Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 314

Chapter 314

I answered.

“Celeste?” Sierra’s voice came through the speaker, high and tight and trembling on the verge of tears. “Celeste, I have been trying to reach Felix for two days. Two whole days. He will not pick up my calls. He will not answer my texts. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know if he is okay.

I keep thinking something terrible has happened to him, and I cannot sleep, and I cannot eat, and the baby needs me to be calm, the doctor said I have to keep my stress levels low for the baby, but how am I supposed to stay calm when the father of my child has disappeared off the face of the earth?”

I rolled my eyes at the ceiling, a gesture that Sierra could not see but that I felt I had earned. “Sierra, calm down. I am sure Felix is fine. Felix is a grown man. Felix has disappeared before. Felix once went three weeks without answering his phone because he had decided to go on a silent meditation retreat and forgot to tell anyone about it. Do you remember that? I remember that.”

“This is different. He was not ignoring me then. He is ignoring me now. He is deliberately not picking up my calls I called him from three different numbers, Celeste. Three. And he did not answer any of them. That is not an accident. That is not a meditation retreat. That is him actively avoiding me, and I do not understand why, and I am pregnant with his child, and he owes me at least the basic decency of telling me what I did wrong.”

Before I could formulate a response that was both honest and kind, there was a knock on my office door. I looked up and saw the receptionist, a young woman named Elise whose composure was usually as crisp and unruffled as her blazer, standing in the doorway with an expression of barely concealed panic.

“Dr. Fisher,” Elise began, and I could hear the tremor in her voice, “there is a man here. He says his name is Felix. He says he is your brother, and he is demanding to see you.”

I heard Sierra’s sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. “Felix is at your workplace? I am coming there right now. Do not let him leave before I get there, Celeste. Do not let him leave.”

The line went dead.

I lowered the phone from my ear and turned to Elise, my expression carefully neutral despite the sudden, unpleasant churning in my stomach. “There must be some kind of mistake. I do not have a brother.”

Elise’s eyes widened, her mouth opening to form a response she never got to deliver, because at that exact moment the door behind her slammed open with enough force to send it crashing against the wall, and Felix stormed into my office like a hurricane in human form, his hair disheveled, his eyes wild, his chest heaving with the labored breathing of a man who had been running on adrenaline and rage for far too long.

He pushed past Elise, who stumbled backward and caught herself on the doorframe, her face a mask of confusion and alarm, and he did not stop moving until he was standing directly in front of my desk, his palms pressed flat against the polished surface, his body leaning forward with an aggression that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

“Celeste.” His voice was ragged, raw, scraped clean of every pretense. “I have not come here to cause trouble. I am here for one reason and one reason only. I know you have Seraphine. I know you took her. I know you are the one behind her disappearance, and I am telling you right now, return her to me immediately. Otherwise, this building will not be big enough to contain the both of us.”

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