Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 44

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Chapter 44

CELESTE

The shots kept coming.

Each one hit somewhere outside and I flinched at every single one, my back pressed against the wall beside Dominic, my heart doing something violent and irregular in my chest.

“Why would anyone want you dead?” I asked.

He did not answer immediately. He was looking at the door, listening, calculating something I could not

see.

“Dominic.”

“It is a long story,” he said.

Another shot. I flinched again.

“What do we do?” I asked.

He looked at me. “Come with me.”

He took my hand and moved.

We went fast, through the corridor that ran along the left side of the house, away from the front door and the sound of the shots. He snatched his phone from the table as we passed it without breaking stride. We reached a door at the end of the corridor, plain and unremarkable, and he pressed a button set into the wall beside it.

The door clicked open.

We went inside and he locked it behind us.

I stood in the middle of the room, panting, and looked around.

A bedroom. A completely normal bedroom. Wide bed with clean white linen, two nightstands, a lamp, a wardrobe, a window on the far wall looking out at the water. The window was shut tight, the glass thick in a way that ordinary glass was not.

“Your bedroom too?” I said,

“Everything in here is bulletproof.” He was already at a monitor mounted on the wall, picking up a remote from the dresser. “The glass, the walls, the door. Do not worry. We are safe in here for now.”

He pressed a button and the monitor came on.

I looked at the screen and my stomach dropped.

The feed was split into sections, each one showing a different angle of the island’s exterior. And on

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every single feed there were men. Armed, moving through the trees, taking positions at the edges of the property. I counted quickly and lost count.

He was already on the phone.

“Sparrow.” His voice had changed. All the ease was gone, all the warmth. What was left was something cold and precise. “We have a situation at the island. Someone’s trying to kill me. I need you to move.”

A voice on the other end, sharp and clipped. “How many men?”

He looked at the monitor, his eyes moving across each feed with the systematic efficiency of someone who had done this before.

“More than ten,” he said.

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