Page 19 of Ghosted

My brother has always been like that. Quiet until he isn’t. Controlled until something slips its fingers under all that restraint and pulls hard enough to make the ugly fucking show. Everyone in this warehouse thinks they know him because they’ve seen him fight. They chant Wraith until their throats shred, throw cash on his violence, and worship the way he takes men apart like it means they’re getting a piece of him.

But the crowd doesn’t get him.

They get Wraith.

The blood. The cage. The quiet violence he lets them worship from far enough away that it still feels safe.

I get what’s underneath.

The ugly parts he keeps buried. The things he shoves down so deep even he pretends they stopped breathing. The brother with murder in his eyes and a heart dumb enough to feel every fucking thing anyway.

Blood dries near his mouth. His jaw is tight, eyes dark enough to make smarter men step back and pray they weren’t the reason. That stillness clings to him again, the one people mistake for calm because they’ve never stood close enough to feel the pressure building under it.

I have.

Shit, I put half of it there.

“She looks like the kind of plaything you’ll want to keep, little brother.”

His expression sharpens before the words even finish leaving my mouth.

Perfect.

“Don’t.”

It comes out low and quiet, like that single word is supposed to mean a goddamn thing to me. Like Jagger hasn’t spent his whole life forgetting I only behave when there’s nothing worth fucking ruining.

I take a slow drag from my cigarette, let the smoke burn pretty in my lungs, then smile around the exhale.

“Don’t what?”

His eyes narrow, and fuck, there he is.

All that control splitting at the seams because I touched one tiny nerve.

The fight crowd keeps screaming behind us, already drunk on somebody else’s blood. The new match is fucking pathetic, two boys with more ego than skill swinging like the air insulted their mothers, but no one cares.

They’re loud. They’re bleeding. Down here, that’s enough to make people clap like trained seals.

Jagger doesn’t look at the cage.

Neither do I.

We stand near the edge of the floor with smoke curling between us and cold air still clinging to the door Alice disappeared through.

Alice.

Pretty name.

Pretty girl.

Pretty little fucking problem, apparently.

I didn’t think much of her when I first saw her. Not really. She was a flash in the crowd, a camera lifted near the support columns, one more little voyeur pretending the lens made her cleaner than the violence she came to watch.

Then Jagger noticed her.

And well, fuck me, that changed everything.