Page 51 of Dominion’s Collar

Natalie

The case file is spread across my kitchen table, and the pattern I've been chasing for five years is finally resolving into something I can name. The shape is worse than I imagined, and worse is the part that should have been obvious.

I've been mapping Vivienne's information against Claire's notes for days. Her descriptions of women who left the community without explanation, incidents handled privately, boundary violations smoothed over by the same trusted figure.

The entries in Claire's emails I'd been reading as disconnected complaints have acquired connective tissue. The tissue has a name.

Not a method. A person.

I spread the printed screenshots beside Claire's email fragments and trace the connections with a red pen. The red is dramatic, the kind of detail I'd mock in a true crime competitor's book tour slides, but it works because the connections are real.

A submissive reported discomfort after a scene at Elysium. She was directed to a senior member for support. She left the community within days.

A different submissive described injuries that didn't match the negotiated terms of her scene. The incident was reviewed internally, and the same senior member appeared afterward as mediator. Claire's emails mention him by name.

A third woman, a visitor on a trial membership, experienced what she described in a forum post as boundary violations during a demonstration. The post disappeared. The woman never returned to Elysium.

Tomas Hébert's name appears beside one incident. His proximity reads more like personal failure than predation—a man who was nearby when something went wrong and couldn't fix it. His evasiveness felt genuine rather than defensive.

Gaudet's name appears in the follow-up chain of every single incident. Different events. Different women. Different years. He's the mediator, the mentor, the safety contact. The person a frightened submissive was directed toward after something went wrong.

He isn't at the center of the incidents. He's at the edges, showing up afterward with the consistency of a man whose helpfulness has become an institution.

I set the pen down. Claire's photograph watches from the shelf, and the sister in the frame was tracking this exact pattern weeks before she died. Two Chastain women, the same investigation, the same stubborn refusal to stop pulling the thread. Claire didn't have enough of the picture to see its shape. I do.

What I don't have is proof. Behavioral linkage across separate events doesn't prove murder. It proves proximity, and proximity without corroboration is a conspiracy theory with better sourcing. I need to know what it would take to make this into something that can't be ignored.

I need a cop. No. I need Andy Broussard.

I leave the photographs spread across the table and drive to Dominion with Claire's pattern riding beside me like a passenger.

Once inside, I head to the submissives' lounge where the dresser laces the corset with the rhythm I've stopped noticing. I adjust the thong with the competence of a woman who's forgotten this is supposed to be a costume.

Sebastien is waiting in the hallway. Dark trousers, dark shirt, the stillness that fills whatever corridor he occupies.

"Turn around."

The collar settles against the groove it's worn into my throat. His fingers find the lock.

Click.

The sound settles everything. Posture, breathing, the low-grade anxiety I carried from the apartment to the front door. The click resets it. I've stopped pretending that's accidental.

"Bar?" he asks.

"Bar. I need to talk to Andy first."

"About what?"

"Research." I don't elaborate. He doesn't push. The restraint between us is a negotiation neither of us has acknowledged.

He sends me ahead and goes to change.

Renata has the Negroni waiting before I've settled onto my stool. The scar on her wrist catches the amber light as she slides the glass across the mahogany.

"You look like you've been thinking too hard," she says.

"I always look like I've been thinking too hard."