Page 11 of Heresy (The Lost Gospels #1)

SEVEN

THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

VERA

T he sound of the bolt is a physical thing—metallic thunder that slams into my bones, a shockwave of finality.

I stand frozen in the sudden, oppressive darkness, listening to the frantic percussion of my own heart, a drumbeat so loud it seems impossible the entire building can't hear my psychological disintegration.

For uncounted time, I exist suspended between those heartbeats, my reality reorganizing itself around a new truth: I am property.

Eventually, the adrenaline recedes, leaving behind a deep, numbing cold. My legs begin to shake. I slide down the wall until I'm a heap of violated architecture, arms wrapped around my knees. The concrete ridges bite into my spine, a welcome pain—proof that some sensations still belong to me.

The panicked, screaming part of my brain wants to take over, to beat my fists against the steel door until my bones break. But the other part—the ghost that has kept me breathing for two years—calmly pushes it aside.

Okay, the quiet voice says with clinical precision. Analyze. Survive.

My mind snaps into focus, a machine designed for crisis management. It begins to catalog, to map the terrain, fighting back the tide of helpless terror through systematic analysis.

Fact one: I am alive. The decision to preserve rather than eliminate me is a data point. It speaks to a value I possess, even if that value remains undefined.

Fact two: I am a prisoner. This is a concrete box designed for human storage. The walls are engineered to absorb screams, the door constructed to prevent escape, the window barred with iron that has witnessed too many desperate prayers.

Fact three: He controls every variable. Hex—the man with dead eyes and ghosts he claims dwarf my own—holds absolute power over my continued existence.

This is the survival mechanism learned through necessity, the mental discipline that transforms a victim into a strategist.

Hours pass, or maybe minutes. The gray light from the high window fades to black. Just as I wonder if they plan to starve me, a harsh grating sound rips through the silence. A small slot at the bottom of the door slides open. A plastic tray is shoved through, skidding across the floor.

A sandwich wrapped in plastic. A bottle of water.

The slot screeches shut. I stare at the tray on the floor—not a meal, but sustenance for a lab rat. Revulsion churns in my stomach, but the ghost is ruthless.

Eat, it commands. Food is fuel. Fuel is strength. Strength is the only weapon they haven't confiscated.

My hands shake as I unwrap the sandwich. It tastes like cardboard and despair, but I force down every bite. I drink all the water. This is how dignity dies—one necessary compromise at a time.

The sun rises again, painting the opposite wall in shades of dusty gray. Day Two. I mark the passage of time in a mental ledger, measured not in hours but in small victories against despair.

The tray arrives with clockwork precision—morning and evening. Always identical. A sandwich, a bottle of water, a reminder that my needs have been reduced to basic biological maintenance. I eat. I drink. I endure. But twice a day, the suffocating routine is broken by the harsh scrape of the bolt.

This is the walk. One of them, Fuse or Zero, escorts me ten paces down the cold hallway to a small, grim bathroom.

They never speak. Fuse radiates a palpable anger, his presence a physical heat at my back that makes my skin crawl.

Zero is worse; his silence is a void that promises nothing but professional, dispassionate violence.

My heart hammers every second I'm outside the cell, the exposure feeling more dangerous than the confinement. But I force myself to observe.

These brief, terrifying trips become part of the clubhouse rhythm.

I am a ghost haunting their hallways on a schedule.

The other doors are heavy oak, scarred near the locks.

There's a window at the far end of the hall, its glass thick and distorted.

The floorboards creak on the third and seventh steps.

Each trip is another breadcrumb of intelligence dropped in a forest of fear.

They think they are merely walking a prisoner. I am mapping my cage.

By what I calculate to be the third day, the sounds from below have also become a language. My universe transforms into a symphony of echoes, an acoustic landscape that tells stories about the life continuing beyond these walls.

My universe transforms into a symphony of echoes, an acoustic landscape that tells stories about the life continuing beyond these walls. I learn to translate the mechanical rhythms into a narrative, to decode their organizational structure through audio signatures.

The morning roar erupts from the garage below—a deep, guttural chorus of engines awakening in a synchronized ritual.

The sound of predators leaving the den to hunt.

The evening chaos when they return carries a different energy: music erupting through the floorboards with a heavy, angry beat; the sharp crack of pool balls colliding; bursts of rough laughter like small explosions of brotherhood.

I learn to identify individual voices through the concrete.

Fuse's angry bark—quick to ignite, always ready for confrontation.

The deeper rumble that must belong to Rook, a voice of authority that commands respect through measured calm.

Once, I hear a sudden, chilling silence fall, a complete absence of sound that carries more weight than any noise could—the Vow, the sacred moment they gather to make decisions.

But in all this acoustic intelligence gathering, there is one voice conspicuously absent.

Hex. His silence is a black hole at the center of their chaotic universe.

He put me in this cage but does not visit.

The knowledge creates a strange mixture of profound relief and unsettling dread.

Relief because I understand instinctively that his presence would be an escalation; dread because his absence suggests a strategic patience. He is waiting for something.

I am not just a victim waiting for rescue. I am a witness documenting reality. I am waiting, too—waiting like a photographer calculates the perfect moment to capture a truth that others miss.

I lose track of whether it's day five or six.

The gray squares of light on the wall blur together like watercolors left in the rain.

The silence is no longer a neutral space for thinking.

It has become an active, malevolent presence, pressing against my consciousness, amplifying every thought into a deafening roar.

Memory slips through the bars, a ghost seeking warmth.

It wasn't a concrete cell—it was a bedroom in my father's penthouse.

Silk wallpaper, a view of the city like a conquered kingdom.

Dmitri had locked me inside. Not for a transgression.

Because I had smiled at a waiter. He hadn't hit me.

Just smiled that dead-eyed smile, turned an antique key, and left me in luxurious silence for twelve hours. A lesson in ownership.

"Property doesn't smile at other men, little dove," he had whispered through the keyhole. "Property learns to save its expressions for its owner."

The concrete walls around me begin to pulse.

The rough texture morphs into suffocating silk.

The cold air thickens, smelling of imported flowers and funeral arrangements.

The two cages become one, past and present colliding, threatening what little sanity I have left.

Am I twenty-six in Red Hook, or nineteen in that penthouse prison?

The lines blur. Vanish. I can smell his cologne, feel the Egyptian cotton burial shroud, hear the click of the key turning me from a person into a possession.

A sob rips from my throat—a raw, ragged sound carrying years of suppressed trauma. I press myself into the corner, a heap of broken architecture, trying to block the memories attacking from the inside. A wave of pure, hopeless despair crashes over me, as profound and inevitable as drowning.

I am going to die here. Not a fear. A fact. I will become another ruin for someone else to photograph.

And in that moment of absolute despair, the realization cuts through the fog like a blade.

This is how they do it.

This is their method. Not with fists, but with silence. With nothing. Until the emptiness is so complete you will do anything for a human voice—even the voice of the monster who engineered your suffering. This box isn't a prison; it's a laboratory.

And the truly terrifying part? It's working. A part of me—growing larger with every silent hour—craves a voice. Any voice. Even his.

But somewhere beneath the despair, an ember begins to glow. Rage.

Because I have been in a cage before.

And I survived it once.

The realization hits like ice water injected directly into my nervous system, a shock so profound it chases the ghosts back into their tombs. I lie on the cold concrete, breath ragged, but my mind is suddenly, terrifyingly clear.

This isn't random cruelty. This is calculated psychological warfare. The silence, the isolation—they are weapons designed to make me pliable, desperate for any human contact. A strategy to transform a defiant photographer into a grateful recipient of her monster's attention.

Cold, hard rage begins to burn away the edges of despair.

No.

The word is a vow carved from steel, a silent scream that transforms the victim back into an adversary. I survived Dmitri. I survived my father's empire. I will not be conquered by a concrete box and a man with haunted eyes.

I push myself upright, my limbs shaking with exhaustion. They will not find me shattered. If they want to wage war inside my head, they will find I am not easy territory to conquer. I need a new routine. An anchor.

I start with my body—the only territory that is still exclusively mine.

Muscles scream in protest as I force them into a push-up, then another, the pain becoming a prayer.

Sit-ups until my core is a knot of fire.

Pacing my three steps until my legs ache.

Sweat drips into my eyes, a salty reminder that I still possess something they haven't stolen.

The physical discomfort is a welcome proof of agency in a space designed to eliminate all choice.

My body is the only thing I own, I think through gritted teeth. I will not let them make it weak.

Next, I fight the silence with memory. I close my eyes and rebuild my art in a mental gallery, starting with a favorite: a single, stubborn weed growing through a crack in a sidewalk.

I reconstruct every detail with obsessive precision—the texture of the concrete, the exact shade of chlorophyll green, the way the light caught the edge of a single leaf like a benediction.

Each remembered image is another brick in a fortress built against the encroaching madness.

This becomes my new reality. Exercise until I ache. Rebuild art until my mind is sharp. I eat every crumb they provide, not from hunger, but because nutrition is fuel for resistance. I am a survivor learning to extract strength from degradation, a ghost haunting her own captivity.

I am in the middle of this new routine, my mind focused, when an unfamiliar sound rips through the silence. A sharp, metallic scrape from the other side of the door.

Then the heavy, unmistakable THUD of the bolt being pulled back.

My heart still launches into my throat, a caged bird thrashing against bone. But this time, I don't freeze. I straighten my spine, plant my feet, and face the door.

I am no longer the same woman they locked away. I am something harder.

Let them come.