Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 245

Chapter 245

SCARLETT

1

I breathed slowly, deliberately, watching the rise and fall of his chest even out into the steady rhythm of deep sleep, and 1 counted to sixty in my head before I moved a single muscle.

When I was certain he was truly gone, I slipped off the bed, my bare feet silent against the cold floor, and I walked toward the table, where I had placed the cameras. I pulled them out one after the other, the tiny devices warm in my palm.

I turned to slip them into my bag.

But he was standing right in front of me.

The man who had been dead asleep thirty seconds ago now stood there fully alert, his expression unreadable, his eyes fixed on the cameras in my hand like he’d known exactly where to find them.

I gasped and stumbled back a step, letting the shock show plainly on my face. “I thought you were sleeping.”

His hands shot out and gripped my neck, hard enough to choke, and he flung me onto the bed with a force that knocked the air from my lungs. The cameras flew from my hands and clattered across the floor, and before I could scramble for them, he crossed the room and brought his foot down on them, once, twice, the crunch of plastic and metal sharp and final. I lay there on the bed, coughing, my hand going to my throat, struggling to draw a full breath.

I sat up just as he pulled a gun from somewhere behind his back and pointed it directly at my forehead.

Tears sprang to my eyes, real ones, the kind that come from genuine adrenaline whether or not the fear behind them is entirely true. “Please,” I said, my voice breaking. “Mr. Dominic Ford, please don’t kill me. I had no choice. I was forced into this. Please, I am only a victim here.”

He kept silent, the gun steady in his hand, his finger resting against the trigger.

“Please,” I cried, the tears falling faster now. “Forgive me. I did not want to do this. I was forced.”

Finally, his lips curved into a smirk, slow and deliberate. “Do you want to know something interesting?”

I swallowed, looking up at him with wide, terrified eyes, my lips parted, my breath shallow as I let the silence answer for me.

“I am not Dominic Ford.”

I gasped, my eyes flying open, my mouth falling open in what I hoped looked like genuine shock. “What?”

I stared at him, my mind racing, my heart pounding, but beneath the panic, beneath the fear, a slow and steady warmth spread through my chest.

Of course I already knew that. I’d known it the second I stepped into that booth and looked into his eyes. I had come here thinking I would find Dominic Ford, and instead I had found the man I had been searching for since the day I first heard his name. The man who was the reason I had come to this city in the first place. The reason I had spent years plotting and planning and positioning myself like a chess piece moving toward the endgame.

Sparrow.

Most people in this city knew him only by that single name, a dangerous fixer with a reputation for making problems disappear as long as the price was right. Almost no one knew what I knew, that underneath the alias was a man named Alexander Ford, the adopted brother of Dominic Ford.

But it was Sparrow instead. And the instant I’d looked into his face and recognized him, I’d understood that every plan, every calculated move, every sacrifice, had delivered me exactly where I needed to be.

And with a man like Sparrow, I already knew the fastest route to an audience was the oldest one there is. Sparrow, by every reputation I’d gathered, wasn’t a man who went a single day without a woman in his bed, and beautiful women always sat at the very top of his preferences. Fortunately for me, I had enough beauty to spare for twenty women and still have some left over.

And honestly, sharing Sparrow’s bed had been no loss at all. Quite the opposite.

I watched him process everything I’d told him, even knowing, with total certainty, that he’d likely known most of it before I ever walked into that booth. Still, I let myself collapse to the floor, sinking onto my knees, fresh tears sliding down my cheeks.

“Whoever you are,” I said, “please. Save my sister. Save my friends. Get us away from that monster. In return, I will do anything you ask.”

His lips curved into something almost gentle. “My name is Sparrow.”

Hearing him finally offer it to me himself, plainly, without games, I let out a breath of genuine relief. This was really happening. Now we were finally getting started.

‘Sparrow,’ I thought, a more serious expression settling over my face beneath the tears. ‘If you are willing to save Tasha and get rid of Big Bryan, there is absolutely nothing I am not willing to do.’

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