Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 284

Chapter 284

Cum and sweat. Sex and violence. The heavy, cloying stink of bodies that had been used hard.

I moved through the living room, my heart hammering, my vision narrowing, and I found them in the bedroom at the end of the hall. My mother was on the floor, naked, her skin mottled with bruises and her hair a tangled mess, her eyes open and staring at nothing. Riley was on the floor too, naked, unconscious, her limbs splayed at angles that looked wrong, her skin slick with dried semen that had crusted across her stomach and thighs like a horrible second skin.

For one long moment I could not breathe. The air in the room was foul and my lungs refused to take it in, and all I could do was stand there in the doorway and stare at what was left of my family.

“Who did this?” The words came out as a growl, low and ragged, and I was already moving, tearing off my jacket and crossing to cover Riley’s body.

“Who the fuck did this?”

My mother’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. Tears were streaming down her face, cutting clean tracks through the filth, and her hands were trembling so badly she could barely lift them. I grabbed the clothes that were scattered across the floor, and threw them at her, turning away so I would not have to watch her struggle into them. The sight of her like that, my proud, sharp-tongued mother reduced to this, made something in my chest crack wide open.

“It was Celeste,” she whispered, and the name came out like poison. “She kidnapped us. Her men grabbed us off the street, drugged us, and brought us here. She drugged those six men too, Julian. She drugged them and then she left. They were animals. They took turns on us. They used us like we were nothing. Like we were meat. I begged them to stop, I begged, and Riley, oh God, Riley, she kept screaming until she stopped screaming, and I thought we were going to die in this room.”

I listened with my eyes closed and my hands balled into fists so tight my nails bit into my palms. Every word landed like a blade, and I could feel the rage building in my chest, hot and volcanic, threatening to blow the top off my skull.

“Can you walk?” I asked her, my voice flat and mechanical.

“I think so. I think I can try.”

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