Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 640

I had thought about Tasha too, about Scarlett and Maya and Jasmine, the girls I had once assumed I could scoop up whenever I felt like it. Then I had watched Sparrow marry Tasha, and I understood, finally, that those girls were beyond my reach. Sparrow moved in a world I couldn't touch. I had let them go completely. They were nothing now.

But Celeste was everything.

The only thing that fueled me was her. The thought of touching her again, holding her, kissing her, of putting my child inside her and watching her belly grow round with my name. I had made a vow: this time I would do right by her. This time she would have all of me.

And now the doctor had confirmed everything. I just needed to strike at the right time.

The next morning, I was parked in a hidden corner, outside Celeste's mother's house before the sun finished coming up, a duffel bag on the passenger seat holding everything I needed. The oxygen mask. The canister of gas. The injection, kept cool in a small case.

The house had a keypad lock on the front door, and I knew the code. Celeste's birthday. It had never been changed, because nobody in that family ever imagine what was about to happen today. I had watched Celeste's mother rush out at dawn, dressed like she was heading to the market, which meant she would be gone for hours and come back loaded with groceries. I needed her to come back. She was the bait.

I punched in the code, slipped inside, and locked the door behind me. I put on the oxygen mask, carried the canister to her bedroom, and sealed the room as best I could, towels along the bottom of the door, windows shut tight. Then I cracked the valve and let the gas hiss out, a sweet chemical smell that would knock a person out for a solid ten hours. When they woke, they would remember nothing. Not how they fell, not how long they were under, not a single detail of what happened while they slept.

That was the plan. Knock the mother out. Lure Celeste in. Knock her out too. Do what I needed to do, clean everything up, and be gone. When they both woke, the whole thing would feel like a strange, heavy nap.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify