Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 27

Chapter 27

SERAPHINE

I felt like I was floating.

+15 Bonus

The party was everything I had imagined it would be and more. The kind of room I had spent my whole life trying to get into. The chandeliers alone cost more than most people’s houses. The women wore jewelry that did not come with price tags because if you needed to ask, you could not afford it. The men moved through the room like they owned everything outside it too.

And I was here. On Julian’s arm. In a black dress that cost seven hundred thousand dollars and looked every cent of it.

I had won.

Leslie was back in whatever room Julian kept her in between uses, and I was here, at the most important party of the year, turning heads every time I moved. I had felt Julian’s hand tighten on mine when we walked in and I had seen the way other men looked at me and I had thought, yes. This is exactly where I belong.

I was already scanning the room. Old habit. New environment, new opportunities. Billionaires did not come to parties like this alone. There were men in this room who could make Julian look like a stepping stone, which was exactly what he was.

I leaned close to Julian and asked about the chairman. He had mentioned the reveal on the way over, something about a man nobody had ever seen, the biggest mystery in business circles for years.

Julian smiled the way he smiled when he knew something other people did not.

He told me the chairman of Veil Holdings would be unveiled tonight. That no one knew what he looked like. That he had run the largest company in the country from complete anonymity for years and tonight was the first time he would show his face in public.

I felt a small thrill move through me.

A mystery man. The richest man in the country. A man powerful enough to throw a party like this and still arrive as a surprise.

My mind went to work immediately. The way it always did.

If a man like that noticed me. If I could position myself correctly. Even as a side piece, even as one of several, a man like that would set me up for life. I would never have to calculate again. Never have to perform. Never have to kneel on a floor counting to five for a man like Julian.

I would be untouchable.

Even Julian would become irrelevant. Even Dominic and his empty promises and his modest little life and his meager little salary would become a story I told with a laugh at parties exactly like this one.

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Yes.

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The chairman of Veil Holdings was my target. I had decided. I did not care if he was old. I did not care if he was ugly. I would find him tonight and I would make sure he found me, and I would not leave this room until I had made an impression he could not forget.

The thought barely had time to settle before the man at the podium raised his voice.

I heard the name before I understood it.

Dominic Ford.

I stopped.

The glass in my hand went still.

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I should have known.

The thought came through the shock like a slap.

I should have known. Men who looked like Dominic did not stay poor. Men who carried themselves the way he did, that quiet certainty, that control, that way he had of moving through a room like nothing in it could touch him. I had mistaken it for arrogance. For delusion. For the posturing of a man who had nothing but his face and his body and his confidence to recommend him.

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