I was scrolling through Instagram when a photo on my explore page stopped me dead in my tracks. It was my face, my bedroom, even the pale-blue pajamas I had bought three weeks earlier—but beneath the picture, a man I had never met was asking strangers why his girlfriend kept refusing to meet him.
Chapter 1
The account belonged to someone named Julian Sterling. His caption read, “Been dating this girl online for almost a year. I think it’s finally time we meet, but whenever I bring it up, she finds an excuse. Rose, if you see this, please stop being scared. I already care about you.”
At first I assumed someone had stolen an old picture from my social media. Then I zoomed in and felt the blood drain from my face. I had never posted that photograph anywhere. The pajamas were new, and I had worn them only inside Room 214 of Hartwell Hall, the apartment-style dorm I shared with three other women at a university outside Boston.
The comments beneath Julian’s post were brutal. People were telling him he had been catfished, urging him to reverse-search the photographs and warning him that any woman who refused to meet after a year was hiding something. Julian kept defending “Rose,” insisting they had video-chatted, talked late into the night, and exchanged new pictures almost every day.
That was when a voice floated down from the top bunk behind me.
“Chloe, serious question. What’s the fastest way to lose thirty pounds?”
I turned slowly.
Madison Chen was leaning over the edge of her bunk, studying me with a look I had never seen before. She was twenty-one, loud, dramatic, and forever ordering late-night fries while complaining that none of her clothes fit the way she wanted. Until that moment, I had never thought of her as dangerous.
“Thirty pounds?” Sarah asked from across the room. “In what, six months?”
“One month,” Madison said.
Sarah laughed. “Unless you plan to lose a leg, probably not.”
Madison ignored her. She climbed down and came toward my desk, staring directly at my face.
“If I lost the weight,” she said, “you think I could look a lot like you, right?”
My skin prickled.
“What?”
“Our faces. The structure.”
She touched her own cheekbone, then looked at mine.
“We have similar features. Don’t we?”
Behind her, Sarah finally stopped laughing.
I locked my phone before Madison could see Julian’s post.
“Why are you asking?”
Madison shrugged too quickly.
“No reason.”
“What’s the boyfriend’s name?”
Her eyes brightened despite herself.
“What boyfriend?”
“The one you’ve been bragging about for six months.”
She hesitated.
Then vanity won.
“Julian Sterling.”
I knew the name.
Everyone on campus did.
His family had donated the new economics library. Sterling Capital owned commercial real estate from New York to Miami, and Julian’s father appeared often enough in financial magazines that even people who hated business news recognized him.
Madison lifted her wrist.
A diamond bracelet glittered there.
“He sent me this for our anniversary.”
“Anniversary of what?” Sarah asked.
“When we started talking.”
“Have you met him?”
Madison’s smile disappeared.
“We video-chat.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Madison’s face tightened.
“He’s busy. I’m busy.”
Sarah whistled softly.
“Girl, you haven’t met him.”
“Shut up.”
I watched Madison.
Then I remembered the picture on Julian’s page.
My pajamas.
My room.
And suddenly another memory surfaced.
Two months earlier, Madison had borrowed my white dress without asking. Last week, I found my hairbrush on her desk. She had once asked why I never wore more makeup because I “already had the kind of face men spend money on.”
At the time, those moments seemed irritating.
Now they looked different.
Madison abruptly grabbed her sweatshirt.
“I have to see my academic adviser.”
“Right now?” Sarah asked.
“Yes.”
She left so quickly the door slammed behind her.
For several seconds, none of us spoke.
Then Sarah turned to me.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know yet.”
But I did.
I just wasn’t ready to say it.
That evening, Madison returned carrying a glossy black takeout bag from one of Boston’s most expensive restaurants.
“Julian knew I had a bad day,” she announced. “So he sent dinner.”
She spread the containers across her desk.
Sarah gasped over the prices.
I looked at the receipt.
Customer: Chloe Bennett.
My name.
I went cold.
Madison noticed me staring and folded the receipt before sliding it underneath a container.
“Problem?”
“No.”
I smiled.
“None at all.”
She relaxed.
That was when I knew she had used more than my face.
She had used my name too.
While Madison bragged about Julian’s gifts, I reopened his post.
He had added another comment.
“I’m thinking about surprising her on campus. Sometimes people need a push to stop being afraid.”
I stared at his profile photograph.
Tall. Athletic. Dark hair. Kind eyes, at least in pictures.
Then I looked at Madison, happily eating a dinner purchased for a woman who did not exist.
I could have messaged Julian right then.
Instead, I stopped.
Because there was one thing I needed to know first.
Was he another victim?
Or was he the kind of man who would become dangerous once he discovered the truth?
The following Saturday, I found out.
