Page 97 of Dominion’s Collar

"We won't," Ezra says.

The room begins to clear. Sophie to compile her social connections into a format Natalie can reference during the interview. Cole and Ezra move toward the stairs already talking logistics.

Cole pauses. "Shell company. Want to bet it leads to another shell company?"

"I don't take sucker bets," Ezra says, eyes on his screen. "I take them apart."

Luc pauses at the door. "You good?"

The question is directed at me. Luc has watched me navigate damage before. He's checking whether this version requires intervention.

"I'm working," I say.

He nods. It's enough.

Natalie gathers a stack of files and heads downstairs to work on the interview details. Remy follows her out, already on the phone coordinating logistics.

The room empties until it's just me and the timeline Natalie pinned to the wall. Her handwriting. Her evidence. Her case. Years of work displayed in index cards and printed documents and pins connecting names I should have connected myself.

My thumb finds the inside of my left wrist. The pulse there is steady. The steadiness is a lie my body tells my brain, and I let it.

That's what I can give her now. Not an apology. Not the collar. Not the dynamic we built and I corrupted with silence.

The work. Every observation I've collected across years of watching a man I didn't know I was watching.

I was in the room. I missed it.

I pull a chair to the table and open the file Natalie left for me. What I'm putting together will tell her exactly how far she can push before Gaudet stops being warm.

But a man who has given every system nothing to find for years didn't do it by being careless. He reads rooms. He adapts. The plan assumes he won't see it coming.

I'm not sure that assumption is correct.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Natalie

The property Gaudet chose is a converted sugar warehouse on Tchoupitoulas, three blocks from the river. The renovation turned it into a rental event space with exposed brick and industrial beams and floor-to-ceiling windows that let in enough light to make the whole place feel transparent. Honest. Nothing to hide.

I pull in where Cole told me to park. The earpiece is so small I can't feel it. The transmitter sits against my left side, taped flat below my bra line, warm from my skin.

The second device is somewhere else entirely, and Ezra told me not to think about it. "If you don't know exactly where it is, you won't touch it. If you don't touch it, neither will he."

Good advice from a man whose idea of casual conversation involves encryption protocols.

"Audio's live," Luc says in my ear. "We have you."

Across the street, a van that belongs to a catering company that doesn't exist holds Luc, Ezra, and enough recording equipment to capture a hummingbird's heartbeat.

Cole is inside the building already, dressed like a property manager finishing a walk-through. He'll clear out before Gaudet arrives, but he's mapped every door, every window, every exit in the blueprints and confirmed them against the physical space.

Sebastien is in the van. Remy told me, and Sebastien wouldn't be anywhere else. He's there to read Gaudet's behavior through the audio feed, to identify the moment warmth becomes something else, to advise on how far I can push.

He's across the street and might as well be across the country. That's my doing, not his. I'm not ready to close the distance. The fact that my pulse kicked when Remy said his name is a problem I'm filing under "deal with after I survive today."

My throat is bare. I never wore the collar outside Dominion, but the absence doesn't care about that distinction. The phantom pressure registers with every swallow.

The collar is wherever Sebastien put it after I placed it in his hand. He doesn't discard things. He files them. Holds them. Waits.