Page 34 of Knot for Sale

I nodded. “I know. Anyway, she’s aware of it; she said she’ll ask the crew if anyone saw anything suspicious.”

“Y’know, there’s a decent chance itwassomeone in the crew,” Elijah said. “Who did the actual breaking and entering, I mean. Think about it—the door locks automatically, and it wasn’t forced. With all the money floating around on this yacht, it wouldn’t have taken much at all to bribe some poor employee with a high credit card balance or gambling debts.”

“That’s true,” I allowed. “But either way, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the perpetrator to be dragged to justice. There isn’t much justice to be had in company like this.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Emma muttered.

She was wrong, though. I very much did.

“There’s something else we need to discuss,” I told them. “And I’m afraid there’s no way to sugar coat it. I’ve taken steps to expedite our departure once Curran and Onyx manage to reach us.”

“Okay...?” Elijah said slowly.

“But I’ll need both of you to sign the contracts that the rest of the models signed on the first night,” I continued. “No matter what sort of outrageous quasi-legal horse shit is buried in the fine print.”

Emma’s delicate brows drew together, and she straightened partway from her dejected slouch. “What kind of quasi-legal horse shit do youexpectto be hidden in the fine print?”

Anger coiled in my gut. “The kind that binds you into a legal obligation that’s barely one step up from indentured servitude, and then allows a third party to buy out those rights without your knowledge or agreement, thereby absolvingThe Secret Boudoirof any further legal liability for you.”

“Dowhat, now?” Elijah asked in alarm. “That’s... that’s not how modeling contracts work!”

“No,” I agreed, “It’s not. But itisone of the ways that international human trafficking rings work.”

SIXTEEN

Emma

HUMAN TRAFFICKING. Maybe I should have been more surprised, but somehow, I couldn’t summon any emotion other than resignation. Uncle Tommy had always berated my father for his unwillingness to steer the Huntwell syndicate deeper into the sex trade.

Elijah mustered enough outrage for both of us. “Sex traffickers! We’re stuck on a yacht withfucking sex traffickers?”

“Hopefully not for much longer,” Gabriel said calmly.

Healwaysseemed to be calm. I didn’t think I’d ever heard him so much as raise his voice during our admittedly brief acquaintance. Did that icy control ever break?

God, I felt awful today. My body had been swinging back and forth between the extremes of red-hot horniness and feeling like I had the flu, all of it combined with the worst case of beta PMS imaginable. I clutched the hot water bottle closer to my aching uterus.

“Why thehellwould we sign these contracts now that we know what’s in them?” Elijah demanded. By contrast, he was about as far fromicy controlas it was possible to get. An erupting volcano made a better comparison.

“Because doing so will make it simpler for me to get both of you off this ship,” Gabriel replied.

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