Page 21 of Heresy
This one endures. She builds a new cage inside the one I provided, a fortress made of discipline and will that I can feel even through the low-res screen. And that resistance is driving me slowly, methodically insane. A low growl rumbles in my chest. I hate her resilience with a passion that borders on religious fervor, a constant, silent challenge to everything I know about breaking human spirits.
I watch her now, in the space between day five and six, as she finally sleeps. Curled on her side, she appears smaller, almost fragile. A dangerous lie. Even unconscious, her spine is tense, her muscles refusing to fully relax. Sleep provides no surrender.
I take a long drink of whiskey, but the fire does nothing to touch the ice around my heart. The splinter she has become lodges deeper with each passing hour, an infection in a system designed for sterile control. I find myself returning here night after night, drawn by a gravitational pull I can't resist, watching her sleep like a lovesick teenager instead of the president of an empire.
What the fuck is happening to me?
The question hangs in the recycled air, a digital glow reflecting off my glass like a prayer to a god of demolition. On the screen, she stirs, a small movement in the concrete tomb. I lean forward, a moth drawn to a flame I know will incinerate me.
Because I need to know what makes her different. I need to understand what forges that kind of unbreakable will. I need to discover if she dreams of escape or revenge.
Or if she dreams of me.
The thought emerges unbidden, a poison from a part of my soul I've spent years trying to kill. It transforms this surveillance into something intimate. Something dangerous.
This isn't security anymore. This is a fascination. This is an obsession. The question isn't how to break her.
It's how to stop this from breaking me.
The days area different kind of hell. While the club is awake and moving, I am the President. I handle business. I make calls. I project an aura of cold, unshakable control. But she is alwaysthere, a persistent ghost at the edge of my thoughts, a black-and-white image of a woman pacing a cage superimposed over everything I see.
The heavy oak door of the church room swings shut behind me, the sound of the main clubhouse vanishing as if it were in another world. A deadbolt slides home with a heavy, metallicTHUD, sealing us in our sanctuary. The only light comes from a single fixture hanging low over the massive oak table, illuminating the scars and names carved into its surface over decades—a historical record written in wood and blades. The air is thick with the ghosts of stale smoke and secrets that have been soaked into the very timber of the room. We take our seats, the table already a scarred battlefield of beer bottles and ashtrays.
Rook lays out a series of surveillance photos, their glossy surfaces a stark contrast to the ancient wood. They’re grainy, taken from a distance, but the images is clear enough.
"This is from last night," Rook says, his voice a low growl. "Our source inside the Santos' crew finally paid off. He got a picture of the man who's been giving them their new strategy, the one telling them where to hit us."
My eyes, still clouded with thoughts of Vera and Abel, drift to the photos. They're grainy, taken from a distance. A man in shadow. But the set of his shoulders, the arrogant tilt of his head… It's a ghost I know. A cold dread begins to crawl up my spine, a familiar sickness churning in my gut.It can't be.
Rook taps the central photo, his voice a low growl for the whole table to hear. "Our source inside the Santos' crew got a picture of the man who's been giving them their new strategy. He calls himself their new 'consultant.'"
Rook looks up from the photo. His gaze sweeps over the brothers before it lands and holds on me. He sees the recognition on my face. He sees that I already know. Hisexpression hardens, a silent acknowledgment of the history we share.
He lowers his voice slightly, the next words meant more for me than for the room.
"It's him, Hex. It's Cain."
The name lands in the room like a grenade, sucking all the air out. My eyes are fixed on the head of the table, on the name carved deep into the oak. ABEL. The two names are forever linked, my greatest failure and my greatest sin. And now, a new, dangerous thought begins to form, linking all of them: the ghost from my past, the enemy at our gates, and the ghost in the cage upstairs.
Abel trusted me, and Cain forced my hand until I put my brother in a grave. This woman, Vera, looks at me with that same defiant fire, and I’ve put her in a cage while Cain is maneuvering outside my walls.
It’s the same pattern. The same curse. Cain creates chaos, and I am forced to sacrifice a piece of my soul to contain it.
"...he's making his move. What's the call, Hex?"
Rook’s voice cuts through the fog. I look up. The entire table is silent, watching me. I realize I missed half the report. I, the man who misses nothing, was lost at the exact moment I couldn't afford to be.
I see the sharp, worried look in Rook's eyes. I push down the flash of anger—at him for seeing my weakness, at Cain for returning, at myself for being compromised. I slam my fist on the table, the bottles jumping.
"Find him," I snarl, my voice a weapon. "I want eyes on every move Cain makes. I want to know what he eats, where he sleeps, and who he's talking to. This isn't a turf war anymore."
I force my mind back to the war. But it's too late. The ghost from my past is no longer a memory. He’s an active threat, and he's brought my other ghosts to the table with him.
Night falls over Red Hook,painting the grimy brick buildings in shades of bruised purple and black. Downstairs, the familiar rumble of the clubhouse begins to fade. The clatter of glasses, the shouts of laughter, the heavy beat of the jukebox—all slowly die away as the brothers drift off to their own restless sleep.
But sleep will not come for me.
I’m in my apartment above the clubhouse, the silence amplifying the frantic thoughts that claw at the inside of my skull. The whiskey sits half-finished on the nightstand, offering no solace. The ghosts are too loud tonight.
