Dominion’s Guard (Velvet Dominion #2)

Prologue

RENATA

New Orleans, Louisiana

Three Years Ago

The alarm panel glows green. The code I bought from the cleaning crew is still good, and the Garden District mansion opens for me like it's been waiting.

I know the route from the service entrance to the study by heart.

I've walked it in my head so many times since I first cased the property that my feet could find it without the rest of me.

The owner, a real estate developer named Picard, left for Hong Kong yesterday.

His wife went to their place in Destin earlier in the week. The housekeeper has Wednesdays off.

It's Wednesday.

My gloves are lambskin, thin enough to feel the grain of the doorframe as I slip inside.

The leather warms against my fingertips like a second skin, and every nerve ending sharpens the way it always does when a job goes live.

The pulse at the base of my throat ticks steady and slow.

My breathing drops into the shallow rhythm that keeps my rib cage still, my footfall silent, my whole body running on nothing but input, output and control.

The house smells like money in the way only old New Orleans money can, all beeswax polish on antique wood and hothouse flowers arranged in crystal vases that probably cost more than my mother's medical bills.

A faint undertone of cedar drifts from the built-in shelving that lines the hallway like a library in a movie about people who never worry about anything.

The study is on the second floor, a left at the top of the stairs and the third door on the right.

Each step is placed with the kind of precision you only develop by spending years making sure the wrong floorboard doesn't end your freedom.

My sneakers are soft-soled, worn enough that they don't squeak on the hardwood.

My thighs absorb each stair, muscles coiled, weight distributed to the outer edges where the boards don't flex.

My bag is canvas, packed flat against my spine and still empty.

The safe is behind a painting. Of course it is. Rich people are predictable in ways that keep me employed.

I find the frame, lift it off its hook, and there's the Hartwell 3200, a six-digit combination lock in an old model that was discontinued years ago.

I could crack it with a stethoscope and some patience, but I don't need to.

The combination is written on a Post-it note in the kitchen junk drawer, and I found it when I came through pretending to make a florist delivery.

His wife's birthday, because rich people never learn.

The safe opens with a satisfying click and inside is exactly what my buyer described.

The wife keeps a jewelry collection here, separate from the main vault at their bank.

These are the pieces she wears to galas and fundraisers, the kind of diamonds and emeralds that would pay off every bill my mother accumulated before the cancer won, before the house went, before everything went.

My hands are steady as I reach for the first velvet box.

They're always steady. That's what makes me good at this.

I've been slipping through other people's homes, other people's security, other people's certainty that their walls will hold since I was sixteen years old, and the only thing that still gets me high is the geometry of it.

The planning and the execution pull me in, along with the clean line between entrance and exit and the way my body knows exactly where it is in space, how much room I have, how fast I can move if everything goes sideways.

I open the box, and the sapphire necklace inside has a teardrop pendant in a platinum setting that will make my buyer weep.

The light comes on.

Every muscle locks at once, from my legs to my lungs to the hand still holding the velvet box. Adrenaline floods so fast my vision whites at the edges and the sweat on my lower back goes cold. Every job I've ever pulled screams a single word.

Run.

But the woman standing in the doorway of the study doesn't look like security.

She's tall, dark-haired, dressed in tailored black pants and a silk blouse like she just came from a business dinner.

Her heels are Italian, custom-soled, and she's leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed, watching me with an expression that isn't fear or anger.

It's assessment, the kind you'd give a piece of real estate you're deciding whether to flip or demolish.

"That's a Hartwell 3200," she says. "You cracked it in under a minute."

My mouth opens, but nothing useful comes out. I'm still holding the sapphire necklace, still standing in front of someone else's open safe with my pulse pounding so hard I can feel it in my teeth.

"The combination," I manage. "Post-it note in the kitchen drawer."

Something shifts in her expression into what is almost a smile. "His wife's birthday."

"Rich people always make it easy." The words come out before my brain can stop them, because apparently my survival instincts have decided that sarcasm is the appropriate response to getting caught mid-burglary by a woman who looks like she could buy and sell everyone in this zip code.

She doesn't flinch. She doesn't call the cops. She just watches me with those cool, measuring eyes.

"Picard is in Hong Kong. You got that part right.

" She uncrosses her arms and takes a step into the study, but she moves toward the armchair near the window instead of toward me.

She sits down like she has all the time in the world.

"But he's one of my business associates, and his security system sends alerts to my phone when he travels.

I was in the neighborhood when you tripped the motion sensor on the second floor. "

The blood drains from my face so fast my ears start ringing.

Everything I researched, every detail I verified, every pattern I mapped, and I missed the one connection that mattered.

The owner is exactly where I expected him to be.

The house is exactly what I planned for.

But the woman sitting in the armchair has the kind of connections that make my carefully cased job a catastrophic mistake.

The sweat between my shoulder blades turns cold, and the sapphire necklace sits in my palm like an accusation.

"I can hear you calculating your options.

" Her voice is calm, almost conversational.

"The service entrance is still unlocked.

You could probably make it out at a full run before I reached my phone.

I'm in heels, so I wouldn't chase you. But I already have your face on multiple cameras, and I have friends at NOPD who would find you before sunrise. "

I put the necklace back in the safe. I close the box first, and I don't know why that matters, but it does.

"Or," she says.

The word hangs between us. She lets it sit there, watching me the way someone watches a chess game they're already winning.

"Go ahead." I cross my arms, mirroring her posture even though my lungs are burning and every instinct I have is screaming at me to bolt. "I love a good sales pitch."

Her eyebrow rises by just a fraction. "You're mouthing off to the woman who's deciding whether to call the police."

"You haven't called them yet. Which means you want something, and you're hoping I'm smart enough to take the deal instead of making you do paperwork." I lean my hip against the desk because if my knees are going to shake, she doesn't get to see it. "So what's the offer?"

The almost-smile becomes a real one, small and controlled but real. "My name is Margot Pascal. I own a private club in the Warehouse District. I need a bartender."

She wants me to be a bartender.

I just got caught with my hand in a safe and she's offering me a job slinging drinks. The laugh that escapes is sharp and too loud in the quiet study, and I hate myself for it because it sounds like relief.

"A bartender," I repeat. "You catch a thief red-handed and your first thought is to put her behind a bar where she can steal from you at the point of sale."

"You won't steal from me." She says it like it's already settled, like she already knows how this ends and she's just waiting for me to catch up. "You're, what, twenty-four? Twenty-five?"

"Twenty-five."

"Twenty-five years old with a skill set that's going to land you in Orleans Parish Prison before you turn thirty. How much do you owe?"

The question lands like a gut punch because she's not asking about tonight. She's asking about the reason I'm standing in a stranger's study at eleven o'clock on a Wednesday, wearing lambskin gloves and a canvas bag.

"Enough," I say.

Her gaze drops to my hands, to the gloves and the calluses visible at my wrists where the leather ends.

Then her eyes travel back to my face, and I can feel her putting it together the way a doctor reads symptoms. I'm young and skilled and alone in a rich woman's house on a Wednesday night.

I'm not desperate enough to be sloppy, but I'm desperate enough to be here.

"Someone's medical bills," she says. "Parent, probably. You're too young for it to be a spouse, and you wouldn't be this careful if you were stealing for a habit."

The accuracy of it hits like a hand through my ribs, closing around something I keep locked away. The flinch gives her the rest.

"Mother," she says quietly. The word lands like a certainty, not a question.

"Are we done with the cold reading, or should I take my shoes off so you can check my soles for character flaws?"

"Here's what I'm offering." She stands from the armchair. "You stop stealing. You work at my club until the debt is settled."

"And learn a legitimate trade and stay out of prison and stop burning my life down?" I fill in the rest for her because the shape of the pitch is obvious. "I've seen this movie. The part where the pretty criminal gets saved by the rich lady with a heart of gold."

"I don't have a heart of gold." Her voice drops the conversational warmth and what's underneath is granite. "I have a business that requires loyalty and staff who understand that trust isn't negotiable. You have skills I can redirect. This isn't charity. It's an investment."

The word lands differently than I expect. She's not saving me; she's investing, and the distinction matters because it means she sees raw material where everyone else would see a write-off.

"And if I say no?"

"Then you run for the service entrance and I call my friends at NOPD." She straightens, smoothing the front of her blouse with one hand. "But you won't say no."

"You don't know me well enough to predict what I'll do."

"I know you put the necklace back before I asked you to. And you closed the box." She holds my gaze. "A real thief would have pocketed it while we were talking. You wanted to, but you didn't. That tells me more about you than a background check."

I want to tell her she's wrong, that I'm exactly the criminal she caught tonight and that her read on me is sentimental bullshit and that I don't need saving.

But the argument dies somewhere between my brain and my tongue, because she's right about all of it.

She's right about the exhaustion I've been ignoring for the past year, the close calls that keep getting closer, and the feeling that the walls are tightening every time I slip through them.

My mother is dead. The debt is still alive.

And the only skill I have is one that's going to destroy me if I keep using it.

My body knows it before my brain catches up. The tension in my shoulders drops a fraction. My jaw unclenches. The fight-or-flight that's been screaming since the light came on quiets to a low hum, and what replaces it sits heavy in my chest, warm and terrifying.

I pull off the gloves. I fold them once and hold them in my fist.

"When do I start?" I ask.

Margot Pascal extends her hand and a business card. Her grip is firm, dry, the handshake of someone who has never had to ask twice. "Monday. Don't be late."

"I'm never late." I shake her hand. "I'm occasionally unauthorized, but never late."

The corner of her mouth twitches. She lets go of my hand, steps aside, and gestures toward the door.

I walk out of that house carrying nothing except a promise I make in the silence of my own chest, not to her but to myself: I will never break into another building again. I will honor the deal I made with Margot Pascal the same way I honored the debt my mother owed.

The night air hits me on the porch and I stand there, my body still humming with the ghost of adrenaline, the folded gloves balled tight in my fist. The life I've been living is behind me.

Ahead of me there's a club I've never seen, a debt I'm going to pay the hard way, and the first person in years who looked at me and saw something worth keeping.