by Hannah Ford
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.
“At least, this is what Clementine found out from her source in the police department,” Noah said when he was finished. “There may be details we’re missing.”
“She thinks it’s going to be a big case?” I’d been taking notes on my phone, and I frowned, wondering if I’d missed something. Murder cases were always a big deal, but there were hundreds of them in New York every year. What made this one so special?
“Yes.” Noah nodded. “And I trust her instincts.”
I fought the annoyance that rose inside of me. “If Clementine thinks it’s going to be such a big case, why doesn’t she just get down there herself?”
The notoriety you could gain from working on – and winning – a high profile case more than made up for the pay cut you might take if the defendant didn’t have the money to pay your usual fee.
So then why had Clementine handed the case to Noah? A nineteen-year-old girl accused of killing her boyfriend? That wasn’t the type of client Noah usually took on. Normally Noah was involved in real criminal cases, the kind of cases that were almost impossible to win, with high-profile clients that had past criminal histories or were notorious in some way.
Besides, Noah didn’t need any more clients. Yes, we were starting a new firm together, but it’s not like that made a difference to Noah’s clients – they would follow him wherever he went. If they hadn’t left him when he was accused of murder, they sure as hell weren’t going to leave him just because he’d started a new firm. He’d even said himself that the things they were writing about him in the papers, about what had happened at Force, had caused business to be stronger than ever.
So then why the hell were we rushing off to Staten Island to chase down some case that might not even be a thing?
“Clementine can’t take the case, Charlotte,” Noah said, his voice admonishing. “Now that Colin is in jail for murder, his firm’s name has been irrevocably tarnished. Clementine knows enough to realize that her presence on the case would be a hindrance rather than a help.”
Great. Now perfect little trustworthy Clementine was going to be on the hunt for a job. And who better than to hire her than Cutler and Cutler? The thought of her being a constant presence in my office made me want to scream.
Stop, Charlotte, I told myself, you’re acting like a crazed, jealous girlfriend.
An hour later, we pulled up in front of the Staten Island Women’s Penetentiary, and Jared drove the car around to the back. It was completely dark out now, and spotlights dragged lazily over the prison yard. It was too late for anyone to be out there, but the barbed wire fence and guard towers painted a stark picture of what life was like for the inmates.
I shivered and pressed my forehead against the window, thinking about how close Noah had come to spending his life in a place like this. My heart constricted at the possibility, and I reached out and grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I just love you so much.”
He face relaxed into a smile. “I love you too so much.”
He gave my hand another squeeze as the car rolled to a stop outside the back entrance, the one available for lawyers outside of normal visiting hours.
Noah was out of the car in an instant, but I stayed still for a moment, trying to get my bearings.
Everything was moving so fast.
A couple of hours ago, I’d been at another jail, visiting Professor Worthington.
Now I was engaged to Noah, I’d learned he wanted me to go into business with him, and now here we were, about to embark on a case that he seemed to think was going to be huge.
My brain screamed at me to slow down.
I’d been through so much -- both of us had -- physically and emotionally. I felt like we were jumping into something that might not be good for us.
A shiver of trepidation slithered through my body, squeezing my heart like a snake before taking up residence in my stomach.
My car door opened and Noah appeared in front of me. “Are you coming?” he asked, holding his hand out. He must have seen the look in my eyes, must have sensed something wasn’t right, because his face turned grave. “Charlotte, if you’re not ready…”
“No, I’m ready,” I said, stepping out onto the pavement of the back lot. “Let’s go.”
**
This jail was creepier than the one where Professor Worthington was being held.
I wondered if I only felt that way because I’d been more hopped up on emotion when I’d gone to see Professor Worthington, if I’d been so filled with adrenaline and determination and that I’d blocked out some of the creepiness, but I didn’t think so.
The back door was cold grey steel, and it opened into a long corridor lit with track lights. Oddly, it smelled of perfume, something sweet and flowery, and the scent was so out of place and unexpected that it only heightened the eerie feel of the place. Everything was concrete, and it reminded me of Force, of the hallway I’d been forced down the night I’d been taken captive.
Panic welled in my chest, but before it had a chance to take over we’d reached the end of the hallway, where a woman with tight corkscrew curls and too much lipstick sat behind a caged desk.
“Noah Cutler,” Noah said. “Here to see Lilah Parks.”
Lilah Parks.
It certainly didn’t sound like a murderer’s name. God, she was only nineteen! I wondered if she was innocent or guilty, what her life had been like, what would have pushed her to kill her boyfriend, to slit his throat until he bled out on the floor in front of her.
It was so gruesome that even after all I’d been through, I almost couldn’t contemplate it.
“You can go back to holding room three,” the woman said. She sounded bored. If our possible client was about to become part of high-profile murder case, this woman certainly hadn’t been told about it.
She pushed a button and a buzzer sounded, a pair of double doors opening as Noah and I walked past a uniformed guard, through a metal detector, and into holding room three.
There was a square table sitting the middle of the room, with two chairs on one side of it, and another on the other side. All of the chairs, along with the small square table, were gun grey metal and bolted to the floor.
I sat down next to Noah on one side of the table, and he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a legal pad.
He handed one to me, along with a pen.
“Thank you, Mr. Cutler,” I said formally.
“You’re welcome, Mrs. Cutler,” he shot back.