Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 292

Chapter 292

But she was still the one I hadn’t had yet. The one I had planned to savor at my leisure once this business with Dominic was finished, and now Scarlett was asking me to serve her up on a silver platter to the man I hated most in the world.

“You will have to wait à little,” I said, and before Scarlett could respond, I grabbed Tasha by the wrist and began pulling her toward the hallway that led to my private room.

Scarlett moved faster than I expected. One moment she was standing by the couch, and the next she was directly in my path, her body planted between me and the hallway like a redheaded barricade, her chin lifted and her eyes blazing with a defiance I had never seen in her before.

“Are you daring to stand in my way?” The question came out soft, dangerous, the kind of voice I used when I was giving someone their last chance to reconsider.

“We have fifteen minutes until we need to leave.” Scarlett’s voice didn’t waver. “Fifteen minutes. Dominic Ford told me explicitly that he does not tolerate being kept waiting. If we are late, even by five minutes, he will not open the door. The cameras will stay in his penthouse, and you will never get your footage, and everything we have worked for will be for nothing.”

“Get out of my way, Scarlett.”

“No.” The word landed like a stone dropping into still water. “I have worked too hard for this. The success of tonight guarantees our freedom, and I will not let you jeopardize it because your ego cannot handle the idea of Dominic Ford touching a girl you consider your property.

If you want to abort the mission, then abort it. Tell me right now that we are not going, and I will step aside, and you can do whatever you want with Tasha. But if the mission is still on, then we are leaving right now, and you are going to let us walk out that door without any more delays.”

She reached out, and with a movement so swift and sure that it caught me completely off guard, she snatched Tasha’s wrist from my grip and pulled the girl behind her. Then she turned, still holding Tasha’s hand, and walked to the front door where she stood waiting, her posture rigid with determination, her eyes fixed on me with the calm, unwavering patience of someone who knew she had already won the argument.

I stood there in the middle of the living room, my fists clenched, my jaw locked, my entire body vibrating with a fury that had no productive outlet. Every instinct I possessed was screaming at me to grab Tasha, to throw Scarlett aside, to assert my dominance in the most primal way possible, but the cold, calculating part of my brain knew that Scarlett was right.

The mission was more important than my pride. Dominic’s destruction was more important than my desire. And if I had to sacrifice Tasha’s untouched-by-me status on the altar of revenge, then so be it. There would be time enough later to reclaim what was mine.

“Fine,” I said, the word scraping its way out of my throat like broken glass. “But if you fail me tonight, Scarlett, there will be nowhere on this earth you can hide from me.”

“I will not fail.” She didn’t blink.

I crossed to the door, keyed in the code that released the electronic lock, and pushed it open. Two of my guards stationed outside snapped to attention, their hands moving toward their weapons before they recognized me.” You will escort them to the Beaumont Hotel,” I said, my voice flat and businesslike. “You will wait outside until they emerge. And you will bring them directly back here the moment they are finished. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

1/2

15 Benu

I turned to Scarlett and Tasha, still standing in the doorway, and the sight of them side by side, one a flame- haired seductress and the other a golden-haired vision, was almost enough to make me reconsider. But I had made my decision, and I would see it through. “Do not make me regret this.”

They walked past me without a word, and I watched them disappear with my two guards flanking them like sentinels. The doors slid shut, and I was alone in the living room with the ghost of my own restraint.

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