Page 50 of Dominion’s Collar

Years ago, after Elysium closed, I sat at this desk and wrote down everything I remembered. The fragments. The questions. The proximity. I went through this exercise and came up empty because there was no pattern. Just guilt looking for a shape.

I pick up a pen.

The fragments haven't changed. What's changed is the variable I didn't have before.

I write:

A submissive asked me a question at Elysium. A woman whose name I never knew. She wanted to know whether trust should feel the way hers felt. Whether what she was carrying was normal or a warning. I told her unease in a new dynamic is common. That was true. It was also insufficient. Her death was ruled accidental. The investigation was thorough. Nobody argued with the findings.

A different submissive left the community without explanation. Packed her locker. Didn't say goodbye. Nobody followed up. Privacy is the product at any lifestyle club, and respecting someone's departure was treated as courtesy rather than negligence. People leave. It happens.

An incident. A scene that went wrong, attributed to miscommunication. The Dom involved was contrite and cooperative. The submissive didn't come back. The safety committee reviewed protocols. Gaudet chaired the review. Andy handled the member interviews. Étienne provided the room logs. Both parties corroborated the miscommunication.

At Elysium, everybody's name appeared somewhere if you looked long enough. Gaudet's appeared often enough that I noticed. Not often enough that noticing meant anything. Comforting. Explaining. Smoothing. Not at the center. At the edges.

The same fragments I wrote down years ago. The same list that refused to resolve. Each piece had a perfectly reasonable explanation at the time.

But now:

Natalie Chastain asks questions about Elysium that go beyond the book she described. Whatever she's actually looking for, it overlaps with my old fragments.

Gaudet is collecting oral histories from the same people Natalie gravitates toward. Generous. Consistent with who he is. Also consistent with a man who wants to know what stories are being told and to whom.

Natalie is concealing something outside Dominion. She scans the street before she gets in her car. Her phone behavior has changed. Cole noticed the scanning. When I gave her the opening to tell me, she closed it with the precision of a practiced answer.

I set the pen down. The old fragments and the new observations sit on the same page. They don't form a picture. Not yet. They form the border of one, edge pieces whose center is still scattered. But the border is tighter than it was years ago because of her.

What I suspect: Natalie is looking for answers about Elysium. Gaudet keeps appearing near the questions she's asking. She's concealing a problem she doesn't trust me with. And she's chosen to manage it alone.

That last line is the one I keep returning to.

I've spent five years watching from a booth, holding fragments, telling myself observation was enough. Telling myself the boundary between my life and the people in it was protection rather than cowardice.

The woman wearing my collar told me she's fine. Everything in her body said otherwise. The contract says within Dominion's walls. The qualifier was supposed to protect us both from exactly this. The moment the boundary stops holding and starts failing.

I pick up my phone.

The clause I wrote says within Dominion's walls. The clause is wrong.

Luc answers on the second ring. The background noise says Dominion.

"You busy?"

"Depends." His voice carries the particular neutrality that means he's already reading tone.

"I need another set of eyes on something."

The pause is brief. Luc doesn't waste time asking whether it's important. I don't call. That's the tell, and he reads it cleanly.

"I'll be there in twenty."

The line goes dead. I set the phone on the desk beside the legal pad.

Five years of fragments and one name circled twice on a page that should have been written years ago. Luc is on his way. I pour a bourbon and set it across from my scotch.

For five years, I watched alone. That ends tonight.

CHAPTER ELEVEN