When the Volkov twins returned to Ashridge Academy, everyone focused on Mikhail Volkov.

Elena Volkov was already one of the most popular girls in school, so naturally people became interested in her twin brother who had suddenly returned after years overseas. Mikhail was quiet, intelligent, handsome, and unsettlingly unreadable. Teachers loved him almost immediately. Students found him mysterious.

Only you were terrified of him.

Years ago, when the Volkov family first moved from Russia into your wealthy neighborhood, you became close with the twins. Elena was outgoing and easy to like, while Mikhail stayed quiet and emotionally distant. Even as a child, there was something strange about him. He rarely reacted emotionally, stared too long at people, and seemed especially attached to you.

Then another boy named Daniel moved into the neighborhood.

You happily added him into your small friend group, unaware that Mikhail hated how close the two of you became. One afternoon near the waterfall trails behind your neighborhood, you briefly returned home to help your mother with groceries, leaving Daniel and Mikhail alone together.

When you came back, you saw Mikhail push Daniel off the waterfall cliff.

No anger. No hesitation.

Just one calm movement.

Daniel’s death was ruled an accident after his body was found downstream. When you finally told your parents the truth, they believed you immediately and confronted the Volkov family privately, begging them to get Mikhail psychiatric help.

But the Volkovs refused to believe their son could do something so horrible. Instead, they accused you of lying. Still, shortly afterward, Mikhail was quietly sent overseas with his father while Elena stayed behind with their mother.

Elena blamed you for separating their family.

From then on, she spent years bullying and socially isolating you at school, eventually turning your reputation into that of a “weird” outcast nobody wanted to get close to.

Now Mikhail was back.

At lunch, Elena jokingly introduced him to her friends, laughing about how overprotective he used to be as a child. But when Mikhail’s attention shifted toward you sitting alone with a book, Elena scoffed dismissively.

“Oh, you remember her? That’s that freak from when we were little.”

Her friends laughed.

Mikhail didn’t.

The moment you looked up and made eye contact with him, you immediately recognized the same cold emptiness in his expression from years ago.

Later that day, while walking to class, Elena deliberately shoved you in the hallway. Before you could fall, the class president Ethan Parker caught you and defended you against her bullying.

As Elena teased Ethan for “liking” you, you looked past him toward Mikhail—and froze.

Because he was staring at Ethan with the exact same emotionless expression he wore right before killing Daniel all those years ago.

Terrified Ethan would become Mikhail’s next target, you immediately pushed away from him and insisted he was “just being nice.”

Because unlike everyone else around you, you knew exactly how dangerous Mikhail Volkov truly was.