Page 38 of Heresy
Rook is the one who speaks, his voice a low, careful rumble. "Doc says Crusher will be laid up for months. The Santos hit us hard. They knew our route. We have a leak."
"I know," I say, my voice flat as I move to the bar. "Glitch is already hunting for it."
"This is Cain's strategy," Rook continues, his eyes watching me. "He wants us angry. He wants us to make a mistake." The unspoken warning hangs in the air:You just made one.
Zero cuts through the pretense, his question a scalpel. "What's the status of the asset?"
"Contained," I say.
"She saw you lose control, Prez," Rook says, his voice quiet but firm. "She saw the animal. You gave her a weapon."
"I gave the club a lesson," I snarl. "I showed them what happens when they cross my line."
"And what about you?" Rook presses. "What line did you just cross?"
Before I can answer, Zero intervenes, ever the pragmatist. "The girl is a complication we can no longer afford. Her escape attempt proves she's a threat. Her effect on you," he says, his dead eyes fixed on me, "proves she's a liability. The solution remains the same. Elimination."
I stare at both of them—Rook, the strategist, worried about my soul; Zero, the enforcer, worried about our security. Both of them are right. If she were just a civilian photographer, their logic would be undeniable.
"She's not," I say, the two words cutting through the tension in the room.
Rook and Zero both look at me, their expressions shifting from concern to sharp focus.
"Glitch has been digging since the night we brought her in," I continue, my voice now low and controlled. I finally have a justification that is as cold and hard as they are. "Her name isn't Vera Ivanov. Her real name is Katarina Volkov. Her father was an oligarch with deep ties to the Volkov Bratva in New York. She vanished two years ago."
The new information lands on them like a physical weight. The "asset" is no longer a simple problem. She's a stick of dynamite.
"Killing the runaway daughter of a Bratva-connected family without knowing why she's on our turf?" I let the question hang in the air. "That's not 'clean,' Zero. That's lighting a match in a room full of gasoline. For all we know, she's running from them, and they're looking for her. Or worse, she was sent by them."
"No," I say again, the word now final and backed by undeniable strategy. "The plan to go after Judas's family stands. But her..." I turn my back on them, a clear dismissal. "She is a separate matter. A high-value intelligence asset. And she is mine to handle."
I hear Rook sigh, a sound of frustration, but he can't argue with the logic. The argument is over. They turn and leave, closing the door softly behind them, leaving me alone.
They think I'm keeping her aliveonlyas part of a strategy. They see the king making a calculated, intelligent move to protect the club. They don't see the man feeding his obsession, using their loyalty as a shield for his own weakness.
And that's exactly how I need it to be.
"We move on your command, Prez,"he says, his voice tight. Zero gives a single, sharp nod, his silent promise of obedience.
They turn and leave, closing the heavy oak door softly behind them, leaving me alone in the suffocating silence of my office
When the door clicks shut, leaving me alone with my demons, my tormentors. The lie I just fed Rook and Zero settles in the air, a functional, tactical shield for the chaos ragingbeneath. It's a good lie because it’s rooted in a terrifying truth. Sheistied to the Bratva. But that’s not why I kept her alive.
I walk to the bar, my hand shaking almost imperceptibly as I pour a generous measure of whiskey. The amber liquid glugs into the glass, the only sound in a room suddenly filled with ghosts.
I walk to my desk and sink into my chair, the leather groaning under my weight. I pull up a file on my monitor, one that is encrypted from even my own club's network. It's Glitch's full report on "Vera Ivanov."
He brought it to me two days ago. He had run her face through every database he could hack—state, federal, and international. He got nothing. Vera Ivanov was a ghost, her digital footprint clean and curated. Too clean. So he widened the search, running her image against known associates of our rivals and allies. Still nothing.
Then, he did what he does best. He went deeper. He cross-referenced unsolved disappearances from the last five years against her physical markers. And there, buried in an eight-month-old high-society page from a New York gala, he found her. A ghost with a different name. Katarina Volkov, standing beside her father, a man whose name came with a thick file of his own, detailing his connections to the Bratva.
From there, the pieces fell into place. Glitch built a web, pulling on every digital thread. He found security rosters for the Volkov estate, cross-referencing them with known Bratva enforcers. And one name came up again and again, a man who was always at Katarina's side in the background of photos. Sasha 'The Whisper' Volkov. Not a blood relative, but a high-ranking lieutenant and one of the Bratva's most feared hitmen, known for his quiet, efficient work. He was her father’s shadow and, apparently, her chess tutor.
The information is a weapon. The name Sasha was a scalpel I used to see if she would bleed, and she bled beautifully.
But that's not what's haunting me now.
I close the file, the screen going dark. My mind goes back to the bar. Not the violence. Not the sex. It goes back to the momentbefore.
