Page 91 of Dominion’s Collar

Both things are true. Neither one resolves the other.

"Where is Sebastien?" The question surprises me. I'm not sure I want the answer.

"Upstairs," Luc says. "He's been here since this morning."

Since this morning. When we separated last night, he had the collar in his hand and a look on his face that I'll carry for a long time.

He's one floor above me. I can feel it. The same pull I felt from his booth on the main floor. Gravitational, indifferent to context or betrayal or the fact that I'm furious enough to break something. My skin remembers his hands. My throat remembers his collar. The rest of me remembers that he mostly knew who I was while I was giving him everything I thought he needed to know. Fury and want, coexisting without resolution.

"I don't want to see him right now."

Luc nods once and doesn't push.

Margot arrives through the mezzanine staircase. She descends as she does everything at Dominion: measured, deliberate, controlled. She takes in the tableau. Me, standing in the empty lounge in street clothes, still trembling. Cole at the entrance. Luc beside me. Renata behind the bar with an expression I've never seen on her face.

Margot doesn't ask what happened. Her gaze goes to Luc. Luc gives her the short version. Margot's face doesn't change. When he finishes, she turns to me.

"How long have you been conducting this investigation inside my club?"

"Since my first night."

The silence that follows is worse than anger. Margot Pascal guided Dominion from scandal and near-ruin. She created the security, the protocols, the culture that makes this place the safest space most of its members will ever enter.

And I walked through her door carrying a predator's attention without telling her it was following me in.

"I understand why you're angry," I say.

"You don't." Her voice is low. "But we'll deal with that later. Right now someone tailed one of my members to my club, and that's a problem we can solve."

Luc turns to Cole. "I want the vehicle identified within the hour. Pull the exterior cameras."

Cole moves. Luc moves. Remy appears from somewhere I didn't see him arrive, already on his phone. Renata moves. The competence is immediate, coordinated, and stripped of every ounce of social performance.

Dominion's community operates at a frequency I've only glimpsed in passing: Luc's clipped nods to Cole, the coordinated awareness I caught between them on the main floor. I'm seeing the infrastructure I suspected but never confirmed.

Dominion holds. The sanctuary I didn't know I was counting on is doing exactly what it was built to do.

Remy steers me to a table near the back of the lounge. His hand on my shoulder is brief, firm, and doesn't ask permission. Luc sits across from me. Renata crosses from behind the bar with a Negroni nobody asked for and presses it into my hand before heading back.

They debrief me the way I imagine they debrief anyone who brings a problem through Rapier's door. Remy asks the questions. Luc listens. The division is practiced and efficient. Remy's voice is calm enough to pull information from someone running on adrenaline. Luc builds the operational picture from what I give him.

I give them everything. Vivienne's account. Cécile's clue. The counter-investigation. The erased records. The misdirection toward Tomas. Years of case files compressed into the most efficient summary I've ever delivered.

Remy leans back when I finish. He exchanges a look with Luc that carries an entire conversation in two seconds. Then he turns back to me.

"I'll deal with Sebastien." The flatness in his voice is the sound of a man whose closest friend kept him half-informed. "You're not leaving this building unprotected. A Rapier detail follows you home, or you stay here tonight. Your choice."

"Those are my options?"

"Those are your options." His gaze is steady, and underneath the calm I can see the same anger Margot carried. Pointed in a different direction, but just as sharp.

"The detail," I say.

Remy nods once and pulls his phone.

Luc stands. "I'll coordinate the rotation." He moves toward the stairs, and the operational machine keeps turning without anyone stopping to explain it to me. I'm left sitting at a table in a club that's saving me from the consequences of lying to it since my first night.

Renata pulls out the chair Luc vacated. The gesture is deliberate. The look she gives me isn't practiced at all.