Prologue
PROLOGUE
Two Years Earlier
Evan Hale woke with blood in his mouth and the smell of disinfectant in the air.
Upstairs, the party continued.
Music shook the basement ceiling. Dozens of students shouted, drank, and danced, unaware that beneath their feet, someone was preparing a death.
Evan tried to sit up, but the pain forced him to remain on the floor.
The scene was already being cleaned.
Before there was an official version.
Before he was dead.
His notebook was not there. He had hidden it beneath the university’s stone lion, where no one would think to search for something that was never supposed to exist.
Dates. Payments. Photographs. Names.
And one impossible file.
SIENNA CALLOWAY.
The young woman did not attend that university yet. She had not even applied for a transfer.
But someone had already approved her arrival.
The basement door opened.
A silhouette descended the stairs and closed the door behind them.
VOICE: “Where is it?”
Evan smiled, even though blood covered his teeth.
EVAN: “You’re too late.”
The figure stopped in front of him.
VOICE: “Twelve people saw what happened tonight.”
EVAN: “Twelve people repeat whatever they’re told.”
The silence that followed was worse than a threat.
Evan thought about Leah. The glass. The lie they had built around her.
EVAN: “Leah didn’t take anything from me.”
VOICE: “They don’t need it to be true.”
Then he understood.
They were not merely trying to conceal a murder.
They wanted to manufacture a memory.
The silhouette leaned closer. Something flashed briefly between their fingers.
Evan felt the needle pierce his neck.
He tried to pull away, but his body stopped responding. The lights distorted, and the music began to sound distant, as though the entire house were sinking beneath the water.
VOICE: “Where are you, Evan?”
He clenched his teeth.
He knew which answer they expected.
He also knew he must not say it.
Yet his lips moved on their own.
EVAN: “I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
VOICE: “Good.”
After that, everything happened exactly as they had planned.
Twelve witnesses repeated the same statement.
The police called it a fall.
The university protected its name.
And Evan Hale’s case was buried beneath a truth that had never happened.
Two years later, Sienna Calloway would walk through those gates, convinced that an available place had brought her there.
She did not know that university yet.
The university already knew her name.
