Page 12 of Dominion’s Collar

I try calling. The automated voice tells me the number is no longer in service.

I open my email and send a message to the address I've been using for months. It bounces back within seconds. Delivery failed. Address not found.

Not "mailbox full." Not "temporarily unavailable." The address doesn't exist anymore.

I put the phone away. My hands are steady.

The Negroni is sweating on its napkin and the bar noise continues around me as though nothing has changed. Everything has changed.

I've barely settled back onto my stool when a voice arrives behind me.

"Ms. Chastain."

I turn and find Margot Pascal close enough for privacy, far enough to avoid cornering.

Fitted black dress, neckline that settles at authority rather than seduction. The posture of an owner standing in the center of what she built.

"Ms. Pascal."

"Margot." The correction is offered without warmth, clipped and final. "Walk with me?"

It's phrased as a question. We both know it isn't one.

I follow her through the lounge area toward a hallway I haven't accessed before. She stops beside a door and gestures me through.

The room beyond is a small sitting area designed for this kind of conversation. Two chairs, a side table, no desk. Intimate but not comfortable.

"I'll be direct," Margot says, settling into the far chair. "You're a true crime author. I knew that when your application crossed my desk."

The ground beneath my cover story shifts by a degree I can feel in my spine.

"The enhanced NDA and the access restrictions make more sense now," I say.

"They were always going to." She crosses one leg over the other. "Your published work is thorough. Your public profile suggests a writer who doesn't sensationalize. Those are the reasons you're sitting in my club instead of reading a rejection letter."

"And the reasons I'm sitting here right now?"

"Expectations." The single word fills the space between us. "You're free to write about your own experience. Anything that identifies another member, reveals club operations, or breaches the NDA is actionable. My attorneys will enjoy that work. These are facts, not threats. I don't make threats."

I believe her. She has contracts, conviction, and the authority of a woman who built something worth protecting and knows exactly what it costs to keep it standing.

"Understood."

"Good." Margot stands in a single fluid motion. At the door, she pauses. "Renata speaks highly of you. Her judgment matters to me. Don't make her regret the endorsement."

The door closes behind her. I sit in the quiet for a count of ten, recalibrating.

Margot isn't someone I can work around. She's someone I have to work through, and that requires earning something I haven't earned yet. Trust, or at least the version of it that opens doors.

I return to the bar and my waiting Negroni. Renata gives me a look that says she knows exactly where I've been. She doesn't ask.

He is at the bar.

The last time I was this close to him, he said two words that cut through every protocol I'd rehearsed. 'Excuse me,' delivered in a voice that didn't ask. The compliance had been instant, unscripted, and the memory has been taking up more space than I can afford.

He's in dark jeans and a black shirt tonight, sleeves rolled to the forearm. His physicality registers differently at this distance. Broader. More deliberate. The stillness that read as watchfulness from across the floor sharpens into confrontation up close.

Renata tilts her head toward him without subtlety. "Natalie, this is Sebastien. Sebastien, Natalie. She's a writer. He runs Villere Holdings and pretends that isn't interesting."