Page 4 of Heresy
Only Rook claims that privilege earns that level of trust through years of proven loyalty and shared violence. His presence immediately shifts the room's emotional architecture, fills space with contained menace that newer members mistake for calm.
I know better.
Rook is never calm. He is simply coiled tight enough to spring in any direction, necessity demands, violence held in suspension like potential energy waiting for release.
He places two heavy glasses on mahogany with reverence of communion, pours generous measures of Macallan 18—liquid amber that costs more than most people earn in a month. The whiskey catches light like captured fire, each pour a small ceremony of brotherhood distilled to its essential elements.
Ritual. The only honest communication between killers.
"The Sin Santos are getting bold," he begins, voice carrying a low rumble of approaching thunder. He settles into the chair across from mine, frame filling space with the kind of presence that suggests violence as a natural state rather than learned behavior. "Hit a shipment of parts coming in from Jersey. Wasn't about the score—they left most of it scattered like confetti. They just wanted to show us they could."
I take a slow sip, letting burn chase Abel's ghost from my throat, liquid fire to cauterize phantom wounds. The alcohol carries notes of smoke and oak, flavors that speak to patience, aging, the kind of investment that assumes tomorrow will arrive despite all evidence to the contrary.
"They're drawing lines," I acknowledge, tasting truth alongside aged grain.
"And daring us to cross them," Rook finishes, dark eyes reflecting calculations I recognize because they mirror my own. "They think we're distracted."
He's not wrong.
But my distractions are older and deeper than any street crew rivalry, rooted in choices that transformed brotherhood into leverage, loyalty into weapon. The crown grows heavier each year. The kingdom is hollow. Some prices, once paid, continue collecting interest for eternity.
The whiskey burns truth into consciousness: leadership is isolation wearing authority's mask.
Rook leans forward,his heavy shoulders testing the seams of his cut as he shifts his weight like a predator. He pushes his glasses up his nose, a deceptively calm gesture for a man built like a monolith. His raven hair is stark against his skin, and his goatee is a sharp, precise line that accents the coiled power in his frame. "They're testing us, Hex. They think the war with the old guard left us weak."
Perception versus reality—the eternal battlefield of power.
"Let them," I respond, voice carrying the flat finality of executioner's blade. "Pride makes men stupid. And stupid men make convenient corpses."
The philosophy of leadership distilled to brutal essence: allow enemies to believe their own propaganda, then use their arrogance as a weapon against them. The Sin Santos operate on street logic—loud, obvious, desperate for recognition. They mistake our strategic patience for weakness.
They'll learn the difference between quiet and dead when the distinction no longer matters.
Before Rook can respond, vibration erupts from my desk drawer—a harsh pulse of the problem phone, a device that only carries news measured in body counts and crisis management.Not a polite buzz of personal communication. This is mechanical urgency that transforms the atmosphere from contemplative to operational.
Trouble with a capital T.
I raise my hand, cutting through whatever Rook was preparing to say. Twenty years of partnership have taught us to communicate in gestures, the subtle shift of posture that speaks louder than words. His spine straightens, transformation from confidant to lieutenant occurring in real time.
I retrieve the cheap burner, screen glowing with minimalist threat: single encrypted number that bypasses every security protocol except the one that matters most. Zero's number. The angel of death checking in.
I flip the device open, press cold plastic against my ear. "Yeah."
Zero's voice flows like liquid nitrogen—calm, flat, emotionally vacant as surgical steel. He speaks with precision of someone who has surgically removed every trace of human feeling from his vocal cords.
"President. Situation at the pier. Civilian witness." Pause weighted with tactical assessment, pages turning in mental files. "ID on her says Vera Ivanov. She has a camera."
Vera.
The name detonates in charged silence, syllables arranging themselves into something that sounds like prayer, like something delicate and old-world and completely fucking dangerous. Two syllables that carry the weight of potential destruction, another identity in a city built on manufactured histories.
A witness with a name and camera is the kind of loose thread that unravels empires.
My jaw tightens with familiar annoyance—psychological signature of someone who has spent years managing problemsthat shouldn't exist. You don't investigate loose threads. You don't try to tuck them back into fabric. You take a lighter to them. Burn them until the edge is clean and nothing is left to unravel.
The mathematics of survival reduces to brutal simplicity: witnesses become evidence, evidence becomes conviction.
"Contained?" I ask, voice dropping to registers that suggest consequences.
