5. Wraith
Chapter 5
Wraith
T he moment I step out of Thorn & Petal, the brisk morning air shocks my system as I head back to the warehouse.
It cools my skin—overheated, overstimulated, invaded—but not enough. Not nearly enough.
Not enough to erase her scent.
Not enough to shake off the warmth of that fucking flower shop.
Not enough to claw her out of the place she’s already stitched herself into.
She should not be under my skin.
Yet that’s exactly where she is.
But now that she’s fed the beast lurking in my darkness?
There’s no escaping him now.
I should be forcing myself to focus.
Forcing myself to remember the next hit. The next step toward tearing Voss apart .
Revenge used to be the only thing that mattered.
The only thing that burned so hot it drowned everything else out.
But now?
Now it has competition.
Two dueling obsessions.
And I hate that I don’t know which will win.
I don’t even recognize the way they claw at me now—fast, sharp, ugly.
Neither waits for permission.
Neither thinks logically.
They fester under my ribs—tight, hot, heavy—like barbed wire tightening with every breath. Restlessness gnaws at the edges. Fractures split down the center, raw and bleeding, and I can’t stitch them fast enough.
I round a corner, barely aware of my surroundings—still chewing on the mental gymnastics she shoved me into.
That’s when he staggers into me.
Random asshole. Hoodie up. Head down. Shoulders slamming into mine like I’m a fucking ghost.
He mutters it under his breath.
“Watch it, dickhead.”
Not loud. Not even aggressive. Barely a bump.
But it’s enough.
The feral beast inside me snaps its leash.
I don’t think. Don’t plan.
One second he’s walking.
The next he’s slammed into the side of the building, bricks rattling under the impact.
I hit him once. Twice. Knuckles splitting skin, bone crunching beneath the weight of it .
He slumps. Slides to the ground, dazed and broken.
I stand over him, breathing hard, blood pounding behind my eyes. Knuckles torn to shreds.
This is the kind of place where if people see something—no they didn’t.
Nobody’s coming.
Still—
I didn’t plan this.
Didn’t control it.
Didn’t choose it.
It just happened.
I step back. Flex my fingers. Feel the blood sticking to my skin.
It’s been years since I lost it like that.
Years since rage overrode logic.
I drag in a breath. Force my heartbeat back into something steady.
This can’t happen again.
Control’s never been a luxury.
It’s always been survival.
I learned that young.
Fifteen, soaked to the bone, sleeping behind dumpsters in a city that didn’t blink at another runaway foster kid.
Eventually, I found the warehouse.
Half-rotted. Mold-choked.
Compared to the streets, it felt like a five-star hotel.
It took time.
Took a few less-than-legal moves to tap into the electrical grid.
Somehow, stealing internet was easier.
I started with junk tech—outdated, secondhand, barely faster than fucking dial-up.
But it was mine.
I built something no one could touch.
Once, it had been different.
Before the system tried to erase me.
The door slams behind me and I hang my jacket on the hook.
The first thing I do is grab a bag of frozen peas and hold it to my busted knuckles.
I need to reach out to “S”.
Maybe do a few rounds in the circuit.
I can’t afford to lose it.
Not now.
Not with her in my head.
Not with Voss still breathing.
I need something that deserves to be broken.
Something I can take apart piece by piece—planned, measured, precise.
Not reckless.
Not like before.
Something clean enough to stitch the cracks back together.
Planning the hit. Scrubbing their existence. Walking away like a goddamn ghost.
It centers me.
And right now?
I’m very much off-center.
Unsteady.
Un-fucking-acceptable.
I am always in control .
And she’s cracking it.
With flowers.
With a smile.
With a goddamn pink lily and eyes that never once recognized the monster standing in front of her.
I walked out of there with a fracture I didn’t know how to set.
And the only cure I know?
Hunting the filth and the secrets they hide—pulling every string until their lives collapse. Making them watch every second of it before deleting them with a bullet between the eyes.
It takes time. It always does. And I’ve spent the last twelve hours doing what I do best.
Hunting.
Watching.
Calculating.
Plotting.
Setting a trap.
I know his routines.
I know the guards who sleep on shift.
I know the camera blind spots no one’s bothered to fix.
I know everything.
Tonight isn’t about her.
It’s about precision.
Control.
The clean, predictable art of a job well done.
A hit is a problem with a solution.
A system.
A formula.
No unpredictability.
No haunting smiles.
No fucking pink lilies sticking in my head where they don’t belong.
By the time the sun sets, I have everything I need.
A name.
A location.
A fucking beautiful plan.
I've always known how to win.
My parents made sure of it—coding camps, robotics clubs, weekend drives to the college so I could sit in on engineering courses before I even hit puberty.
They wanted me to build a future.
After they died—after the system stamped a number over my name—those skills were all I had left.
No home.
No family.
Just a mind built to turn code into profit.
I knew computers.
Construction?
I didn’t know jack shit.
I worked construction sites just to learn—lifting scrap no one would miss.
If they did?
I didn’t exist anyway.
I wised up.
Picked up repair gigs across the city.
Broken machines. Corrupt drives.
To most people, they weren’t fixable.
But I’m not most people.
Every so often, something fancy enough to bankrupt a CEO came through .
Magically, I stopped showing up right after it went missing.
Piece by piece, I built an empire out of scrap.
By twenty-three, the world whispered my name.
Dominic Kade-Mercer was dead.
And Wraith was born.
Tonight Ezra Vaughn—trafficker. Sadist. Arrogant bastard with slicked-back hair and a god complex—gets a personal introduction.
One of Voss’s well-dressed cockroaches, feeding on stolen lives and calling it business.
He thinks he’s untouchable.
Laughs with all the confidence in the world.
But tonight?
He bleeds.
Thursday nights are his ritual.
Same suite.
Same agency.
Same game.
No security. No handlers. No eyes.
Just him, a bottle of overpriced whiskey, and a woman he thinks he owns the right to break.
Predictable.
And predictable men?
They’re the easiest to gut.
I slipped into the escort system like it was made for me—scrubbed his booking clean, canceled the callout, wiped the logs.
The agency thinks he flaked.
The girl never gets the request .
Nobody’s coming.
Nobody knows.
Vaughn won’t notice.
He’ll walk into that penthouse with a half-chub and an ego, ready to own someone. Ready to dominate.
But I’ll be the one waiting.
Mask on.
Steel in my hands.
Death wrapped in silence.
Isolated. Trapped.
No one will come.
No one will hear.
And by the time his network realizes the breach, I’ll already be ripping through their infrastructure like a fucking plague.
They’ll be too busy bleeding to realize what they lost—until it’s already gone.
I’ll get what I came for.
S wants names. Routes. Trade agreements.
I’ll dig deeper.
How long has Vaughn been in Voss’s pocket?
What’s he delivered?
Who did he sell out?
What else is Voss working on—and where the hell is he hiding the rest of the data?
And then I’ll finish Vaughn.
No bullets.
No quick exit.
No clean detachment.
He’s not a target.
He’s a message.
I’ll take him apart the slow way .
Make him understand what it means to be owned by someone who doesn’t want your body—only your fear.
Because fear is the only currency that matters in my world.
And his account is overdrawn.
I intend to cash in.
At least that was the plan.
Calculated. Controlled.
Clean.
Until it went entirely to shit.
The penthouse is in sight.
Top floor. West corner.
Lights off, just like I planned.
Curtains drawn. Shadows heavy behind the glass.
No movement. No noise.
Nothing to betray that in less than ten minutes, Ezra Vaughn will walk through that door, thinking he owns the fucking world.
I’m already in position—perched in the shadows, mask and hood drawn, body wound tight with purpose.
Every sense wired sharp.
Every breath measured.
The rooftop gravel crunches under my boots as I shift my weight, locking into place.
Nothing has been left to chance.
The entry’s primed—door jimmied just enough to make it stick, slow him down.
The path is mapped—eight steps from the door to the bedroom, two clean exits sealed.
The cameras are looped—static flickering in their blind spots, buying me precious minutes.
The tools are clean—blade. Cuffs. Syringe loaded and ready, in case things get messy.
The plan is perfect.
Simple. Ruthless. Unforgiving.
The kind of setup that doesn’t just promise control—it demands it.
Everything’s ready.
Now comes the fun part.
But then something shifts.
A sound. Subtle.
Not quiet.
But not careless.
Confident.
Weight shifting on metal. Fire escape.
I freeze.
Not because I’m afraid.
Because someone else is here.
Someone who shouldn’t be.
They move fast—fluid and silent across the rooftop, dressed in black, gear molded to their body like it’s part of them.
Not prey.
Not some dumbfuck courier in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A hunter.
Just like me.
And they’re about to piss all over my plans.
Fuck.
I shift to intercept, moving without a sound, slipping into their path with calculated precision—cutting off the only clean route to the penthouse door .
They stop.
Not surprised. Not panicked.
Just still.
Coiled like a wire pulled tight.
We stand there.
Breathing the same cold air.
Waiting.
I watch them.
They watch me.
No twitch.
No flinch.
Just the slow tilt of a head, like they’ve been expecting me all along.
A professional. Maybe.
Bold as hell, definitely.
My fingers find the blade tucked at my back, wrapping tight around the hilt.
Half a second from moving.
Half a second from making this a bloodbath.
And then they step forward—slow, deliberate—into the soft spill of light from a rooftop security bulb.
What I see isn’t gear.
Isn’t armor.
Isn’t tactical.
It’s makeup.
Painted white, split dead down the middle.
One half of the face smiling.
The other frowning.
A perfect tragedy/comedy mask brought to life—grinning underneath it all with a mouth full of villainy.
What.
The.
Actual.
Fuck.
And then?—
They wink.
They fucking wink.