Page 82 of Dominion’s Collar

"A woman came to me at the bar one night. Asked if I'd noticed anything wrong with how incidents were being handled. I gave her a textbook answer. Community safeguards, proper channels, trust the process." I pause. "She thanked me. She left. She died."

She studies me. The investigator's gaze, sharp and assessing. "You sat in your booth and noticed all of this. And did nothing."

"Not nothing." The words come out harder than I intended. "Not enough. But not nothing."

She waits.

"After she died, I spent months pulling at every thread I could find," I say. "Talked to members who'd left. Requested incident reports. Tried to locate the submissives who'd gone quiet."

I hold her gaze. "Every lead went cold or ended in an explanation that fit better than my suspicion. I started to wonder if guilt was making me see a pattern that wasn't there."

"Was it?"

"No. But I couldn't prove otherwise. Not until you."

The quiet that follows has weight. Her arms have uncrossed. Her hands hang at her sides, and I can see the investigator recalibrating, fitting my fragments against whatever she's been building.

"Who?" she asks.

"Gaudet."

She doesn't flinch. She nods once. Confirmation from a different direction.

"At my request, Rapier has been pulling Elysium's old records," I continue. "Booking systems. Access logs. Committee structures. They've confirmed that Gaudet's role gave him visibility into room assignments."

"Rapier."

I nod. "Rapier."

She absorbs this. Every interaction she's had with anyone from Rapier. Every appearance at the club that felt too frequent to be coincidence. The picture assembling itself.

"How long have you known what I was doing here?" she asks.

"Long enough."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're going to get."

"For a man who demands honesty from his submissives, you're remarkably comfortable with ambiguity."

The sentence lands exactly where she intended. I don't flinch either. "Ask me what you actually want to ask."

"I'm asking why a man who noticed a pattern at Elysium and sat on it for years suddenly started pushing when I showed up."

"Because you gave the fragments a shape I couldn't find alone."

She meets my eyes. The collar sits against the hollow of her throat, the ruby catching the low light.

"The woman who came to me at the bar." My voice drops. These are the hardest words I've spoken. "I know now her name was Claire Bergeron."

The air leaves the room.

"Your sister," I say. "I know who you are, Natalie. I've known since before the fire scene."

Natalie stops breathing. Not the investigative stillness. Not the performance. Something older, as if everything inside her has gone still while her mind catches up.

I watch the recalculation cross her face. The fire play. The first time. Every scene since I sat in my study and wrote her sister's name on a legal pad.