Page 46 of Heresy
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 massiveBOOMfrom 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.
TWENTY-ONE
THE GHOST IS RIGHT
VERA
The world is darkness, dust, and the deafening roar of a kingdom under siege. A radio on a dead man's belt in the hallway crackles to life, a desperate voice screaming from the speaker. It's Zero, but it's a version of him I've never heard, his voice shredded with a raw pain that cuts through the static.
"PREZ, THEY GOT ROOK! ROOK IS DOWN!"
The name hangs in the air, heavier than the smoke that is starting to fill the hallway. I look at Hex.
For the first time since I met him, the mask is not just cracked; it is gone. The cold king who dissected my past in this cell, the brutal monster from the hallway—they both vanish.
The man standing before me is utterly shattered. A low, guttural sound is torn from his throat, a sound of pure, animalistic agony. He is pure, unthinking rage.
He turns, his pistol raised, ready to charge blindly down the main staircase, a suicidal move into the heart of the firefight. He is going to get himself killed. He is going to getmekilled.
And something inside me snaps. The cold, calculating survivor takes over.
"Wait!" My voice is sharp, cutting through his haze of grief. He freezes, his head turning slowly toward me, his eyes wild and unfocused.
