Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 28

Chapter 28

I had been wrong.

He had told me. How many times had he told me. Give me a little more time, Seraphine. I will give you everything you want. I just need a little more time.

I had laughed at him. Behind his back, to his face sometimes, in the quiet of my own mind every day of our marriage. I had laughed at the man who was standing on that stage accepting the applause of every important person in the country.

A wide smile broke across my face before I could stop it.

My husband was a billionaire.

I was the wife of the richest man in the country.

I was already letting go of Julian’s arm. I was already moving toward the stage. I would go to him. I would stand beside him. The whole room would know who I was, that I was Mrs. Dominic Ford, that I had

been beside this man the whole time while everyone else was guessing at his face.

I had taken three steps when I heard the words Helix Research Laboratory.

I stopped.

The applause was still going but I had stopped hearing it.

Helix Research.

Why Helix.

I turned back to the stage and listened, and as Dominic spoke, as the number ten billion landed in the room and the gasps rippled outward and the whispers started, I felt the first cold thread of something move through all the warmth and the excitement.

Helix Research. My old lab. The lab I had broken away from. The lab I had left behind when Julian’s money gave me the means to build something bigger and better and entirely my own.

But then came the name.

Celeste.

And the spotlight moved.

And there she was.

I stared.

Celeste was standing in the crowd in a dress that stopped my breath.

I knew that dress. I had wanted that dress. There were only five of them in existence, made by a designer

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whose waitlist ran three years long, and I had looked at pictures of it on my phone and put it away because even asking Julian for something that cost five million felt like pushing my luck.

Celeste was wearing it.

Celeste, who Julian had always made cover up. Celeste, who I had watched shrink herself for two years into the shape of the wife Julian wanted. Celeste in a five million dollar dress that Julian had apparently gone out and bought for her without being asked.

The questions came fast and ugly.

When had Julian started buying his wife dresses like that. Why had I never seen it. Had he been doing this the whole time, spending on Celeste in private what he complained about spending on me in public.

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find out everything. The affair. Julian. The lab. All of it.

No.

I could not let that happen. Not now. Not when everything had just changed.

I needed to go. I needed to get out of this room before Dominic came off that stage and I needed to get away from Julian and I needed to think.

I did not say goodbye to Julian. I did not look for him. I turned and I walked and I did not stop walking until I was through the door and the cool night air was on my face.

At the door I stopped and looked back one more time.

Celeste was at the podium now, standing under the lights, and she was smiling.

No, I thought. I cannot let Celeste or any other woman get close to my husband.

D

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