Page 26 of Dominion’s Collar

"Then don't treat it casually."

"I wasn't planning to."

Across the room, Prosper holds court near the lounge area, hands moving through a story for a small group. He catches my eye and raises his glass. The smile makes me feel welcome.

His name is in Claire's emails. He was at Elysium. The connection is circumstantial, but circumstantial is where most investigations begin.

Sebastien is in his booth when I leave. Corner seat, sight lines, the scotch in front of him untouched.

He watches me walk toward the exit with the steady attention of someone who's already decided what I am to him. Simply waiting for me to catch up.

I hold his gaze long enough to make it a choice. Then I look away.

On the sidewalk, the New Orleans air hits me: humidity, jasmine, the distant brass of a second line rehearsal from somewhere I can't see. The club's controlled atmosphere peels away. The world floods back in, indifferent to what just happened in a dark-paneled room upstairs.

Walking to my car, I reach for the base of my throat. My fingers find bare skin. The hollow where Claire's pendant used to rest.

Claire's necklace hasn't been there in years. The thin gold chain I wore until the gesture became conspicuous.

Soon, something with a lock will take its place.

I check my phone before I start the engine. No messages. No missed calls. No sign that Cécile still exists anywhere a phone signal can reach. The silence has weight now. I can no longer afford to assume Cécile chose it.

The woman who may have caused it just agreed to let a man lock a collar around her throat. And she did it so she can keep asking questions that keep putting people in danger.

Claire would understand. At least I need to believe she would.

I pull away from the curb. In the rearview, Dominion's facade shrinks to a dark line against the sky. My investigation just became something I can't take off by myself.

CHAPTER SIX

Sebastien

Two nights since the negotiation. I sent the contract to Natalie the next morning, as promised. She returned it this afternoon with one note in the margin.

She wants the early-exit clause made explicit rather than buried in the contract language. A reasonable request. Also the request of a woman who's already thinking about how she'd leave.

I could have written it in before tonight. I didn't. Contract amendments happen face to face. That's not negotiable, even when the amendment is.

The contract is on my desk in the study. I've read it four times since she sent it back. That's three more passes than any decision in my life has ever required.

I'm ignoring the scotch sitting untouched beside it. Ignoring the specific memory of Natalie's jaw under my thumb. Her breath catching before she composed it away.

The terms are set. Meticulous, precise, and waiting for my signature. Everything in this room waits for me: patiently, in order, exactly where I put it.

Nothing about her stays where I put it.

My study is the only room in the townhouse that looks occupied. The rest of the place is maintained by a service, kept in the condition of a house where someone occasionally sleeps but rarely lives. This room is different. Books spine-out on mahogany shelves I found in an estate sale in the Marigny and had delivered the same afternoon. An armchair worn to my shape.

The scotch I keep at home is older and better than what I drink at Dominion. I hold it more than I consume it. The St. Charles streetcar rumbles past outside, close enough that the windowpanes hum with it.

Tonight the glass sits untouched. My discipline is holding. The rest of me is less certain.

I've dismantled years of careful distance in weeks for a woman I've known barely long enough to justify the contract sitting on my desk.

Margot vetted Natalie personally and approved her membership. The independent check I ordered hasn't come back yet. Her cover story, researching power dynamics for a book, is plausible enough that I can't reject it on substance.

I don't reject it on substance. I reject it on instinct.