Page 34 of Heresy
She seems to take my silence as an invitation to continue. "He gets like that sometimes. Wound up so tight he just... snaps." She shakes her head. "You can always tell when things are bad. The music gets louder, the fights get uglier, and you hear certain names being thrown around more. Lately, it's been the name 'Cain' all the time. It always gets him on edge. Brings up a lot of old ghosts."
Her words are a baited hook. She's offering me information—the currency of this house—but what's the price?
"You know," she says, her eyes narrowing as she studies my face. "It's weird. You've got the same kind of fire in your eyes that Abel used to have. I've seen his picture. He's a club legend."
Angel seems to realize she's said too much...
"You know," she says, her eyes narrowing slightly as she studies my face. "It's weird. You've got the same kind of fire in your eyes that Abel used to have."
The name lands like a physical object on the table between us.Abel. I don't know it, but my entire nervous system recognizes it as a key—or a trigger. It’s the first real piece of his past anyone has dared to offer.
Angel seems to realize she's said too much. Her eyes dart around the room again. "Look, honey, just... be careful. When Hex gets a new obsession, it never ends well for the obsession."
Before I can ask the question burning on my tongue—Who is Abel?—one of the prospects notices us. "Angel! Get back to work," he barks, his voice cracking with a nervous authority he doesn't possess.
Angel rolls her eyes, the moment of connection broken. She gives me one last look, a mixture of pity and warning, then turns and saunters back toward the bar.
I am left alone again, but the silence is different. It is no longer empty. It is filled with a name.
Abel.
He isn't just a monster haunted by generic ghosts. His ghosts have names. And she just gave me one. The dismissal I felt moments ago begins to evaporate, replaced by the cold, sharp focus of a predator that has just caught a new scent. The game is not over. He just handed me a new piece to play with.
I watch Angel walk away,the prospect glaring at her back until she's safely behind the bar. The moment is over. The brief, dangerous connection is severed. The room settles back into its hollow rhythm, the men at the pool table oblivious, the few remaining girls lost in their own worlds.
But for me, everything has changed. The boredom, the feeling of being a dismissed object—it’s gone, replaced by a live-wire current of energy that hums just beneath my skin.
Abel.
The name echoes in the quiet emptiness of my mind. It's not just a name; it's a key. A trigger. The first piece of solid ground in the psychological swamp I’ve been navigating. Before, Hex was a monolith, a monster defined only by his power and his ghosts. Now, one of his ghosts has a name.
I replay the conversation in my head, dissecting every word with the precision of a watchmaker. Angel’s warning—"When Hex gets a new obsession, it never ends well for the obsession."It confirms what I already suspected. I am not a temporary problem; I am a project.
And her comparison—"You've got the same kind of fire in your eyes that Abel used to have."This is the most crucial piece of the puzzle. It means Abel was not like the others. He had "fire." He was likely defiant, like me. And whatever happened to him is the source of the rot in Hex's soul, the reason he flinched when I mentioned his ghosts.
The information is a weapon, but it’s an unfinished one. A name without a story is just a sound. I need to know more. I need to knowwhathappened to Abel.
My eyes drift across the room, past the oblivious prospects, to the bar where Angel is now dutifully wiping down the counter. Her face is a mask of professional boredom again, the brief flicker of connection erased. She is a potential source, a well of information, but she’s also terrified. Pushing her for more, especially in the open, would be reckless. It would put her in danger and expose my own intentions.
No. A direct approach is too risky.
I look at the men still in the room—Grizz, the serpent-necked man, the prospects. They are all pieces on the board. The keyis not to confront them, but to listen. They are arrogant, drunk, and restless under Hex's new, tense leadership. They will talk. They will boast. They will mourn.
And I will be here in my corner, the invisible ghost. The perfect, silent listener.
My new mission crystallizes. I am no longer just waiting for an opportunity to escape this building. I am now hunting for the story of Abel. Because I understand with a chilling, absolute certainty that the story of his death is the key to the lock on my own cage.
The clubhouse isa tomb after midnight. The chaos of the day has bled away, leaving only the stale scent of beer and the low, mournful hum of a neon sign behind the bar. I sit at my corner table, a ghost in their quietest hours, watching the few remaining prospects clean up the wreckage of the day.
A sharp, metallicCLANGfrom the front of the clubhouse makes me jolt, my head snapping up. It’s the sound of the heavy crossbar being thrown back. A second later, the heavy front doors burst inward, slamming against the interior walls with aCRACKso loud it feels like the building itself has broken a bone. The impact reverberates through the floorboards, a physical shockwave that travels up the legs of my chair.
The silence is not just shattered; it’s annihilated.
It’s a storm of motion and noise. Three members stumble in, their faces grim, their leather cuts stained with something darker than road dust. They are supporting a fourth man who is slumped between them, his leg wrapped in a makeshift, blood-soaked tourniquet. A low, pained groan is ripped from histhroat. The war with the Sin Santos, I realize with a jolt, is not a distant, strategic game. It is a thing of torn flesh and real blood.
The remaining prospects and club girls freeze, their eyes wide. A raw, animal panic floods the room.
Then he walks in.
