Page 3 of Heresy (The Lost Gospels #1)

The filth, like the crown, is mine to bear. This is the mathematics of survival: sometimes you choose to be a monster so your people can remain human.

Time to go handle Vera Ivanov.

I leave Rook suspended in the calculated quiet of my office and take the stairs.

Four flights down. With each level, the muffled hum of the clubhouse sharpens into distinct sounds—a harsh laugh, the clink of glass, the low thrum of music.

The air grows thick with stale beer and smoke.

When I step onto the main floor, the noise doesn't just quiet, it evaporates.

I move through the room like a shark cutting through water.

The men part instinctively—they know their place in the food chain, and recognize this particular stride.

Not social. Not casual. This is the measured walk of someone on his way to handle a problem.

And my problems always end in silence.

The garage breathes different air—sharp, clean honesty of mechanical spaces. Gasoline. Oil. Hot metal. The scents of purpose stripped to essential function, where honest work happens without pretense or performance.

My bike dominates the concrete floor like a monument to controlled violence—blacked-out beast of steel and carefully contained rage. No chrome to catch light, no decorative elements serving vanity over function. Only power, speed, menace distilled into mechanical form.

My throne. My confessional on wheels.

I swing my leg over worn leather that has molded to my body through thousands of miles of shared purpose. The machine settles under my weight with recognition—metal and flesh finding familiar equilibrium.

Turn the key. Wake the beast.

The engine roars to life with a guttural rumble that vibrates through my spine, settling into bones like a tuning fork struck against frequency of violence. This isn't just transportation—it's psychological armor, mechanical extension of will made manifest.

A familiar voice answering my own darkness.

The setting sun bleeds across the urban sky, painting warehouses in shades of copper and threat.

This is my city, my kingdom—territory carved from concrete and claimed through blood.

But I don't see architectural beauty. My eyes catalog tactical possibilities: one-way streets as choke points, rooftops as sniper perches, blind corners for ambush.

You have to know concrete, steel, and secrets to survive here.

I navigate a backstreet labyrinth with unconscious expertise, a web of alleys mapped in muscle memory. The rumble of BQE overhead provides acoustic cover, urban white noise that masks approach and muffles consequence.

As the pier materializes, tactical consciousness sharpens. Zero's coordinates were precise—professional efficiency that reduces chaos to manageable variables. I see the alley formed by shipping containers, a geometric canyon created by an industrial accident.

Perfect killing ground. Isolated. Contained.

A hundred yards out, I cut the engine. The beast falls silent with mechanical sigh, momentum carrying me forward like a ghost on two wheels. The only sound now is soft crunch of gravel—percussion announcing arrival to those trained to interpret such signals.

The time for noise is over. Time for necessary work begins.

Each revolution carries me closer to an encounter that defines the true cost of leadership—the moment when abstract authority transforms into concrete action, when philosophical positions require practical demonstration through applied violence.

Vera Ivanov waits in her steel coffin, unaware her story ends tonight.

I swing my leg off the bike, heavy leather settling across shoulders like the familiar weight of authority. My boots make almost no sound on worn asphalt—years of operational discipline transforming movement into silent approach.

Fuse and Zero stand like stone gargoyles guarding entrance to tomb, bodies radiating stillness that suggests violence held in suspension.

They see my approach and silent understanding passes between us—communication refined through shared purpose, brotherhood of men who have crossed lines that can never be uncrossed.

Professional courtesy between monsters.

And then I see her. The loose thread. Vera.

She's pressed against corrugated steel like a cornered animal in a cage of our making, slight frame dwarfed by industrial architecture.

Dark hair creates a wild halo around a face drained pale with terror, features sharpened by adrenaline into something approaching ethereal.

She clutches the camera to chest like a shield, like a talisman.

Nothing remarkable. Another piece of civilian debris.

My mind shifts into operational mode—calculating logistics of erasure, mechanical steps required to make a person vanish. Should be simple. Should be clean.

I take a step into the alley. That's when I look into her eyes.

I expect tears. Pleading. Hysterical begging I've witnessed hundred times before. I see none of it.

Terror swims in wide, dark pools of her irises—primal fear that speaks to evolutionary understanding of predator-prey dynamics. But underneath, buried like ember in ash, something else flickers.

Not hope. Defiance.

Sharp glint of shattered glass, dangerous and unexpected. She isn't looking at me like lamb for slaughter. She's looking at me like she's calculating whether she has strength to rip my throat out before I land a killing blow.

The realization hits like cold water on hot metal.

This isn't simple erasure. The methodical plan encounters unexpected resistance—not external obstacles, but internal disruption. Something unwelcome and intensely irritating sparks in my gut, spreading warmth through regions that have learned to operate on ice.

Interest. Curiosity. Weakness.

I hate the feeling instantly, recognizing it as an operational liability that could compromise judgment. Leaders can't afford attachment to problems requiring permanent solutions.

But there it is anyway, burning like a small betrayal in my chest.

I walk slowly toward her, closing distance with deliberate precision, letting silence stretch until it becomes physical weight. Psychological warfare through proximity—demonstration that space belongs to me.

Watch throat work as she swallows. Note tremor in hands. Catalog every tell.

She is afraid—physiological responses impossible to fake. But she is not broken. Not surrendered. Not reduced to psychological submission that makes necessary work easier.

Not yet.

I stop just outside striking distance, shadow falling over her like a dark promise. This close, I can smell her fear—metallic tang of adrenaline, salt of sweat, something floral underneath that speaks to life lived outside violence.

This changes things.

Simple erasure feels insufficient, like trying to solve complex equations with elementary mathematics. The anomaly requires investigation before elimination.

I need to understand what makes this one different.

My voice emerges as a low, controlled rumble—sound designed to penetrate bone, settle into consciousness like a tuning fork struck against frequency of existential dread.

"You saw something that doesn't exist. Now I have to decide if you do, either."

Let her process that. Let her understand how narrow her world has become.

The words hang in charged air between us—statement and threat and philosophical question combined. This is where negotiations begin, with absolute clarity about who holds power and who merely hopes to survive its application.

Every decision from this moment determines whether she leaves breathing.

But something about those defiant eyes suggests this conversation won't follow familiar patterns. Won't reduce itself to simple predator-prey dynamics.

Maybe that's what makes her dangerous. Maybe that's what makes her interesting.

Maybe those are the same thing.