Page 20 of All Ghosts Aren’t Dead (The Forgotten #1)

SAMUEL

B en’s face took up most of the screen, dark hair slicked back, cold eyes that didn’t blink enough, and a jaw set like he could break a man with it.

He wore a suit sharp enough for a boardroom, all dark fabric and quiet wealth, but no amount of expensive tailoring could mask the truth.

He wasn’t a businessman. He was a killer.

Ruthless.

Rich.

Untouchable.

Benjamin Thomas hated most people, tolerated the rest, and only ever softened when his husband entered the room.

My office felt colder with him on the screen.

Which seemed nearly fucking impossible. It was already a cold room—temperature kept low, floors polished to silence, the sharp smell of disinfectant always clinging to the corners. Ben brought a different kind of cold—the kind that pressed beneath your skin and reminded you who held the leash.

I sat straight-backed in my chair, hands folded in my lap. A single manila folder sat in front of me—clean and sans creases. Everything inside had been logged and double-checked.

Evaluations.

Reports.

Records of daily progress.

Thirty days.

Every recruit had a check-in at the one-month mark. It was standard protocol, but Ben didn’t give a shit about protocol unless it served him. If Ben was taking time out of whatever corner of hell he currently resided in, it meant he wanted something.

Something that was guaranteed to piss me off.

His voice cut through the static. “How’s the cult boy doing?”

Motherfucker.

Pleasantries didn’t exist in this line of work, not between people like us, but still, I didn’t answer right away. I stared at the screen for a beat, jaw tight, waiting for the urge to snap to pass.

It didn’t.

“His name is Blue.”

Ben arched a brow. “That wasn’t my fucking question.”

Of course it wasn’t. I’d seen this before, seen how he liked to prod and twist, how he read beneath answers like he was hunting for weakness. Ben didn’t just want an update. He wanted proof that the boy wasn’t broken— my boy.

I tapped a finger against his folder. “He’s made progress.”

Ben leaned back in his chair, the soft creak of leather echoing through the speakers. “Academic or behavioral?”

“Both. He’s… steady. Obedient.”

He was unimpressed. “For now.”

“He’s being tutored,” I said, sharper. “Reading’s still a hurdle. His dyslexia makes it hard, but he’s showing up. Every day. He doesn’t complain. Doesn’t skip.”

Sofia and Amir had brought in a specialist the first week, a certified educational therapist, the kind trained to assess and support learning disabilities like Blue’s.

She’d spent nearly two hours with him, soft-voiced and patient, while he struggled to sound out words and hid his shaking hands in his sleeves.

The official diagnosis hadn’t surprised me.

What had surprised me was how Blue didn’t crumble after hearing it.

Now he met daily with that therapist and Sofia, alternating between letter drills, decoding strategies, and whispered encouragement I wasn’t supposed to hear from the hall. He still stumbled, still reversed letters, but he tried.

I was so fucking proud of him.

A few days ago, I came back from a late meeting and found a folded piece of paper on my desk—creased edges and pencil smudged. It was the kind of mess only effort could make.

Dear Daddy, I love you.

Every letter was written perfectly.

I nearly fucking cried right there, standing in the dark, reading those five little words like they might undo every fucked-up thing that ever happened to him.

To me.

He’d waited in the hallway for me to find it, rocking on his heels, eyes too bright for that time of night. All day he’d practiced.

I framed it and set it on the corner of my desk like a shrine.

It was the only fucking warmth in this place.

Ben didn’t react to Blue’s diagnosis or the progress he was making. It wasn’t what mattered to him. Not really. “How’s he been emotionally?”

I clenched my jaw. “He’s adjusting.”

Ben’s gaze sharpened. “That wasn’t an answer.”

I didn’t fucking care.

A beat passed. Static buzzed faintly through the speakers, but Ben didn’t fill it. He just… stared at me, and I stared right back.

Ben knew what that word meant coming from me. Adjusting didn’t mean healed, or happy, or even safe. It meant surviving. Clinging. Building new muscle over scar tissue. In regards to Blue it meant mine now, so back the fuck off.

“I’m not asking for sentiment, Samuel.” Ben’s face twitched, and he started tapping something off-screen.

Probably a pen. Or a knife. With him, either was a threat.

“I’m asking because the next phase is coming.

He’s a month in. If he can’t hold a blade without pissing himself, we both know what that means. ”

“Violence is not an issue for Blue. He can hold a blade.”

“And from what I hear, he knows exactly where to put it.” Ben gave the smallest tilt of his head. “Bishop says he ignores precision weapons and almost always reaches for the tool that will make the biggest mess.”

I forced my jaw to stay still.

He wasn’t wrong.

My boy wasn’t afraid of blood. He liked the evidence of it. The mess centered him, but he wasn’t some goddamn feral stray. Blue wasn’t bloodthirsty, he was conditioned , molded by hands that believed pain was holy.

He didn’t reach for the blade to indulge in cruelty. He reached for it because it gave him something he never had.

Control.

“Blue is not just a weapon,” I spat. “He’s a survivor. A victim. You don’t get to strip that down to numbers and utility.”

“Don’t I?”

Fuck. You.

“Hiro says he’s sharp. Bishop says he moves like he’s got something to prove. You know what I say, Samuel?” He leaned closer to the camera, eyes narrowing. “I say that’s the goddamn point of this program. Since when do you give a fuck?”

I didn’t answer.

“You, of all people. The boy who wouldn’t speak for a year. The one who broke ribs without blinking. Suddenly, you care about what’s fair?”

“I have always cared about what’s fair.” My fingers curled around the edge of my desk.

“That is why I took this job, and why I’m so fucking good at it.

I care that these boys reach a position in their lives where they feel they have autonomy.

They are humans first and foremost, and weapons only if they choose to be. ”

“Every boy that comes through our program is a weapon, Samuel. Every goddamn one of them. It doesn’t make a difference to me whether they are shoving a gun down a man’s throat or moving millions through six shell companies before the bank opens.

They are weapons. My weapons. I can take them out of the blood-stained box they came in and use them as I see fit, whenever the fuck I want.

That is what they agreed to—the autonomy you speak of. ”

“You think I don’t know what this place is?

What I’ve made it?” I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.

“These boys aren’t your weapons. They’re my consequences.

They agreed to this program because it was the only thing that ensured their survival.

They serve you because I make damn sure they feel safe enough to choose to do so. ”

“Did you want a fucking medal? Am I supposed to clap for you? For fuck’s sake, Samuel, get a goddamn grip.

” His lips flattened. “I offered you this job, and the only reason the boys receive the option to choose their path is because I conceded to your conditions with the promise that they will become mine in some way or another. Not once have you pissed me off so royally that I’ve wanted to reach through this screen and strangle you where you sit. What the fuck is so different now?”

Ben shook his head, slow and deliberate, then leaned in, elbows resting lightly on his desk, fingers steepled in front of his mouth like he was praying for control.

His eyes narrowed, not in suspicion, but in calculation. He studied me with the same patience I’d once seen him use to watch a man bleed out—curious, detached, and already two moves ahead.

I watched as his mouth twitched, not a smile, but the faintest lift at the corner.

He’d found the wound .

“Jesus Christ, Samuel,” he murmured, voice barely more than a breath.

“You’re emotionally compromised.”

My fingers curled tighter around the desk, just enough to keep the heat in.

I didn’t deny it. I couldn’t . Blue had become the exception I couldn’t make excuses for, as if I fucking would, but that sure as shit didn’t mean I would sit here and let Ben take it apart and call it weakness just because it wasn’t useful to him.

“You don’t get to weaponize that too,” I said, voice low. “Not him.”

Not my baby.

Ben exhaled slowly, like he pitied me. “I don’t need to weaponize him. You’ve already done that, so what exactly is the problem here, Samuel? That he’s a weapon… or that he enjoys it?”

I stood so fast the chair scraped backward.

My hand shot out and slammed the edge of the desk. A sharp crack echoed through the room. I leaned in toward the screen, breath steady yet pulse racing.

“The problem,” I said evenly, “isn’t that he’s a weapon. It’s that you think he belongs to you. ”

“Doesn’t he, though?”

“I swear to God, Benjamin?—”

“You don’t get to preach autonomy and then keep your little monster locked in a basement.”

He let the words hang, then adjusted the cuff of his sleeve. “I’m considering him for a test assignment.”

A flicker of something hot curled beneath my ribs.

“We’ve got a situation, one that might benefit from a soft face and a hard edge. I want to send him out. Minor participation. Controlled environment. Just backup.”

“No.” The word left me before I could leash it.

Ben didn’t flinch. “It’s not a request.”

Every muscle in my body tightened, the veins lining my neck pulsing with a level of rage I rarely let myself succumb to.

I pressed a finger to the screen. “You send him on a mission without me knowing, and I swear to God, Ben, I’ll pull every resource from this house. I’ll gut this program from the inside out before I let you make him into a fucking trophy.”

“Ah.” Ben’s smile barely lifted just one corner of his mouth. “I was wondering when that boy I met fifteen years ago would show up. I’d started to think you’d buried him under all that bullshit you call discipline.”

“Fuck you.”

He laughed under his breath, mocking , like I was there for his amusement. “Give the boy a choice, Samuel. That’s your whole sermon, isn’t it?”

“I’ll give him a choice, but I’ll protect him while I do it. If you think I’m going to drop him into a battlefield before he’s ready just to satisfy your fucking curiosity—think again.”

“Let me be very clear.” His lips curled.

“I don’t give a fuck who is in your bed.

Love him. Fuck him. Marry him. I couldn’t give less of a shit, but make no mistake,” he popped his knuckles, the skin around his eyes tightening as he leaned toward the screen, “Blue belongs to this cause, and so do you.”

The call cut.

I stared at the black screen, pulse thudding at the base of my throat. My body stayed still, but my blood moved under the surface of my skin like something caged too long—thick, cold, and pulsing behind my ribs with nowhere to go.

The heat in my chest crawled to my neck, until the edges of my vision sharpened and I could feel it— rage.

The kind that didn’t burn outward.

No.

It was the kind that buried itself deep. Bone-deep.

I moved before I thought.

My arm swept across the desk in one violent arc—papers, pens, the laptop— everything crashed to the floor with a sound that felt louder than it should’ve.

Blue’s note landed face up. I stood there, staring down at those words, chest heavy and jaw locked.

Dear Daddy, I love you.

Over my dead fucking body did Blue belong to anyone but me.