Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 307

Chapter 307

“Tasha has always been your favorite, right? I’ve seen it. All three of us are your friends. You met all of us at Big Bryan’s. But you always treated Tasha differently, and I never complained about it, but now I need to know why. You used my name. You told Julian to take me instead of her. You wanted Julian to have sex with me so that Tasha would not have to. Isn’t that exactly what happened?”

“No.” The word came out faster than I intended, sharper. “No, it is not the way you are thinking. Listen to me, Jasmine. Tasha is still a virgin.”

“And I’m not. So Julian gets to rape me because I’ve already been used. Is that the logic?”

“The man Sparrow, the one I told you about, the one who can get rid of the poison in your body, he agreed to help us. But he asked for Tasha specifically. If Julian had been with Tasha last night, she would have been too sore today to go be with Sparrow. And Sparrow is rough, Jasmine. Sparrow is much rougher than Julian, and if Tasha had shown up already used and already sore, he might have rejected her. He might have rejected all of us. I was trying to look at the bigger picture.”

Jasmine stared at me for a long moment, her dark eyes unreadable in the shifting light of the passing streetlamps. “And if Julian had killed me? If he had decided I wasn’t worth the trouble and put a bullet in my head, what would the bigger picture have looked like then?”

“He was never going to kill you. Julian does not kill his toys. He breaks them, but he does not throw them away.” I reached out and took her hand, and she let me, which was more than I deserved. “I am sorry. I did not want Julian to do that to you, and I did not want to sacrifice you. But this was the only solution. The poison in your body, the Hemovax, you do not have much time left. If in one month you do not get the antidote, you are going to die. Maya is going to die. Tasha is going to die. Everything I am doing now is to prevent that from happening.”

Maya spoke for the first time since we had left the apartment, her voice small and trembling but steadier than I had expected. “And you have a way to get the antidote?”

“Sparrow has agreed to help. He has agreed to take down Big Bryan and get rid of the poison in your systems. I have already made the arrangements. Once Sparrow has dealt with Big Bryan and you are all safe, I will give you money, enough to start over wherever you want. I have money saved from all the time I worked for Big Bryan. You can go wherever you want and build whatever life you want, and no one will ever be able to hurt you again. I will get you girls new identities.”

“I don’t want a new identity,” Jasmine said, and there was something cold and hard in her voice now, something that had been forged in the fire of everything she had endured and was now being sharpened into a weapon. “If I survive this poison, I have a score to settle with some people. The ones who sent me to Big Bryan, who set me up and made sure I ended up with him. The people I trusted most. My own family.”

“Me too,” Maya said, and the hatred in her voice was so raw, so visceral, that it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “The ones who sold me to Big Bryan, they are going to pay. If I survive this, every single one of them will pay.”

I looked at both of them, these two women who had been broken and abused and discarded by everyone who was supposed to protect them, and I saw something in their faces that I recognized because I had seen it in my own reflection for twenty years. Determination. The kind of determination that did not bend and did not break and did not stop until it had gotten exactly what it was looking for.

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