Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 320

Chapter 320

From my vantage point above, I watched the security team exchange uncertain glances. The lead guard looked up at me, his eyebrows raised. I shook my head. Let them have their moment. Let Sierra cry into the chest of the man who had spent the last hour screaming at me about another woman. Drama Laboratory, indeed.

Sierra pulled back just enough to look up at his face, her cheeks wet, her voice cracking. “Where have you been? Why haven’t you been answering my calls? Felix, I missed you so much and…”

“Let go of me.”

The words landed like a slap. Quiet, cold, utterly devoid of warmth. Sierra blinked, her mouth still open around the next word she had been about to speak.

“I said let go of me.” He snapped and shoved her.

It was a hard, two-handed shove to the shoulders, delivered with enough force to send her stumbling backward, her arms windmilling, her body tilting sideways in terrible slow motion. She hit the marble floor on her stomach, the impact making a muffled thud that seemed to echo through the lobby with the finality of a door slamming

shut.

For three seconds, nothing happened.

Sierra lay on the floor, her hands pressed against her belly, her face contorted in shock. Felix stood frozen above her, his arms still extended, his mouth hanging open as though his brain had just caught up with what his body had done. The security guards were motionless. The lab technicians were motionless. The receptionist had her hand clamped over her mouth.

Then Sierra screamed.

It was a low, animal sound, a keening wail from somewhere deeper than her throat, and before anyone could move, a dark red stain began spreading across the blue fabric of her dress, blooming outward from between her legs. Blood. Not spotting, not the negligible discharge doctors assured you was normal, but thick, dark red pooling beneath her body and spreading across the white marble.

“Oh my God.”

The words came out of my mouth before I knew I was speaking, and then I was running, my heels skidding on the stairs as I descended from the mezzanine faster than I had ever moved in my life.

“Call an ambulance!” I shouted at the receptionist. “Now. Tell them a pregnant woman is hemorrhaging. Tell them to hurry.”

I dropped to my knees beside Sierra, ignoring the blood soaking into my pencil skirt, ignoring the way it was warm and wet against my skin, and I took her hand. Her fingers were cold, her grip weak, her eyes wide and glassy and fixed on some point on the ceiling.

“It hurts,” she whispered. “Celeste, it hurts so much.”

“You are going to be fine. The ambulance is coming. Just hold on. Hold on for the baby.”

The word baby seemed to snap something in her, and her eyes rolled back, her body going limp as unconsciousness pulled her under. I looked up and saw Felix standing a few feet away, still frozen, still staring, his mouth still hanging open, and the rage that flooded through me was so pure and hot and absolute that for a moment I could not see straight.

“You.” My voice came out low and dangerous. “Do not even breathe in her direction.”

12

15 Bom

The paramedics arrived eight minutes later, though it felt like eight hours. They loaded Sierra onto a stretcher with practiced efficiency, calling out vital signs and medical terminology, and I followed them out of the building without sparing Felix a single glance. The drive to St. Catherine’s took seventeen minutes. I made it in eleven.

At the hospital, I paced. The emergency room corridor was too bright and too cold and smelled of antiseptic. I walked from one end to the other so many times I could have measured the distance in miles. My skirt was stil! stained with Sierra’s blood, dark brown now rather than red, and a nurse offered me scrubs, but I shook my head without hearing her. Changing clothes felt like admitting something I was not ready to admit.

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