Page 26 of Heresy
"She's a civilian," Fuse grunts, the defiance still simmering. "A nobody. You put her on a pedestal, made her some untouchable queen?—"
"I made her mine," I interrupt, the word cracking like a whip in the silent room. "And you put your hands on my property. In my house. In front of my men. You didn't just disrespect me. You disrespected the crown. You disrespected every man in this room."
I nod to Zero.
The movement is brutally efficient. Zero draws his knife in a blur of motion. Static cries out as Zero grabs a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back to expose his throat. But the blade doesn't go to his neck. It goes to the prospect patch stitched on his cut. With two quick, vicious slices, Zero cuts the patch away, severing the kid's connection to the club.
"Get out," I say, my voice flat. Static scrambles to his feet, sobbing, and flees the room, no longer a part of our world.
Then, I look at Fuse. He is a patched member. A brother. His punishment must be different.
"Fuse," I say. "You challenged my authority over what is mine. So you will pay the price with what is yours." I glance down at his right hand, the one he put on her shoulder.
Fuse, still on his knees, pales as understanding dawns in his eyes. Two of the other members grab him by the shoulders,hauling him forward and forcing his right arm out across the scarred oak table, pinning it there. Rook places a heavy, steel ball-peen hammer on the table in front of me.
I stand up, pick up the hammer. It feels heavy, final. I walk around the table until I'm standing over him. I look into his eyes, and I make sure every man in this room sees the consequence of crossing their king.
My words, "This is the only warning," hang in the air, heavy as the hammer itself. The moment it begins its descent, a collective flinch ripples through the assembled brothers.
The crack of bone is far worse than any imagined sound—a wet, splintering tear. A raw scream of pure agony builds in Fuse's throat, but even through the white-hot haze of pain, he crushes it back down. He knows the rule. Screaming is weakness. Weakness means you lose respect. And in this club, respect is the only currency that matters.
He swallows the sound, his body jerking once, violently, a choked, pathetic gasp escaping his lips instead. The silence that follows is thick with the ghost of a scream that was never uttered, and the brutal understanding of the price of defiance.
The sharp,clean pain in my own hand is nothing compared to the memory of the sound—that wet, splintering crack of Fuse's bones shattering. It wasn’t justice. It was a brutal, ugly display, and it wasn't enough. No amount of pain—his or mine—could scour the acidic taste of what I’ve become from my soul.
I drop the hammer on the table and walk out of the church room without a backward glance, leaving Zero and Rook to clean up the mess. The heavy oak door thuds shut behind me, sealing the sound of Fuse’s ragged breathing away. I walk throughthe now-empty clubhouse, the silence a heavy shroud, the only sound the crunch of my own boots on a stray piece of broken glass.
Back in my office, the soundproof glass cuts off the world. I cross to the mahogany bar, my movements stiff, robotic. My own hand throbs, the knuckles split and bleeding from the wall I assaulted earlier. The whiskey glugs into a crystal glass, the sound obscenely loud in the quiet room.
I take a long swallow, chasing the burn. My free hand comes up to my chest, fingers tracing the stitched outline of the President patch on my cut. The symbol of my power. The brand of my sin.
As I stare down at it, the scent of whiskey and stale smoke in my office is replaced by the smell of desert rain on hot asphalt. Abel's ghost enters the room, not as a whisper, but as a fully formed memory from a decade ago. We were prospects then, patching a leaking roof on the old clubhouse after a summer storm. He was smiling, his face streaked with tar.
"Our strength is a shield, Hex," he had said, his voice full of a conviction I have long since murdered. "It is a wall we build to protect our own from the wolves. It is not a hammer to crush the weak."
The memory dissolves, leaving only the sickening echo of a hammer hitting flesh and bone. I am no shield, I think, the whiskey burning a hollow path in my gut. I am the hammer.
I sit thereon the floor, surrounded by the ghosts of my own making, letting the despair wash over me. It’s a familiar, dangerous tide. But despair is a luxury. A weakness. It’s the emotion that made Abel hesitate that night, a single moment ofdoubt that got him killed. Despair is a grave I will not lie down in.
The throb in my broken knuckles is a sharp, grounding pain. I use the wall to push myself up, my body protesting. A king doesn't have the luxury of falling apart. He finds a new path. He reasserts control.
I can't undo what happened in the hallway. The brand has been set. The punishment delivered. But my mistake wasn't the violence—violence, when used correctly, is a tool of order. My mistake was the rage. The hot, messy, unprofessional fury of an animal losing its grip. That is not how a king wages war. A king’s violence is a cold, a scalpel used with precision. Mine was a hammer in the dark.
A new resolve, sharp as chipped ice, cuts through the fog of my self-hatred. If I am to control the monster inside me, I must first understand the thing that unleashes it. I must control her. Not just her body—that’s a temporary victory, a crude display of force. I need to control her mind. I need to map her, dissect her, peel back every layer of her defiant silence until I know what she is, what she fears, and what levers I need to pull to break her will completely. When she is a known quantity, a solved equation, she will no longer have any power over me.
My feet carry me across the room, my purpose now clear and cold. I stop in front of the bank of security monitors, the blue light washing over my face. My good hand finds the mouse, and with a click, I find the feed for her cell.
She’s no longer on the floor. She is on the cot, sitting up, her back ramrod straight even in the grainy, black-and-white image. Her knees are drawn to her chest, but it’s not a posture of fear. It's one of vigilance. She is a queen on a makeshift throne, surveying a ruined kingdom. She is waiting.
A slow, cold smile touches my lips. This is no longer about a lesson taught in a hallway. This is a campaign. A siege. A much more interesting game.
You want to fight, little ghost? I think, my eyes locked on her defiant image. Fine. We'll fight. But the battlefield has changed. Not with fists and teeth. In here.
I tap my temple with my good hand.
And in here, I never lose.
ELEVEN
