Beneath the Gilded Mask

Dr. Elara Vance, a forensic pathologist who trusts only the dead, is summoned to examine the body of a teenager shot by the Lakefield Police. The official report labels him an armed suspect, but under her scalpel, the wounds speak a more terrifying language. The bullet trajectories and defensive injuries tell of an execution, not a confrontation. The boy had no gunpowder residue on his hands, yet his back was riddled with precision shots. Her search for truth leads her to Alistair Brecken, a revered philanthropist whose charity for at-risk youth masks a private hunting reserve where the marginalized are the prey. When seventeen-year-old Eli Mercer, a runaway, accidentally stumbles into Brecken’s game, he becomes the final quarry. As Elara peels back layers of corrupted tissue and corrupted power, she realizes that death is the only honest confession, stripping away every lie the living have stitched together.