Ghosted Obsession

Chapter 1

JAGGER

THE GIRL BEHIND THE LENS

Blood always smells the fucking same.

Hot. Metallic.

Thick enough to settle at the back of your throat and stay there until morning. Until it sinks into the cracks in the concrete and mixes with the spilled beer, cigarette ash, and every other goddamn bad decision ever made inside this fucking warehouse.

Shit, the place has smelled like this for as long as I can remember.

The warehouse sits on the rotten edge of campus where the university stops pretending it cares about safety and the city starts showing its real teeth.

From the outside, it looks abandoned. Boarded windows.

Rusted loading bay doors. Graffiti sprayed across brick in layers so thick no one can tell who marked it first. The kind of building people walk past faster at night without knowing exactly why.

But inside, it’s alive.

Bodies pack the open floor shoulder to shoulder, pressed tight around the cage bolted into the center of the room.

Cigarette smoke curls beneath rusted steel rafters, catching in the yellow industrial lights that flicker overhead like they’re tired of witnessing the same shit every weekend.

Music pounds through speakers hidden somewhere in the shadows, bass rattling through the concrete hard enough to make the floor feel like a pulse.

People scream until their voices break. Money changes hands in fistfuls. Girls climb onto crates for a better view while guys get drunk on cheap liquor and false confidence shove each other near the fence, all of them hungry to see blood as long as it isn’t theirs.

Sure, University has its polished side. Red brick buildings, manicured grass, donors’ names carved into stone, professors pretending everyone here is chasing some kind of future.

Then there’s this.

The basement heartbeat.

The place where rich kids, scholarship kids, bored girls, violent boys, and anyone with a death wish come to watch men beat each other bloody for cash.

No school colors or fucking rules worth respecting. No pretending violence doesn’t live under everyone’s skin, because we all know it fucking does.

I like it better down here.

At least here, everyone’s fucking honest.

A fist cracks across my jaw hard enough to snap my head to the side.

Pain flashes bright behind my eyes. My teeth cut into the inside of my cheek, and blood floods my mouth, warm and familiar. The crowd erupts like that single hit bought them all a piece of me. They scream harder, pressing into the chain-link until the cage rattles around us.

The guy across from me grins.

That’s his first mistake.

Smiling means he thinks he did something. It means he still thinks this is a fight.

I roll my neck slowly, spit blood onto the canvas, and look back at him without blinking. His grin lasts maybe two seconds before uncertainty slides into its place.

There it is.

My favorite part.

Not the punch, or the pain. Fuck, not even the win.

The realization.

That tiny little moment when a man understands the version of me he built in his head isn’t the one standing in front of him. He thought the reputation was inflated. He thought because he landed one clean hit, he stood a fucking chance.

People think a lot of stupid things before they end up on the floor.

I don’t fight like the rest of them.

I don’t storm in swinging or waste breath screaming and shit talking. I don’t throw pointless punches just to prove I can. Men like that are easy to break because their anger gets there before their brain does.

I wait, and I watch.

I let them make the first mistake, then I become the thing they can’t get away from.

By the time they realize I’m close enough to hurt them, it’s already too fucking late.

And eventually, people stopped asking for my name and started chanting the one they gave me instead.

Wraith.

Nobody down here cares that Jagger Cutter is the man they’re chanting for.

People love a monster more when they don’t have to know where he sleeps, what classes he skips, what last name he carries, or who taught him how to throw his first punch.

Johnny taught me, for the record.

My older brother by fifteen months, though he acts like those months came with a crown and a divine fucking right to ruin my life whenever he gets bored.

Johnny taught me how to hit first, lie better, and smile when something hurts. He taught me how to survive people who smell weakness like blood in water.

He also taught me that the ones who love you can ruin you faster than any enemy ever could.

The guy in front of me raises his fists again. His right eye is already swelling, his lip split down the middle, blood dripping from his chin onto his chest.

He’s tough. I’ll give him that.

Tough enough to keep standing, and yet too stupid to realize standing is the worst thing he can do right now.

The referee shifts along the edge of the cage, watching us closely. He’s only here to keep people from dying too obviously.

Everything else is considered entertainment.

The crowd chants louder, hungry for the part where I stop playing with him and start ending this.

Wraith.

Wraith.

Wraith.

The name rolls through the warehouse like a fucking warning.

Like I’m something that slips through the dark and leaves bodies behind.

The bell rings.

The guy charges. Well, that’s his second mistake.

Everyone thinks I fight because I’m angry.

Because I’m fucked up. Like there’s something rotten in me that needs somewhere to go.

They’re not completely wrong.

But anger isn’t why I step into the cage.

Control is.

In here, the world gets smaller and the noise fades. Nothing matters except the body in front of me and how fast I can make it break.

The cage strips everything else away: classes, expectations, my last name, Johnny hovering like a bad fucking omen.

What’s left is breath, bone, timing, and pain.

Simple.

Clean.

Mine.

His punch comes fast, but desperate men are sloppy as fuck.

I slip under it and drive my fist into his ribs. The hit travels up my arm, hard and clean, and something gives beneath my knuckles. Not enough to drop him. Just enough to let his body know I found a place that hurts.

His breath punches out of him.

The crowd gets louder.

He staggers back.

I follow.

I’m not rushing this. Rushing is for men who are scared the fight might last long enough to expose them. I already know how this ends. Now I want him to know it too.

He swings again, wild and pissed off, showing me the hit before he ever throws it. I catch his wrist before his fist reaches my face and twist until his shoulder jerks forward.

His expression changes right away.

There’s the fear.

Raw. Honest. Fucking perfect.

I slam my elbow into his jaw.

His head snaps sideways, blood and sweat cutting through the air under the flickering lights. The cage rattles when the crowd surges forward, bodies slamming into chain-link, voices rising until the music nearly disappears beneath them.

Someone near the front starts the chant.

“Wraith! Wraith! Wraith!”

It catches fast.

Spreads through the warehouse like smoke.

He tries to back up, but the cage stops him. I step in and cut off the other side, leaving him nowhere to go except through me.

Bad fucking option.

His eyes flick past my shoulder, searching for the ref, for a way out, for someone to save him from the stupid choice that dragged him in here.

That’s the thing about fear. People think it makes you run.

Sometimes it just locks you in place and lets you watch what’s coming.

I almost feel bad for him.

Almost.

Then a flash cuts across my vision.

White and sharp.

For half a second, the whole warehouse looks blown out, like someone overexposed the night.

My focus snaps toward the edge of the crowd before I can stop it, irritation prickling hot at the back of my neck.

A camera.

That’s all I catch at first.

A black strap loops around pale fingers. A lens points straight through the cage.

Not at the other guy or the crowd losing its fucking mind.

At me.

Then the bodies shift, and whoever’s holding it disappears again.

My jaw tightens.

The guy uses the distraction to swing.

Stupid.

I turn back just as his fist cuts past my face, close enough for me to feel the air move. The irritation in my chest goes sharp, then cold.

The next hit I land is meaner than it needs to be.

A clean shot to the ribs folds him forward with a strangled sound. His knees buckle. I grab the back of his neck and drive my knee up once, then again, each impact dull and heavy beneath the roar of the crowd.

The ref steps closer.

I let the guy drop before he can touch me again.

The bell rings.

Fight over.

The warehouse explodes.

For a second, I stand in the middle of the cage with blood on my mouth, sweat cooling under my shirt, and the crowd screaming like I’m something worth worshipping.

The ref grabs my wrist and lifts my arm.

Money moves.

Someone throws a drink.

Some drunk idiot tries climbing the cage before security drags him back down.

Usually, this is the good part.

The quiet after.

The drop.

The moment violence drains out of me and leaves everything clean.

Tonight, it doesn’t fucking come.

My eyes cut through the crowd instead. Raised phones. Drunk faces though the smoke. Moving bodies. Too much fucking noise. Too many people.

I tell myself I’m not looking for anything.

Bullshit.

The camera flash shouldn’t matter.

The person holding it shouldn’t matter either.

But my gaze keeps searching until another burst of light flares near one of the steel columns.

This time, I see her.

Not all of her, but enough.

Long dark hair. Black clothes, and the lens is still pointed right at me.

Like she wants to see what happens when I notice.

Another flash hits before I’m ready for it.

White cuts across my vision, sharp enough to make the whole warehouse disappear for half a second.

I blink once.

Twice.

When the world comes back, the steel column is empty. The crowd is still screaming, smoke still crawling under the lights, but the girl with the camera has slipped back into the dark like she was never there at all.

My mouth curves before I can stop it.

Cute little trick.