Page 9 of Worshiping Faith

The rest of the files are stacked neatly on the desk, sorted and ready to be reviewed. But this one, the one with Zachs, Bradley stamped across the tab, feels different. Heavier, somehow.

Zachs left to get lunch. I don’t even know how long ago. Minutes? An hour? I’ve just been sitting here, my fingers brushing over the edge of the folder, my mind caught in a loop.

Had Dax not told me on purpose? Or had he, like Zachs, just assumed I already knew?

That I must have known. Because that’s why I was here, after all. To advocate for them. To understand them.

Except I hadn’t known. Because Warden Sinclair had deliberately kept me locked out of the full records system, only handing me select paper files, ones he chose, ones he thought were relevant.

And somehow, Zachs wasn’t one of them.

I exhale slowly, pressing my fingertips against the worn cover.

Zachs. Bradley.

How had I missed it?

I think back to sniping the men on the boat, laughing while he killed, like it was all just entertainment. They were a threat. He was a guard. That’s what guards do.

That’s what I told myself.

The file is thick.

I huff out a quiet laugh, shaking my head. Maybe the biggest.

I’ll never tell him that. His ego is already bad enough.

Egomaniac. Maniac. Psycho.

The other guards used to call him that, half-joking. I took it as workplace humor. The way soldiers mock each other, the way men who live in violence use dark jokes as armor.

Except… was it a joke?

I swallow hard.

Open the file, coward.

I flip it open, and the weight of what’s inside nearly knocks the breath from my lungs.

The first pages are disciplinary records. One infraction after another.

Page after page of solitary confinement sentences.

Assaulting guards. Attacking inmates. Murder.

Not just once. Not just twice.

I shuffle the papers aside, scanning for patterns, but there aren’t any.

Prison murders aren’t unheard of. Not in a place like this. Every file I’ve read since I started advocating has been full of serious crimes, extortion, trafficking, homicide.

But this is… different.

There’s no clear reason for any of it. No power struggles, no gang orders, no debts being settled. Just violence for the sake of violence.

I scan the listed explanations, my pulse hammering.

“Looked at me funny.”