Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 233

Chapter 233

I called. He picked up on the third ring.

“I need your help,” I said.

“Celeste Fisher. It has been a while. I heard you have been busy. Something about a billionaire and a very public divorce.”

“I need information on someone. Fast.”

“I am listening.”

I sent him Kingsley’s full name, a copy of his passport photograph, and the last known address I had on file. “I want to know everything. Where he grew up, who his parents are, what he has been doing for the past six months, and why he resigned from his job at Helix without collecting his final paycheck.”

“You think he is in trouble?”

“I think someone is using him to get to me. And I want to know why.”

The line went quiet for a moment. Then: “Give me thirty minutes.”

“Thirty minutes?”

“I like you, Celeste. You pay on time and you do not ask stupid questions. You get the express rate.”

“Send me the bill.”

I hung up and stood there in the parking lot, the air cool against my skin, my phone warm in my hand. Thirty minutes. I could wait thirty minutes.

I walked to a small bench near the entrance of the parking lot and sat down, my eyes fixed on the sky, my mind drifting through the events of today. The kidnapping. The rescue. Dominic in that hospital bed. Pat on her knees in a parking lot, slapping her own face while Seraphine watched.

Thirty minutes passed. Then forty. Then my phone buzzed with a notification.

the file included a medical report. The diagnosis was severe cardiomyopathy, a heart condition that had deteriorated to the point where only a transplant could save her. The surgery would cost two million dollars. Kingsley did not have two million dollars. He did not have two thousand dollars. He was surviving on odd jobs and handouts, sleeping in his car some nights, skipping meals so he could afford his mother’s medication.

I set the phone down in my lap and stared at the sky again.

Had Kingsley worked for Seraphine because he was desperate? Because his mother was dying, because he would have done anything, anything at all, to save the only family he had left?

But the file also showed something else. Something that made my chest tighten with a complicated feeling I could not name.

No money had been deposited for Evelyn’s surgery. Not a single dollar had been transferred to the hospital’s account in Kingsley’s name. If Seraphine had hired him, if she had promised him money for his services, she had not paid him a cent.

I closed the file and sat there in the silence, the weight of the information pressing down on me.

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