Page 2 of Heresy (The Lost Gospels #1)

TWO

A LOOSE THREAD

HEX

T he floorboards vibrate with the life of the clubhouse four stories below.

They call this the Eagle's Nest. Up here, the world lays itself bare, the entire harbor a map of my making, and the chaos of the brotherhood reduces to a manageable hum—a constant reminder of the beast I'm tasked with keeping fed.

The silence in this room is different.

Theirs downstairs is a vow of discipline—sacred quiet born from shared blood, mutual dependence. Mine is the heavy weight of isolation, the psychological architecture of someone who commands but cannot truly belong. Crown heavy. Kingdom hollow.

I lean over mahogany that's witnessed more confessions than any priest, my fingers tracing coded entries in the club's real ledger.

Not the sanitized fiction for our legitimate fronts, but the true accounting written in blood and ink.

The honest mathematics of survival where every decision carries the taste of copper pennies and consequence.

Each line item pulses with life: shipment of Glocks that will find their way into hands serving our interests, payout at the docks ensuring certain containers arrive without scrutiny, the exorbitant cost of Glitch's quantum-encrypted paranoia.

Every number is a heartbeat in the organism we've built from violence and necessity.

One weak link, and we all go to the bottom.

The mathematics of power reduce themselves to brutal equations: loyalty plus leverage equals survival. Trust minus verification equals death. Everything else is philosophical decoration on fundamental savagery.

I lean back, old leather groaning like confession under pressure. The chair was Abel's—another inheritance I claimed along with his debts, his enemies, his unfulfilled promises. Sometimes I swear the leather still holds the impression of his body, a phantom presence that refuses its own extinction.

Ghost in the machine I've become.

My reflection materializes in the monitor's dark screen, pixels arranging themselves into accusation.

For one brutal second, it's not my face staring back.

It's his. Abel's. The memory detonates without warning—taste of cold rain on dying lips, look of betrayal in eyes that had trusted me absolutely, weight of choice that transformed brother into stepping stone.

You built this kingdom on his bones, Hex. Never forget the price.

The price. Always the fucking price. Leadership measured in graves dug, bridges burned, pieces of soul surrendered to maintain the illusion of control. Abel understood, in those final moments, what I'd become. What the throne demanded. What brotherhood meant when survival required betrayal.

The ghost vanishes, leaving only my own tired, hard face.

I scrub a hand over my jaw, stubble rasping against calloused palm—sound unnaturally loud in manufactured quiet.

Sleep comes in fragments now, consciousness shattered by constant calculus of staying alive when everyone around you carries weapons and grievances in equal measure.

The door opens without a knock.

Only Rook claims that privilege earns that level of trust through years of proven loyalty and shared violence. His presence immediately shifts the room's emotional architecture, fills space with contained menace that newer members mistake for calm.

I know better.

Rook is never calm. He is simply coiled tight enough to spring in any direction, necessity demands, violence held in suspension like potential energy waiting for release.

He places two heavy glasses on mahogany with reverence of communion, pours generous measures of Macallan 18—liquid amber that costs more than most people earn in a month. The whiskey catches light like captured fire, each pour a small ceremony of brotherhood distilled to its essential elements.

Ritual. The only honest communication between killers.

"The Sin Santos are getting bold," he begins, voice carrying a low rumble of approaching thunder.

He settles into the chair across from mine, frame filling space with the kind of presence that suggests violence as a natural state rather than learned behavior.

"Hit a shipment of parts coming in from Jersey.

Wasn't about the score—they left most of it scattered like confetti.

They just wanted to show us they could."

I take a slow sip, letting burn chase Abel's ghost from my throat, liquid fire to cauterize phantom wounds. The alcohol carries notes of smoke and oak, flavors that speak to patience, aging, the kind of investment that assumes tomorrow will arrive despite all evidence to the contrary.

"They're drawing lines," I acknowledge, tasting truth alongside aged grain.

"And daring us to cross them," Rook finishes, dark eyes reflecting calculations I recognize because they mirror my own. "They think we're distracted."

He's not wrong.

But my distractions are older and deeper than any street crew rivalry, rooted in choices that transformed brotherhood into leverage, loyalty into weapon. The crown grows heavier each year. The kingdom is hollow. Some prices, once paid, continue collecting interest for eternity.

The whiskey burns truth into consciousness: leadership is isolation wearing authority's mask.

Rook leans forward, his heavy shoulders testing the seams of his cut as he shifts his weight like a predator.

He pushes his glasses up his nose, a deceptively calm gesture for a man built like a monolith.

His raven hair is stark against his skin, and his goatee is a sharp, precise line that accents the coiled power in his frame.

"They're testing us, Hex. They think the war with the old guard left us weak. "

Perception versus reality—the eternal battlefield of power.

"Let them," I respond, voice carrying the flat finality of executioner's blade. "Pride makes men stupid. And stupid men make convenient corpses."

The philosophy of leadership distilled to brutal essence: allow enemies to believe their own propaganda, then use their arrogance as a weapon against them. The Sin Santos operate on street logic—loud, obvious, desperate for recognition. They mistake our strategic patience for weakness.

They'll learn the difference between quiet and dead when the distinction no longer matters.

Before Rook can respond, vibration erupts from my desk drawer—a harsh pulse of the problem phone, a device that only carries news measured in body counts and crisis management.

Not a polite buzz of personal communication.

This is mechanical urgency that transforms the atmosphere from contemplative to operational.

Trouble with a capital T.

I raise my hand, cutting through whatever Rook was preparing to say. Twenty years of partnership have taught us to communicate in gestures, the subtle shift of posture that speaks louder than words. His spine straightens, transformation from confidant to lieutenant occurring in real time.

I retrieve the cheap burner, screen glowing with minimalist threat: single encrypted number that bypasses every security protocol except the one that matters most. Zero's number. The angel of death checking in.

I flip the device open, press cold plastic against my ear. "Yeah."

Zero's voice flows like liquid nitrogen—calm, flat, emotionally vacant as surgical steel. He speaks with precision of someone who has surgically removed every trace of human feeling from his vocal cords.

"President. Situation at the pier. Civilian witness." Pause weighted with tactical assessment, pages turning in mental files. "ID on her says Vera Ivanov. She has a camera."

Vera.

The name detonates in charged silence, syllables arranging themselves into something that sounds like prayer, like something delicate and old-world and completely fucking dangerous.

Two syllables that carry the weight of potential destruction, another identity in a city built on manufactured histories.

A witness with a name and camera is the kind of loose thread that unravels empires.

My jaw tightens with familiar annoyance—psychological signature of someone who has spent years managing problems that shouldn't exist. You don't investigate loose threads.

You don't try to tuck them back into fabric.

You take a lighter to them. Burn them until the edge is clean and nothing is left to unravel.

The mathematics of survival reduces to brutal simplicity: witnesses become evidence, evidence becomes conviction.

"Contained?" I ask, voice dropping to registers that suggest consequences.

"Affirmative. She's cornered. Awaiting your directive."

Good. Clean. Professional.

"I'm on my way. Maintain position. No contact."

I snap the phone shut, plastic creaking like small bones breaking.

A witness. Here? Now? Coincidence is a luxury I don't believe in.

The Sin Santos are making noise, and now a woman with a camera appears at our most private venture.

Is she a ghost, or is she their ghost? The thought coils in my gut.

An informant. This isn't just a mess to be cleaned; it’s a message that needs to be answered.

The decision crystallizes—this problem requires a surgical, final resolution before metastasizes into organizational cancer.

Another soul to feed to the machine.

"Trouble?" Rook asks, dark eyes searching mine with the intensity of someone who has learned to read psychological weather patterns.

He already knows the answer.

I stand, heavy silence pressing against consciousness like atmospheric pressure before storms. "A loose thread," I say, offering only the explanation necessary. "Her name is Vera."

Speaking the name makes the problem concrete. Not a person. A tactical complication.

"Keep digging on the Santos," I instructed, grabbing my cut from the chair's worn back. The jacket settles across shoulders like armor, psychological preparation for work that requires emotional insulation. "I'll handle this."

It's not a request.