What He Sacrifices (What He Wants, Book Fourteen) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance)

WHAT HE
SACRIFICES
 
(What He Wants, Book
Fourteen)

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.

CHARLOTTE

My head began to pound.
 
The blood rushed through my body, faster
and faster, becoming more intense with each beat of my heart.
 
My veins expanded and pulsed, and my temples
throbbed.
 
The panic rolled in like
a tide, threatening to overtake me, and I forced my mind to move faster in an
attempt to stay ahead of it.

I felt completely disconnected from my body,
like what was happening to me wasn’t real. For a brief second, I imagined
myself as the heroine of a movie, caught in some twisted situation with the
villain.

In the movie, I would be in danger, but I would
get myself out of it.

In the movie, I would be okay.

In real life, I knew I was in deep, deep
trouble.

Suddenly, inexplicably, a crazed-sounding
giggle escaped my lips.

“You think this is funny?” Professor
Worthington spit.
 
His hands were
wrapped around the wheel of his car as he zipped down back streets and weaved
in and out of traffic, sideswiping cars as he moved through the dark alleys of
the city.

“No.”
 
I shook my head.
 
I didn’t
think it was funny.
 
The panic was
rising, trying its best to pull me under and drown me as the reality of my
situation became horribly clear.

Think,
I told
myself.
 
Think, Charlotte.
 

My eyes flicked to the window.
 
I wondered if I could signal to someone
outside that I needed help. But the car windows were tinted, which would make
seeing inside the vehicle impossible.
 
The professor was intentionally choosing
streets that were dark and deserted, the kind of streets you saw in old
gangster films about New York City, with steam coming up from the manholes and
trucks blocking the view of the buildings.

I moved my gaze back inside the car.

I knew from the countless case studies I’d done
that victims had a better chance of getting away from their captors if they
tried to fight back.
 
Either the
perpetrator would decide it wasn’t worth the hassle, or the victim would escape.
Once you allowed yourself to be taken to a different location, your chances for
survival went down drastically.

“I’ve been watching you, you know,” Professor
Worthington said.
 
His tone was calm
and smooth, the same tone he used when he was giving a lecture or leading a
debate.

“What?”
 
I asked, startled.

“Since the beginning of the semester.
 
I’ve been watching you.”
 
He glanced at me out of the corner of
his eye, and I made sure to keep my gaze focused toward the front
windshield.
 
The last thing I wanted
was for him to know I was searching the car for something that could help me.

“Watching me? Why?”

“I knew you were special.”
 
He checked the rearview mirror, making
sure no one was following us.
 
The
traffic was surprisingly light for this time of day, and I wondered where he
was taking me.
 
Did he have a remote
cabin in the woods somewhere upstate?
 
Was he going to take me back to his apartment?
 
I thought about how Katie had died right
in the middle of the park.
 
Was he
going to kill me there too?

“I’m not special,” I said.

He set his hand down on my knee.
 
His palm was cool, but his touched
burned through me.
 
“You are
special, Charlotte.
 
Noah knows
it.
 
I know it.”
 
His tongue snaked out and licked his
bottom lip.
 
“Of course, you’ve
disappointed me a few times.”

“I disappointed you?
 
How?”
 
I wanted to keep him talking, to distract
him while my eyes combed the car for something I could use as a weapon.

“Well, for instance, you never once asked what
my connection was to Noah.
 
Didn’t
you think that perhaps there was a reason Noah had chosen me as his
lawyer?
 
He could have had anyone in
the state.”

“No.”
 
I shook my head as my eyes landed on my bag.
 
My iPad was in it, and my laptop.
 
It was heavy.
 
I could pick it up and hit him in the head.
 
But then what?
 
If I hit Professor Worthington hard
enough to hurt him, but not incapacitate him, I’d still be stuck in the car
with him, with no way to get out.
 

I’d have to hit him hard, harder than I’d ever
hit anyone in my life.
 
I imagined
myself picking up my bag and smashing it into his face.
 
I thought about his bones cracking, about
his nose spurting blood, about the side of his head breaking open.
 
I was surprised to find that the thought
didn’t repulse me in the slightest. He’d killed those girls.
 
And he’d tried to blame Noah for it.

Was he going to try to blame Noah for killing
me, too?

“You’re naïve in that way, Charlotte,”
Professor Worthington was saying.
 
“You didn’t stop to look at the whole picture.
 
You became so focused on Josh.
 
Ha! Josh didn’t know Nora.
 
He didn’t know Dani.
 
He didn’t know Katie.”

“And you did?” I asked.
 
My foot was inching carefully toward my
bag.
 
I would have to slide it
toward me before I could reach down to get it.
 
I hooked the strap around the toe of my
shoe and pulled slowly.

“No, Charlotte.
 
You’re focusing on the wrong
things!
 
Again!”
 
He pulled his hand from my knee and
slapped it down on my thigh, hard.
 
His open palm stung my skin, and his fingers dug into my flesh.
 
I glanced down at his nails, which were
perfectly manicured and clean.
 

“What should I be focusing on?”
 
I asked, struggling to keep myself calm.

“You should be focusing on the fact that those
women don’t
mean
anything.
 
They are just props, Charlotte.
 
They are just
toys
to be used to get to the real perpetrator.”

He was talking like a madman.
 
What did he mean, the real
perpetrator?
 
He
was the
real perpetrator.
 
The panic I’d
worked hard to tamp down pulsed and flowed through my body again, stronger this
time.
 
The toe I’d wrapped around
the strap of my bag began to shake, and the panic became alive, whispering at
me to succumb to it.

It told me to hurry up, to pick up the computer
and slam it into the Professor’s face, to do it now
now
now
, that I had no idea where we were going, that the
longer I waited the further away from the city he could take me, that there
would be no one around to help.
 
Then the panic morphed into something else, a doubting Thomas, telling
me it was a stupid plan, that there was no way I was going to be able to save
myself no matter what I did.

The doubt burned an image into my mind of the
bag slipping out of my hands before it could do any damage, of the professor
laughing at how stupid I was for thinking I could hurt him.

“Hello?” Professor Worthington demanded.
 
“Are you paying attention to my lessons,
Charlotte?”

“Yes.”
 
My mouth had gone dry, and I licked my
lips.
 
The professor guided the car
around a corner and he did, my stomach turned on itself, something slippery and
sour rising in my throat.
 
I was
afraid I was going to throw up.

“Then who,” he said,
 
“is the perpetrator?”

His voice was bordering on shrill, and I
realized he wasn’t just making conversation.
 
He really expected me to answer the
question, and if I didn’t, he was going to be upset with me.

“Noah?” I tried.

“Good job!” he crowed.
 
“Good job, Charlotte!
 
Yes, Noah.
 
Do you know what an arrogant little shit
he is, Charlotte?
 
Do you know the
things he’s done to me?”

“Yes,” I said.
 
“He is arrogant.” The words sounded
wooden on my tongue.

Professor Worthington glanced over at me
sharply.
 
It was dark outside, and
the streetlights shone into the car as we passed through them, the light
illuminating the sharp planes of his face, the hollow sockets of his cheeks,
the
dark circles under his eyes.
 
For a moment, I was sure I could see
through his skin to the skeleton underneath, his skull and bones all yellow and
papery.
 
But when I blinked it was
gone.

“Don’t lie to me,” he said.

“I’m not lying.”

“Yes, you are,” he said.
 
“You don’t think Noah’s arrogant, do
you, Charlotte?”
 
He shook his
head.
 
“You are naïve, after all.”
His tone was darker now, and I could sense that I’d displeased him.
 
I wasn’t sure why, but I had the idea
that he was testing me.
 
That if I
was somehow able to give him the answers he wanted, he would keep me
alive.
 
But the thought was anything
but comforting.
 
He was obviously a
ranting mad man.
 
How was I supposed
to know the things I was supposed to say?
 
One wrong answer could set him off.

He’d killed Katie, and most likely Dani and
Nora, too.
 
And he’d killed them just
because they were close to Noah. Why did Professor Worthington hate Noah so
much?
 
I needed more information.

“Why do you hate Noah so much?” I asked.
 
My bag was close enough now that I could
grasp the strap.
 
The fingers of my
right hand tightened around it.

“You think this is about
Noah?”
Professor Worthington asked.
 
He
sounded upset, like I’d asked the wrong question.
 
“This is not about
Noah,
Charlotte.
 
This about people like
him, people who have everything in life handed to them.”

“Noah hasn’t had everything handed to him,” I
said automatically.

It was the wrong thing to say.
 
Professor Worthington took his hand from
my knee, pulled back, and slapped me hard across the face.
 
I gasped as my hands flew to my cheeks,
their protection too late.
 
My teeth
buzzed and my brain felt as if it were rattling around in my head.

“That is very stupid of you, Charlotte.
 
I didn’t want to hurt you, but I need to
make you see the truth.”

“What truth?”

He shook his head.
 
“That is for you to figure out.
 
I thought you
had
figured
it out, but then you immediately fell under his spell, just like everyone else.”

My jaw was vibrating from the blow he’d sent to
my face, and my fingers probed my cheekbone experimentally.
 
It felt swollen, and I knew I was going
to have a bruise.
 
If I was even alive to
have
a bruise.

I tried to focus on Professor Worthington’s
words, to try and make sense of his ramblings.
 
What did he mean, everyone fell under
Noah’s spell?
 
Had Noah taken a
woman from Professor Worthington? Had it been Nora?
 

Noah had never mentioned that to me.
 
Not that he necessarily would have
– Noah and I had never spoken of Nora.
 
I had no idea
what
their relationship had been like, what their history was.
 
Noah was a closed book, and I had no way
of knowing how or if Professor Worthington had been involved in his personal
life.
 
It was shocking, really, when
I thought about it.
 
Why had I never
asked Noah why he’d chosen Professor Worthington as his lawyer?
 
I’d thought it was simply because he was
one of the best in the city, but I should have known that Noah didn’t do things
like that.
 
All of his decisions
were thought out, planned carefully, with the utmost precision and control.