Chapter 19
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.
I adjust my rearview mirror and check my face. Professional. Composed. A true-crime author arriving for a private research interview, nothing more.
The woman in the mirror looks like someone who does this for a living. She also looks like someone who hasn't slept a full night since she stopped wearing another man's leather around her throat.
Both things are true.
I gather my bag, my recorder, and my notebook.
The recorder is real and visible and part of my cover.
The notebook has prepared questions arranged in a careful sequence.
Historical context first. The specific inaccuracy last. The one that will either confirm five years of work or blow the interview entirely.
Rapier has people hidden throughout the building and across the street.
The risk is controlled. The stakes aren't.
Claire's photograph is in my wallet. I slipped it in this morning. Superstition dressed as sentiment. My sister's face, younger than I am now, watching me walk into the building where the man I believe killed her has agreed to help with my research.
The lobby is bright, freshly painted over old wood.
The event space is on the second floor, and the stairs are wide and newly finished.
My heels echo against the treads. Each step is a sentence in an argument I've been building since Claire died, and the closing statement is waiting for me at the top.
Gaudet is already seated when I enter. He chose a table near the windows, where the light falls across his shoulders and makes him look approachable. Warm. Like a man with nothing to hide and all the time in the world to be helpful.
He stands when he sees me. The smile is genuine. That's the part that makes my stomach turn, and I smile back because this is what I do.
I interview people. I build rapport. I ask questions designed to make subjects comfortable enough to say things they didn't plan to say.
The fact that I want to break his jaw with my recorder is professionally irrelevant.
"Natalie." He offers his hand. "Thank you for reaching out. I've been hoping someone would take a serious look at Elysium's history."
"Prosper." The handshake is firm, dry. Decades of making people trust him in a single grip. "I appreciate you making the time. This chapter of the book has been the hardest to research."
"I imagine so." He gestures to the chair across from him. "Difficult history deserves careful attention."
I sit. Set up my recorder. Open my notebook to the first page of questions. The choreography is familiar. I've done this with dozens of sources across multiple books.
None of them murdered my sister.
None of them were this good at seeming harmless, either, which is saying something because I once interviewed a serial killer.
"I'd like to start with the community structure," I say. "How Elysium handled member safety."
Gaudet settles into his chair. He's comfortable here. This building wasn't a random suggestion. Everything about the offer was designed to look generous: the location, the flexibility, the willingness to accommodate.
What he actually did was select terrain he knows.
But Rapier surveyed it. A contact in the planning department gave them access to the blueprints. Cole walked every inch. Ezra checked the blueprints against the physical layout. Luc confirmed the exits. We accounted for what we could see. That should be enough.
"Elysium's safety protocols were progressive for their time," Gaudet says. He leans back in his chair. Relaxed. Open. He looks like he believes every word. "We had a mediation committee, incident reporting, regular reviews. I served on the committee for years."
"In what capacity?"
"Member support and incident mediation. When conflicts arose between members, or when someone had a concern about a scene or a partner, I was one of the people they came to." He pauses. The pause is calibrated. "I took that responsibility seriously. Still do."
"Can you walk me through how the booking system worked? For the private rooms?"
"Of course." He leans forward, helpful. "Members reserved rooms through a scheduling queue. Committee members with mediation roles had read access to the bookings, so we could coordinate around scheduled sessions if a conflict needed addressing. Standard administrative infrastructure."
I keep writing even though everything he's telling me matches Luc's research. The notebook is a prop. The recording is running. And in my ear, Luc says nothing, which means I'm on track.
We talk for a while. Gaudet is generous with detail, walking me through Elysium's governance and community dynamics. He talks about the people who built it with genuine fondness.
The fondness is real. That's the thing nobody wants to believe about predators. The man I believe killed Claire also loved the community that trusted him. Those two things coexist inside the same person.
If I think about that too hard right now, I'll lose the composure I need to finish this interview without vomiting on his shoes.
The conversation shifts toward the incident. Claire's death. Framed as one of several historical events I'm covering, not the centerpiece of my book. Gaudet's expression goes appropriately somber.
"That was the worst night of my life at Elysium," he says. "A young woman dead in circumstances none of us fully understood. It shattered the community."
"The official conclusion was accidental death during a scene," I say. "Restriction-related."
"Yes." He nods. "Claire went to étienne Comeaux's room for a scheduled session.
The equipment involved was consistent with their established dynamic.
" He pauses. "étienne was still in the Doms' changing room when it happened.
He left with another Dom. They walked upstairs together.
When étienne opened the door to his own room, Claire was already dead.
The other man was standing right behind him. "
"So étienne never touched her."
"No. His alibi was absolute. Two people saw him enter the room for the first time and find her."
"Then what happened?"
"Panic," Gaudet says. "étienne was devastated.
The safety committee arrived within minutes.
I was one of the first. We secured the room and tried to preserve the scene while protecting everyone's privacy.
" He spreads his hands. "The equipment was étienne's.
The room was étienne's. The booking was in his name.
Everything pointed to a scene that went wrong, despite the fact that étienne hadn't been there to conduct it. "
"And the police?"
"We called them immediately. They examined the room, spoke to étienne, spoke to the committee." He pauses. "They agreed with our assessment. Accidental death during a consensual activity. No fault attributed to anyone. The case was closed within weeks."
"And the committee's own review?"
"I drafted the incident review myself," he says. "The evidence was consistent with a restriction scene that exceeded safe parameters. Self-inflicted, or a session that began before the scheduled Dom arrived."
I hear it now. The careful arrangement. Facts assembled into a narrative by the one man who knew the real sequence because he'd created it. Gaudet didn't lie to the committee. He selected which truths to emphasize and let the room's staging do the rest.
"Can you tell me more about the staging? What the room looked like?"
"I saw what everyone saw. Claire in étienne's restraints, in étienne's room, after what appeared to be a restriction scene that went wrong."
This is where I push.
I flip to a new page in my notebook. The gesture is casual. The question isn't.
Luc spent days reconstructing the staging from the incident report before I walked in here.
The report described the final state of the room.
Luc reverse-engineered the sequence from the physical evidence, the anchor points, the equipment specifications.
He gave me the real version. I built the wrong one.