Page 27 of Heresy (The Lost Gospels #1)

TWENTY

THE QUEENS’S GAMBIT

HEX

T he air in the church room is thick with the ghosts of old smoke and the sharp, clean scent of gun oil.

It's late. The only light comes from the single fixture hanging low over the massive oak table, illuminating the map spread across its scarred surface. It’s the night before the gambit.

The night before we burn a piece of our own kingdom to the ground to save the rest.

Rook, Zero, and I are the only ones left, going over the final, minute details. The atmosphere is tense, but it's the clean, controlled tension of a predator before the strike. We are one step ahead of Cain. For the first time in weeks, I feel a semblance of control.

"The trackers are in place," Rook says, his voice a low rumble.

He taps a point on the map marking the ambush site for our own shipment.

"The prospects assigned to the decoy truck are the ones we vetted.

They're clean. They'll follow their orders, make a show of a fight, and go down without getting themselves killed. "

"The snatch team is on standby," Zero adds, his voice flat. "Once the decoys are taken and the Trojan Horse is on the move, Glitch will have the trackers live. We'll know where Cain is sleeping within the hour."

The plan is perfect. A cold, sharp thrill runs through me. We are using their own treachery as a weapon against them. We will find the rat. We will find Cain. This is how a king wages war.

But even as I nod, my eyes drift from the map to the corner of the table where I had Glitch set up a small, secondary monitor. A single, grainy, black-and-white feed. The view into her cell.

She's on the cot, asleep, or pretending to be.

A small, still figure. She is the one variable I can't solve, the nagging, persistent ghost in my own machine.

She is the one who saw the rot I refused to see, the one whose ruthless philosophy now underpins this entire desperate operation.

I should be focused on the map, on the war, on the brother we are about to avenge.

But I am watching her, a king distracted from his own battle plans by the prisoner in his tower. A fatal, unforgivable weakness.

The air in the room compresses first, a sudden, violent pressure change that feels like being shoved underwater.

My ears pop, a wet, painful crunch. Before my brain can even process the sensation, the sound hits—a deafening, bass-heavy CRUNCH-BOOM that vibrates up through the concrete floor and slams into my bones.

It feels like the hand of God has picked up the entire clubhouse and smashed it back down onto its foundations.

The solid oak table jumps, bottles exploding in a shower of amber liquid and shattered crystal. The power is cut, plunging us into absolute darkness.

For a single, suspended heartbeat, there is nothing but the high-pitched ringing in my ears. Then, through the darkness, Zero's voice cuts through the ringing, his tone not panicked, but cold and analytical—the voice of the combat vet he is.

"RPG," he says, the single word a chilling diagnosis. "West wall. That was a shaped charge. They're coming through."

The floor heaves beneath my boots, and a fine dust rains down from the ceiling, thick and choking in the sudden, ringing silence that follows the blast.

Then, darkness. Absolute. The power is cut.

For a single, suspended heartbeat, there is nothing. Then, the hellish, battery-powered red of the emergency lights kicks in, bathing the room in a bloody, pulsing glow.

That’s when the gunfire starts. Not from one direction, but from all of them.

A deafening, coordinated roar of automatic weapon fire from outside the walls, chewing through wood and brick.

Bullets punch through the heavy oak door, splintering it into pieces.

This isn't a raid with flashing blue and red lights.

This is a military assault. This is an execution.

My perfect gambit, my intricate plan—it’s all incinerated in an instant.

The realization hits me with the force of the explosion itself.

They weren't waiting for our trap tomorrow night.

This was the trap. Cain didn't just know our plan; he used it against us.

He waited for us to deploy our best men for the decoy, waited until our fortress was a hollowed-out shell, and then he struck the heart.

They're not just at the gates. They are inside the fucking walls.

Pure, cold shock gives way to a single, horrifying realization that cuts through the chaos. An attack this coordinated, this precise... it's impossible without help from the inside. The traitor didn't just leak information about a shipment.

He opened the goddamn door. We're not just being attacked. We are being slaughtered.

The world is red light, choking dust, and the deafening roar of gunfire. Chaos erupts. My ears are still ringing from the blast, but the instincts of a President at war take over.

"Armory! Get the heavy shit!" I roar, my voice cutting through the din. "Barricade the front! Hold the main floor!"

The brothers move, a surge of leather and violence.

Zero is already a lethal shadow, shoving a rifle into one man's hands, pointing another toward a defensive position.

He is in his element, a creature of pure combat.

Rook is beside me, his face grim in the pulsing red light, shouting orders, trying to turn a rout into a defense.

My mind should be a clean, cold map of the battlefield. It should be on entry points, fields of fire, the status of my men.

But it's not.

My eyes keep flicking to the corner of the table, to the dead, black monitor that, moments ago, held her image. A cold dread, separate from the adrenaline of the fight, cuts through me. She's on the fourth floor. Trapped in a concrete box. Alone. In the middle of a fucking firefight.

She is the one unsecured asset. The one piece on the board I can't account for. The splinter, lodged not just under my skin, but in the very heart of my fortress as it burns.

"Prez, the west wall is compromised! We need you here!" Rook shouts, his hand gripping my arm, trying to pull my focus back to the battle. "We have to hold the main floor or they'll push us all the way to the basement!"

He's right. His logic is perfect. The club's survival depends on a coordinated defense, and I am the commander. My place is here, leading my men, holding the line.

But the thought of her—alone, trapped, at the mercy of a stray bullet or a breach team—is a hook in my gut, pulling me away from duty, away from all tactical sense. I have to know she's contained. I have to know she's not a part of this. I have to see her.

It's not a choice. It's a compulsion.

I shove a fresh magazine into my pistol, the click of the metal a definitive sound. "Hold this ground," I snarl at Rook, shrugging off his hand.

"Hex, what the hell are you doing?!" he yells as I turn from the main battle.

I don't answer him. I am no longer a king defending his kingdom. I am a man driven by a single, irrational obsession. I lower my shoulder and charge toward the staircase, fighting my way through the smoke and chaos, toward the fourth floor. Toward her.

The staircase is a deathtrap. Dust and smoke billow down from the upper floors, so thick I can barely see.

The air is acrid with the smell of gunpowder and burning insulation.

I take the stairs two at a time, my pistol up, my senses screaming.

A burst of automatic fire from below chews a line of splinters from the wall next to my head, and I flatten myself against the steps, waiting for a lull before pushing upward again.

I reach the fourth-floor landing, my lungs burning.

The hallway is a long tunnel of pulsing red emergency light and swirling smoke.

I fumble for the key to her cell, my adrenaline-slick fingers struggling with the lock.

For a horrifying second, it sticks. I slam my shoulder into the heavy steel, and it finally gives way.

I throw the door open, expecting to find her screaming or crying, a broken mess in the corner.

Instead, she’s on the floor, crouched beneath the high, barred window.

Not in terror, but in observation. Her face is a mask of terrifying, analytical calm as she watches the firefight erupting in the street below, the flashes of muzzle fire reflecting in her wide, dark eyes.

She is a strategist watching a battle unfold.

The sight of her, so contained amidst the chaos, sends a fresh jolt through me.

"We have to move! Now!" I yell over the roar of gunfire, grabbing her arm. "The building's not secure!"

She doesn't resist, but her eyes snap to mine, clear and sharp. "It was never secure," she shouts back, her voice cutting through the noise. "Your men have been betraying you."

"What the hell are you talking about?!" I snarl, dragging her toward the door. We don't have time for this.

"I saw it!" she says, digging her heels in, forcing me to stop and look at her. "In the clubhouse. The big one with the red beard, Grizz. He was with the prospect who had been bringing me food."

Her words are fast, precise, the details of a photograph being described.

"He leaned in and whispered something. I couldn't hear the words, but it wasn't an order.

It was an exchange. A moment later, I saw the prospect reach under the table they were at and retrieve a small burner phone that had been taped there. He palmed it and walked away."

She looks me dead in the eye, her voice dropping with chilling certainty. "It was a secret. A conspiracy."

Her words hang in the smoke-filled air between us, an accusation so profound it feels like a physical blow.

My first instinct is to reject it. To snarl at her, to call her a liar.

The thought is a venomous whisper in my mind: She's playing you.

This is a trick. A seed of paranoia planted by a Bratva-trained operative to make you turn on your own.

My men do not conspire. They do not break the hierarchy. Not a patched brother. Not Grizz. The laws of the club are absolute, the chain of command forged in blood and iron. To believe her is to believe that the very foundation of my kingdom is rotten.

My mind flashes with suspicion, playing tricks on me. Is this her game? Is this the move she's been waiting to make on the board?

But then, another image cuts through the smoke and suspicion.

Her, standing before me at the bar, a clean rag in her hand, her face a mask of calm focus as she tended to the gash on my arm.

The rooftop conversation, her voice steady and sharp as she spoke of burning down rotting kingdoms. Her defiance.

The fire in her eyes that was not the practiced deception of a spy, but the raw, honest fury of a survivor.

That was real. Her defiance was real. Her fear was real.

And the sickening, cold realization settles in my gut. She has no reason to lie about this, not now, not when bullets are tearing through the walls. She is a photographer. She sees things others miss. She saw a detail, a crack in the foundation that I, in my arrogance, was completely blind to.

I see the scene she's describing with perfect, horrifying clarity. The whispered conversation. The hidden phone. A patched member and a prospect conspiring in plain sight.

I put my trust in Grizz. And he sold us all out. I have been completely, catastrophically blind.

I was so focused on the idea of a single, low-level rat—the prospect—that I never considered the possibility that he was just a pawn. That the rot, the real betrayal, came from one of my own. A patched brother.

Grizz. I put my trust in him. I shared my battle plan in front of him. And he sold us all out.

I have been completely, catastrophically blind.

I have been completely, catastrophically blind. The sickening realization is still churning in my gut when the world explodes again.

A massive BOOM from the main floor below sends a shockwave up through the concrete, shaking the entire fourth floor.

The weak emergency light flickers and dies, plunging us into absolute, suffocating darkness.

Dust and debris rain down from the ceiling, and the sound of splintering wood is followed by a fresh wave of triumphant, close-range automatic gunfire from downstairs.

They're through the barricades. They're inside the house.

A radio on the belt of a dead brother in the hallway crackles to life, the sound a desperate beacon in the dark. Zero's voice screams from the speaker, raw with a pain and fury I have never heard from him in twenty years.

"They're through! They're through the main hall! MAN DOWN! MAN DOWN!"

There's a burst of static, a choked sob, and then the words that shatter what's left of my world.

"PREZ, THEY GOT ROOK! ROOK IS DOWN!"

Rook.

The name is a void that swallows every other thought. My brother. My VP. My strategist. The one man I trusted without question. Down. Bleeding out on the main floor because of a breach that Grizz, a man Rook trusted, allowed. A breach I was too blind to see.

The fortress has fallen. The war is lost. My best friend is dying.

And I am on the fourth floor of a burning building, trapped in the dark.

The only person with me is not a brother, not a soldier.

It's her. The woman I brutalized, the ghost I caged, the one person whose clear eyes saw the truth that my own arrogance missed.

The one person who is not panicking, whose breathing beside me is steady and calm.

She has a piece of the truth. She has a mind that sees things differently. And in this moment of absolute, catastrophic failure, a horrifying new reality dawns. To get out of this alive, to save what little is left of my club, I have to do the one thing I thought was impossible.

I have to trust her.