Page 59 of Dominion's Guard
The corner of his mouth tightens, and the tension in it belongs to a man who watched me sell a scene with Arnold Voss from across a crowded room and has been holding the memory of it ever since. He doesn't take the bait. He checks his phone, pockets it, and looks at me with the focused calm that makes his interrogation room the most dangerous space in the building.
"Car's out front. I drop you at the club at quarter to eight. I go in through the service entrance after you're on the floor. And Renata." He waits until my eyes are on his. "Everything you say tonight, I hear. Keep that in mind."
The sentence is operational. The way he delivers it is not. The pause before my name, the weight oneverything, the steadiness of his gaze: he's telling me the wire is a tether and the tether runs directly to him, and the possessiveness in that arrangement would have sent me running six weeks ago. Now it lands somewhere warm and low where the fear can't reach it.
"Wouldn't want you to get bored up there," I say. "I'll try to keep it interesting."
"You always do."
The drive across the city takes longer than it should because the evening traffic through the Quarter is thick with tourists and rideshares and the chaos that New Orleans exports to people who come looking for it. Andy drives with controlled precision and a patience that makes the twenty-minute crawl feel deliberate rather than delayed. His right hand rests on the console between us, close enough to mine that the gap is a choice, and I spend the first half of the drive pretending I don't want to close it and the second half acknowledging that pretending is beneath both of us after last night.
The wire shifts when I shift in the seat, the adhesive pulling against skin that has been registering every movement since the tech pressed the transmitter into place. These are small, physical complaints, manageable and constant, and they hold me in my body in a way that the larger fears can't, because the larger fears are enormous and the tape on my skin is specific and real.
Andy pulls onto the side street behind Dominion and stops the car.
"You hear anything, see anything, feel anything that's off, you say my name. That's your signal. You say my name and Remy's team moves."
"And if I just want to say your name because I like the way it sounds?"
"Then we'll have a conversation about operational discipline when this is over." His eyes hold mine in the dark of the car, and the promise in them has nothing to do with reprimands. "Go."
I get out of the car and walk toward the service entrance, and the night air hits my face with the warm, wet weight of a Louisiana evening in the part of the season when the heat doesn't leave after dark, just softens into something that clings. The smell of the Quarter reaches me from two blocks over: river water and frying oil and the sweet rot of jasmine that grows wild along the wrought iron.
Dominion's service entrance opens into the back hallway that runs behind the bar, past the staff lockers and the storage room where Terrence keeps the overflow glassware and the cases of top-shelf bourbon that Margot orders in quantities that would concern a lesser establishment. The known geography of the building settles over me, the angles and distances I've memorized across years of shifts, the acoustics of the hallway that tell me whether the main floor is still in the quiet early-evening lull or has crossed into the fuller, warmer register of a night in progress.
The club is still in the lull. The main floor lights are dimmed to the amber that Margot chose for the rebuild, warm and flattering, designed to make every surface look expensive and every person look better than they do in daylight. A few members have arrived early, scattered across the lounge seating in the configurations that signal whether they're here for conversation, observation, or negotiation. The music is low, the kind of curated mix that provides texture without demanding attention.
I tie my apron and take my station behind the bar. Terrence is already there, restocking the well with the focused efficiency of a man who has been covering my shifts for days and is relieved to hand the territory back.
"Look who decided to show up," he says. "I was starting to think you'd quit and nobody told me."
"You'd miss me too much. Who would fix the garnish station every time you butcher it?"
"My garnish game has improved dramatically in your absence. The lemon wheels have been flawless."
"Your lemon wheels have always looked like they were cut during an earthquake, Terrence. The standards haven't changed just because I wasn't here to enforce them."
He grins and steps aside, and the handoff happens with the practiced ease of two people who have been sharing a bar for years. My hands know where everything is. The muscle memory of the pour, the reach, the wipe, the turn clicks back into place like a lock I've tumbled a thousand times, and for the first few minutes the work is enough. The bottles line up where they belong. The ice well is full. The glassware catches the light.
Then the first member approaches, and the performance begins in earnest, with an audience of one listening from the third floor.
"Renata, welcome back. We missed you." The voice belongs to David, a financial advisor from Uptown with meticulous hair and a preference for rye old-fashioneds that I've been building for him on autopilot for years.
"Missed you too, David. Same as always?"
"You know me too well."
"That's what they pay me for." I build the drink with steady hands, muddling the sugar and bitters with the practiced rotation that moves through my wrist without thought, and every clink of the spoon against the glass broadcasts through the wire to the man upstairs who kissed me against his kitchen counter this morning with coffee still on his breath and his hand at the back of my neck. I wonder if he can hear the difference between the sounds I make at work and the sounds I made last night. I wonder if he's filing both in that notebook of his, cataloged under evidence he'll use against me later.
The thought pulls warmth through my chest that has nothing to do with the adhesive.
More members arrive. The floor fills in the slow, predictable pattern of a weeknight at Dominion, regulars claiming their preferred spots, newer members hovering near the entrance with the careful posture of people who haven't yet learned how to look comfortable in a place designed for discomfort. I pour and mix and smile and scan, and the absurdity of mixing Sazeracs while wearing federal surveillance equipment under my shirt settles into a rhythm that works mostly because performing has always been the thing I do best under pressure.
A woman at the far end of the bar leans across the rail to order a French 75, and the angle gives me a clear view of the room behind her: the lounge seating, the hallway entrance, two men in blazers who might be operatives and might be investment bankers and who look equally uncomfortable in both scenarios. Remy's people are good. If they're here, they'vedissolved into the club's ecosystem with the ease of men who understand that the best security is the kind nobody notices.
By nine-thirty, a member I recognize from the main floor circuit takes the seat directly in front of me. His name is Paul, and he has the unfortunate habit of treating the bar like a confessional and the bartender like a therapist who owes him a drink. He orders a Sazerac and settles in with the body language of someone who intends to occupy that stool for the rest of the evening.
"So where have you been, Renata? The other guy makes a fine cocktail, but the conversation's been lacking."
