Page 17 of Heresy (The Lost Gospels #1)

TWELVE

A PUBLIC brANDING

HEX

T he morning light is a dirty gray smear against the windows of my first-floor office.

Below me, the sounds of Serpent Cycle Works are a familiar, grinding rhythm—the clean, professional noise of our legitimate face.

But my focus is fractured. On a secondary monitor, next to spreadsheets and encrypted messages, is a small, black-and-white window. The feed from her cell.

She sits on the cot, reading the book of Robert Frank's photography I had left for her.

An offering. A test. She hasn't moved in an hour, a portrait of unnerving stillness.

My mind is a labyrinth, trying to decipher the puzzle of her, trying to map out the psychological campaign I vowed to wage.

She is a distraction I can't afford and an obsession I can't shake.

The door to my office crashes open, slamming against the wall.

I don't flinch, but a cold, hard anger snaps into place. No one enters my office like that. I look up, my eyes narrowed, ready to deliver a lesson in respect.

It's Fuse. His face is pale, his eyes wild with a fury that eclipses his usual hot-headedness. His right hand is wrapped in a thick, white cast. This is not a temper tantrum. This is something else.

"Prez," he says, his voice a raw, ragged sound. "We got a problem."

I lean back in my chair, my own internal chaos instantly shelved, the cold, calculating President taking full control. "Report."

"It's Static," he says, the name of the ex-prospect catching in his throat.

"The Santos grabbed him on his way back from his mother's place.

They just dumped him at the end of the street.

" Fuse swallows hard, his gaze flickering with a shame and rage that are at war with each other.

"They carved him up, Hex. They left a message. "

My blood turns to ice. They took a boy I cast out, a lamb I sent from the flock, and slaughtered him on my doorstep. I stand up slowly, the scrape of my chair the only sound in the room. "What message?"

Fuse's eyes are burning. "Their initials. Right on his chest. 'SS'. Like a fucking brand."

Fuse's words fade into a dull roar in my ears. The image he paints—a boy carved up on the pavement—is replaced by another. The alley behind O'Malley's. The smell of wet asphalt and blood. The look of shocked betrayal in my brother's eyes as his life bled out into the rain. Abel.

The war is no longer a matter of strategy. They have drawn first blood on a boy who was, until yesterday, one of mine. They have put their mark on my territory. A chilling, absolute calm settles over me. The time for thought is over.

"Get Rook and Zero," I say, my voice a low, deadly command. "Meet me in church. Now."

The heavy oak door of the church room seals us in. The air is thick with the promise of violence. Rook, Zero, and I are the only ones at the table. The others stand, lining the walls, a silent jury.

This is the law of Church, a tradition forged in blood and discipline.

At this table, only three men sit: the President, the VP, and the Sergeant-at-Arms. The crown, the council, and the sword.

Every other brother stands, a wall of leather and loyalty.

They are not here to debate; they are here to witness the decree and become the instruments of its execution.

It is the architecture of our strength, a silent vow made visible.

Zero’s report is brutal and efficient, “The boy is dead. The message is clear.”

"This is Cain's play," Rook says, his voice a low growl.

"It has his stink all over it. Humiliation.

Psychological warfare. He's trying to make us look weak, make us overreact.

" He has a map spread on the table, their known fronts marked in red.

"The logical move is to hit their money.

We bleed them dry, cut off their supply lines. A cold, strategic strangulation."

"No," Zero says, his voice flat. "A boy wearing our ink is dead. The law demands blood for blood. We hit their clubhouse. We burn it to the ground with their President inside. We send a message in fire."

The two paths lie before me: fire and ice. Zero’s is the path of pure, hot vengeance. Rook’s is the path of cold, strategic strangulation. I have walked both roads a hundred times.

But today, I see a third. A path shown to me by the ghost in the cage.

I hold up a hand, a quiet gesture that silences the room.

"Hitting the clubhouse is what they expect," I say, my voice a low, flat rejection of both plans.

"Hitting their money is slow. We're not going to hit their bodies or their wallets.

" I lean forward, my hands flat on the table, my eyes locking on Rook, then on Zero. "We're going to hit their soul."

Rook and Zero exchange a look of confusion.

"A man can recover from a lost soldier or a lost shipment," I continue, the words forming with a chilling clarity.

"But you break his spirit… that's a wound that never heals.

You find the one thing he loves, the one thing he thinks is safe from this life, and you put your hands on it. You show him there is no sanctuary."

Rook’s eyes widen slightly. He sees it now.

This is a new level of cruelty, even for me.

He thinks I've developed a new strategy.

He doesn't realize I'm just applying the lessons I'm learning from my own prisoner.

To truly break an enemy, you don't attack his walls. You find the ghost that haunts him.

"Their President, Judas Santos," I say, my voice dropping. "He's a puppet, but he's Cain's puppet. And he has a weakness. Glitch, you will find that person. A daughter in college. A brother he's still close to. Find the one person he loves."

My gaze shifts to our tech man, who nods once, his fingers already flying.

"Zero," I say. "You will prepare a snatch team. Small, silent. No bodies. We take the asset, and we hold them. We let Judas and Cain sit in the dark and imagine what we’re doing to the one person they thought was safe."

My orders are delivered. I have just declared a new kind of war, a quiet, vicious campaign of psychological terror. And the blueprint for it came directly from a girl in a cage, twenty feet above my head.

As the men begin to file out, their purpose now clear and deadly, I stop one of them with a single word.

"Rook."

He pauses, turning back to me, the question in his eyes.

My voice is low, for him alone. "Static died a civilian.

The club can't claim him. He doesn't get a brother's burial.

That is the law." I let the harsh reality of our code settle between us.

"But he was killed because of us. That's a debt.

The family... make sure they have what they need for a proper burial.

Cash. No name on it. Just take care of it. "

Rook gives a single, sharp nod. He understands. It's not charity. It's the club balancing its bloody ledger. He turns and leaves, the heavy oak door swinging shut behind him.

The heavy oak door thuds shut, sealing me alone in the heavy silence. For a moment, the cold thrill of the strategy remains—the clean, sharp adrenaline of crafting a new, more vicious kind of attack. It’s a familiar high, the feeling of a king moving his pieces into place for a checkmate.

And then, as it always does, it recedes, leaving a familiar, hollow void in its place.

The silence in the room is absolute, but the silence in my head is filled with the image of the dead prospect.

Static. A boy I cast out, a body I am responsible for.

His ghost now joins the other one that haunts this room.

Abel’s face, superimposed over the boy's, his eyes asking the same silent question: Was it worth it?

The weight of their sacrifices, their blood on my hands, is a crown far heavier than the one I wear for this club.

My hands clench on the arms of my scarred throne, the wood cool beneath my grip.

I should be thinking about Judas Santos, about the logistics of the snatch team, about the daughter whose life I’m about to detonate.

My mind should be a grand chessboard, mapping out a dozen moves and counter-moves against Cain.

But all the squares are empty. All the pieces have been swept from the board. All that remains is the image of the defiant queen, sitting on her cot, staring back at me. My mind is not a chessboard. It is a cell, and she is its only occupant.

I push myself away from the table, my chair scraping harshly against the floor in a sound of protest. I walk out of the church room, my boots echoing in the now-empty clubhouse.

The air is stale with the ghosts of beer and smoke, but the electric energy of the war council has vanished.

My steps carry me with an undeniable, magnetic pull, not to my bed or to a bottle, but to my office. To the monitors.

I sit in the cold, blue-white glow of the screens, the hum of the machines a low, conspiratorial whisper. With a click of the mouse, I pull up the feed to her cell.

She is on the cot, the photography book resting open in her lap.

She is perfectly still, her posture calm, her focus absolute.

From this distance, through the distorted lens, I can see the way her fingers trace the edges of a photograph on the page, the slow, reverent movement of an artist communing with her faith.

She is a portrait of quiet, contained defiance in the heart of my chaotic kingdom, a scholar in a tomb I built for her.

I have just set in motion a plan that will tear a rival's world apart, an act of brutal, psychological warfare that will burn my enemies' lives to the ground. It is the kind of move that defines a presidency, that cements a legacy in fear and blood.

And all I can think about is the silent, intricate war she is waging against me from a concrete cell twenty feet above my head.

They think this war is with the Santos. They think this war is with Cain. They see the map, the soldiers, the enemy on the horizon.

They're wrong.

The real war, the one that is costing me sleep, the one that is cracking the foundations of my control, is being fought right here. In the dark. Against a ghost on a screen.