Page 25 of Dominion’s Collar

"Savannah."

His expression doesn't change. He doesn't ask why Savannah. He accepts the word with precision and without comment. The absence of inquiry tightens something behind my ribs.

"Savannah," he repeats. "If you say it, everything stops. Lights up, contract paused, my hands off you until we've spoken."

"Thank you." It comes out unedited. Too honest. Too close to genuine.

He catches the crack. He lets it pass. Grace or strategy. The ambiguity is the thing that keeps pulling the pins out of my certainty.

His hand moves. His fingers catch my chin and tilt it up. The contact is brief and absolutely deliberate. His thumb follows my jaw and drops away.

I don't pull back. My skin burns where he touched it. A contact so brief it shouldn't leave anything behind. It does.

"Good," he says. "Frequency?"

"Twice a week. More if I choose."

"If we agree."

"If we agree."

"I'll draft the contract. Review it. Mark anything that doesn't fit. We finalize terms before the collar goes on."

I nod. A woman accepting a negotiated agreement. Definitely not a woman whose skin is humming.

He stands. At the door, he pauses without turning.

"A collar from me changes how people see you here. It also changes what you can see." He turns his head just enough. "Be certain you want both."

Then he opens the door and the music from the main floor rushes into the space he left behind.

I sit for a full minute. My breath is shallow and deliberate. The negotiation ended when he walked out. My thighs are pressed together, my spine rigid.

The conversation wasn't a scene. He sat in a chair and asked me questions. My body doesn't appear to grasp the distinction.

I compose myself. The collar offer is the break I needed. Access, proximity, trust. Everything I came here for.

The thing they don't organize is the guilt.

He's never done this before. I'm the one tracking his tells, cross-referencing his history, calculating the investigative value of his collar while his voice sinks into the small of my back.

When he finds out why I'm really here, it'll cost him something. I don't know him well enough to name what. But I watched him negotiate with an exactness that doesn't come cheap, and none of it was performance.

I push the guilt down. Claire matters more. The dead sister outweighs the living man. And Cécile, wherever she is, deserves to know that someone is still looking. If she's hiding, I owe her answers. If she was silenced, I owe her more than that. If the trade is ugly, it's the only one I've got.

The thing the guilt doesn't reach is his voice saying 'Savannah' like the word was something he intended to keep.

On the main floor, the atmosphere has shifted. Subtle: the social equivalent of furniture rearranged while you were in another room.

Renata catches my eye and pours me a Negroni without asking. "You were in a private room with Obsidian."

"We talked. He offered me a consideration collar."

Renata's hands stop moving. A small, real pause. "He's never done that."

"So I gathered."

She studies me. The protectiveness is for the man in the corner booth, not for me.