Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 512

Hearing his words, my blood went cold.

"Was Blaze also carrying? Did he hold a gun to your head, Seraphine? Because it looked like you were having the time of your life with his cock in your hole. Or did he force himself on you too, and you just decided to enjoy the middle of it?"

"That's" I started, and stopped.

"How do you know about him?" The words came out smaller than I wanted.

"You enjoyed Blaze's cock so much that you forgot your phone." He reached into his pocket and held up my phone. My phone. The entire accounting of my life was in that flat glass rectangle, every name, every account, every door I could walk out of, and he held it between two fingers like a dead match.

A man brought him a chair and set it behind him with the gravity of a crown-bearer. Emerson sat, crossed one leg, spread his arms along the back, turning my phone over and over like a teacher holding a failed exam.

"You signed a contract, Seraphine."

I swallowed.

He began to laugh.

A deep, slow laugh that started in the pit of him and rolled across the floor like a wheel. It went on and on, the laugh of a man who had never once been caught against his will. Then he stood and came to me, bent at the waist, and the good humor went out of his face the way a flame goes out of a match.

"Forget everything you think you know about the world, girl. This island is mine. This is my turf. No one takes a step out here without my word, and no one leaves without my word. Give my name to whoever you like. Let them come. Let them swim the whole ocean, and I will stand on my own dock and watch them go under. Not even the president of this country could do a single thing about your detention. Prepare your mind to serve your sentence."

At the end of it, I opened my mouth to answer him, and nothing came out. Because I had only been bluffing, and the fear was now at my neck. My mother was the only soul on the whole earth who had ever heard the name Emerson Gath from me, and I had not given her enough detail to find this place. No friends were waiting on the other end of that bluff. I was alone, on an island, in the middle of nothing.