Page 10 of All Ghosts Aren’t Dead (The Forgotten #1)

That got everyone’s attention.

Midnight was… brilliant.

The mafia’s personal hacker.

He didn’t just find information—he dismantled it, rewrote it, buried it again, and dared you to come looking. He’d hacked into federal systems, Vatican archives, and once redirected a CIA drone just to impress his husband, a mafia assassin with a kill count high enough to be its own area code.

“He’s been digging into John and Naomi—names, addresses, old mail, documents they didn’t think to burn, and cross-referencing anything he could find with unlisted religious group records.”

I tapped the space bar with the edge of my thumb, and the screen flickered once, then twice, before steadying onto the grainy image of a dimly lit room. A moment later, Midnight’s face filled the screen.

His headset sat crooked across his head, half-swallowed by unruly dark hair. The glow from half a dozen monitors painted his skin in shifting shades of blue and violet, throwing shadows across his pale features and oversized T-shirt.

“Did you find anything?” I asked, skipping the bullshit.

Small talk was for people with time and patience.

I had neither.

“Are you serious?” The boy blinked at me. “I always find something. I’m the best.”

He wasn’t wrong.

His chair squeaked loudly as he spun to one side, fingers flying over a mechanical keyboard. The clack of the keys was fast and chaotic—no hesitation, just muscle memory and caffeine-fueled instinct.

“Blue didn’t come up anywhere in the usual places, but I got a ping off a corrupted scan file buried in a defunct cloud backup attached to an old donation ledger.”

“What the fuck did he just say?” Bishop murmured.

Midnight didn’t miss a beat. “The ledger was private and password-locked. It was buried under layers of ghost routing and fragmented metadata. It appears to have been digitized and archived about seven years ago.”

Amir’s chair creaked as he leaned forward, the file in front of him forgotten. “What exactly does it contain?”

“The ledger is for something called the Purification Program,” Midnight said, his voice flatter now. He scratched absently at his forearm, fingers twitching with agitation. “It’s… children. Dozens of them. Categorized under stages of purity.”

My stomach turned, slow and hard like something foul had uncoiled inside it.

Across the table, chairs creaked.

No one spoke.

Midnight continued. “The Purification Program is the result of a religion founded by a man who goes by Ezekiel. No last name or confirmed identity.”

He tapped something out of frame, and a new glow washed over his features—cold, clinical blue.

“Ezekiel claims he received a divine vision, that the world is entering an era of reckoning. A divine judgment where only the pure ascend.”

My jaw clenched, slow and grinding. Every muscle in my shoulders went tight.

“Jesus Christ,” Imogen whispered, her voice nearly lost to the silence.

“Sounds like a fucking lunatic,” Bishop echoed louder, knuckles white against the table’s edge.

Midnight shook his head. “He’s more than that,” he said, fingers still tapping.

“He’s smart, organized, and super rich. He built an entire network—safe houses, ritual sites, underground compounds—all operating under fake foundations and religious protections.

The kind of stuff that gets overlooked if you pay the right people. ”

Elara let out a sharp breath, the sound barely audible.

“I traced some of the donations.” Midnight clicked again, bringing up something we couldn’t see. “This program is backed by some high-level contributors.”

“I’m sorry,” Amir said suddenly, clearing his throat and rising halfway out of his chair. “Are you telling me mothers and fathers around the world bring their children to this man so he might cure them of impurities?”

“Yes. They call it salvation, but it’s just… punishment.”

A pulse of something black and furious slid beneath my ribs.

“Blue’s parents appear to be regular contributors,” Midnight said, eyes flicking across his second monitor, “and by the looks of it… high ranking. There’s a separate donor file.

Blue is listed specifically in one of the cleansing ledgers—under his birth name.

” He paused, squinting slightly. “‘Bailey Bensen.’”

Bailey .

The name hit harder than I expected.

“He’s listed under the classification: impaired.”

“Impaired?” Sofia echoed, mouth flattening into a thin line.

Midnight nodded once. “I’m… not totally sure what it means in context, but it’s not good.

The ledger tracks his cleansings. There’s a break—stops around his sixth birthday, then picks back up with more frequency.

The last entry…” He shifted, clicking something off-screen.

“The last entry is dated the same day as the murders.” He glanced up. “Blue’s eighteenth birthday.”

Silence rippled through the room.

“His birthday?” I repeated, low and dangerous, voice rough in my throat. I stared at the screen like it might explain itself. “You’re telling me they hurt him— celebrated him —with violence?”

“Looks that way,” Midnight said quietly.

“A learning disability would explain the classification,” Imogen said, flipping through her folder. “Impaired likely refers to his struggles to read. If Ezekiel’s doctrine emphasizes purity through mental clarity, it would be seen as a stain.”

Fucking hell. My throat tightened.

Blue had been punished, bled, over a fucking difference, and then conditioned to believe his brain was broken beyond repair.

“Whatever they were doing to him,” Mei said slowly, scanning the table, “it had to have been about to escalate, yes? The rituals hit legal adulthood. That’s usually the point of transformation in these sects.”

“My guess?” Amir’s voice cut through with quiet certainty as he folded his arms. “They were preparing a final cleansing. Something symbolic. Something brutal. His eighteenth birthday would’ve marked the end of impurity, in their eyes.”

The chair beneath me groaned as I leaned forward, jaw locked. Rage prickled just beneath my skin, but beneath that, guilt .

I hadn’t saved him.

I’d found him, but only after he’d been forced to save himself in the only way he could.

“Can we track down where Ezekiel is now?” I asked, voice quieter than before.

Midnight leaned closer to his screen, posture tense.

“I’m trying. He’s cloaked himself behind encrypted donation shells and scrubbed registries, but there are threads.

He’s left digital fingerprints in places he didn’t think mattered.

If they exist, I’ll find them.” He tapped a final key. “I can find anybody.”

The screen dimmed to black, Midnight’s last words lingering like a warning and a promise.

I can find anybody.

I looked down at the folder in front of me and felt something raw claw up my throat.

Bailey .

I flexed my gloved fingers once. Twice.

When I looked up, every eye was on me.

“Listen closely,” I said, voice low but steady. “There’s no handbook for what comes next. We’ve seen trauma, we’ve seen indoctrination, but this…” I tapped the folder with the back of my knuckle. “This is another fucking category.”

“He’s not just here to survive. He’s here to change.” My voice sharpened. “We train him, we watch him, and we protect him.”

A few heads nodded. No one dared speak.

“Stay out of his head unless you’re invited,” I said, rising to my feet. “He’ll shadow Simon this week. No pressure. Just observation. If any of you observe anything you’d consider off, I want to be notified immediately. Understood?”

Murmurs of agreement followed. A few shifted, reaching for pens or closing folders.

I didn’t move… didn’t fucking need to.

The decision had already been made.

Blue wasn’t just another broken boy passed through our gates or a project to be measured in stages.

He was mine .