Page 35 of Knot for Sale

Was he this way when he had sex, I wondered idly—all cold and self-contained? Or did he lose control and turn into a beast? My cramping passage gave an unhappy throb, and I gritted my teeth.

“No offense,” Elijah was saying, “because I know you’ve already helped us out when you didn’t have to. But the reality is, we don’t know you from Adam! Why are you evenhere, if you’re not in on the scheme? I can’t imagine these people would invite a bunch of randos aboard if they’re busy selling sex slaves on the side.”

Gabriel’s grim little smile didn’t come anywhere near his glacier-blue eyes. “Gaining an invitation to thisfunction—” He practically spat the word. “—required more work than I care to think about. But I assure you, I didn’t come here as a buyer.”

Elijah paused, the gears in his head turning visibly. “Wait. Are you some kind of undercover cop? Like, Interpol or something?”

A sudden certainty coalesced in my mind, though I couldn’t have said why or how. “No. This is personal for you, isn’t it?” I forced myself to meet his alpha gaze without letting on that the effort set off fireworks in my belly. “You might as well tell us. You already know my secret. And I don’t think Elijah’s going to sign those papers without knowing yours first.”

It was a pure guess on my part. But Gabriel knew my uncle. Knew him and hated him. How many people had Tommy Huntwell hurt over the years? How many lives had he destroyed?

I watched the alpha silently debating how much to say.

The change in Gabriel’s scent signaled his capitulation before his expression did. He took in a deep breath through his nose, his nostrils flaring, and let it out slowly.

“My sister,” he said with obvious reluctance. “She was an omega. She was kidnapped by a splinter group of the Huntwellcrime family when she was twelve years old. We never saw her again. The missing persons case is still technically open, but the police told us years ago to make our peace and mourn her, because she was almost certainly dead after a decade of that kind of life.”

My heart ached for yet another victim of my messed-up family.

Elijah fumbled for a chair and sat down abruptly. “Oh my god.” He swallowed. “So, you’re... what? On some kind of mission of vengeance?”

“I’m on a mission to see that Tommy Huntwell and anyone associated with him goes down,” Gabriel said, as though that was a perfectly reasonable sentence. His eyes fell on me, his pale brows twitching. “Present company excepted, of course. At any rate, you can rest assured that I have no interest in buying and selling human beings, when that’s how I lost my baby sister.”

Elijah looked gobsmacked. He sat in the chair, his arms hanging limp at his sides. “Fuck. Fucking...shit.”

“Quite,” Gabriel replied.

I wasn’t sure if my next words were because my higher brain functions were shutting down in the face of my hormones, or because it seemed unfair to hold it back, knowing what I now knew.

“My father was Jimmy Huntwell,” I said quietly. “He was shot to death when I was sixteen.”

Gabriel blinked. I thought I could see puzzle pieces rearranging themselves behind his startled gaze.

“Jimmy Huntwell,” he echoed. “The head of the Huntwell syndicate before Hugh Rathbone took over.”

I nodded, curling tighter around my hot water bottle. “Tommy and my father never saw eye to eye. Tommy wanted to expand into the sex trade. My father insisted the syndicate stayfocused on other ventures that were... less illegal, I guess you’d say.”

“But also less profitable,” Gabriel finished.

I shrugged agreement.

“Rathbone is rotting in prison after he tried to fly too close to the sun,” Gabriel said. “That means there’s an opening at the top of the organization.”

A shiver wracked me. “And Tommy’s trying to t-take it.”

That didn’t surprise me in the least. He’d been spitting mad when Hugh Rathbone moved into the power vacuum after my father died. He must have been biding his time all these years.

“Yes,” Gabriel confirmed. “He’s here to make allies. The economics of this cruise don’t make sense otherwise. This yacht cost ten million—at a minimum—to lease for the week. They’re not going to recoup that outlay by selling a handful of high-end sex slaves to a ship full of wealthy bastards. No... this is a networking opportunity. How better to gather a group of traffickers in one place than to offer up prime merchandise in a discreet venue?” He seemed to suddenly realize how that might sound to his current audience of two. “Er... no offense.”

But Elijah was too focused on me to have registered the slight.

“Emma. You never told me any of this.” He looked bewildered. Even hurt.

“I don’t tellanyoneany of this,” I shot back, refusing to feel guilty about it.

“Yeah? Well, it still might have been nice to know... especially after you realized your uncle and cousin were aboard.” The hurt was more obvious now.

My moratorium on guilt flew out the window. “I know. I’m sorry.” I gulped a deep breath that did nothing to ease the tightness in my chest. “It was safest if you never heard the wordsHuntwell crime syndicate. You were no threat to them if you were just another random model.”

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