Page 23 of Heresy
This fragile safety is a leash, and its chain is wrapped tight around my throat.
The table next to mine is occupied by a mountain of a man with a wild, red beard and another, leaner member with a tattoo of a serpent coiling up his neck. One of the club girls, a blonde named Angel, brings them a round of shots.
"To the Saints gettin' what's comin' to 'em," the red-bearded one growls, raising his glass.
"Easy, Grizz," the serpent-necked man says, his voice a low hiss. "Hex wants this quiet. No unsanctioned hits. You know the rules."
"Rules," Grizz scoffs, slamming back his shot. "The rule is, they hit us, we hit them back twice as hard. Since when did we get so damn soft?" He glares across the room toward the bar, his meaning clear.
The conversation gives me my first real piece of actionable intelligence. The "Saints"—it has to be the Sin Santos, a name I've heard spat out with venom half a dozen times since they brought me down here. There's tension in the ranks. Some of the men are impatient with Hex's controlled, strategic approach to the war with their rivals. And they aren't afraid to say it.
Hex’s control is demonstrated not by touching me, but by forbidding anyone else from doing so.
This fragile safety is a leash, a constant reminder of my powerlessness. But they're letting me listen. They're letting me learn. And every secret I gather is a blade I can use to cut myself free.
He’s here now, at the far end of the bar, his back to me. He’s talking quietly with Rook. He hasn’t looked in my direction once, but I feel his presence like a change in the atmospheric pressure. A prickling on my skin, a cold weight in the pit of my stomach. He is the sun this dark, violent planet orbits, and even with his back turned, I can feel the pull of his gravity.
My focus stays lockedon the scarred surface of my table, on the interlocking rings of condensation left by my glass of water. It’s safer to look at the table. But my senses are screaming, every nerve ending a fine-tuned antenna. Isense them before I see them. A shift in the atmosphere. Two predators detaching from the pack.
I don’t look up, not even when their shadows fall over me. I can smell the beer and aggression on them.
"Lookin' lonely over here," a rough voice says. Fuse. The angry one.
I keep my eyes down. "I'm fine."
A chair scrapes against the floor as he sits without invitation. A younger one, the prospect they call Static, remains standing, a nervous but eager hyena flanking the lion.
"Fine?" Fuse scoffs, his voice loud. "Doesn't look fine. Looks like the President's got his new toy locked up so tight he forgot to play with it."
My stomach clenches. This isn't about me. This is a challenge, a message sent across the room to the man at the bar. I have been here before, a pawn in a pissing contest between powerful men who see me as territory. I am the ground they are fighting over.
"I’m not a toy," I say, my voice a low, quiet warning. A mistake. My defiance is a flicker of light, and it draws the moths.
"Got some fire in ya, huh?" Fuse leans forward. "I like that. Bet Hex is tryin' to stamp that right out of you." He smiles, a humorless flash of teeth. "Me? I'd encourage it."
My entire body is rigid. I can feel the eyes of the room on us. I can feelhiseyes, a physical weight on my back. The air is thick, static, waiting for a lightning strike.
"You should go," I say, my voice barely a whisper.
Fuse just laughs, a short, ugly sound. "I think I'll stay."
And then he reaches out, slow and deliberate, and places his hand on my shoulder.
The weight of it is heavy, proprietary. The heat of his palm seeps through my shirt, a brand from the wrong man. The touch is a ghost, an echo of a different man's hand—Dmitri's—claimingownership in a gilded cage. The music from the jukebox seems to warp and slow. The entire world narrows to the unwanted pressure on my skin.
And the utter, bone-deep certainty that I am about to see someone die.
The moment Fuse’shand settles on my shoulder, the low-level chaos of the clubhouse seems to stutter, like a record skipping. Conversations die mid-sentence. The clatter of pool balls ceases. Even the snarling guitar solo from the jukebox seems to lose its edge, fading into a muffled background hum.
At the bar, Hex’s conversation with Rook cuts off abruptly. I can’t see his face, but I feel the shift in his posture, the sudden stillness that radiates a terrifying intensity. He saw it all reflected in the mirrored back of the bar. He saw the blatant disregard for his unspoken rule. He saw another man’s hand on what belongs to him.
He moves with a speed that belies his size, a silent, predatory grace that sends a fresh wave of fear crashing over me. He doesn't shout. He doesn't look at Fuse or Static. His focus is solely on me.
He reaches my table in what feels like three long strides. His hand clamps onto my arm, his fingers digging into my flesh with bruising force. He doesn't speak, doesn't acknowledge Fuse or Static. He just hauls me out of my chair with a brutal yank that sends the flimsy wood skittering across the floor.
The silence in the clubhouse is now absolute, thick with a tension you could cut with a knife. Every eye is on us.
He dragsme from the table, his grip a vice on my arm. The noise of the main room cuts off as he pulls me into the adjoining hallway, a dim passage smelling of dust and old secrets. The sudden shift in lighting throws harsh, flickering shadows across his face, carving his jaw into something sharp and unforgiving.
