Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 326

Chapter 326

CELESTE

I walked out of the station without looking back, but I could not shake the weight that had settled in my chest, a heaviness that had nothing to do with guilt and everything to do with the irrevocable finality of what had just happened.

My bodyguards were waiting by my car when I stepped outside. The relief on their faces was almost comical, the way their shoulders dropped and their jaws unclenched, as though they had been holding their breath for the entire duration of my detainment.

“We did not call Mr. Ford,” the one who had driven my car said quickly, as though preempting the question. “Per your instructions, ma’am.”

“Thank you.” I took my keys from his outstretched hand. “I appreciate your discretion.”

The truth was, I felt ashamed to involve Dominic in this mess. It was bad enough that I had interrupted his morning with a request for live footage of Seraphine, all because I had felt sorry for Sierra and wanted to help Felix see the truth. And what had that compassion earned me?

A false accusation and few minutes in handcuffs while the woman I had tried to help pointed at me and screamed murderer for the entire hospital to hear. Still, as I slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine, I found a sliver of cold satisfaction in the outcome.

Sierra had revealed herself. She had shown me exactly who she was, and now I had the perfect reason to cut her off completely, to excise her from my life with the surgical precision of a woman who had finally learned that some people could not be saved.

No more late-night phone calls about Felix ignoring her. No more tearful pleas for sisterly advice. No more getting dragged into their emotional dramas like an unwilling extra in a tragedy I had not auditioned for. I was free of both of them now, and the freedom tasted almost sweet.

My phone buzzed with a notification I had ignored in the chaos of the morning: a text from the court, reminding me of the appointment I had been summoned to attend.

I glanced at my reflection in the rearview mirror and winced. My pencil skirt was still stained with Sierra’s blood, the dark brown spots spreading across the charcoal fabric like a Rorschach test designed by a vengeful psychologist. My blouse was wrinkled. My makeup had long since given up the fight against the morning’s emotional onslaught. I could not walk into a courthouse looking like the survivor of a crime scene, even if that was technically accurate.

I pulled into the nearest boutique I could find, a small shop wedged between a coffee house and a bookstore, and bought the first dress that caught my eye: emerald green, knee-length, with a modest neckline and the kind of cut that suggested professionalism without veering into austerity,

Back at Helix, the atmosphere had shifted. The staff who had watched Felix’s lobby performance with slack-jawed bewilderment now clustered around me the moment I walked through the automatic doors, their faces full of concern and curiosity in equal measure. Strange, they didn’t quietly gossip behind me this time. The receptionist, still pale from her encounter with Felix’s shove, was the first to speak.

“Mrs. Fisher, is Sierra okay? We saw the…”

“Sierra lost the baby.” I did not soften the words. I did not dress them up in euphemisms or cushion them with platitudes. “When Felix pushed her to the ground in this very lobby, the impact caused a placental abruption. I drove her to the hospital myself. I stayed with her until the doctor told me the baby could not be saved. And when I

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called the police to report what Felix had done, Sierra told the officers that I was the one who pushed her.”

A collective intake of breath. The receptionist’s hand flew to her mouth. One of the lab technicians muttered something that sounded like an expletive.

“She tried to have me arrested for a crime her fiancé committed. So no, Sierra is not okay, and frankly, I am no longer concerned with whether she ever will be.”

I delivered the words with the clinical precision of a pathology report, and I watched the information land on their faces-shock first, then disbelief, then a slow-dawning understanding of exactly what kind of woman Sierra had turned out to be. Good. Let them know. Let them spread the truth through the building like antibodies through a compromised immune system, inoculating everyone against whatever lies Sierra might attempt to spread later.

P

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