Page 19 of Redline Communion

“Cassian wants more than notes,” he says. “Photos. Video, where you can get it. He needs to see what he’s dealing with — her, Ash, the girl.” A pause. “Talia.”

“You want me to film her.”

“I want you to do the job you agreed to.”

“I agreed to keep her safe.”

“You agreed to report on her.”

His voice doesn’t rise. It never does. That’s the whole trick of him: he doesn’t need volume when he has decades of being obeyed sitting under every sentence.

“Those were never two different jobs, Rafael. You just liked believing they were.”

Something in my chest goes tight and mean. I make myself sit still with it instead of doing anything a camera in this room might catch and use later.

“And if I say no?”

“Then somebody else does it. Somebody who won’t be careful with her the way you would.” He lets that sit. “I’d have thought you’d want it to be you.”

That’s the part that gets me. Not the threat, because a threat I can hate clean; it’s that he says it like he’s doing me a favor, and some old, stupid part of me almost believes him before I catch it.

I don’t answer right away. Dominic lets the silence stretch because he already knows which way it’s going to break, and the worst of it is that he’s right about the part I can’t argue with. If somebody is going to point a camera at her, I would rather it be somebody who knows which doors not to open.

So I bargain, because bargaining is the only thing I’m still allowed to do.

“Not her apartment,” I say. “Nothing behind a closed door. Nothing from inside her room.”

“Nothing she wouldn’t do in front of the house.” Dominic considers it as though he’s the one being generous. “Agreed.”

It isn’t a win. It’s the price of keeping the camera in my hands instead of somebody else’s.

“Fine.”

The word tastes wrong, too close to agreement and not close enough to refusal, and I already know I’m going to hate myself for how easily Dominic can make compromise sound like protection. It’s too late to take it back.

“Good.”

He goes back to his monitor like the conversation has already been filed and forgotten, which for him it probably has. Then, almost as an afterthought, he says, “Nico’s coming back.”

I go still.

“Coming back where?”

“Here. Marazul. Next month.”

“Why.”

“Because I asked him to.” Dominic looks at me again, and there’s something in his face I don’t get shown often. Not pride exactly. Not just calculation either. “He wants to see how the preparation’s coming along. Before the Offering. Before anything gets decided that can’t be undecided.”

“Preparation for what.”

“You know for what.”

I do, and I hate that I do.

“He’s not part of this,” I say. “He’s not even here.”

“He’s family. Family gets a say in outcomes that touch the whole branch, whether they’ve been around for the buildup or not.” Dominic says it like scripture, like something he has recited before to somebody else a long time ago. “Nico’s opinion carries weight in this house. More than yours does right now, given how thin your reporting’s been.”