Chapter 13 #3
The question I don't ask: how does he know I've been asking specific people?
He watches the room from this booth. He'd notice who I talk to.
But 'specific questions about a specific time' is sharper than observation from a distance.
He's either paying closer attention than I realized, or he's been asking questions of his own.
"Everything that happened at Elysium shaped what came after," I say. "That's worth examining."
"That's the third time you've given me a version of that answer." His eyes don't waver. "It gets less convincing each time."
The observation cuts close enough to sting. He's not accusing. He's letting me know he's noticed a pattern, and Sebastien noticing a pattern is the most dangerous thing that can happen in this building.
"Maybe I should workshop new material," I say. "You're a tough audience."
"I'm a thorough one."
The words land with surgical precision. His eyes stay on mine, and the heat behind them has nothing to do with Elysium. It has everything to do with what happened on the St. Andrew's Cross.
I hold his gaze. He holds mine. The booth is a closed circuit, two people watching each other watch each other. The thing neither of us says takes up more space than anything we've spoken aloud.
He knows I'm looking for something specific. I know Vivienne landed. He knows I caught the freeze. I know he knows I caught it.
Neither of us speaks. Neither of us looks away.
Across the room, Gaudet is talking to a newer submissive near the lounge entrance. His posture is open, attentive, the same genuine warmth I've watched him deploy for months. He laughs at something the woman says, and the laugh carries across the floor.
He glances in our direction. The glance is brief, natural, the kind of sweep a social person makes across a room they consider theirs.
His gaze moves from me to Sebastien and back to me.
He registers the charge between us, two people in a booth saying more without words than we've managed with them.
Gaudet's expression doesn't change. His warmth doesn't falter. He turns back to the submissive beside him and continues the conversation as if nothing happened.
But something when he looked at us was different. Aware. The subtle recalibration of a man who's spent years watching people and has just noticed a new variable.
I feel the shift like a barometric pressure change. Nothing visible. Just the knowledge that the atmosphere is different, and what comes next will be shaped by it.
"She told me about the woman who died there. She called her Claire," I say to Sebastien, because the investigation doesn't survive the luxury of waiting. "About what Claire was doing at Elysium before she died."
His chin drops a fraction. "And what was Claire doing?"
"Trying to protect someone. A submissive who was in trouble. Vivienne said Claire started asking questions."
He goes still again, more completely this time. His jaw sets. His expression closes. Whatever he's holding back takes visible effort to contain.
"That sounds like something a concerned woman might do," he says quietly.
The words are careful. Too careful. He locked down before he said them, and a man who doesn't know Claire doesn't lock down at the sound of her name. The answer is crafted to sound general. His body already told me it was personal.
Everyone at Elysium knew a member named Claire had died. Public knowledge.
But Sebastien isn't recalling a death. He's recalling a person. How she carried herself. What she was like.
"You didn't just know her name," I say. "You knew her."
"I remember a lot of people from Elysium."
"You remember Claire specifically."
The scotch glass sits between us untouched. He drank from it earlier, when I dropped Vivienne's name. The deliberate return to not drinking tells me the conversation has reached a wall he won't let me past.
"Yes," he says. "I remember the name of the woman who died, but I didn’t know her specifically."
The admission hangs in the heavy air of the booth. Around us, the club continues. Renata pours drinks. Music plays low. Laughter drifts from the lounge. The world keeps moving while something between Sebastien and me goes quiet and dangerous.
I finish my Negroni. I don't push. The thread I've been pulling has given me more today than the previous weeks combined. The next piece comes from patience, not pressure.
"I should go," I say, turning away from him and lifting my hair.
He removes and pockets the collar. "Lock your doors."
The instruction is the same one he gives every time I leave. Tonight it sounds different. Tonight it sounds like a man who's measured the distance between his doors and mine and has reasons for wanting those doors secured.
I walk across the floor. Renata catches my eye from behind the bar and lifts her chin.
The gesture is small, easy, the shorthand of a friendship that's becoming real enough to complicate the reasons I'm here.
Back in my street clothes I stop at the entrance and glance back. Habit, mostly. The room is the same sprawl of leather and low light it always is.
Gaudet is standing near the lounge. He's watching me leave. His expression carries the same easy warmth it always does. The smile reaches his eyes. Everything about his posture wishes everyone well on their way out.
He's just watching longer than usual. And the warmth, for the first time, doesn't reach all the way across the distance between us.
Parked at the curb, I check the mirrors before pulling out. The habit is automatic now. I check the seatbelt, the headlights, and the rearview mirror for reasons that have nothing to do with traffic.
The man in the booth remembers my sister by name. The man near the lounge has started paying a different kind of attention.
‘Be careful.’ Vivienne told Claire the same thing. It didn't stop Claire, and it won't stop me. The advantage I have over Claire is I know how the first version of this story ended. I intend to write a different one.