moment, he hadn't thought it through all the way... but how could he think that Lex would be so bold? "Not the... Even the jumpers?"
Lois wouldn't meet his eyes, and that sealed it for him.
"I'll kill the son of a bitch."
Lois looked up at his venomous tone, eyes widening at his dark, angry expression. "Don't say— I'm sure it was an accident."
He snapped his gaze up at hers, horrified, stomach knotting terribly. "You're not actually defending him, are you?"
"I'm not—"
Clark smacked his hand heavily against the desk, the anger and the nausea mixing in his blood. "If he's the one who was behind all those tests, then that means the man had you thrown off a building!"
"That was the jumper who did that. I spooked him, and he panicked."
"Lois," he chided with disgust and jumped to his feet, no longer content to just sit by her side. Her defense of the man made bile rise up in his throat.
She crossed her arms over her chest, and he didn't even glance her direction at the peripheral motion. "Lex would never do anything to hurt me. He loves me."
He scoffed at that, nearly trudging a hole in the floor with his enraged pacing. "Yeah, but I love you, and I wouldn't throw you off a building, that's for damn sure."
Silence met his outrage, and he took a second to wonder why before his brain caught up to where his mouth was. His eyes went wide. He spun to look at Lois with a deer in the headlights expression, hoping she hadn't heard that. The gutted look on her face informed him that she clearly had. He shut his jaw with an audible click.
"What did you just say?"
Clark had never backpedalled so hard in his life. "Lois, no. I didn't mean— I mean, I did mean— but I didn't think—"
She didn't even stop at her desk to grab her things this time. She just left.
Clark balled his hands into tight fists, wishing he could punch something right now without drawing the attention of the whole office. Lois storming out already drew enough attention his way, and now was not the time to reveal his secret identity to the world just because he had a temper and he broke down a wall or something. He closed his eyes and talked himself down, counting backwards from ten as he struggled to get his emotions back under control, managing it in the slightest. Even that felt like a win right now.
"Everything okay in here, Kent?"
He plastered on a fake smile for Perry White, shoving his fists in his pockets. "Just swell, Perry. Nothing to worry about in here."
The editor-in-chief's eyes slid past him, to the largely blank white board with Lex Luthor's name emblazoned at the top. "Uh-huh. Okay. Let me know if you guys will be needing anything."
"Actually, I'm gonna head out, Perry. Tell Lois if she comes back and wants to talk I'll be here on Monday."
*****LnC*****
Perry's eyes tracked his movements as he picked up his coat and briefcase, and made his way across the bullpen to the elevators, but once the man disappeared from view, his gaze was right back on that whiteboard.
What the hell did Luthor do?
