Page 10

From the moment Zoe calls me, about an hour after we parted ways, to the moment I step on the ship takes no more than twenty-five minutes.

On the way there, I get in touch with Frank to authorize my entrance, so I won’t have to go through check-in since I’m not a passenger. Desperate to close the deal as he is, he doesn’t question why I want to come and just informs me an employee will be waiting.

The guy is surprised when I tell him to take me to the cabin Zoe is assigned. He tries to explain to me that it’s the crew’s wing.

Patience is not my strong suit, let alone giving explanations, but at this moment, her safety is at stake.

I still don’t quite understand what the hell is going on because the story sounded so absurd that it was hard to believe.

How could she be stuck in the bathroom? If it’s for the reason I’m thinking, my encounter with the captain won’t be pretty. If he touched her, he can kiss his career goodbye.

As we talked on the phone, I tried to get her to explain what happened, but she sounded too nervous and didn’t make sense at all. Something about a necklace missing and that they were blackmailing her .

However, everything starts to make sense when I arrive with my security guards in front of the cabin that the crewman pointed out as hers. I see a young man leaning on the door, arms crossed, as if he’s guarding the hallway.

“Out.” My voice comes out as loud as thunder.

“If you’re a guest, this is the staff’s wing.”

I grab his collar. “Get out of my way.”

This time, he seems to understand, and looking scared, he walks away.

“Open the door,” I say to the employee who brought me in.

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

I pick up the phone and quickly make a call. “Frank, I want to get into one of the staff cabins. This will influence my decision to close the deal. Will that be a problem?”

“I don’t understand, . . .”

“Just ‘yes’ or ‘no’, Frank.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ll let you authorize it with your employee.”

Before they can even speak, however, the door opens, and the motherfucking captain comes out, tucking his shirt into his pants.

I go ballistic. Several possible scenarios run through my head.

It doesn’t matter how much money I have now. I’m still the little boy from a Greek island, raised to deal with confrontation physically and to defend beliefs with his fists.

“Where is she?” I demand, pressing him against the wall, my fingers clawing at his throat.

“Are you mad? Let me go! Who are you talking about?” The man is turning purple, and the cynical smile he had on when he opened the door disappears.

“Zoe Turner.”

The recognition on his face tells me she was telling the truth over the phone.

“Don’t let him move,” I warn my bodyguards, already walking into the bedroom.

“You can’t keep me locked up. I am the highest authority on this ship. ”

“And from now on, I’m your new employer,” I say, making the decision. “But you can call me God, too.”

I enter the cabin as I watch my men position themselves to stop him from escaping.

There’s a half-naked woman there, lying on the bed, but no sign of Zoe. When the woman sees me, she tries to cover herself.

“Zoe, it’s me,” I say at the bathroom door.

“Xander?”

Maybe this is the right time to correct the misunderstanding and tell her that everyone knows me as and no one calls me by my second name, but somehow, I suppress the information. Even with the madness of the present situation, I like the idea that she doesn’t know who I am yet.

“Yes, it’s me. Open the door. You are safe now.”

Seconds later, I hear the latch being released, but I don’t know what will happen next.

Zoe, face puffed from crying, throws herself into my arms as if I’m her safe haven, and some totally unknown feeling spreads through me.

Oblivious to everyone around us, I hug her, touching her soft hair. “Let’s get out of here.”

“The ship is leaving soon.”

“No, it won’t because I’ll call the police. It doesn’t matter. The journey will go on. If you want to go home, fine. But come with me first. There’s no way I’m leaving you unprotected here.”

She pulls back a little to look at me, and I wait for her decision.

Seconds later comes the answer I wanted:

“Okay.”

She is resting in my apartment suite. After I had a doctor come to examine her and make sure my housekeeper would take care of what she needed, I contacted my lawyers to make legal arrangements.

I’ve decided to keep the fleet—which is what I wanted anyway—but I’ll rewrite all the rules about relationships between crew members. From what the lawyers explained to me, this kind of harassment from senior officers is not unheard of.

I wanted to be present when they interrogated Tamara, and from what she told me, she had a consensual relationship with the captain. That wasn’t my problem, but what she revealed next was.

She said that Bentley Williams had been planning to seduce Zoe since dinner yesterday when I first saw her. So, she’d been called in to assist as a waitress in his cabin. But when I showed up and asked to see the ship, the bastard had no chance of keeping her there any longer.

He and Tamara chose to have sex in the bedroom, knowing that Zoe was already there. They had the intention of coaxing her into a little party, but when she opened the door and found them, Zoe was so shocked she locked herself in the bathroom.

Tamara also revealed that the captain tried to blackmail Zoe about a supposedly stolen necklace, which was a lie—there was no jewelry missing. He was counting on Zoe’s inexperience and being in a foreign country. He thought that if she felt threatened, she would eventually give in.

When that didn’t work, he considered opening the bathroom door by force, but in a brief moment of conscience, Tamara convinced him otherwise, promising to reward him for her friend’s absence.

Friend? What a fucking friend! Friends do not conspire or betray.

According to her statement, it wasn’t the first time that the man had used more aggressive methods to convince someone on the crew to have sex with him. When verbal threats were not enough, he resorted to physical embarrassment or, at least on one occasion, he roofied them.

The lawyers said that those were serious allegations but because we didn’t have evidence before what happened today, they were nothing more than hearsay.

It took my whole body’s restraint not to kill the son of a bitch. I don’t like to think about what might have happened if the situation had been different and only, he and Zoe had been in the room.

I asked my lawyers to dig into the ex-captain’s life and punish him as best they could. I’ll also make sure he never finds work as a captain again. Or in any other position.

I’m finally going to my apartment after almost four hours at the police station. After closing the door, I turn around and face the woman. From someone I was insanely attracted to, Zoe has become the one I need to protect.

I’ve never walked that path, so instead of planning, as I do with everything in my universe, I decide to let life show me the next step.