Page 5 of Dominion's Guard
"Margot, the cops already think I'm?—"
"I don't care what the cops think. I care that you're standing alone in a parking garage where someone was just murdered. Move. Now."
I move.
The drive back to Dominion is white-knuckle steering and obsessive mirror checks. Every set of headlights behind me could be the shape from the stairwell. Every shadow at every intersection could be the gun rotating toward me. My body hasn't come down from the sprint up the stairs and doesn't intend to, every nerve ending lit and screaming.
The underground lot at Dominion has never felt safer. I park in my employee spot, take the service elevator, and the doorsopen onto the third floor, where Rapier Strategic's offices glow with the kind of light that means someone got here fast.
Remy Pascal meets me in the corridor. He's the oldest of the three Pascal siblings, built from the same blueprint as Luc but with a sharper edge, a man whose stillness makes you nervous because you understand what it costs. He takes one look at me and steps aside, gesturing toward the conference room without a word.
Margot is on the phone inside. She holds up a hand, finishes the call, and crosses the room. Her hand grips my shoulder, firm, grounding, the touch of a woman who does not hug but whose grip says everything a hug would.
"Tell Remy what you told me. Every detail."
I sit. I talk. Remy listens with the focus of a man building a tactical map in his head, and his questions are precise, the sort that tell me he believes me without needing to say so. Where exactly in the garage. What time. What angle. How far from the stairwell. How many shots. What direction did the shooter turn. How fast did I run. Which exit did I use.
I am partway through the debrief when the elevator opens and a voice I know too well carries down the corridor.
"Remy. Where is she?"
Not "the witness."She.My stomach tightens.
Detective Andy Broussard fills the conference room doorway, broad shoulders consuming the frame, dark suit jacket open over a white dress shirt buttoned in a hurry, collar uneven. His dark hair is untidy, and the stubble along his jaw is heavier than the groomed version he wears to the club. He looks like he got pulled out of bed, and my brain supplies that image before I can stop it.
The badge on his belt glints. The gun on his hip sits matte and quiet.
I know this man. Every bartender at Dominion knows the members, but Andy is the sort you learn to track across a room even when you're trying not to. He comes in a few nights a week, orders Woodford Reserve on the rocks, sits where he can see the whole floor, and watches with a focus that says he has never needed to rush anything in his life.
He scenes with submissives who like firm hands and clear instructions, and none of them come back for a second round. I've watched them leave the private rooms looking satisfied and shaken in equal measure, and I've watched them choose other Doms on the next visit. Not because anything went wrong. Because something went too right, and they weren't ready for what that meant about them.
I've spent months avoiding him. Not because of the badge, though cops have never been my favorite species. I avoid Andy because he watches me differently than anyone else at Dominion. Every bratty deflection and sarcastic comeback I throw at the Doms who try to scene with me is a tell he's filing away for later use.
He is the only Dom at Dominion who has ever made me feel like my performance might not be good enough.
And right now those blue-grey eyes are locked on me, and the expression behind them has nothing to do with club nights and everything to do with the badge.
"Remy called me," he says, but he's looking at me. Then, directly: "You all right?"
The concern in his voice is genuine. I hate that I can tell the difference.
"Fantastic," I say. "Nothing like watching someone get executed in your parking garage to really cap off a Friday night."
His expression doesn't shift. Most people flinch when I go sharp. Andy absorbs it, holds it, gives me nothing back. His gazestays level, and heat gathers low in my chest, a pull I refuse to examine right now or possibly ever.
"Have a seat, Andy," Remy says from the far side of the table. "She's been debriefing. You can catch up."
Andy doesn't sit where Remy gestures. He pulls out the chair directly across from me, close enough that I catch something woody and warm underneath coffee. He drops into it with the ease of a man who owns whatever seat he picks, and the conference chair that looked institutional when Remy sat in it somehow looks like a throne.
He pulls out a notebook. Worn leather cover, pen clipped to the spine. He opens it, clicks the pen once, and looks at me.
"Tell me what happened tonight."
"I already told Remy everything."
"Now tell me."
"Why? So you can write it down in your little notebook and file it with the patrol officers who already decided I'm drunk or delusional?"
