Chapter 17 #2
Probably not Gaudet himself. If the pattern holds, if the coached refusals and scrubbed records and gift-wrapped misdirection mean what I think they mean, he'd use someone else. Keep his own hands clean. Let the system do the work.
I turn onto the block where Dominion sits behind its unremarkable facade.
The building gives nothing away from the street, just another converted warehouse among other old commercial buildings repurposed for people with money.
Tall windows, weathered masonry, a recessed entrance easy to miss if you don't know it's there.
I find a spot on the street and kill the engine.
My hands are shaking. The true crime writer has become the material.
I'd find that funny if I could get outside it far enough to laugh.
I'm convinced someone started following me after Cécile failed to show.
The only person I could think to call is a bartender who became my friend while I was using her for access.
The door is open. Renata is there, and she takes one look at my face and steps back to let me through. I walk into Dominion under my own power because that's the only way I walk into anything. The door swings shut behind me with a weight that says nothing follows you in here.
The safest place in New Orleans, and I had to lie to every person in it to work my way inside.
The interior of Dominion before it opens is different from the space I know.
Lights up, furniture being arranged, the ambient intimacy stripped down to logistics.
But the security infrastructure is the same.
The cameras. The discreet checkpoints. The systems that Rapier Strategic built after the crisis that nearly destroyed this place.
Cole appears from the direction of the stairs, and the man in front of me isn't the one I know from the bar.
The easy charm has vanished. The smile with it.
What's in front of me is reading the situation before I've opened my mouth.
Scanning me for injury. Taking apart my posture and breathing for information, all of it happening behind a gaze that's gone clinical.
"What happened?" he says. No greeting. No warmth. The words are an instrument for extracting information.
"I think I was being followed. Dark sedan, tinted windows. It's been on me since the Marigny." I hear myself assembling the report with a clarity that surprises me. The investigator is still functional. Good.
Cole moves past me toward the door. The deadbolt engages under his hand. The sound is small and absolute.
Cole pulls his phone and makes a call that lasts long enough for two sentences. I hear him say "main entrance" and "now" and nothing else. He turns back to me.
"Luc's on his way down. You're going to tell us everything. Starting with why someone would be tailing you."
This is the part I've been dreading since the door closed. Because why someone would be tailing me requires Claire. It requires the investigation. It requires the truth I've been hiding from every person in this building except the one who already pulled it out of me.
His jaw tightens. "Start at the beginning."
It's not a question. It's a summary delivered with the efficiency of a man calculating what my negligence may have cost his people.
"My name really is Natalie Chastain. I didn’t lie about that," I say.
Cole's expression doesn't change. He already knows my name.
"I'm Claire Bergeron's sister. Claire died at Elysium five years ago.
Her death was ruled an accident. I don't believe it was.
I came to Dominion to find out who killed her. "
The words land in the empty lounge and just sit there. Renata, behind me, goes quiet. The particular quiet of a woman recalibrating everything she knows about someone she considered a friend.
Cole's expression shifts. Not anger. Something colder. "You've been running an investigation inside this club. Without telling Margot. Without telling security. And you were concerned enough about a car behind you that you called Renata."
It's not a question. It's a summary delivered with the efficiency of a man calculating how much he doesn't know.
"Yes," I say.
"And she told you to come here."
"Yes," I say. "The man I'm investigating is a current member."
Cole's expression doesn't change. "Who?"
Before I can answer, the stairwell door opens. Luc comes through it at a pace that isn't hurried but isn't casual either.
"Gaudet," he says.
Cole looks at him, then back at me. "All right. Start with the witness."
"Cécile Doucet. Former Elysium submissive. She contacted me this morning and asked to meet at a coffee shop in the Marigny. She said she had more to tell me about Claire's death."
"Did she show?"
"No."
"Did you hear from her again?"
"No. Her phone stopped receiving messages."
"And that's when you noticed the sedan?"
"When I left the coffee shop."
Cole's gaze shifts to Luc.
Luc's face has gone very still. "Cécile Doucet?"
"You know the name?"
"I know enough to want Remy down here."
That gets my attention.
Cole is already reaching for his phone. "What else?"
"Someone has been interfering with my investigation for weeks. Sources backing out. Elysium records disappearing. Someone sent me financial records trying to point me toward Tomas Hébert. Vivienne received a warning after she talked to me."
"And you think Gaudet is behind it."
"I think someone is trying to dismantle my case. Gaudet is where the evidence is pointing. I don't know yet if those are the same person."
Luc's gaze meets mine.
"That's what we're going to find out."
Cole's attention snaps to Luc. Mine follows.
Sebastien told me last night that Luc had been pulling Elysium's booking records.
Hearing it described in a private room during the worst conversation of my life is one thing.
Watching Luc say the name out loud in the Dominion lounge with the same flat certainty Cole uses is another.
"How long?" Cole asks. The question isn't directed at me.
Luc glances at him. "Weeks. Sebastien brought Rapier in after he put it together."
Hearing it confirmed strips away the last insulation between what Sebastien told me and what it means. He withheld the truth from me while simultaneously building the case alongside Remy and Luc. He lied to my face and worked behind my back, and both of those things were pointed at the same target.
Both things are true. Neither one resolves the other.
"Where is Sebastien?" The question surprises me. I'm not sure I want the answer.
"Upstairs," Luc says. "He's been here since this morning."
Since this morning. When we separated last night, he had the collar in his hand and a look on his face that I'll carry for a long time.
He's one floor above me. I can feel it. The same pull I felt from his booth on the main floor.
Gravitational, indifferent to context or betrayal or the fact that I'm furious enough to break something.
My skin remembers his hands. My throat remembers his collar.
The rest of me remembers that he mostly knew who I was while I was giving him everything I thought he needed to know.
Fury and want, coexisting without resolution.
"I don't want to see him right now."
Luc nods once and doesn't push.
Margot arrives through the mezzanine staircase.
She descends as she does everything at Dominion: measured, deliberate, controlled.
She takes in the tableau. Me, standing in the empty lounge in street clothes, still trembling.
Cole at the entrance. Luc beside me. Renata behind the bar with an expression I've never seen on her face.
Margot doesn't ask what happened. Her gaze goes to Luc. Luc gives her the short version. Margot's face doesn't change. When he finishes, she turns to me.
"How long have you been conducting this investigation inside my club?"
"Since my first night."
The silence that follows is worse than anger. Margot Pascal guided Dominion from scandal and near-ruin. She created the security, the protocols, the culture that makes this place the safest space most of its members will ever enter.
And I walked through her door carrying a predator's attention without telling her it was following me in.
"I understand why you're angry," I say.
"You don't." Her voice is low. "But we'll deal with that later. Right now someone tailed one of my members to my club, and that's a problem we can solve."
Luc turns to Cole. "I want the vehicle identified within the hour. Pull the exterior cameras."
Cole moves. Luc moves. Remy appears from somewhere I didn't see him arrive, already on his phone. Renata moves. The competence is immediate, coordinated, and stripped of every ounce of social performance.
Dominion's community operates at a frequency I've only glimpsed in passing: Luc's clipped nods to Cole, the coordinated awareness I caught between them on the main floor. I'm seeing the infrastructure I suspected but never confirmed.
Dominion holds. The sanctuary I didn't know I was counting on is doing exactly what it was built to do.
Remy steers me to a table near the back of the lounge. His hand on my shoulder is brief, firm, and doesn't ask permission. Luc sits across from me. Renata crosses from behind the bar with a Negroni nobody asked for and presses it into my hand before heading back.
They debrief me the way I imagine they debrief anyone who brings a problem through Rapier's door.
Remy asks the questions. Luc listens. The division is practiced and efficient.
Remy's voice is calm enough to pull information from someone running on adrenaline.
Luc builds the operational picture from what I give him.
I give them everything. Vivienne's account. Cécile's clue. The counter-investigation. The erased records. The misdirection toward Tomas. Years of case files compressed into the most efficient summary I've ever delivered.
Remy leans back when I finish. He exchanges a look with Luc that carries an entire conversation in two seconds. Then he turns back to me.