Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 315

Chapter 315

CELESTE

The receptionist had not moved from where Felix shoved her against the doorframe, her face ashen, her chest rising and falling in shallow, startled breaths. I met her wide eyes and kept my voice perfectly level.

“Elise, get security. Now.”

She bolted. Her heels faded into a rapid, diminishing staccato down the corridor, and then it was just Felix and me in my office with the morning sun slanting through the windows and the ghost of Dominic’s kiss still warm on my lips.

Felix brought his palm down on my desk hard enough to send my pen holder rattling, the silver-plated instrument skittering across polished wood. “Don’t push me, Celeste.”

I did not flinch. I had learned a long time ago that the best response to a man trying to intimidate you was to look at him as though he were a particularly tedious spreadsheet you were being forced to review on a Friday afternoon.

“I have cut off all ties with you, Felix.” My voice came out cold. “Don’t think you can act brazenly in front of me. One phone call to the police will get you behind bars. Do you want to see what I am capable of?”

The shift in his expression was almost instantaneous. The hard lines around his mouth softened into something that resembled the brother I used to know, the one who had taught me to ride a bicycle on the gravel driveway of our childhood home, who had shared his lunch with me on the first day of school when I dropped mine in a puddle. His shoulders dropped and his hands uncurled from their fists.

“Please.” The word came out raw, scraped against the back of his throat. “You already released fake sex videos of Seraphine and because of that she tried to end her life once. Please, Celeste. For old times’ sake. Just do this one thing for me and I will never bother you again.”

I stared at him, letting the silence stretch until it became uncomfortable, until he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and his gaze dropped to the floor.

“In your eyes, I am such a devil, am I not?” I leaned back in my chair, crossing my legs with deliberate relaxation. “You so badly want to believe Seraphine is a saint. That is why, even if it makes you look extremely stupid, you would rather throw ridiculous accusations at me than face reality.”

“Please, Celeste.”

Two words. That was all he had. Two words delivered with a broken sincerity that made something in my chest crack open despite every effort I had made to seal myself off from him. I looked at my brother, this man who had once been my ally and my protector, and I felt the weight of everything he had thrown away pressing down on the space between us. I felt sorry for my mother. I felt sorry for Sierra, pregnant with a child whose father was too busy chasing a fantasy to notice the real life growing inside the woman who loved him.

The door opened and two security men filed in, broad-shouldered and stone-faced. I held up my hand and they stopped mid-stride, hovering by the door like well-trained guard dogs awaiting a command.

I turned back to Felix. “Since you are being so sincere, tell me then. What exactly do you feel for Seraphine?”

His answer came without hesitation. “I am head over heels in love with her.”

They say love is blind, I thought, but this stupidity certainly cannot be called love. It is just blind obsession wearing love’s clothes, walking around in love’s skin, convincing everyone except the person trapped inside it.

“Now that you love her so much, what is going to happen to your fiancée Sierra and your unborn child?”

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For the first time since he had stormed into my office, Felix looked genuinely uncomfortable. His jaw worked silently, the muscles bunching and releasing. “I don’t know. Unfortunately, Sierra is not the one I love. It has always been Seraphine and I cannot live without her.”

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