Page 2 of All Ghosts Aren’t Dead (The Forgotten #1)

SAMUEL

I was not a stranger to death… or the face it wore. It was flawless, almost perfect— designed to seduce and destroy. It whispered pleasure but bled pain, and though I’d seen it thousands of times, I wasn’t immune.

This boy…

He was somehow the anomaly to it all.

His folder was thin— too thin —a single page that lacked any kind of pertinent information. It lay open against my palm, corners curling beneath the cool, midnight breeze. Dull street lamps flickered on top of swaying posts, casting just enough of a glow to read the barely-there assessment.

History: Inconclusive

Medical Records: None Found

Prior Incidents: None Found

Threat Level: High

The boy it spoke of had tucked himself into the curve of an overpass, folding himself into the shadows its angles created. He sat cross-legged on a bed of dirt and gravel, mouth parted slightly.

Studying the angle of his neck, I noted looseness in his shoulders and the way his hands rested open on his knees—fingers twitching like he’d been waiting for someone to notice him.

Praise him.

He was layered in innocence and soft edges—angelic in the oddest of ways.

I just… couldn’t quite understand how that was possible. Not when he was covered in so much blood.

The heavy liquid raced down the contours of his cheekbones and lined his upper lip. The scent was bitter enough I could taste iron in the back of my throat, but he didn’t seem bothered.

The tip of his tongue appeared, stealing a fleeting taste from his upper lip before disappearing back inside his mouth. Damp ends of snowy hair flopped over his forehead, threatening to poke him in the eye.

He didn’t look like a killer.

Then again, the boys who came to us rarely did.

“How did you find him?”

“Seattle PD.” Ben folded his arms across his chest, eyes meeting mine for the briefest of seconds before they settled back on the boy. “They called about two hours ago.”

Of course they did.

That was the rule. When something didn’t make sense—too clean, too strange, too loud in its quiet—they called us.

We weren’t the law, not by any proper definition of the word, but if you lived in this city, then you knew… Benjamin Thomas was the justice system. If you needed someone to pray to, it was his name you whispered while on your knees.

“Do we know his name?”

“Blue,” Ben said, gazing at him with the same cold, calculated look he studied all his recruits with.

These boys weren’t seen as human. They were assets. Weapons.

Ben offered them a place to set their conscience free, and though they ran wild, it was always within his limits—under his command.

My job balanced cruelty with precision—shelter them, train them, and guide them until their loyalty pointed in only one direction.

I pledge allegiance to the mafia.

Blue wouldn’t be forced to sign his life away. Like the rest of them, he’d be given a choice. But how much of a choice is it really… when it’s the only one you’ve got?

“Two victims,” Ben said. “Suspected cause of death is blunt force trauma.”

“This boy beat his victims?”

He made a gruff sound. “He used a hammer. Claw end.”

“How can you already be certain?”

“The hammer was found resting between the two bodies. Bloody fingerprints were stamped on the handle, and strands of hair were found on the claw end. The hammer itself will be processed for confirmation, but I am pretty goddamn certain.”

Ben’s eyes flicked upward, one eyebrow raised as he leveled me with a glassy stare. “Have you beaten anyone with a hammer recently, Samuel? I, myself, am acutely familiar with partially collapsed skulls.”

If I possessed even a measure of self-preservation, I’d apologize for questioning him. Benjamin Thomas could kill me faster than I could snap my fingers, but it wasn’t in me to be nervous.

He’d been my boss for nearly ten years. He owned me, hell , he owned the state. He had us all in a goddamn chokehold.

Attorneys, politicians, federal judges, surgeons, accountants, university presidents, local business owners, half of the police force… One way or another, we all found ourselves choking on his grasp.

He would never loosen his grip. No . Once you were caught, you died trying to escape, or you died serving.

“I can’t do my job properly if I don’t possess all the facts, Sir. If you want me to mold this boy into something the mafia can use, I need to know what I’m working with.”

They weren’t all the same. Killers .

Despite what American media loved to sell—Dahmer, Manson, Bundy—there was no single mold.

Some boys were born with a hunger for it.

Some were broken into it.

Some just wanted to make the world hurt the way they did.

Ben didn’t give a shit which shape it took, so long as I could sharpen it to something that benefited him.

He shifted beside me, gravel crunching beneath the expensive boots he wore. Linking his fingers together, he started spinning his wedding band. On anyone else, it was a normal, absent-minded gesture.

Benjamin Thomas was the antithesis of normal, and he sure as fuck wasn’t patient. For each minute he spent away from his husband, that patience thinned into a fragile existence.

“What you’re working with, Samuel, is an adolescent killer who bashed in the heads of not one, but two people. The facts , as they stand, are that where we are now isn’t a crime scene, but a dump site. He carried each of their bodies here.”

“Did he say why?”

“He told officers it’s where broken things go.”

My hand flexed, fingers curling inward until my nails bit down against the rough skin of my palm. “Do we have an ID on the victims?”

Two bodies lay beside him—one male, one female. The woman wore a simple dress, wet with her own blood. Her arms had been wiped clean, hands positioned carefully over her heart. Lifeless eyes were locked in a vacant stare—jaw slack and lips white.

The man had been positioned similarly, though his injuries were far more gruesome.

The woman’s skull had simply caved in, bone wet and punched inward.

The man’s skull wasn’t split. It was destroyed —crushed in on itself like someone was trying to press out all the thoughts. The cavity where his temple used to be was just… gone.

There was no subtlety to it—no precision or control.

Just… chaos.

Over…

And over…

And over again.

“John and Naomi Bensen. His parents.”

His parents. Christ.

The words struck the space between my ribs, lodging themselves in my chest like a splinter. Everything inside of me shifted then, pulling taut like muscle bracing for impact.

“We ran both their names. The family rents property six miles from here. Lease is in John’s name, under a holding LLC.”

“Was there medical history? Prior abuse?”

“Nothing on record.” Ben gestured toward the folder. “He doesn’t have an ID. No birth certificate. No school record. Nothing. For all intents and purposes, this kid doesn’t fucking exist.”

Hell.

A boy who didn’t exist made my job easier.

No records meant no red tape. No lingering baggage to untrain. No past to bury.

Blue was clean—a blank slate with blood still drying at the edges, yet the absence of him pressed on something I’d thought I buried.

Nobody— not one fucking person —bothered to notice him.

Not until he became a killer.

“Neighbors barely knew they existed,” Ben said. “They were isolated, church types.”

“What kind of church?”

“Small. Rural. Operates under a handful of names. No digital footprint. No outreach. No official affiliations.”

Ben exhaled and pushed a hand through his dark hair like the lack of information personally offended him.

“I’ve got a team combing the house now. If there’s a church, we’ll find it. If only to make sure no one is going to come looking for him.”

He glanced at me then, eyes sharp and cold, like a loaded gun leveled and waiting.

“Ultimately, Samuel, I don’t give a fuck who this boy was. He’s ours now. Build him into something I can use, or eliminate him. That’s why this project exists.”

Build him or break him.

That was the job.

Our boys were discarded in some way or another; abandoned, traded, or sold.

A collection of barely-legal killers, pissed off at the world and armed with a hair-trigger instinct to destroy anything resembling power.

They didn’t want safety. They wanted control.

Revenge.

Purpose.

They wanted to hurt back.

Ben tugged at the cuffs of his jacket. “First responders performed a quick intake. Vitals are stable. No visible trauma. No panic or fight. Psych eval was brief—he spoke when spoken to.”

“I’ll have the bodies taken care of,” he added, his tone flat. Final.

The silence that met us then wasn’t a gentle hush, but an oppressive, heavy quiet. It was the kind of quiet that kept secrets, and I had to wonder if that’s why Blue had chosen to sit here, folded into the dark.

On paper, Blue fit the mold. Another forgotten, angry boy with blood on his hands and bodies at his feet. He had the markings of what this program looked for—a boy carved by violence and quiet enough to train.

In truth, he was an anomaly, too soft in the places that should have hardened.

He didn’t wear his rage like the others did.

Whether that made him more dangerous or more worthy… I wasn’t sure.