Page 7 of Dominion’s Collar

I tried that once. At Elysium, years ago. A different room, a different woman, fragments I didn't assemble into a picture until it was too late.

After it closed, I went back through everything I could access. Talked to people who didn't want to talk. Sat across a table from a homicide detective I knew from Dominion and asked whether anything warranted a second look.

Accidental death during consensual activity. No evidence of foul play. Case closed.

I tried to find the submissive who left without telling anyone why. She'd scrubbed her presence from every forum and directory connected to the lifestyle. I pulled every thread I could reach.

None of them led anywhere. No one alleged murder. No evidence connected the incidents. I couldn't manufacture a pattern from guilt, no matter how many times I arranged the pieces.

So I chose to come here, sit in the booth and watch instead.

I'm back in it now, the scotch exactly where I left it, when Luc appears at the edge.

"Dinner Sunday?"

"No."

"You don't know where."

"Still no."

"Margot's cooking."

"Especially no."

Luc grins. He's been running this play for years. The grin says he'll run it again next week and the week after that. Luc Pascal has decided that Sebastien Villere will eventually rejoin humanity, and Luc Pascal does not lose arguments he's committed to.

"Nice work with the kid on the bench," he says.

"Your DM had it."

"My DM was five steps behind you."

"Three." He tilts his head, conceding the count but not the point.

Then his eyes cut to the bar. Natalie is pretending she didn't just watch me cross the floor to put a Dom on his back foot without raising my voice.

Luc doesn't say anything about her. He doesn't need to. His face is doing all the work his mouth isn't, and the expression on it is the kind of smug I'll make him pay for later.

"Go away," I tell him.

He goes. Still grinning.

I settle back into the booth. The scotch is warming in my hand, untouched, and the room is rebuilding its rhythm around the space the intervention carved out.

Members who froze during the commotion are moving again. Conversations resume. The system held. Dominion held.

Marion arrives at her usual time. She signals Renata before she signals me. The drink appears without consultation. Our rhythm is familiar enough that the steps don't require discussion.

She collects her glass and crosses to the booth. "You look like you've already had an interesting evening."

"I look exactly the same as I always look."

"That's what makes it interesting." She takes a sip. "The kid on the bench. Word travels fast in here."

"Word shouldn't travel at all. That's the point of how it was handled."

"And yet." Marion sets her glass down with the particular precision of a woman who runs logistics for a living. She brings that precision to everything. "I heard Margot took him to her office. He won't sit comfortably for a week, and she won't have touched him."