What He Sacrifices (What He Wants, Book Fourteen) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (2 page)

 
I
should have been angry
at
Noah, should have been
frustrated and upset that his unwillingness to talk about things had put me in
this situation, a situation where my life was at risk.

But all I felt was longing.
 
I wished he were here right now, to
protect me, to take care of me, to make this all go away.

But I was on my own, left with Professor
Worthington and his sick need to test me, to quiz me, to force me to solve his
riddles.

 
 
Of course I would never be able to give
him what he wanted.
 
I had none of
the information, and even if I did, he was insane.
 
It was impossible to know how his mind
worked, impossible to know what kind of slight – real or imagined –
Noah had inflicted on him.
 

Professor Worthington had already hit me for
giving him a wrong answer.
 
And I
knew he wouldn’t stop there.
 
Katie’s face flashed through my mind, how she looked that morning lying
in the park, her lips blue, her face bloated.
 

Give up,
the panic whispered.
 
If you fight back, he’ll make it worse.

I had a feeling it was true.
 
If I fought him, he would make it worse
for me.
 
He wanted me to play by his
rules, to participate in his twisted game.

But I couldn’t do that.
 
If I did, the chances were I would end
up dead anyway.

The car was rolling to a stop at a red light,
and my hand snaked back down to my bag.
 
I would hit him as hard as I could, and then I would reach over and go
for the door locks.
 
I would jump
out if the car
was
still moving.
 
I might get hurt, but it was a better
alternative than letting him take me somewhere and kill me.

I took a deep breath.

It was now or never.

But before I could pick up the bag, Professor
Worthington spoke.

“Do not think about hitting me with your bag,
Charlotte.”
 
He didn’t sound
angry.
 
He sounded matter-of-fact,
almost devoid of all emotion.
 
“You
will regret it.”

We were completely stopped at the light now,
and he reached over and picked up my bag, then tossed it roughly into the
backseat.

I bit my tongue to keep from crying out in
frustration.

“He’ll find me,” I said.
 
I could tell I was losing my fight with
the panic that was rising in my chest.
 
It was swirling around like a tornado, picking up any
cognizant
thoughts or feelings I had and sweeping them up, gaining strength as it went.

“Who?” Professor Worthington asked.

“Noah.”

He laughed, and it was the laugh of evil.
 
“No, he won’t, Charlotte.”
 
He looked at me, working his top teeth
over his bottom lip over and over again, giving him the appearance of a
rat.
 
His lip went in and out of his
mouth, in and out in and out until a tiny drop of blood appeared.
 
“He’s not coming.
 
This time, he loses.”

And that’s when I realized it.

Professor Worthington was determined to hurt
Noah, and he wouldn’t stop until he did.

He was going to kill me.
 
He would probably torture me first, but
then, ultimately, he would kill me.
 

There was nothing I could do to stop it, no way
to talk my way out of it.
I glanced around, looking out the window, the panic still clawing at me.
 
I reached over and hit the button for
the automatic windows, hoping that maybe something had been overlooked and it
would still work.

Professor Worthington shook his head sadly, as
if he’d expected more from me.

Hysteria bubbled inside of me, and it took all
my self-control to tamp it down.
 
I
was about to lose it, was about to give into the panic that seemed to being
gaining steam with every second.
 
I fought
the urge to grab the door handle and scream, yanking and pulling at it in
a frenzy
.
 
My
brain knew that would accomplish nothing other than to fuel Professor
Worthington and to exhaust me.
 

Think, Charlotte.
 
Think.

How could I get out of this car, or at least
alert someone on the street that I needed help?

The window.

You could break it.

But with what?
 
The professor had taken my bag.
 
I thought about smashing my hand through the glass, but I wasn’t sure I
was strong enough.

Kick it.

It was Noah’s voice I heard in my head, strong
and measured, controlled, calming me.
 

I’m not strong enough.

Yes, you are.

We were coming up to another red light now, and
I sensed my opportunity.
 
The second
the car rolled to a stop, I leaned back and slammed my foot into the window as
hard as I could.
 
Glass splintered with
a sharp crash, showering me with its shards, and I took in a breath of
surprise.
 
I hadn’t expected it to
be so easy.

I immediately began screaming.

“Help!” I yelled.
 
“Help!”
 

“You idiot whore,” Professor Worthington
spat.
 
He reached over and grabbed
me around the shoulders, pulled me back toward him so that I was lying
horizontally across the seat.
 

My back ground painfully against the gearshift,
causing me to cry out.
 
But I
flailed my legs out the window, hoping against hope someone would see me and
come to my rescue, or at least call the police.

“That was very stupid, Charlotte,” Professor
Worthington said.

He was reaching into his pocket for something,
and he held me down by placing his forearm across my throat.
 
My esophagus felt like it was getting
crushed under the pressure, and I struggled to breath.

“Please,” I sputtered.

Professor Worthington shook his head.
 
“I’m sorry, honey,” he said.
 
“But now I’m going to have to make this
much worse.”

I saw the needle a second before he plunged it
into my neck.

I tried to bite his hand, but it was too late.

A warm drowsiness was overcoming me as a thick
darkness rolled over my field of vision.

This is what it feels like to die,
I thought in wonderment.

And then everything went dark.

***

When I came to, I didn’t know how much time had
passed.

It could have been minutes.

It could have been hours.

I felt like I’d been sleeping forever, and yet at
the same time, I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had told me I’d only
closed my eyes for a moment.

My body felt heavy and jittery, and I had the sensation
of being tossed around.
 
A cool
breeze skittered over my skin, letting me know I was outside.
 
I felt disoriented, and I looked around,
trying to get my bearings.
  

But all I could see was inky blackness.

It took me a second to realize the inky
blackness was the sky.
 
It was pitch
black, no stars,
no
moon.
 
I must have been out for a while if it
had gotten so dark.
 
The crunch of
gravel filled my ears, and as I forced my gaze down, my situation began to take
form in my mind.

I was slung over Professor Worthington’s
shoulder while he carried me across a parking lot.
 
That explained the disorientation, and
the feeling of being thrown up and down.
 
With every step he took, my body jostled.
 
I glanced around, trying to get a sense
of where I was.

I could smell
a certain
grittiness in the air, smog and hot dogs and car exhaust, the smell of New
York, which made me think we were still in the city.
 
Then again, that didn’t narrow things
down much.
 
I could have been
anywhere in Manhattan, or Brooklyn, or Queens, Harlem, the Bronx…not to mention
there were parts of New Jersey and Long Island that could feel similar to New
York.

Hopelessness flowed
through
me, strong and debilitating, pooling in my belly and leaving an ache
.

I could be anywhere, and the worse part about
it was that no one would even be looking for me.

I had no roommate to go home to, no one to
check in with at the end of the day.
 
If I didn’t show up at school, no one would think it was weird.
 
They would mark me absent and that would
be it – I would be one of the countless students who skipped class or
dropped out.

Julia.

She’d been worried about me.

Maybe if she didn’t hear from me, she’d get
nervous.

But that was a big if – she would have to
text me tonight, right now, before Professor Worthington did whatever it was he
was planning to do.
 
And after what
had happened with Josh, after what Noah had done to him, I was pretty sure the
chances of Julia trying to get in touch with me were slim.

The only one who would be worried about me was
Noah.
 
And he was in jail.

Hopelessness and despair continued their
assault on my soul, along with a tiredness that seeped into my bones.
 
My eyes started to drift closed, my
awareness ebbing away as the lingering effects of whatever Professor Worthington
had injected me with had
a resurgence
.
 

Charlotte.
 
You need to stay calm.
 
And aware.

It was Noah’s voice, in my brain, so clear and
distinct that for a moment I was sure he was there in the parking lot with
me.
 

Try to figure out where you are.
 
Search for any clues you can.

I forced my eyes to stay open, forced my brain
to try and work.
 
We were walking
through some kind of lot. We were behind a brick building, and the ground was
gravel, but it wasn’t a parking lot – there were no cars.
 
To my left, I could see a street, with another
brick building on the other side of it.
 
To my right was a chain link fence.

That was it.
 

No signs.

No landmarks.

No clues as to where I might be.

My hands balled into fists, my nails pressing
so hard into my skin that the pressure left little crescent moon indentations.

Fury and panic rose up inside of me.

If he was going to kill me, I wasn’t going down
without a fight.

I began screaming and pounding my fists against
Professor Worthington’s back.
 
I was
sure he would stop, would put me down,
would
maybe
even try to hurt me in some way.

But to my surprise, he kept walking.

“Shhhh, Charlotte,” he said.
 
“It’s okay, sweetheart.
 
It’s going to be okay.”
 
His voice was soothing, such a change
from the way he’d been in the car, when he’d called me an idiot whore.

The change in him scared me for some reason,
and I began hitting him harder and screaming as loud as I could.
 
But my voice felt rough and raw and my
screams were swallowed up by the cool night wind.

Professor Worthington didn’t vary his stride or
try to quiet me or make me stop.

He stayed steady, and for the first time, I
realized how physically strong he was.
 
His arms were wrapped around the back of my legs, tight and strong.
 
He was wearing a leather jacket, and I
could feel how broad his shoulders were through the material.

He’d always come across as a bit of a nerdy
lawyer type, but now I realized at least some of that must have been an
act.
 
He was muscular, bulkier than
he looked, and I wondered if that was a choice on his part, if he wanted people
to underestimate him physically.

It sent a bone-chilling shiver of fear down my
spine.

A few seconds later, Professor Worthington set
me down on the concrete.