Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 31

Chapter 31

She turned back and walked to the elevator.

She did not say a word.

She did not look back.

I stood there.

This was Celeste. Celeste who had cried on my shoulder after every bad date she had ever been on. Celeste who had called me her sister. Celeste who I had fooled so completely and so easily that I had

almost felt sorry for her sometimes.

That Celeste had just looked through me like I was furniture.

I took out my phone and called her number.

It rang. And rang. And went to voicemail.

I called Dominic. Same thing.

I went back to the waiting area and sat down and told myself I would wait. I would wait all day if I had to. I would sit in this lobby until Dominic came out of that elevator and then I would smile at him and hand him the breakfast I had made and everything would begin to make sense again.

The hours passed the way bad hours do.

Slowly and then slower.

I watched the lobby empty and fill and empty again. I watched the light change through the glass facade, morning going to afternoon going to the flat grey of late day. I shifted in the chair. I sat up straight. I crossed my ankles. I uncrossed them.

I called Dominic at two. At three. At four.

At ten minutes past four a receptionist I had not seen before came around the desk and approached me.

She pointed at the flask. “Excuse me. There have been complaints from other guests. The food is producing an odor and causing discomfort in the waiting area.”

I looked at her. I looked around the waiting area, which was nearly empty.

“The food is not smelling,” I said. “It is in a sealed flask and it is still warm. There is no odor.”

“I understand, but I’m going to have to ask you to take it outside.”

“I cooked that food for my husband and I am not taking it anywhere.”

She signaled the security guards.

They came. Two of them, the same ones from this morning.

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“Ma’am,” one of them said. “The flask needs to go outside.”

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I stood up. “That is my husband’s breakfast. I have been sitting here for hours and I am not surrendering it.”

One of them reached for it.

I held on.

For a moment we stood there, the three of us, in the lobby of the building my husband owned, fighting over a food flask I had packed in the morning in a house that smelled like his favorite meal.

Then they took it.

I followed them to the door. “Give that back. You will be looking for new jobs before the week is out. You

have no idea who you are dealing with.”

They set the flask next to the trash bins outside the entrance, turned, and walked back in without a word.

I stared at the flask.

I got up.

I stood on the pavement outside Veil Holdings and I called Dominic again and it went to voicemail, and I called Julian and it rang out and I called Celeste and it rang four times and went to voicemail.

I stood there.

Then I called Celeste again.

It rang.

Voicemail.

I waited for the beep.

“Listen to me, Celeste,” I said. My voice was very calm. Calmer than I felt. “Listen to me and listen well. I don’t know what game you are playing. But I am warning you. Stay away from my husband. Otherwise, I will destroy you.”

I ended the call.

I stood outside in the dark with the cold pavement under my heels and my hands steady at my sides.

She had been warned.

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