Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Natalie
Each visit gets easier, and the ease is its own kind of warning. The door still has the same deliberate weight, the same resistance that makes you commit before it opens. The hallway still smells like cedar and bourbon and that floral note I can't identify.
My body has stopped bracing and started settling into the rhythm of a place it has no business getting comfortable in.
Comfort is a liability. Comfort is what happened to Claire.
I push the thought into the compartment where it lives, next to the pendant that isn't on my throat and the case files that brought me through this door.
I enter the club anyway.
Dominion is quieter tonight than my first visit.
A weeknight crowd, a few dozen members scattered across the main floor in clusters that read as intimate rather than performative.
The scening areas are occupied but not crowded.
The energy is steadier, more focused, the kind of night where the regulars come to be themselves rather than to be seen.
I find my stool at the bar. My stool. Three visits and I already have a stool. The investigator in me logs that under variables I need to manage.
"Negroni?" Renata is already reaching for the gin before I've fully sat down.
"You're going to stop asking and just pour one day," I tell her.
"Give it two more weeks." She builds the drink with the exactness I've come to expect, the orange peel curled with the careless skill of a woman who could do this blindfolded. "Weeknight's a different crowd. The people who come midweek don't need an audience."
"I noticed."
"You notice everything." She slides the drink across with a look that's equal parts warmth and assessment. "Writers. You're all the same. Sitting in corners, watching people live their lives."
"That's not what I do."
"Sure it is. You just write it down later instead of during." Her smile changes her whole face. "What's the book about, specifically? You said trust and power in closed communities. That's a big net."
"I'm narrowing it." The cover story has a second layer now. "I'm interested in how private clubs build internal accountability. What happens when the systems work and when they don't."
Renata's hands slow on the glass she's polishing. "When they don't. You're talking about when things go wrong."
"Both sides. But yes."
She studies me for a beat, then seems to make a decision. "Dominion handles it better than most. Margot built this place to be what other places weren't."
She nods toward the floor. "You see those two near the suspension rig? They broke up three months ago. Still book the same Friday scene slot because neither one will surrender the time."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It's spectacular." Renata reaches for a bottle.
"And if Ezra ever tells you he designed that suspension rig, he's lying.
He held the flashlight." She pours someone's order without looking at the glass.
"Oh, and don't ask the French woman about the Frenchman unless you have forty minutes and a fire extinguisher. "
"Which French woman?"
"You'll know when you meet her."
The gossip is warm, specific, and has nothing to do with my investigation.
That's what makes it valuable. These are people with petty rivalries, inside jokes, relationships that existed before I walked through the door.
Dominion has folklore. Harder to fake than protocols, and it makes me like this place in a way I can't afford to.
Tomas Hébert is in the same spot he occupied on my first visit. Same posture, same full glass, same tension running through him like a wire pulled too tight. Whatever he's bracing for hasn't arrived yet.
I've been building toward this conversation for three visits. He's a former Elysium member, one of those who migrated to Dominion.
His tension reads like a man carrying something he'd rather put down. Tonight I make my approach.
The opening is easy enough. I take a seat at his table with a smile and my cover intact. I ask about the community, about how Dominion compares to other clubs, about the culture of a place where the same people scene together regularly.
Tomas gives me surface answers. Polite, guarded, the responses of a man who's been asked questions before and knows how to give answers that satisfy without revealing.
I push a little further. Clubs that have closed. Communities that dispersed. The particular grief of losing a space where you felt safe.
Something in his posture shifts. He's listening differently now, his glass forgotten but his fingers tighter around it. I'm getting close to real ground.
Then I ask about a submissive who was injured during a scene at Elysium, an incident the safety committee reviewed and handled internally rather than reporting. Claire had written about it in an email to a friend months before she died, concerned about why the club was keeping it quiet.
The detail is so familiar I don't hear how specific it sounds until Tomas's expression changes.
His eyes go flat. "Where did you hear that?"
The air between us changes temperature. I keep my voice steady. "An interview I did months ago with a former member. She mentioned it in passing."
"Who?"
"She asked me not to say."
Tomas looks at me for a long moment. The guarded politeness is gone. What's replaced it is older and colder.
"I don't know what you think you're doing." His voice is low enough that the bar noise covers it. "But you need to watch yourself."
He stands. He picks up the drink he never touched and walks away without looking back.
The table is suddenly very empty. I take a sip of my drink and replay the exchange, searching for the fracture line.
The injured submissive. The internal review. Claire had written about both in an email months before she died, and I used the details without translating them into language a researcher would have. I was too specific. I knew too much, and now Tomas knows I know too much.
The worst part isn't that I spooked him. The worst part is that his reaction confirmed the detail was real. An injured submissive and a review that went nowhere, and the mention of it is still enough to shut a man down years later.
I pull my phone from my clutch under the bar edge. Texts from friends I'll answer later. Nothing from Cécile.
I try calling. The automated voice tells me the number is no longer in service.
I open my email and send a message to the address I've been using for months. It bounces back within seconds. Delivery failed. Address not found.
Not "mailbox full." Not "temporarily unavailable." The address doesn't exist anymore.
I put the phone away. My hands are steady.
The Negroni is sweating on its napkin and the bar noise continues around me as though nothing has changed. Everything has changed.
I've barely settled back onto my stool when a voice arrives behind me.
"Ms. Chastain."
I turn and find Margot Pascal close enough for privacy, far enough to avoid cornering.
Fitted black dress, neckline that settles at authority rather than seduction. The posture of an owner standing in the center of what she built.
"Ms. Pascal."
"Margot." The correction is offered without warmth, clipped and final. "Walk with me?"
It's phrased as a question. We both know it isn't one.
I follow her through the lounge area toward a hallway I haven't accessed before. She stops beside a door and gestures me through.
The room beyond is a small sitting area designed for this kind of conversation. Two chairs, a side table, no desk. Intimate but not comfortable.
"I'll be direct," Margot says, settling into the far chair. "You're a true crime author. I knew that when your application crossed my desk."
The ground beneath my cover story shifts by a degree I can feel in my spine.
"The enhanced NDA and the access restrictions make more sense now," I say.
"They were always going to." She crosses one leg over the other. "Your published work is thorough. Your public profile suggests a writer who doesn't sensationalize. Those are the reasons you're sitting in my club instead of reading a rejection letter."
"And the reasons I'm sitting here right now?"
"Expectations." The single word fills the space between us. "You're free to write about your own experience. Anything that identifies another member, reveals club operations, or breaches the NDA is actionable. My attorneys will enjoy that work. These are facts, not threats. I don't make threats."
I believe her. She has contracts, conviction, and the authority of a woman who built something worth protecting and knows exactly what it costs to keep it standing.
"Understood."
"Good." Margot stands in a single fluid motion. At the door, she pauses. "Renata speaks highly of you. Her judgment matters to me. Don't make her regret the endorsement."
The door closes behind her. I sit in the quiet for a count of ten, recalibrating.
Margot isn't someone I can work around. She's someone I have to work through, and that requires earning something I haven't earned yet. Trust, or at least the version of it that opens doors.
I return to the bar and my waiting Negroni. Renata gives me a look that says she knows exactly where I've been. She doesn't ask.
He is at the bar.
The last time I was this close to him, he said two words that cut through every protocol I'd rehearsed. 'Excuse me,' delivered in a voice that didn't ask. The compliance had been instant, unscripted, and the memory has been taking up more space than I can afford.
He's in dark jeans and a black shirt tonight, sleeves rolled to the forearm. His physicality registers differently at this distance. Broader. More deliberate. The stillness that read as watchfulness from across the floor sharpens into confrontation up close.
Renata tilts her head toward him without subtlety. "Natalie, this is Sebastien. Sebastien, Natalie. She's a writer. He runs Villere Holdings and pretends that isn't interesting."
Sebastien gives her a look.
"What?" Renata says. "She was going to ask eventually."
"Was I?"