Page 94 of Dominion’s Collar

Rapier's space looks the way Remy and Luc built it: clean, functional, serious. Screens on one wall. A planning table in the center. Comm equipment Ezra maintains with the focus of a man who considers technology a personal relationship.

Remy and Luc are already here. Cole is at the planning table with a tablet, reviewing the exterior camera footage from yesterday. Ezra has a laptop open beside a bank of monitors showing feeds I don't recognize.

The machine is warming up. The people running it are the people I've watched work for years without ever needing them to work on my behalf.

Margot is waiting for me in the hallway outside the operations room.

She doesn't raise her voice. That's never been how Margot works. She stands in front of me with her arms crossed and delivers the most thorough evisceration I've received from someone I respect enough to hold still for.

"You had fragments for years," she says. "I don't blame you for that. Fragments aren't actionable. But you had a pattern weeks ago, and you didn't tell me."

There's nothing to say to that. She's right.

"A man who may have done this has been walking through my club. Inside the club I rebuilt after it nearly didn't survive the last time someone used it as a hunting ground. And you knew. You sat in your booth and you watched my floor and you knew, and you brought Rapier in without telling me."

"Rapier's investigation was pulling Elysium records, not surveilling your floor." The distinction is technical. Her anger isn't. I uncross my arms and let them hang at my sides. "But you're right. I should have told you."

"You were sitting in my booth running a parallel investigation while a member I'm responsible for was being followed to my door." Her voice is quiet and carries the specific weight of a woman whose trust has been violated by someone she considers family. "I don't care where the records came from. You don't get to know what you knew without telling me."

The calculation that prioritized caution over transparency was mine. And it was wrong.

"I should have told you when the pieces began to connect," I say. "I didn't. That's on me."

Margot holds my gaze long enough to make the point.

Then Remy appears in the hallway behind her. He doesn't interrupt. He stands where she can see him. The calm he carries is a brother's calm, specific to the woman in front of him.

"He didn't do this inside Dominion," Remy says. Quiet. Measured. "Gaudet operated at Elysium. Your system works, Margot. That's exactly why Gaudet had nothing actionable here."

The distinction matters. Margot had Rapier rebuild Dominion's protocols specifically to prevent what happened at Elysium. The fact that Gaudet gave her system nothing to flag isn't a failure of the system. It's confirmation that predators adapt, and this one adapted well enough to operate inside trust itself.

Margot looks at Remy. Then back at me. She uncrosses her arms as she turns to face Remy.

"Can you fix it? Can you shut him down? Can you prove what you think you know?" she asks.

Remy nods. "Yes."

She walks away. I let her go. Margot's anger is earned, and I'm not the man who explains himself twice.

Remy tilts his head toward the operations room. "She's on her way."

Natalie.

The operations room is full when I enter. Luc at the table. Cole across from him. Ezra at his station. Andy Broussard in a chair near the wall, off-duty, wearing the expression of a cop who understands he's here as a resource, not a badge. Sophie near the door, arms crossed, reading the room with the old habits of a cop who left the French police force when Remy offered her a better job but still has all the instincts.

I take a position by the window. Not the center of the room. Not the planning table.

I'm here to provide what I know about Gaudet. Remy and Luc run the operation. Natalie runs the case.

She arrives with a box of files and the posture of a woman running on coffee and determination.

She doesn't look at me. The not-looking is deliberate. I note it with attention and without reaction, the same as every choice she makes.

Her throat is bare. The skin where the collar sat looks exposed in a way that has nothing to do with modesty. My hands remember the weight of that leather, the click of the lock, the pulse underneath it. The memory is physical and unwelcome and I let it pass through without reaching for it.

Remy meets her at the door. "What do you need?"

She stops. The box is heavy and her arms are braced for a fight she clearly rehearsed on the drive over. The fight where Rapier takes her files, thanks her for the information, and hands her a seat in the audience.