Page 20 of Heresy (The Lost Gospels #1)

FIFTEEN

A KEY OF brEAD AND BONE

VERA

T he sound of the bolt sliding back no longer makes my heart leap.

It's been three days since he stood in this cell and methodically dismantled me, not with his fists, but with a name from my past and a stolen book.

Three days since he took the last weapon I thought I had: the illusion that I was an unknown quantity.

A new prospect stands in the doorway. He's little more than a boy, with nervous eyes that refuse to meet mine. He jerks his head, the silent, now-familiar command to follow. The walk down the four flights of stairs is the same, but the atmosphere I descend into is completely different.

The clubhouse is a ghost of itself.

Before, it was a beast, loud and snarling, a place of constant, aggressive energy.

Now, it's a tomb. The main room is mostly empty, the air stale and quiet.

The usual pack of patched members is gone.

Hex is gone. Rook, Zero, Fuse… all of them.

Vanished. The war with the Sin Santos, it seems, has finally moved from the planning stages to the battlefield.

I am escorted to my usual isolated table in the corner.

My cage has been upgraded from concrete to a few square feet of scarred wood, a silent island in a sea of emptiness.

The only other signs of life are a few club girls, their faces etched with a boredom that borders on despair, wiping down empty tables with listless movements.

Two other prospects are engaged in a half-hearted game of pool, the clack of the balls echoing unnaturally in the quiet room.

They brought me down from my cell to be among people, but the people are gone. The roaring chaos I had begun to map has been replaced by a hollow, unnerving silence. Before, I was a ghost because I was forbidden to interact. Now, I am a ghost because there is no one left to haunt.

He took the book. He took my secrets. And then he left.

The punishment, I realize with a chilling certainty, wasn't just the deconstruction in my cell.

It is this. The utter, absolute dismissal.

He solved the puzzle of me, and then, like a child with a new toy he has already broken, he simply got bored and walked away.

The silence he has left in his wake is a far more profound prison than the one with the steel door.

I sit for what feels like an hour, a statue in the corner, my glass of water untouched. The silence is a different kind of torture from the cell. It’s a hollow, empty thing, filled with the ghosts of the men who are absent. I am a prisoner in a castle with no king.

Then, a subtle shift. A shadow falls over my table. I don't look up, my muscles automatically tensing for a confrontation I don't have the energy for.

"Tough day at the office?"

The voice is female. Soft, with a cynical edge.

I slowly lift my head. It's one of the club girls, the blonde they call Angel. She’s holding an empty tray, her hip cocked, a look on her face that is a practiced mixture of boredom and pity.

Her eyes flick nervously toward the empty corners of the room before landing back on me. She is breaking a very serious rule.

I don't respond. My mind is a flurry of calculations. Is this a test? Is she a pawn sent by Hex to gauge my state of mind? Kindness in a cage is always a weapon.

She seems to read my suspicion. She gives a small, humorless laugh. "Relax, honey. The cat's away. The mice are just trying not to get stepped on." She gestures with her head toward the prospects at the pool table. "He's gone. They all are. Something big is happening with the Santos."

I remain silent, my face a mask. I will give her nothing.

She sighs, leaning closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Look, I just... I saw what happened in the hallway the other night. We all did." A flicker of genuine sympathy crosses her face. "That was rough. Even for him."

She seems to take my silence as an invitation to continue.

"He gets like that sometimes. Wound up so tight he just..

. snaps." She shakes her head. "You can always tell when things are bad.

The music gets louder, the fights get uglier, and you hear certain names being thrown around more.

Lately, it's been the name 'Cain' all the time.

It always gets him on edge. Brings up a lot of old ghosts. "

Her words are a baited hook. She's offering me information—the currency of this house—but what's the price?

"You know," she says, her eyes narrowing as she studies my face. "It's weird. You've got the same kind of fire in your eyes that Abel used to have. I've seen his picture. He's a club legend."

Angel seems to realize she's said too much...

"You know," she says, her eyes narrowing slightly as she studies my face. "It's weird. You've got the same kind of fire in your eyes that Abel used to have."

The name lands like a physical object on the table between us. Abel . I don't know it, but my entire nervous system recognizes it as a key—or a trigger. It’s the first real piece of his past anyone has dared to offer.

Angel seems to realize she's said too much. Her eyes dart around the room again. "Look, honey, just... be careful. When Hex gets a new obsession, it never ends well for the obsession."

Before I can ask the question burning on my tongue— Who is Abel? —one of the prospects notices us. "Angel! Get back to work," he barks, his voice cracking with a nervous authority he doesn't possess.

Angel rolls her eyes, the moment of connection broken. She gives me one last look, a mixture of pity and warning, then turns and saunters back toward the bar.

I am left alone again, but the silence is different. It is no longer empty. It is filled with a name.

Abel.

He isn't just a monster haunted by generic ghosts.

His ghosts have names. And she just gave me one.

The dismissal I felt moments ago begins to evaporate, replaced by the cold, sharp focus of a predator that has just caught a new scent.

The game is not over. He just handed me a new piece to play with.

I watch Angel walk away, the prospect glaring at her back until she's safely behind the bar. The moment is over. The brief, dangerous connection is severed. The room settles back into its hollow rhythm, the men at the pool table oblivious, the few remaining girls lost in their own worlds.

But for me, everything has changed. The boredom, the feeling of being a dismissed object—it’s gone, replaced by a live-wire current of energy that hums just beneath my skin.

Abel.

The name echoes in the quiet emptiness of my mind. It's not just a name; it's a key. A trigger. The first piece of solid ground in the psychological swamp I’ve been navigating. Before, Hex was a monolith, a monster defined only by his power and his ghosts. Now, one of his ghosts has a name.

I replay the conversation in my head, dissecting every word with the precision of a watchmaker. Angel’s warning— "When Hex gets a new obsession, it never ends well for the obsession." It confirms what I already suspected. I am not a temporary problem; I am a project.

And her comparison— "You've got the same kind of fire in your eyes that Abel used to have.

" This is the most crucial piece of the puzzle.

It means Abel was not like the others. He had "fire.

" He was likely defiant, like me. And whatever happened to him is the source of the rot in Hex's soul, the reason he flinched when I mentioned his ghosts.

The information is a weapon, but it’s an unfinished one. A name without a story is just a sound. I need to know more. I need to know what happened to Abel.

My eyes drift across the room, past the oblivious prospects, to the bar where Angel is now dutifully wiping down the counter.

Her face is a mask of professional boredom again, the brief flicker of connection erased.

She is a potential source, a well of information, but she’s also terrified.

Pushing her for more, especially in the open, would be reckless.

It would put her in danger and expose my own intentions.

No. A direct approach is too risky.

I look at the men still in the room—Grizz, the serpent-necked man, the prospects. They are all pieces on the board. The key is not to confront them, but to listen. They are arrogant, drunk, and restless under Hex's new, tense leadership. They will talk. They will boast. They will mourn.

And I will be here in my corner, the invisible ghost. The perfect, silent listener.

My new mission crystallizes. I am no longer just waiting for an opportunity to escape this building. I am now hunting for the story of Abel. Because I understand with a chilling, absolute certainty that the story of his death is the key to the lock on my own cage.

The clubhouse is a tomb after midnight. The chaos of the day has bled away, leaving only the stale scent of beer and the low, mournful hum of a neon sign behind the bar. I sit at my corner table, a ghost in their quietest hours, watching the few remaining prospects clean up the wreckage of the day.

A sharp, metallic CLANG from the front of the clubhouse makes me jolt, my head snapping up.

It’s the sound of the heavy crossbar being thrown back.

A second later, the heavy front doors burst inward, slamming against the interior walls with a CRACK so loud it feels like the building itself has broken a bone.

The impact reverberates through the floorboards, a physical shockwave that travels up the legs of my chair.

The silence is not just shattered; it’s annihilated.