Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 228

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Chapter 228

I cursed him in my mind, a litany of hatred that burned through the grief. I cursed myself too, for my naivety, for my stupidity, for believing that a man like Kingsley Duke could ever want someone like me. I was thirty years old. I had waited my entire life for something special. And I had given it to a camera hidden behind a curtain.

I do not remember taking myself home that night. I do not remember climbing the stairs to my apartment or unlocking the door or collapsing onto my bed. I do not remember the hours I spent staring at the ceiling, my face wet with tears, my mind replaying every moment of that hotel room on an endless loop.

But I remember the morning. I remember the pale light filtering through my curtains, the ache in my jaw where I had slapped myself, the cold resolve settling into my chest like a stone. I sat up and looked at myself in the mirror across the room. My cheeks were red, swollen, marked with the outline of my own fingers. My eyes were puffy, my hair a disaster, my skin sallow from a night of no sleep.

I looked like a woman who had been broken. But I did not feel broken. I felt something else, something harder, something that had crystallized in the dark hours of the night while the world slept.

And I was not going to let Seraphine win.

I took a shower and let the hot water beat against my bruised face until I could feel the blood moving beneath my skin again. I put on clean clothes. I applied concealer to my cheeks until the red was barely visible, until I looked like myself again, like a woman who had not spent the night crying.

When I arrived at Helix that morning, I pretended like everything was fine.

Celeste didn’t realize anything. She had no idea what I was carrying. And she had no idea that Seraphine had spent the night plotting her destruction. And I could not tell her. Not yet. Not until I had done what I needed to do.