Page 21 of Dominion’s Collar

Natalie has left. I don't know when.

In my pocket, my phone is warm. I pull it out. The call is one I decided on before the conversation started. I couldn't justify it until now.

Not Rapier. Rapier means Remy, and Remy means Margot hears about it by morning. I'm not putting a member on their radar based on instinct and an untouched scotch. I have my own contacts from the months I spent pulling at Elysium's threads. People who owe me answers without asking why I want them.

"Natalie Chastain. She's a new member at Dominion, says she's a writer." I keep my voice even. "Confirm what she told the club is accurate. I want to know if anything doesn't match that Rapier Strategic might have missed."

I end the call. The amber hasn't moved in the glass.

The booth settles around me like something that used to fit and doesn't anymore.

Luc is wrong about one thing. I didn't leave the booth because Natalie reminds me of Elysium. I left because what she says she's doing and what she's actually doing don't match. Five years ago, I learned what it costs to dismiss the gap between those things. I won't do it again.

He's right about the other thing. I want to collar her, and the wanting has nothing to do with surveillance or suspicion or the fragments that still press at three in the morning.

The wanting is its own kind of problem, and I don't have a booth for that. But there's a collar in a drawer at the townhouse that's never been locked around anyone's throat.

CHAPTER FIVE

Natalie

The investigation is bleeding out, and I'm the one holding the gauze wrong. It doesn't help that the last conversation I had in this building is still running on a loop behind everything else. 'You've never knelt.' Three words from a man I've known for a handful of conversations, and they've taken up permanent residence in a part of my brain that's supposed to be working the case. 'Because you already have one.' He meant a recommendation. He meant himself. And the worst part isn't that he said it. The worst part is how long I spent in my apartment afterward not thinking about Claire.

Every lead I built before coming to New Orleans is gone or going. Cécile's phone number returns a flat robotic nothing when I call it. Her email bounces with a finality that has no business being this clean. Her social media accounts didn't just deactivate. They dissolved, taking cached posts and archived comments with them. Believing she did all of this herself is getting harder to sustain.

And inside Dominion, the avenues I've been cultivating are narrowing to a point. Prosper still buys me drinks and calls me "dear." He tells stories about the old New Orleans kink community that are vivid, generous, and reveal absolutely nothing I can use. Renata feeds me folklore and friendship but draws a hard line at anything that touches member privacy. The people who might actually know what happened to Claire are either guarded, absent, or too deeply connected to Elysium for a direct approach.

Tonight I'm back at the bar with a Negroni I haven't touched and a plan I already know won't work. Tomas is across the room. He's been avoiding me since the slip. I asked about the Elysium safety committee, pulled the question straight from Claire's correspondence without realizing how precisely it would land. He warned me and walked away, and every visit since then, his body angles toward the nearest exit when I enter the room.

I watch him long enough to be sure. He's talking to Arnold Voss near the lounge area. Relaxed shoulders, easy posture. The tension that lives in his face when I'm nearby isn't there. He doesn't know I'm watching. I finish the Negroni and cross the floor.

He sees me coming from halfway across the room. His expression doesn't change. He simply turns, says something to Voss, and moves toward the hallway that leads to the scening areas. Nothing rude about it. Just absolute. A door closing with the quiet finality of a man who's decided he has nothing to say to me and no obligation to explain why.

I stand in the gap he left and feel the investigation shrink around me.

That was my last accessible former Elysium member. Prosper's name appears in Claire's emails alongside dates and events I can't yet verify. Vivienne Thibault is a name in Claire's files that I haven't been able to locate inside these walls. Theo Vautrin is another ghost. Tomas was the one I could reach, and I spooked him with a question I should've saved for later.

The tactical error was mine. The consequence is real.

I'm still calculating the narrowing options when Margot appears beside me. She doesn't sit. That's becoming a pattern. Margot stands when she has something to deliver, and the delivery is always efficient enough that sitting would waste the posture.

"You've been a member for a while now, Natalie." Her voice is measured, neither warm nor cold. "And every time you walk through those doors, you sit at that bar. Some of my members have noticed, and they're not comfortable being observed by someone who doesn't participate."

"I'm getting to know the community."

"You're spectating." Precise, not hostile. "Dominion is a participatory community. Members engage. They build relationships, attend events, learn, scene with those they choose. They're part of what makes this place work." She pauses just long enough for the implication to sharpen. "This isn't your observation deck. If observation is all you're here for, eventually I'm going to have to reconsider your access."

She lets the message settle, then walks away. It has an expiration date stitched into every word.

The Negroni I ordered to replace the first one tastes different now. Sharper. The clock I've been pretending doesn't exist just started ticking where I can hear it.

I run the inventory because that's what I do when the ground shifts. Outside: Cécile is gone. If someone else is dismantling the digital trail, they know exactly which threads to pull. I can't investigate that without exposing what I'm investigating, and I can't stop investigating without letting Claire's death stay buried under five years of polite institutional silence.

Inside: Tomas is done with me. Margot is running out of patience. My cover as a writer researching a book has a shelf life. Every visit I spend nursing a Negroni and taking mental notes shortens it. Every door is closing. I'm running out of rooms.

I came to New Orleans because a woman was finally ready to talk. That woman is gone. The emails from Claire's account led here, to this club, to these people.

And the deeper I dig, the faster the evidence disappears. If someone is watching, I don't know whether they started before I arrived or because I did.