Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 13

Chapter 013

SERAPHINE

Veil Holdings did not look like a building that belonged to my husband.

That was the first thought I had when I turned onto the street and saw it rise up ahead of me. Glass and steel, floor after floor of it, the kind of structure that did not apologize for the space it occupied. The morning light hit the facade and threw it back at the street in sheets of silver and I sat in my car at the traffic light and stared at it with my mouth open.

I had driven past buildings like this my whole life. Had looked up at them from the street and thought about the men inside them, the kind of men who made decisions that moved money across the world before breakfast.

My husband was one of those men.

My husband owned this building.

I pulled into the visitors lot with my hands tight on the wheel and my heart doing something embarrassing in my chest. The lobby doors were glass too, tall enough to make you feel small before you had even walked in, and through them I could see a reception desk that was longer than the living room of the house I had spent time resenting.

I straightened my jacket, picked up the flask from the passenger seat, and walked in.

The lobby smelled like money.

Not like perfume or cleaning product. Like money itself, that particular cold mineral smell of marble and climate control and surfaces that had never known a fingerprint for longer than thirty seconds. The ceiling was double height. The chandelier above the reception desk cost more than some buildings I had been inside. The staff moved with the particular efficiency of people who had been trained to make everyone feel slightly inferior.

I walked to the desk with my chin up.

The receptionist looked up at me. Young. Polished. The kind of professional blankness that was its own form of dismissal.

“I’m here to see Dominic Ford,” I said.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“I don’t need an appointment. I’m his wife.”

The blankness did not change. “May I see some identification please.”

I gave her my ID. Then I opened my bag and took out the marriage certificate I had thought to bring, because something in me had known this might not be simple.

She looked at it. She looked at me. She typed something I could not see.

“Mr. Ford is currently in a meeting and cannot be disturbed.”

“Then tell him his wife is here.”

“I will pass the message along when he is available. In the meantime, you are welcome to take a seat in the waiting area.”

I looked at her for a long moment. I thought about saying several things.

Then I took a seat.

One hour passed.

I sat with the flask on my lap and my eyes on the elevator bank and I told myself he would be down soon. A man like Dominic, a man who had spent years promising he would give me the life I wanted, would not leave his wife sitting in a lobby.

Two hours.

The receptionist had been replaced by a second one, equally polished, equally blank. I had spoken to two security guards, both of whom had listened to me explain that I was the chairman’s wife with the particular patience of men who had been trained not to react to anything.

Three hours.

I had stopped looking at the clock. I was looking at the elevator.

Four hours.

I heard her before I saw her.

A familiar voice at the reception desk. The voice of a woman I had known since we were eighteen years old sitting in the same lecture hall on the first day of university.

Celeste.

I turned.

She was at the desk in a royal blue trouser suit, the jacket fitted, the trousers clean and straight. She looked like she belonged here. She looked like the kind of woman these lobbies were built for.

I heard her say it clearly.

“I’m here to see the chairman, Dominic Ford.”

“Of course, Ms. Celeste. You are expected. Please go right up.”

I watched the receptionist’s face change. The professional blankness became something warmer, something deferential, the face people made when they were dealing with someone who was expected and welcomed and known

I watched them process her in the time it had taken them to ask me to take a seat.

I watched the security guard step aside.

I watched Celeste move toward the elevator.

I was on my feet before I knew I was standing. I moved toward the reception desk and the security guard stepped into my path. I went around him and the other one moved too and suddenly I was at the edge of the lobby with both of them between me and the elevator bank.

“Celeste.”

She stopped.

She turned.

We made eye contact across the lobby. I know she saw me. I saw her see me, the recognition moving across her face, there and then gone, smoothed over.

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.

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