What He Believes

WHAT HE BELIEVES (What He Wants, Book Sixteen)

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.

PLEASE NOTE:
 
The end of this book contains an excerpt
from Hannah Ford’s new book, BECAUSE HE OWNS ME.

CHARLOTTE

My mouth went dry
and my stomach twisted into a tight knot.

“Who is this?” I
asked, my hand gripping the receiver so hard it hurt.

“My name isn’t
important.”
 
The voice on the other
end of the line, just a second ago intimidating and scary, now sounded almost
nervous, like whoever it was hadn’t planned on what they were going to say
beyond
‘I have a secret to tell you.’
 

“Why are you
calling me?” I asked, emboldened by the caller’s change in tone.
 
“What do you want?”

“I know about the
girls,” the man said.

“Charlotte?” Noah
demanded from the other side of the office, where he stood with his hand on the
doorknob, ready to leave.
 
“Who is
it?”

I hesitated.
 
I’d liked to think I’d learned my lesson
about keeping things from Noah – after all, anytime I’d kept things from
him in the past I’d ended up in trouble.

But if Noah knew what
the person on the other end of the line was saying, he would insist I hang
up.
 
I knew the chances were slim,
but if this caller knew anything about Mikayla and the other girls at Force,
then I needed to listen.

Still.

 
Noah was my fiancé.

I couldn’t
completely shut him out.
  
It
wasn’t fair.
 
If we were ever going
to make this work, we needed to stop with the secrets.
 
They were like a devastating cancer,
determined to destroy our relationship.

“Who is this?” I
asked again.

“I told you, no
names.”
 
His voice was low and
gritty, nothing like the voice of Anonymous, who had turned out to be Professor
Worthington.
 
In those phone calls,
Professor Worthington had used some kind of voice disguiser.
 
This man sounded normal.
 
Well, as normal as you could sound when
you were placing an anonymous call to someone.

But I wasn’t going
to fall for that crap anymore.
 
If
someone wanted to talk to me about something, they needed to tell me who they
were.

“I’m sorry,” I
said, making sure my tone conveyed that I wasn’t sorry at all.
 
“But if you have something to tell me,
if you need help with something, then I’m going to need your name.”

“Charlotte,” Noah
said, his voice gruff.
 
He crossed
the room to me in two long strides, grabbed the phone out of my hand and put it
to his ear.
 
“Who the hell is this?”
he demanded.

I reached down and
hit the button for the speakerphone, not willing to let Noah cut me out of this
completely.

“Who the hell is
this?”
the guy on the other end of the line demanded right back.
 
His voice cracked slightly at the end,
betraying his false bravado.

“This is Noah
Cutler.”

“Put Charlotte
back on the phone.”

“You called my law
office.
 
If you have something to
say, say it to me, asshole.”

There was a pause.

And then the line
went dead.

I grabbed for the
phone.
 
“Hello? Hello?” I said
desperately.
 
But the person was
gone.
 
I scrolled through the caller
ID, but all that showed on the screen was the taunting and familiar “BLOCKED
NUMBER.”

“Shit,” I swore
softly as I replaced the receiver.

When I looked up,
Noah was staring at me, his dark eyes searing into mine.
 
“What the fuck was that about?”

“What was what
about?
 
The phone call?”
 
I shook my head.
 
“I have no idea.
 
It seemed like he had some information
about Force, about the girls who were being held there.”
 

“No, I meant what
the fuck were you
doing?”

“Me?”

“Yes.
 
You refused to give me the phone, you
tried to keep the call going even after I’d taken over.”

“No,” I said, but
then I realized everything he’d said was right.
 
“I just… I thought that if he had
information about those girls that I should at least listen to him.”

Noah nodded, his
lips set in a firm line.
 
He crossed
the room to the window and stared out across the city for a long moment.
 
He took in a deep breath.
 
The silence stretched between us, thick
with tension.
 
When he finally
spoke, he did so slowly, as if he wanted to make sure he chose his words
carefully.

“You do realize
that the story of what happened to you has been all over the newspapers.”

“I know that,
Noah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I’m not a complete idiot.”

“I didn’t say you
were an idiot, Charlotte.”

“Really?
 
Because pointing out something that is
very obvious, namely the fact that my story has been in all the papers, feels
like you think I’m an idiot.”

He turned to look
at me, his eyes blazing with fury.
 
“I think you’re naïve, Charlotte.
 
Do you realize the amount of crazy people there are in this city, the
kind of crazy people who will call anyone they read about?
 
You will not put yourself in danger like
this ever again.
 
You will
not.”
  
The intensity of his voice hit me
like a wave and I involuntarily took a step back from him, even though he was
on the other side of the room.

“You cannot keep
me locked up like some kind of kept woman, Noah,” I said.
 
“I’ve told you, this is –”

He crossed the
room in three long strides and grabbed me by the shoulders, pulled me toward
him so that my chest was crushed against his.
 
He kissed me, his tongue parting my
lips.
 

When he pulled
back, his eyes were still blazing with fury, the tension in the room so
palpable I could almost hear it crackling.
 
“You will obey me,” he breathed.
 
“You will do as I say so I can keep you safe.”

“But – ”

He kissed me
again, silencing me.
 

When he pulled
away, his eyes had softened just a tiny bit, and I could see the desperation
and panic simmering beneath his anger.
 
“If anything happens to you,” he breathed,
 
“I will never forgive myself.
  
Ever.
 
I can’t… I cannot go through it again,
Charlotte.
 
Not with you.
 
It will destroy me.”

His voice caught
on the last word, and I knew he was thinking about Nora.
 
Nora, his ex-fiancé.
 
Nora, who had been killed by Professor
Worthington, the same way I’d almost been killed by him.

I stared at him,
at the strength in his face, the determination on his features.
 
He was so wounded inside, and I couldn’t
even being to imagine what it was he’d gone through with Nora, what that whole
thing had done to him.

There was so much
I didn’t know about him, this man who had asked me to spend my life with him,
to bond myself to him in a way that was irreversible.
 
Divorce was not an option for me.
 
I was only going to get married once.

I knew Noah was
the man I wanted to spend my life with.

But how could it
work if he wouldn’t let me in?

Be patient,
I told myself.

But greed filled
me, taking over, forcing me to push him.
 
My need to feel close to him pushed away my reservations.

“Noah,” I
said.
 
“Can we…
.Nora
,
what happened to her?
 
How did she…what
were you…?”
 
I swallowed, not
knowing exactly what I wanted to say, what I wanted to know.

No. That wasn’t
true. I wanted to know how he’d felt about her, what their relationship had
been like.
 
How had they met?
 
What was she like?
 
What had he done to get over the pain of
losing her?
 
Was
he over the
pain of losing her?
 
Would he ever
be?
 
And Dani.
 
I couldn’t forget about her,
either.
 

She had died too,
at the hands of Professor Worthington.
 
And even though Noah’s relationship with Dani hadn’t been as serious as
his relationship with Nora, her death must have still been devastating.

“Charlotte,” Noah
whispered, shaking his head.

I reached up and
touched his face, put one hand on each side of it, and looked deep into his
eyes.
 
“Please,” I said.
 
“Please, you need to let me in.
 
Help me understand.”

He recoiled for a
second, and I thought he was going to lose it the way he’d done that time I’d
asked him about his juvenile record, about how he’d beaten his stepfather and
his family had turned on him.

But then his
shoulders sagged and he opened his mouth to speak.
 
“I can’t just… Please, Charlotte, I’m
not –”

He was cut off by
the sound of the phone ringing.

Not the office
phone.

But his cell
phone, deep within his pocket.

Normally, Noah’s
phone was set to vibrate.
 
But now
the musical factory preset trilled from his iPhone, followed by a computerized female
voice which
declared,
“You have an urgent call from
Clementine.”

I instantly tensed
at the sound of her name.
 
Clementine.
 
An urgent call.
 
I almost laughed out loud.
 
What the hell could Clementine possibly have to call Noah about that was
urgent?
 
And had he programmed her
into his phone like that, with her own special ringtone?

Annoyance bloomed
inside of me.

Noah hadn’t done
anything to give me a reason to doubt him when it came to Clementine.
 
Besides the fact that she used to be his
submissive, there was no reason to think there was anything going on between the
two of them.
 
In fact, the only
person who’d done anything to suggest that was Clementine herself.

But he did say
he trusts her.
 
And if he trusts
her, she must be special to him.

“Hello?” Noah barked
in to the phone.
 
“When?
 
Where?”
 
He paused, listening.
 
“She’s alone?
 
Has anyone been in to talk to her?”
 
He paused again.
 
“No, you’re right.
 
It won’t be a public defender.
 
Okay. …
are
you
sure?
 
Thanks, Clementine.”

He hung up the
phone.

All traces of
vulnerability were gone from his voice, all thoughts of Nora and his feelings
for her gone, pushed away so easily, back to whatever vault he stored them in
when they weren’t convenient to think about.

“We just might
have our first case, Ms. Holloway,” Noah said, his eyes sparkling with
excitement.

“Our first case?”

He nodded.
 
“Yes.
 
But only if we hurry.”

**

“Where are we
going?” I asked as he hurried through the lobby of our new building and out
onto the street.
 
The sidewalks were
alive with people, all of them hurrying to and fro, illuminated by the lights
that shone from the stores and restaurants lining the street.
 
The pulsing energy of New York combined
with Noah’s excitement got me excited, too.

Our
first case.

Noah
and I, working together.

The thought filled
me with a delicious pleasure.
 
I
thought about how he’d be my boss, thought about the room he’d set up for us in
our office, the room where he’d just fucked me, the room where he could punish
me whenever he wanted.
 
 

I shivered.

“Jail,” Noah said.

“We’re going to
jail?”

“Yes.
 
The women’s penitentiary on Staten
Island.”

His phone was to
his ear, calling his driver, and a few minutes later, as if from thin air,
Jared pulled up in front of us and Noah and I climbed into the backseat of the
black Town Car.

Noah briefed me on
the details as the car joined the line of vehicles that snaked through the city
streets.

A girl, Lilah
Parks, nineteen years old, had been accused of murdering her boyfriend, Ryan Aqualino.
 
She claimed self-defense, even though
she’d been found at the scene, a knife in her hand, covered in her boyfriend’s
blood, his throat slit on the floor in front of her.