The Independently Published The Lasting Supper

THE LASTING SUPPER
Bishop Chronicles, Book OneFor thirty-one years, Bishop Jeremiah Carter has been the man Bruton Blvd trusts most.He built New Beginning Kingdom Church out of a burned-out meat market and a folding table, turned it into an institution that feeds two hundred people a week, houses families the banks turned away, and gives ex-convicts a second chance nobody else will offer. Eight hundred people fill his sanctuary every Sunday, certain his name means something steady.They don't know what it cost to keep it that way.When a young reporter starts asking questions about a man who disappeared from church history thirty years ago, Bishop understands his carefully managed silence is finally running out of road. A young man's death gets tangled with a memory card hidden in a shoe insole. A detective who doesn't believe in coincidences starts pulling every thread. And the daughter carrying his first grandchild starts asking the one question he's never let himself answer honestly: how much of what they call "the kingdom" was actually built on truth?Bishop makes a decision. At his church's annual communal supper - the Lasting Supper, the tradition his own hands built thirty-one years ago - he will finally tell his family everything.He never finishes.When the lights go out at his own table, someone in that room decides some truths are worth killing to keep buried. As the investigation unravels three decades of managed lies, buried debts, and a loyalty twisted into something unrecognizable, one question drives everyone left standing: was he protecting the kingdom, or was he protecting the lie the kingdom was never strong enough to survive without?A literary crime thriller about faith, family, and the difference between a legacy and a debt nobody ever paid off.