Page 78 of Dominion’s Collar

I read the message four times. The address is a burner, the kind you create in thirty seconds and abandon after a single use. No way to reply. No way to trace. If this is another planted trail, it's a different breed than the Tomas email. That one was designed to redirect. This one is designed to stop.

I start typing a reply before I stop myself. A burner address like this is probably already dead. If I send a response, it'll bounce, and if whoever sent it is monitoring the account for confirmation of receipt, I'll have just told them I'm paying attention.

A second message lands in my inbox. Same address, sent less than two minutes after the first.

Claire told me he knew Étienne's room before she ever mentioned it to him. That's all I'm giving you. Don't write back.

That confirms it. The Tomas email was generic. This is personal: Claire's case, Claire's details, knowledge that only someone close to Claire would carry. This is Cécile. She hasn't vanished as completely as I thought. She's reachable enough to create a burner address, break her silence with two messages she clearly agonized over sending.

The relief fades fast. Because Cécile isn't hiding from me. I'm a writer asking questions about a cold case. I'm not dangerous. Cécile is hiding from someone dangerous, and she's been gone long enough to make disappearing feel safer than staying.

The message is short but the meaning isn't. Claire told Cécile that a man knew which room Étienne Comeaux had booked before Claire ever mentioned it to him. Étienne's room. The room where Claire died. Claire had a standing booking with Étienne, which Vivienne confirmed, so Claire would have been discussing plans in normal conversation. And this man already had information she hadn't given him.

The message doesn't name him. It doesn't have to.

If the unnamed "he" is Gaudet, then he was in possession of information that Claire didn't give him. He knew where she would be before she told him.

How he knew is still a gap I can't fill. Vivienne described him as embedded in Elysium's inner workings: near the safety committee, knowing everyone, volunteering for everything. That kind of involvement might explain the access. But I don't know how Elysium's internal systems worked, who could see what, or whether his role gave him a legitimate reason to have that information.

What I know is this: someone knew where Claire would be. And I have a very good idea who.

It doesn't prove he entered the room. It doesn't prove he killed her. But it puts him at the intersection of knowledge and opportunity, and that intersection didn't exist before today. I don't know whether anyone else has been asking the same questions I'm asking, or whether the answers I'm missing are locked in records I'll never see.

Andy's framework applies: pattern evidence, multiple sources, corroboration from independent witnesses. Cécile's memory is one source. Vivienne's account is another. My research provides the pattern. The behavioral evidence that would make the circumstantial case compelling enough for a prosecutor—that's the gap.

I don't have that yet. But I know where to find it.

The man in his corner booth at Dominion knows more than he's saying. He was at Elysium when Claire was alive. He locked down when I said her name. That reaction doesn't come from hearing about a stranger's death. It comes from memory.

Sebastien knows something. I caught his tell. The question is whether what he knows is relevant to what I need. Or whether I'm reading romantic weight as investigative significance because my body hasn't stopped feeling where his hands held me down.

I close the laptop. The apartment is too quiet. The investigation is too large for one person, one laptop, a set of records nobody else has seen. And the only place where the people who might help me are also the people I'm lying to. And it’s open in three hours.

Dominion at nine. I change in the submissives' lounge, the dresser helping me into a corset and thong that have become as familiar as the routine itself. When I come out, Sebastien is waiting in the corridor with the collar in his hand.

He doesn't ask how my day was. He reads it.

"Long day," he says. Not a question.

"Productive day." I tilt my chin up. The gesture is automatic now, exposing my throat for the collar. The intimacy of the habit hits me harder tonight than it should. His fingers are warm against my skin as he wraps the braided leather into place. The ruby settles against the hollow of my throat. The lock clicks.

He doesn't move his hand. His thumb rests against my pulse point, and the contact holds longer than the protocol requires.

"There's something I need to tell you." His voice drops below the ambient noise of the corridor. "Tonight. Not here."

My breath catches. The investigator in me collides with the woman so hard I almost miss what's happening. He's initiating a conversation, not a scene. The gravity in his tone tells me this isn't about the contract or the dynamic.

"Good," I say. "I have questions."

His eyes narrow. He expected to be steering this exchange and just discovered the wheel is shared. His thumb traces a slow line from the collar to the hinge of my jaw. The touch is light and deliberate. It sends a ripple of heat down my spine that has nothing to do with the fire play lingering in my nerve endings.

"Questions," he repeats.

"About Elysium."

The stillness that locks his body is absolute. For two seconds, Sebastien Villere doesn't breathe.

Then Cole appears at the hallway entrance. The charming version is gone. What's in front of us is professional, clipped, and carrying something that requires Sebastien's attention immediately.