All Chapters of Two Can Play: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

JULIAN The front door clicked shut behind me and I stood there on the driveway, keys in hand, the cold night air doing nothing to cool the rage sitting hot in my chest. Celeste had looked at me like I was nothing. Like I was some stranger who'd wandered into her house. In front of my mother. In front of my sister. She'd walked past all of us, and shut her bedroom door without a single word about dinner. The old Celeste would have never. The old Celeste would have smiled through gritted teeth, served the goddamn food, and then shown me her displeasure in private. That was our rhythm. That was how we worked. But this Celeste, this new Celeste with her five billion didn't play by those rules anymore. Money changed people. It had gotten to her head, swollen it up like a balloon, and now she thought she could treat me like dirt in my own house. I got in the car and started the engine. Five billion was a lot of zeros. Enough to make a woman forget who put a ring on her finger. Bu

JULIAN My heart hammered against my ribs as I turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life and I slammed my foot on the accelerator, tires screeching against the pavement as I tore out of that club parking lot. Images. Flashing through my mind like a slideshow from hell. Celeste on her back. Celeste on her knees. Some man's hands on her skin. Some man's cock inside her. I shook my head violently. No. No. No. It had to be something else. Celeste would never cheat on me. She would never dare. That woman loved me. She worshipped the ground I walked on. We'd been through too much together for her to throw it all away on some random handyman. My hands gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles went white. I took the turn into our street too fast, the car swerving before I corrected. When I pulled into the driveway, I noticed it immediately. The guest room window was open. The curtain was billowing out. And there was no unfamiliar car parked anywhere. I pra

JULIAN I parked my car in front of Seraphine's house and just sat there for a moment, gripping the steering wheel, my heart slamming against my ribs. The video was still on my phone. I'd watched it three times already, each time hoping it would magically disappear, that I'd imagined the whole thing. But no. There I was, on that bed, that redhead's mouth wrapped around my cock, her head bobbing up and down like a professional. Crystal clear. High definition. Shot from some hidden angle I hadn't noticed because I'd been too busy thinking with my dick. Two hours. That's what they'd given me. Ten minutes had already passed. I should have known. I'd been picking up women for years and I'd always been careful. I stuck to the professionals, the ones who worked for agencies or companies that would never risk their reputation on something this shady. But last night I'd let my emotions take over. I'd been angry at Celeste, frustrated, desperate to feel something other than the hollow a

SERAPHINE The ceiling tiles of St. Catherine's Private Wing had exactly forty-three hairline cracks. I counted them twelve times between the moment I woke up and the moment I finally accepted that Dominic was not coming. Fifteen hours. That's how long I lay in that hospital bed, waiting for him. Fifteen hours of nurses checking my vitals, of doctors telling me how lucky I was, of reporters camped outside the entrance hoping to catch a glimpse of the wife of the richest man in the city. I remembered everything. The press conference. The questions. The flash of movement in my peripheral vision. The crack of the gunshot that arrived a full second after the bullet had already torn through me. And I remembered him. The hands that grabbed me. The body that covered mine. The voice that shouted for help. Dominic He pulled me down. He saved my life. I knew it the way I knew my own heartbeat. No one else would have moved that fast. No one else would have cared enough. But if h

SERAPHINE The room smelled like expensive whiskey and older secrets. I sat on the edge of a leather chair watching the door, counting the minutes. Thirty passed. Then forty. Then fifty. Where the hell is he? I had paid two hundred grand just to get the message across. Two hundred thousand dollars I'd earned on my back, on my knees, in ways that made me wince when I thought about them too long. And now I was sitting in a back room of a club, waiting for a man called Sparrow to decide I was worth his time. The second-in-command who had taken my money kept offering me a glass. I kept refusing. I needed a clear head. At exactly the fifty-seventh minute, the door opened. He walked in. Sparrow. He was tall. Broader than I remembered from the photographs. His arms were sleeved in tattoos, dark ink that crawled up his neck and disappeared into his collar. His jaw was sharp, his eyes sharper, and when he looked at me, I felt like a specimen under glass. He said nothing. Ju