Page 1 of This Life of Mine

Prologue

The Wraith

Istand with my arms folded, leaning on the concrete wall, observing the man as he loses and regains consciousness.

Fatigue starts to sink deep into my bones.

I’ve been wearing this fucking mask for hours. Hours of being someone else. Hours of hiding behind black armor and a distorted voice. Hours of pretending I’m made of something harder than flesh and blood.

People often assume the mask makes me unstoppable.

Honestly, it drains me each time I put it on.

The mask doesn’t make me powerful. It makes me necessary. And the longer I wear it, the heavier it becomes. Every choice, every name, every face is collected like stones in my pockets until I’m carrying enough weight to drown.

Every hour spent asThe Wraithis another hour spent suppressing the parts of myself that possess human qualities.

The violence and detachment are easy. It’s remembering that I’m only a man underneath it all that takes work.

I roll my shoulders, sensing the ache in my neck and lower back.

The armor isn’t uncomfortable. It’s the man inside who’s tired. Tired of the lies and the secrets. Tired of carrying around a version of myself that only comes alive in the dark.

Across the room, the guy I’ve been working, groans and shifts against the restraints.

I push the exhaustion down where it belongs. After all,The Wraithisn’t the one tired.

The mask seals around my head, matte black plates locking together along the sides. The visor opaque from the outside, giving this guy nothing to focus on. No eyes. No face. No humanity. The hood over the mask hides the rest.

Inside, the display glows across the visor in razor-sharp definition. Enhanced optics turn shadows into detail. Data streams across the corners of my vision while biometric readings track the man chained to the chair.

The voice modulation system is built directly into the helmet. Every word emerges deeper, distorted, stripped of identity—as intended.

“Charlie,” I say calmly, almost pleasantly, “I owe you an apology.”

The words emerge distorted through the speaker. Deep. Unnatural. The kind of voice that sounds less like a man and more like something waiting in the depths unknown.

His head lolls forward, then back. One eye—his only functioning one—fights to stay open, rimmed red and unfocused. The other has swollen shut, a bruised testament to the evening’s progression.

Earlier, he screamed. Begged. Bargained. Now there is only moaning. Soft and broken.

“I’ve been anticipating this meeting for weeks,” I continue. “And somehow, I rushed our time. I didn’t give you the attentionyou deserved. So much of what I wanted to do seemed rushed. Left unfinished.”

The adapter drags a metallic edge across every syllable, stretching the sound into something unsettling.

I sigh, genuinely disappointed. “I overextended myself. Failed to be fully present. For that, I offer my apologies.”

Charlie visibly flinches. To Charlie, I’m not a man standing in the shadows. I’m a silhouette carved from darkness. A featureless shape with a distorted voice and nothing remotely human for him to connect to.

People fear the unknown. But they fear it most when it wears a shape they can’t quite call human.

Charlie’s eyes never leave me. Because right now, he isn’t looking at a man. He’s looking at every story he’s ever heard.

The Wraith.

The name drifts through the criminal underworld like a disease. Passed from one terrified bastard to the next. Whispered in safe houses. Mentioned in hushed conversations behind locked doors. Spoken cautiously across encrypted networks, where men who traffic women, sell children, and order murders for profit exchange warnings with one another.

Human traffickers know it. Cartels know it. Contract killers know it. The predators who spend their lives hunting the vulnerable know exactly who the fuck I am.