The book was fiction. The pain was real. The consequences are deadly.

Professor Karla Dobbs has everything: literary acclaim, a bestselling novel, and a film adaptation on the horizon. Until a former student accuses her of plagiarism.

Natalie Silva claims that the novel in question is based on a real tragedy and insists that the film be stopped, or there will be consequences. Certain that she has done nothing wrong, Karla dismisses her. At first.

But as the world slips into lockdown, the truth begins to unravel, and the people behind the real story emerge demanding answers. Threats and public scrutiny follow. And then come the submissions.

Through a desperate attempt to stay afloat, her online mentorship program, Karla receives work from an anonymous writer known only as The Protegé. Each excerpt is disturbingly personal. Intimate and predictive, with chilling precision.

Someone is watching her. Someone is writing her. And as people around her begin to die, Karla realizes the most dangerous story she's never told . . . may be her own.

When you steal someone else's trauma, it becomes yours.